London is the first city worldwide in terms of insurtech startups, 64, followed by New York (61) and San Francisco (58), but Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, stands out in the ranking of insurtech capitals in terms of USD invested: 2.386 million compared to 160 in London, a remarkable gap.
This is the perfect expression of what is currently happening in the startup sector: according to a recent PitchBook report on venture capital in Europe, this is an increasingly dynamic continent, mainly in some hubs such as London, Paris and Berlin. However, when startups becoming large (scaleups) with other investment dimensions become the focus points, Europe still has to bite the dust compared to the legendary Silicon Valley, a developed, hyper-competitive startup ecosystem with investment funds representing the GDP of some countries.
We have already talked about London and New York as the most dynamic insurtech hubs in the world in this article.
New York is where the offices of many Fortune 500 insurance companies are located, including AIG, Metlife, Marsh, Chubb / ACE, New York Life, Assurant and Travellers. Its proximity to these large insurance corporations gives startups more opportunities to develop partnerships or find talented and experienced managers “stolen” to traditional companies. NY is also the city of media, designers, creatives, marketing agencies: to create a brand, the big apple is the place with the highest level of professionals to do so. In addition, the regulatory system is considered perhaps the most restricted in the US, the most difficult to deal with, yet for this reason considered an important test-bed.
Among the most noteworthy startups of the New York system there are Lemonade, Oscar (already a giant), Jetty, Slice Labs, CoverWallet, Haven Life, Fabric.
London, in turn, is the most popular city to establish many European insurtech startups: Guevara, Brolly, Cuvva (Scottish but based in London), BuzzMove, Digital Fineprint, Neos, Spixii, Revolut, Zego.
The magazine Carrier Management, addressed to managers in the insurance sector, with Venture Scanner has created a ranking of the 20 world capitals of insurtech, the first drawn up on the basis of the number of startups in the city. A positive factor is the presence of 4 European capitals, in addition to London there is Paris, Berlin and (a bit surprisingly) Madrid, which is the birthplace of 14 insurtech startups (one more than Berlin), shyly overlooking this ecosystem. According to the capital investment “page”, those invested in Madrid are really small amounts, about 700 thousand dollars overall.
The second position, on the other hand, includes the capital invested and completely overturns positions: London falls to 12th place, Berlin to 15th, Paris to 20th and Madrid disappears.
New York and San Francisco keep their positions high, followed by Shanghai, which doesn’t even appear in the ranking by number of startups. This because Zhong An, Alibaba’s Chinese startup, has its headquarters in Shanghai. In addition to having received the largest amount of capital ever in the field of Insurtech, Alibaba also made its entrance on the stock exchange in 2017.
In the Top 20 of the world’s insurtech capitals no Italian city can be found. Another ranking, the one restricted to the European context, must be taken into consideration to see Milan appearing at the bottom of the list, with 5 startups (minimum number to be included).
What are these Italian insurtech startups? Among the Italian insurtech in Milan, we have already talked about Yolo, Neosurance, Darwinsurance, Axieme, Mioassicuratore.
