Insurtech Gateway Australia has recruited six insurance industry thought leaders in a mentoring and advisory capacity.
Formerly Managing General Partner of the IAG Firemark Ventures, Ron Arnold joins the team as Associate Partner, to share his impressive track record of supporting and advising start-up businesses and an extensive network of contacts in insurance, venture capital and innovation hubs. Gil Snir has been appointed as Tech Innovation Adviser, former Scor Global Life Re and Macquarie Life Board member Martin Mulcare joined last year as a Board Director.
In addition to the recent appointments, Insurtech Gateway Australia has also announced an impressive mentoring panel including Willis Re Researcher and former United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative Consultant James Hutchin, Envest Chief Technical Officer Luke Saxby and Insurtech Australia Co-Founder Brenton Charnley.
“We’re very excited to onboard our mentoring and advisory team, which brings together the required mix of global industry expertise, along with successful start-up founders,” Insurtech Gateway Australia CEO Simon O’Dell said.
“Their collective experience with corporate insurers, regulation and innovation will undoubtedly help founders overcome the barriers that compromise collaborations between industry and start-ups” he said.
Insurtech Gateway Australia incubates two exciting new business ideas.
The first is developing proprietary tech with the goal of building the world’s best bushfire risk model. The founder has a PhD in earth observation and postdocs with Google and NASA. He is passionate about satellite earth imaging and developed a bushfire burn scar application that has 6,000 x higher resolution than the current best-in-class in Australia. He is now applying his tech in building community resilience to bushfires, and also to help the insurance industry price risks more accurately. Insurtech Gateway is providing venture building services, industry collaborations and investment capital to help bring this product to market.
Gateway’s second investment will see a seasoned Silicon Valley founder launch a first-in-market connected pay-as-you-drive motor insurance offering. It’s been well covered through the COVID pandemic that global motor insurance consumers are feeling hard-done-by, paying a full premium with their vehicle whilst it’s parked at home due to isolation restrictions. Pay-as-you-drive motor insurance will offer Australian consumers a fair rating for those low kilometre drivers.