Spain’s risk managers welcome digital marketplace for corporate risks
A Spanish insurtech is trying to make a mark in the large risks market, a field where its peers have failed to cause much of a stir yet.
IMeureka, which describes itself as a digital marketplace for large risks, presented its project during the annual conference of IGREA, one of Spain’s risk management associations, in the Southern city of Málaga.
The company, which was set up by Pablo Collado, a former Aon broker, and Rafael Baena, who worked for both Aon and Marsh, defines itself as a platform on which intermediaries and insurers are able to input information and have access to data that enables a more efficient underwriting process.
By using its platform, insurers can make their products available to hundreds of brokers, and the latter can have access to a wide range of products that could be of interest to their clients, according to the company.
“Technology is changing the world economy, and the insurance sector will not be different,” Collado said during a panel at the conference.
In IMeureka’s case, the goal is to create a collaborative environment where market players can exchange data and work with better, more transparent information, he said.
Collado believes that it will optimise the work of brokers through digitalisation, while insurers will be able to reach out to a client base that they currently cannot access.
“For risk managers, it is important to have a technological solution that unites it all. One that unites their work and the work of the brokers and put it all in a single marketplace,” he said.
Spain has generated some successful Insurtech stories, such as Coverwallet, an digital broker focussed on SMEs that was acquired by Aon in 2020.
The country is the world 12th largest market in terms of generating insurtechs, which have already raised about €30m in funding, noted Cristina Martínez, the Chief Risk Officer at construction and logistics group Sacyr.
She added that, to be really disruptive, newcomers need to be capable of upending the rules of the game.
“Disruptive innovation is about changing the actors involved in the market, in our case, insurers, brokers, loss adjusters, clients,” she said.
The challenge for IMeureka is to bring that disruption to large risks. So far, the most successful Insurtechs have made their mark on the sale of covers for retail consumers or SMEs, or in the digitalization of specific tasks performed by insurers or brokers.
At the end of April, IMeureka raised €1.3m in a funding round with executives from insurers and brokers.
