If you’re an Insurtech innovator, it’s time for a rethink. After a red-hot funding cycle in 2021, investment in the Insurtech space is cooling, falling more than 50 percent in 2022.1 Amid lingering economic uncertainty those numbers are expected to further shrink. 

Translation? The mindset in Insurtech funding has shifted from “give me” to “show me.” Discerning investors are increasingly selective, demanding hard facts to back up the big ideas brought to them by start-ups. Here, we explain how you can bust through the competitive clutter, win the financial backing you need and get your concept to market, faster. 

Get to money and market, faster.

Insurance, once a staid, stuffy industry, is increasingly modern, digitized and customer-centric, thanks in part to Insurtech innovations. Inventive firms are challenging the status quo. They’re problem-solving at warp speed. They’re using big data, analytics and AI to essentially change how we think about Insurance.

It’s an uber competitive space, for sure, and the faster you can beat other Insurtech startups to financial backing, the faster you can get your concept to market. 

However, before you make your funding pitch, you must first prove your concept. By taking the time to fully vet and prove the viability of your concept, you can impress investors by presenting your idea—and your vision—with an arsenal of data-backed proof points.

For this, you need access to troves of unique consumer and commercial data. You need dynamic analytic tools. AI and machine learning techniques. A decision hub to build and deploy attributes and strategies. 

Yet, it can take months to organize these different components—especially the data—into a secure, productive analytic process. Meanwhile, your fellow innovators are racing to get in front of the same investors as you. So, the question becomes, how can you accelerate this fundamental step in your go-to-market plan? 

Tap into a curated “idea lab” for Insurance.

Instead of juggling disparate data streams and analytic processes, here’s a smarter approach. Catapult your analytic speed, efficiency and productivity forward by corralling the data you need within a single, cloud-based data and analytics ecosystem, Equifax Ignite® for Insurtech. 

In one spot, you and your colleagues can brainstorm, collaborate and play with different data streams and analytic techniques. You can monitor outcomes and, in a few clicks, adjust your analytic projects to experiment with different strategies. 

Think of Ignite for Insurtech as a curated “idea lab” for Insurance where you can access industry-specific data and perform “what if” scenarios, inference testing, claims prediction and more in real-time without the delays and hassles often associated with analytic testing. It can slash your time-to-proof of concept from months to mere weeks and produce a rock-solid, rigorously validated concept that can stand up to investor scrutiny.  

Tackle your niche with confidence.

No matter your Insurance focus—be it the customer experience; policy writing, administration and renewal; marketing and customer acquisition; claims and fraud protection; or elsewhere—you need access to vast amounts of actionable, specific, trended Insurance and credit data to prove your concept. 

This is where Equifax Ignite for Insurtech excels. For instance, you can: 

• Pressure test in a secure environment with millions of real-world data sets to assess performance, prove accuracy and financially model the impact of your innovation(s).

• Achieve data mastery to minimize human errors, eliminate manual processes and accelerate response times.

• Rapidly collect, augment and evaluate data to provide fast, accurate quotes and quickly bind policies.

• Use integrated third-party data and analytics to automatically flag and halt potential conflicts, fraud or crime.

• Find commercial data including risk and business demographic data, with an emphasis on small businesses.

What’s more, Ignite for Insurtech includes a built-in feedback loop that automatically and continuously returns the outcomes of your analytic projects in real-time, so you can see what’s working, what’s not, and what might work. Your results, your analytics controls and your data are all right there in front of you; you simply dial up or down your inputs to optimize your strategy in minutes. See how it works in this brief ebook.

Move forward in 3 steps. Let’s say you have an Insurtech concept and you’re ready to test it. What’s your next step? Here are a few ideas to consider. 

1. Think about your data and any third-party data you might need. Data will be the foundation of your analytic research and proof of concept, so be sure to include enough data, and the right type of data based on your concept. Ignite for Insurtech is data agnostic, so it can easily integrate your data with our data, along with other third-party data streams. As for Equifax data, you’ll have full, direct access to: 

• Powerful, predictive risk scores created specifically for the Insurance market.

• Differentiated consumer credit data and attributes (both trended and point-in-time).  

• Alternative data including payment data for cell phone, cable and utility bills, plus alternative finance data for near-prime and subprime accounts.

• Wealth, asset and lifestyle data designed to predict ability to pay, income, discretionary spending ability, likely credit availability, needs, usage and more.

What’s more, the data within your Ignite analytic ecosystem is continually refreshed, and automatically keyed and linked, saving you countless hours in data prep. This built-in feature may also reveal hidden connections and relationships in the data to further support your analytics research. 

2. Determine your analytic expertise. Are you not-so-techy, but a great idea generator? Maybe you and your business partners are data scientists. Or maybe you simply know the Insurance industry inside out. Regardless of your level of expertise, Ignite for Insurtech offers “right sized” solutions to suit your unique analytic needs. Things like pre-built industry data sets, attributes, AI-infused models and data visualizations help simplify the proof-of-concept process for average business users. More advanced users can opt for DIY access to raw data, the latest programming tools, an attribute engine, even an integrated decisioning platform known as Interconnect. 

Further, you get unparalleled entrepreneurial support   with direct access to more than 400 Equifax analytic experts who have extensive insight into the FinTech and Insurance industries. When you have questions, we have answers, insights and guidance to help keep your projects on track and moving forward. 

3. Don’t waste another minute. While you’re contemplating your analytic strategy, your competitors are scoring meetings with investors. With Ignite for Insurtech, you can be up and running in roughly one week, and well on your way to proving your concept. Let us help you close the gap and win the financial support you need to bring your Insurtech concept to life and get to market, faster. 

Interested in trying Ignite for Insurtech?

At Equifax, we’re committed to supporting Insurtech startups. That’s why we’re offering you limited-time, FREE access to the cloud-native Ignite for Insurtech sandbox. For 90 days, you can access Equifax and third-party data to test and model your solutions more effectively, at no cost. CONTACT US today to get started. 

To learn more, visit us online here.

1 State of Insurtech 2022 Report - CB Insights Research