3 Things – Early Ian Estimates, Post-Acquisition Updates & Embedded Moves

Hello Friends!  First off, our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by Hurricane Ian, we hope you are safe and have begun the recovery process.  It had been a quiet tropical season until it wasn’t, we all knew this would be the case but it is never easy to see the devastation and suffering.  The industry was understandably quiet this week but still we must go on and this week we are following early loss estimates for Ian, post-acquisition updates and two big insurer moves into embedded products:

 [1]

Initial Loss Estimates for Ian

At press time, Ian has made a second landfall in South Carolina but should became less dangerous over the weekend.  Still, we as an industry have many sources and tools to begin to understanding the loss expectations The west coast of Florida has some of the higher property TIV’s in the US.  There were several estimates but it appears likely that losses have potential to exceed $40 billion which would be bigger than Andrew back in 1992.  Of course this is not good for the Florida property market which was already struggling before this event.  The losses will be spread and hit some harder than others.

 [2]

Post Acquisition Updates

It is always interesting to see what happens post-acquisition and there were two interesting stories, both courtesy of our friends at Coverager, that involved notable deals from the past couple of years.  GEICO is going to leverage Bold Penguin (an American Family company) to provide small business comparison quotes.  This looks to only be temporary as it is pointed out in the article that GEICO may be looking to offer their own product on the Berkshire paper.  The other bit of news came as it looks like State Auto will no longer be offering personal lines as a result of being acquired by Liberty Mutual who has other personal lines brands like Safeco.  If you followed our original story of the acquisition, it was noted at the time that, State Auto’s personal book was unhealthy so it makes sense for Liberty to run off and focus on their commercial business.

 [3]

Embedded Plays from Global Insurers

Embedded insurance was a big theme from last week’s ITC event and this week there were moves from big insurers to back up all the hype.  Allianz X the venture arm of global insurer Allianz is acquiring embedded insurance pioneer simplesurance.  They were an early investor and will leverage the digital capabilities for product innovation, another sign of insurance venture investments maturing (another theme).  Chubb is using their Blink platform to launch Blink Paycheck, an income protection consumer financial product.  Chubb appears to be dipping more into digital consumer financial products.  Those types of products are easy to process and have low customer acquisition costs.  They are continuing their journey as a global financial behemoth and putting their capital to good use.

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