Lloyd’s collaborates with startups for Covid-19 innovations
Lloyd’s of London has started its work with three insurtech startups in a bid to help the market respond to the Covid-19 pandemic
This comes as part of a package of measures that Lloyd’s has announced in response to Covid-19. The insurance group has expanded the scope, process, and timings for new applicants to the Lloyd’s Lab Innovation Accelerator.
Lloyd’s expects this to help the various included startups bring Covid-19-related products to market more quickly and efficiently, which in turn will help the wider insurance industry in the long run. In particular, Lloyd’s wants to create products that will provide better protection for customers against pandemic and other systemic risks.
The three teams that the insurer has selected join a Covid-19-related Lab programme that starts today (13 July). The chosen teams are Metabiota, Praedicat and Dialogue.
Metabiota focuses on quantifying and mitigating epidemic and pandemic risk. The startup draws on epidemiological analysis and a wide range of analytic tools to advance the science of modelling infectious disease outbreaks and estimating their socioeconomic effects.
Praedicat uses litigation data and science combined with technology to anticipate the next big liability catastrophe and plans to develop a suite of crossline clash Covid-19 scenarios, to assist the market to identify and track the emergence of Covid-19 liability risk.
Dialogue is focused on the credit and political risk (CPRI) marketplace. Its solution is an online platform sitting between brokers and underwriters to create complex CPRI transactions. Dialogue has also created a centralised availability application to help brokers see underwriter availability, as working from home becomes increasingly common.
This is not the only strategy that Lloyd’s is pursuing to mitigate the potential impact of a future ‘black swan’ event like the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the other proposals the insurance group have offered are Recover Re (a government-backed initiative that would offer long-term cover in the event of major pandemics and other similar disasters); Black Swan Re (again government-backed, this vehicle would offer insurance against future systemic risk); and ReStart, a pooled business interruption product, which would cover policyholders against future Covid-19 outbreaks.
“Covid-19 has demonstrated that there is much more we can do to support our customers by providing protection for the changing risks they face,” said Lloyd’s Chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown. “Some of these risks are of a scale that require partnership with governments globally, and [we have identified] ways in which the insurance industry could work with governments to share risk and create a braver, more resilient world.”