Inzura becomes the lastest company on the insurtech scene
Inzura – a new digital insurance platform – is set to begin using smartphone data and photo recognition to calculate policies.
It’s thought insurance companies will be able to take on less risk by fine-tuning policies.
"We believe the smartphone will play a central role in the much-needed digitisation of insurance," said Richard Jelbert, chief executive of Inzura.
"As such, we have put customer engagement at the core of our smartphone apps, and we enable big data enrichment in the back end for analysis and pricing. This makes for a win-win situation for both insurers and their customers."
The company is entering the market through a customer engagement app for motor insurance, and hopes it can soon branch out into home, travel, pet and life products using similar technology.
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The company also hopes its offerings will help insurers to increase margins, reduce management costs and harness customer data.
While more technologically-savvy insurers might be delighted with the news of the new platform, research published in June by PwC discovered many were feeling wary of what fintech-style businesses might do to their bottom line.
The PwC report discovered almost half (48 per cent) of insurers are worried that as much as a fifth of their business could be stolen away from them by insurtech companies over the next five years.
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Meanwhile, research published in March by the Confederation of British Industry and PwC found many insurers, particular those focused on general insurance, were concerned about competition from startup Insurtech companies and were ploughing the pennies into technology as a result.