On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Pablo Duarte and Hilario Itriago, founders of InsurLab LATAM, a fast-growing insurance technology accelerator for startups wanting to enter the Latam market via Miami.

Both Pablo and Hilario have been leading insurance innovation in LATAM for years. They both come from industry, and you will discover during our discussion that we are all in the fractional world of tech where we split our time across those projects that matter most to us. For instance, alongside supporting the InsurLab LATAM, Pablo is also director, client engagement at Bain and Company and Hilario is also the president at BOXX Insurance.

During the podcast they discuss the InsurTech ecosystem in LATAM, how they support the incumbent, broker, and startup worlds, InsurTech LATAM in numbers, and their InsurTech portfolio and opportunities across the LATAM market.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The insurance space as we know it has a phenomenal opportunity with the transformation that technology brings to it. There’s clearly a before and after technology that came into our world. That technology is now in the hands of consumers and we believe that is a massive change. One of the key things that we really want to make sure happens in our markets is that more people get insurance. We’re convinced that the more people that get insurance coverage the better their social and economic development will be.
• InsurTech has the ability to bring products closer to the everyday individual who can benefit from insurance coverage and do it in a very simple and efficient way. This is an opportunity that must be leveraged by both incumbents and InsurTechs alike – and they both have the ability to do so. As collaborative as insurance has been over the centuries, the opportunities of InsurTech are no different. We believe that incumbents and InsurTechs have the ability to collaborate across the entire value chain and the fact that we can promote and try to influence that happening more and more the better everybody’s going to be, from the industry insiders to the consumers.
• The InsurTech sector in Latin America continues to be very active, unlike what we’ve seen in other markets where valuations plummeted, we haven’t seen an effect in the LATAM market. There are over 400 InsurTechs in LATAM, the growth rate is about 20% year-on-year and about 6% of the companies die every year (just like any venture ecosystem). Some of the fastest growing markets are in Columbia and Brazil with one third of the market located in Brazil.
• We saw the early days of InsurTechs focussing on personal, distribution, that type of disruption which typically is the sexy aspect of where people want to go. But over the years you’ve seen that more and more companies are tackling the commercial space – whether it’s small commercial or more traditional, larger scale of commercial business. There’s a great deal of opportunity in the sustainability aspect of the commercial insurance space, we’re starting to see more and more opportunities there and therefore more and more InsurTechs, that’s one of the angles that’s going to make many of the economies in the region see more solutions and innovations in that space that could also be taken to other markets.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I've been on this InsurTech journey since 2016, back then InsurTech was just starting in Latin America so there wasn’t much activity going on and sometimes we even wondered if we made the right choice getting into InsurTech at that time!’
‘Through InsurTech, we see greater customisation and personalisation of value propositions. That is key because traditionally insurance has been very structured and hard to feed into the specific needs of customers.’
‘Argentina is a country that has been known for innovation way before FinTech and InsurTech, it’s a very entrepreneurial country and precisely because of the economic circumstances they have a very strong pipeline of solutions that are created and grown in Argentina but definitely want to go elsewhere for growth.’
‘In terms of smaller markets that punch above their weight, our first InsurTech unicorn comes from Chile. It’s a great balance between large pipelines of InsurTechs coming from big markets and smaller quantities but tremendous quality coming from the smaller markets as well.’

ABOUT THE GUESTSPablo Duarte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duartepablo/
Hilario Itriago: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hitriago/
InsurLab LATAM: https://www.latam-insurtech.com/

ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.
Twitter: SabineVdL
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Website: www.sabinevdl.com

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