The INSURTECH Book

A Cartographer’s Dream – Exploring, and Mapping, the New Unknown

By Paolo Cuomo

Co-Founder, InsTech London

Overused as it is, the phrase “start of the journey” absolutely fits where the InsurTech world currently finds itself. This new world is so nascent that it was only during 2016 that we actually agreed on the portmanteau of “InsurTech” to describe it. (Having had a brief flirtation with “InsTech”, and a minor diversion via “InsureTech”.) It’s not just the inconsistency in spelling that makes us feel like the cartographers of bygone years, but also the large parts of the map that are still blank. The maritime cartographers’ phrase “Here be dragons” feels as apt when defining the roadmap for InsurTech in the early twenty-first century as it did when defining the shape of America and Australia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The unknown is as bewitching, the discoveries as exciting, the stories as apocryphal; but, fortunately, the dangers somewhat less. Yes, most of the first wave of InsurTech startups will, like Icarus, rise rapidly upwards, before crashing to oblivion, drowning plenty of venture capitalists’ money in the blue seas of unachieved customer numbers. And, while those whose dreams are crushed by incumbents (or funding short-falls!) might feel like Britain’s Captain Scott freezing to death in the Antarctic in 1912 there will be no real lives lost. Yes, our families may complain they never see us, but we’re a quick Facetime away, rather than truly out ...