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Monday 6 October… It's 2 a.m. in a dimly lit London flat. An insurance innovation lead rubs her eyes, staring at yet another "proof-of-concept" dashboard. Seven pilot projects in 18 months – and still nothing in production. Her phone buzzes with the Weather Channel alert: Cat 2 Hurricane Imelda forecast to hit Bermuda with high winds.
In that bleary moment, she wonders: Is this the new normal?In an industry buffeted by digital disruption and climate volatility, "pilot fatigue" has set in. Yet in the USA and across the pond here in Europe, InsurTech founders pack their bags for Las Vegas, determined to prove that AI can finally deliver real value, not just hype. (And if you still need a ticket, do use my advisory board code here)
This is the emotional crossroads at which we find ourselves on the eve of ITC Vegas 2025 – anxious, excited, and hungry for transformation.
What You Will Learn Here 👇🏼
The State of Insurance in Late 2025: Why insurers and tech founders alike are feeling FOMO and urgency from AI breakthroughs to regulatory crackdowns, and how "pilot purgatory" might finally end.
Market Pulse Insights: A rundown of key signals (and warnings) from Q3 2025 – new AI regulations, pilot-to-production accelerators, InsurTech scaling pains, and capital pressures reshaping strategy.
10 Disruptors+ to Watch @ ITC 2025: An introduction to 10 growth-stage ventures (+2) bringing transformational solutions in AI underwriting, claims automation, climate risk, embedded insurance and more: Don't miss your chance to meet them!
Why This Moment Matters Now
Insurance is at an inflection point. After years of talk about going digital, many insurers are still stuck in first gear. Legacy systems and cautious culture meant that by mid-2025, only 7% of carriers had achieved scalable success with AI initiatives. The rest? Dozens of pilots, little to show. This "delay paralysis" is colliding with external pressures like never before:
Digital Disruption & Customer Expectations: Consumers now compare insurance to the seamless tech experiences in retail and banking. They're asking why buying a policy or filing a claim isn't as easy as ordering an Uber. Haden Kirkpatrick warns that carriers must "confront cultural resistance" and truly prioritize digital products, data, and talent – or risk obsolescence. The cost of inaction is rising.
AI Value – From Hype to Here: 2023–2024's hype around generative AI is giving way to real deployments in underwriting, claims and distribution. In a recent study, 69% of Gen Z insurance employees reported that they see AI as a helpful "career co-pilot" to streamline tedious work. Executives now report a measurable impact from AI in risk evaluation and coding – not just innovation theater. The takeaway? AI is finally delivering value, particularly when humans and machines work together. The winners of 2025 will be those who scale these gains across their entire enterprise.
Climate Volatility & Risk: As Imelda barrels toward the Greater Antilles before affecting the Bahamas and Bermuda now, it's a stark reminder that extreme weather is our "new normal." From wildfires and 1-in-1,000-year floods to chronic droughts, catastrophe losses now regularly top $150 billion annually. Q2 data showed a brief respite in U.S. CAT losses, but no insurer is betting on calm seas ahead. Climate risk isn't just a problem for P&C. It's a systemic financial risk. Underwriters are scrambling to update models, regulators are pressing for stress tests, and customers are demanding protection that's actually there when disaster strikes.
The urgency to adapt – with better data, parametric covers, faster response – has never been greater.
Innovation vs. Regulation: The regulatory spotlight is beating down. Global watchdogs are drafting AI guidelinesto ensure fairness, transparency, and “responsible AI” use in insurance. From the EU's AI Act to U.S. state-level bills on algorithmic bias, compliance is becoming as critical as innovation. At the same time, regulators such as the UK's FCA are encouraging insurers to implement new technologies (e.g., rapid AI pilot scaling in the public sector under national AI Action Plans). In short, move fast, but don't break things or face the oversight. This dual mandate – innovate and do it ethically – sets the stage for Vegas: both excitement and caution in equal measure.
So why now? Because the industry is done "kicking the can." Whether you're a carrier exec or a startup founder, the message is clear at this conference: Go bold or go home. There's a once-in-a-generation convergence of mature tech, market pressure, and leadership will. The late nights and last-ditch pre-conference preps happening this week are all fueled by the same realization: if not now, when?
Check out our recent LinkedIn Live session, where we addressed many of those points.
Let's take the pulse of the past week's news (29 September – 5 October 2025), which paints a vivid picture of an industry in flux:
Regulators Turn Up the Heat on AI: Financial authorities are intensifying their oversight of AI in the insurance sector. In the US, 17 states have introduced bills to curb unchecked AI in underwriting and claims. Internationally, the UK's mid-year review noted that regulators are balancing AI's economic promise against market risks and "pressing ahead with new rules" on AI governance. The FTC's inquiry into chatbot harms and the NAIC's draft AI model law underscore a new reality: compliance is no longer optional. Expect lively ITC debates on AI ethics, auditability, and how to meet the needs of examiners and customers. (Founders who can bake "AI with oversight" into their products stand to win big.)
From Pilots to Production – Finally: There's a palpable push to break out of pilot purgatory. At the LIMRA conference two weeks ago, industry leaders practically shouted from the stage: Stop tinkering, start transforming! As noted above, executives shared a Boston Consulting Group stat that only 7% of insurers have scaled GenAI: a gap causing angst at the top. The mandate: evolve how work gets done. Concretely, that means redesigning workflows and products so that AI isn't a sideshow, but the main event. A topic we will dive into with depth with Franklin Manchester from SAS and Denise Garth/ Manish Shah from Majesco. Encouragingly, success stories are emerging where carriers successfully deployed an AI underwriting or claims assistant from sandbox to 100s of underwriters' or claims managers' desktops in under six months, resulting in a 20-30% boost in throughput. The takeaway for ITC: The era of perpetual "sandbox innovation" is over. 2025 is about enterprise deployment or bust.
Insurance Leads AI Adoption (BCG)
InsurTech Growing Pains: Even as tech adoption accelerates, InsurTech startups face a tougher funding climate. Global insurtech investment in Q2 2025 fell ~17% QoQ to $1.09B, with P&C-focused startups seeing a steep 68% drop. The easy money of 2021 is completely gone. Today's investors demand a clear path to profitability. This "survival of the fittest" is shaking out weaker players and forcing strategic pivots. We saw high-profile neo-MGAs exit key markets to conserve cash, and several AI-first startups merged to combine distribution. Yet, there's a silver lining: the $$ is still there for winners, especially those leveraging AI. Over 57% of Q2 insurtech deals were AI-centric, as VCs double down on automation plays. The market is saying: bring real ROI (or transformative risk reduction), and you'll find backers. At ITC, expect scale-ups to showcase metrics over vision, and perhaps a few quiet "for sale" sign conversations after hours.
Capital & Profit Pressure: Meanwhile, Carrier CFOs are navigating higher interest rates and cat losses that squeeze their margins. Reinsurers have jacked up costs. Budget belts are tight. In conversations this week, several insurers hinted they'll favor partners, not build-it-yourself, to save costs – good news for B2B InsurTechs pitching “lean innovation.” However, sales cycles can still be slow, and startups often need to survive on smaller rounds. The flip side: Incumbents with cash are bargain-hunting for tech acquisitions (we might see a spike in InsurTech M&A announcements around the conference). I count 75 this year already, at a median acquisition value estimate of $388 million. Additionally, the venture-client model is gaining traction, with major insurers serving as pilot customers and investors to de-risk adoption. Bottom line: financial discipline is in, flashy cash-burn is out. The solutions that thrive will be those that make or save money in the near term (think loss ratio improvement, expense reduction, new revenue via embedded channels, etc.). If your offering can't tie to the bottom line, 2025 will be a tough crowd.
Climate & Coverage Crunch: Lastly, the elephant in the room is Mother Nature. This quarter saw record wildfire losses on the West Coast and another "once-in-a-century" flood in Europe. Insurers are responding with a mix of innovation and retreat. Example: Insurers in California, Florida and Louisiana are freezing new home policies, citing unsustainable losses. At the same time, parametric and resilience-focused products are booming. One headline noted that flash flooding now rivals hurricanes in insured damage, prompting carriers to utilize new data sources (satellite, IoT sensors) for real-time risk monitoring. The protection gap (uninsured losses) is a hot topic, too. Expect ITC panels on how partnering with governments and startups can help close it. Climate change is an actual future risk, and it's rewriting the insurance playbook in real time.
The upshot: The stage is set in Las Vegas for frank discussions and bold showcases. The pressure to adapt is palpable, but so is the excitement. As one commentator quipped, "Insurance folks have FOMO for the first time in years." The fear of missing out on AI gains, new markets, and the next generation of customers is driving a new sense of urgency. And speaking of next generation… let's turn to some of the growth ventures making waves. These are 10 growth ventures you'll want to scout at ITC Vegas 2025, each poised to help insurers thrive in this fast-changing landscape. (You might even bump into their founders over cocktails at the conference. They'll be the ones with the biggest grins and the boldest claims!)
10 Growth Ventures to Watch at ITC Vegas 2025
Below, we introduce ten high-impact ventures curated by me for this special edition. These founders have been featured on the Scouting for Growth podcast, sharing their vision for the future of insurance. From AI underwriting co-pilots to climate risk forecasters, these companies offer a glimpse into where the industry is headed. Use this as your insider’s guide – and a cheat sheet for whom to connect with before the expo floor closes!
Disruptive Value: AI-native underwriting and pricing platform for P&C insurers, allowing underwriters to turn "messy submissions into structured signals" without hiring an army. Hyperexponential's hx Renew platform helps carriers deploy sophisticated pricing models faster (50%+ speed to quote). In Amrit's words, it's like giving underwriters an "AI actuary" at their side. Make sure to join us for the LinkedIn Live later this week?
Disruptive Value: The first "RiskOps" platform for underwriting. Federato utilizes AI and dynamic portfolio feedback to enable underwriters to quote 5 times faster and focus on the risks that matter. Tired of "stale pilots and disconnected data"? So Will Ross from Federato promises measurable results before the next board meeting by turning underwriting from a manual grind into a data-driven advantage.
Website:federato.ai (Meet the team at #ITCVegas Booth 1318)
Listen to the Podcast: The Federato Playbook — AI RiskOps for Growth.
3. Charlee.ai: AI Decision Intelligence Platform for Claims Litigation
Disruptive Value:Charlee.ai's AI-based decision platform utilizes a patented claims language model trained on over 55 million claims and an exposure-intelligence database containing 50,000+ risk insights and 70+ proprietary KPIs, transforming unstructured claims data into actionable insights. Its system predicts litigation and attorney involvement with over 80 % accuracy and categorizes claim severity, enabling proactive reserve management and fraud detection. Integrated modules—4SeeCharlee (predictive analytics), DocuCharlee (document intelligence) and AskCharlee (secure chat-based queries)—help insurers streamline workflows, reduce litigation and improve risk selection.
Website:charlee.ai (Meet the team at #ITCVegas Booth 1965)
Listen to the Podcast: The Visionary Behind AI Decision‑Driven Claims Litigation.
Disruptive Value: An AI-native claims correspondence platform. Kyber automates the generation and delivery of claims letters, forms, and emails – turning a task that took adjusters 1.5 hours into 30 seconds. The result? Claims teams see up to 85% faster document drafting and can focus on empathy and complex decisions. Arvind's mission is to eliminate the tedious copy-paste drudgery and ensure every communication is compliant and personalized. Two of Kyber's insurance customers, Charlie Wendland from Branch and Sara Mikulski from Kingstone, joined me on the podcast, too. Two episodes not to miss -> AI + Human Empathy in Claims and One Source of the Truth.
Disruptive Value: Voltaire is an AI claims‑correspondence tool that produces accurate claim letters in 30 seconds. Unlike traditional letter drafting, it layers onto existing claims operations without a rip-and-replace approach and reduces human error and copy-and-paste mistakes. Customers report that it improves claims leakage (often 5 %–10 % of payouts), enables adjusters to save roughly two hours per day and produce at least one extra claim letter daily, and can lower loss adjustment expense by 20 %–25 % and claims leakage by 30 %–50 %.
Disruptive Value: An insurance-specific data intelligence layer for finance and compliance. DataHaven automates complex ledger reconciliations and regulatory data prep for P&C carriers. In plain English: it frees CFOs from Excel hell by providing real-time, drill-down insights into financial drivers. Yandy, a former insurance IT architect, built a solution to bridge the gap between core systems and CFO needs with the aim to “make the invisible data visible." If you're chasing elusive loss ratio explanations or faster closes, DataHaven might be your new best friend.
Disruptive Value: A startup born to tackle climate volatility head-on. Adaptive provides parametric coverage for power outages and extreme weather impacts. Mike, a 20-year industry vet, saw a 78% surge in grid outages in the USA and realized traditional BI insurance wasn't cutting it. Adaptive's products utilize IoT and data triggers to enable businesses to receive payments quickly after events like blackouts, eliminating the need for adjusters. In an era of wildfires and heatwaves, they're offering financial resilience in a novel way. Think of it as insurance for the climate-changed world, delivered with speed and simplicity.
Website:Adaptive (Meet the team at #ITCVegas Booth K-5)
Listen to the Podcast: Power Outage Coverage Reinvented
8. Miss Moneypenny Technologies: Embedding the Customer Experience Fabric
Disruptive Value: Transforming digital wallet apps into insurance engagement tools. Anna Bojic and Marc Lampe's company helps insurers with their Wallet Studio become a daily presence in customers' lives. Their tech turns an insurer's app or a partner's fintech app into a dynamic wallet: think loyalty rewards, personalized offers, embedded micro-covers and more. Miss Moneypenny's platform drives up customer touchpoints and cross-sells by meeting users where their financial lives already are. In an age where embedded insurance is touted as the future, Anna and Marc are making it a reality – with style. If your growth strategy involves embedded insurance, put this venture on your radar.
Website: Miss Moneypenny Technologies's Wallet Studio (Meet the team at #ITCVegas Booth 619)
Listen to the Podcast: Disrupting Customer Engagement with Wallet Technologies.
Disruptive Value:Solvrays built an agentic AI command centre that turns messy back‑office tasks into clean, orchestrated workflows without ripping and replacing core systems. Its platform unifies the back office with AI-powered workflows. It deploys nine specialized AI "genes" to automate document understanding, real-time routing, and data orchestration across legacy and cloud systems. By streamlining manual processes and reducing errors, Solvrays accelerates resolution times, modernizes operations, and offers one-click deployment with strong security.
Website:solvrays.com (Meet the team at #ITCVegas Booth 1167)
Upcoming Podcast: Agentic AI Genes for Next‑Gen Insurance Operations... Released on 9 October.
10. GoZeal –Intelligent Automation with Remote Expert Talent
Disruptive Value: goZeal combines AI, matching algorithms, and a team of real people to build purpose-built teams from a network of highly skilled female experts. Clients can hire curated talent on a project basis to fill skill gaps, reduce overhead costs, scale as they grow and promote diversity in the workforce. Dedicated project managers and custom dashboards ensure seamless collaboration and progress tracking. Complementing this talent model, ZealDoc AIis a document-intelligence automation platform designed for the insurance industry, reducing the time spent on manual tasks and enabling professionals to focus on high-skill work. Users can leverage their own data, optimizeback-office operations, and receive outputs in JSON or CSV format via the REST API. The solution applies machine learning to extract critical information for streamlined claims management and improved underwriting decisions, automates regulatory compliance reporting and offers trusted accuracy through advanced analytics and a human‑in‑the‑loop approach.
Disruptive Value: An AI co-pilot for underwriters. Sixfold is leveraging generative AI to digest huge volumes of submission data (those engineering reports and loss runs that underwriters love 😅) and surface the insights that matter. Alex's vision is to equip the "unsung heroes" of insurance – underwriters – with an army of AI agents that read the tedious details, allowing humans to make more informed decisions. With regulators warming up to AI-assisted decisioning, Sixfold aims to improve risk selection and pricing accuracy, while cutting tedious reading time by 80%+. If underwriting is the brain of insurance, Sixfold is like a cognitive booster shot.
Listen to the Podcast: Transforming Underwriting with GenAI
These ventures (among many others) form a mosaic of insurance's risk futures: from AI and data to climate and customer experience. They carry the themes we've discussed, speeding up underwriting and claims, bridging protection gaps, safely orchestrating data, and engaging customers in new ways. More importantly, they're backing up the buzzwords with real traction and results. Each has navigated the gauntlet of startup life to reach a point of scaling – and each needs partners (like you, dear insurance leaders!) to reach full potential.
Which brings us to…
See You in Vegas 🤝
Don't just read about these innovations – experience them!
If you're at InsureTech Connect Vegas 2025, make it a mission to seek out these founders and their demos. Swap business cards, scan QR codes, grab coffee between sessions – do whatever it takes to start a conversation. The insurance industry is built on relationships, and trust me, these entrepreneurs are as eager to learn from you as you are to glean insights from them.
Be the champion of change within your organization. Whether you're an insurer exec, broker, or investor, you have a unique opportunity (and frankly, obligation) to connect the dots. Bring your toughest problems to these startups, ask how they can help solve that claims backlog, or engage that elusive demographic, or cut that expense ratio by 1%. You may be pleasantly surprised by the solutions available. As I often say, "Innovation is a team sport." So, suit up and get on the field, alongside these ventures.
Feel that itch of FOMO? Good. Use it. The worst outcome is returning to the office next week, realizing your competitors forged alliances that you missed out on. The best outcome is leaving Vegas with new partners and a playbook for growth in 2025.
The choice is yours. The startups are ready, the technology is mature, and the industry is hungry for bold moves. It’s time to double down on innovation – not in theory, but in practice.
So, will you be the visionary who brings back the next big thing to your company? Or the one who wished they had? The future of insurance is being scouted and built right now.
Join us in making it happen and enjoy live demos and presentation slides.
See you at ITC Vegas: Let's continue to make some history, discover a wonderland of possibilities and have some fun along the way!
Sabine, I love how you frame this shift—not just as a tech evolution but a responsibility one. The question “How fast can we scale responsibly?” hits deeper than speed alone. It’s the same lens we all need to keep adjusting: just because we can move faster doesn’t mean we see the whole picture clearly.
Powerful lens. The real risk at scale isn’t just model drift. It’s ethical drift: without fairness constraints and counterfactual audits, actuarial AI will replay historic disparities (as seen with a widely used healthcare risk algorithm that underestimated care needs for Black patients). Responsible scale means bias remediation becomes a performance KPI, not a compliance checkbox.
Which of these ventures will publish loss and fairness metrics side by side, including calibration by segment, disparate-impact ratios, and human-override rates, so the market can buy trust, not just speed?
We're delighted to be included and can't wait to show more people the impact that actionable, accurate AI can have in claims!
Men’s Empowerment Catalyst | Author | Speaker | Creating Spaces Where Men Feel Seen & Strong
2wSabine, I love how you frame this shift—not just as a tech evolution but a responsibility one. The question “How fast can we scale responsibly?” hits deeper than speed alone. It’s the same lens we all need to keep adjusting: just because we can move faster doesn’t mean we see the whole picture clearly.
Learning & Development Strategist | Talent Systems & AI Enablement Leader | Human × Machine Architect | Workforce Transformation | L&D Analytics | 0→1→N Scale OS
2wPowerful lens. The real risk at scale isn’t just model drift. It’s ethical drift: without fairness constraints and counterfactual audits, actuarial AI will replay historic disparities (as seen with a widely used healthcare risk algorithm that underestimated care needs for Black patients). Responsible scale means bias remediation becomes a performance KPI, not a compliance checkbox. Which of these ventures will publish loss and fairness metrics side by side, including calibration by segment, disparate-impact ratios, and human-override rates, so the market can buy trust, not just speed?
aiminister.se – Sverige ska leda AI-racet! | Author: AI Agents: When AI Becomes Part of the Team (Amazon, Google) | aiceostrategy.com
2wBrilliant insights, Sabine! Which AI application shows most promise? 🚀
Founder & CEO at EuphoriaTech Group | Entrepreneur | Venture Capital | Investments | Technology | Speaker | Driving Innovation and Growth
2wThe #partnership approach to innovation could accelerate profitability significantly. Great article Sabine