Insurtech is one of the leading innovation frontiers of fintech

sauce

Enter one of FinLeap’s existing portfolio companies, Clark, which operates in the insurance space with an app to help you stay on top of your various insurance products. Today the Berlin/Frankfurt startup is announcing it’s closed €13.2 million in Series A funding, made up of both equity and media-for-equity financing.FinLeap is investing “several million Euros” once again, while additional investors include yabeo Capital, Kulczyk Investments, HitFox, TA Ventures, Tenderloin Ventures, along with various unnamed business angels.Media investment, which I understand will mostly be in the form of TV advertising but will also include some online and print, comes from SevenVentures (the venture arm of the ProSiebenSat.1 Group), Axel Springer, and media investor GMPVC. The split between equity financing and media-for-equity financing is roughly 75 per cent to 25 per cent.(Noteworthy is that FinLeap, which itself raised €21 million in new funding this June, is backed by institutional investors from the insurance industry, including Hannover Re, the third largest worldwide reinsurer.)Calling itself an “insurance­ robo-­advisor,” Clark’s iOS and Android apps let you manage and purchase various insurance products. Specifically, it uses algorithms to analyze your current insurance situation and automatically propose opportunities to improve your coverage or the deal you are currently on. The startup’s insurance experts are also on-hand via the app to help with more bespoke insurance questions.
Since the start of the year, Clark claims to have increased the volume of its managed insurance premiums five-fold, to 30 million Euros. The startup employs close to 20 people, most of whom are software developers.Competitors include Knip, Getsafe and Financefox, but Clark reckons it differs in the way it uses robo-advisors (ie a more automated approach) to assess each user’s insurance situation and to send chat-messages to alert you to insurance opportunities.“In addition, all clients have access to an in-app insurance cockpit,” the German startup says. “This works similar to fitness apps like runtastic or Nike running, i.e. the client can easily understand his ‘insurance fitness.'”

Fintech taking over

singapore pushing for fintech

See more at Source: Visual Capitalist

Mismatch in ideology between talent and company, has such marriages of convenience ever worked: Yahoo

Debatable whether the individual companies would have succeeded if not acquired by Yahoo. 

That aside, is acquiring talent from unsuccessful companies to work on an unsuccessful strategy, where both sides may not be in sync, a viable business plan?

has it ever worked before? 

http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo-acqu-1781980352

According to Yahoo, many of the 53 companies were talent and technology acquisitions, so it should come as no surprise that most promptly shut down post-acquisition. It’s difficult to estimate to what degree each company’s technology was incorporated into Yahoo or its products (if at all), but we’ve made note of it where we found evidence. 

As far as the talent acquisition was concerned, Yahoo took what an insider close to the process called a “prescriptive” approach. “The whole point was, ‘Hey, your company isn’t working, therefore we’re bringing you on for the talent. We’re not interested in the product and service you have in market,” the insider told Gizmodo. 

These deals were done to bring people into areas that badly needed growth—particularly mobile, which Mayer has said had roughly 50 employees working on it when she joined. The tech acquisitions, on the other hand, were made largely to improve the company’s offerings and consumer products.

Apple dropped, will a new tree grow from one of its seeds?

Is Apple trying to replicate Yahoo's purchase of Alibaba stake?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/09/30/how-jerry-yang-made-the-most-lucrative-bet-in-tech-history/#2a0c69f13aed

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-closes-7-6-billion-deal-alibaba-group-161614948--finance.html

bonus: https://www.hottopics.ht/stories/how-to/masayoshi-son-ceo-lost-70bn-in-day-before-conquering-world/

Singapore pushing the envelope insistently for FinTech

Can't fault the Singapore government for effort.

photos from: http://www.sporela.com/index.php/latest-singapore-business-news/3314-inaugural-singapore-fintech-festival-to-be-held-in-nov2016

source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/singapore/singapore-s-first/2691168.html

Deputy Prime Minister and MAS Chairman Tharman Shanmugaratnam launched the Festival at a roadshow in New York City on Wednesday. The US city is the first in a series of global outreach initiatives Singapore's central bank is conducting to draw the attention of the global FinTech community to the possibilities for innovation and collaboration on offer here, the press release said.
In his speech, Mr Tharman affirmed Singapore's stake in the advancing FinTech sector.
He said: "What we are trying to do is to push the envelope. We are trying to find new ways of doing the financial business, every area of business, in a way that makes more sense to the customer, a borrower, a lender, a middle-class saver, someone who’s making payments, someone who’s receiving payments."
He added that with digitisation taking place across global industries, it is more timely than ever for banks to engage proactively with technology.
"We are at the cusp of a new wave in finance that is I think very promising. There's no assurance it’s going to succeed, but it shows great promise - promise of delivering better value to the customer. That’s really what we’re trying to achieve in FinTech," said Mr Tharman.