The winners of the inaugural Pitch Fest have been revealed.
The competition, held as part of this week’s ANZIFF Insurtech conference in Sydney, was designed to illustrate to the industry the opportunity it has to engage with the start-up community.
“There is enormous opportunity for both the existing insurance companies and newly developed technology to fundamentally change the way insurance services are provided to the customer,” said Alex Scandurra, CEO of fintech hub Stone & Chalk.
Stone & Chalk is behind the insurtech program that culminated in Pitch Fest. Last year, it facilitated several roundtable discussions involving representatives from 15 established insurance companies. During those discussions, five problem statements were formulated to outline the sector’s greatest concerns. Those statements were in the areas of automated claims processing, underinsurance, fraud reduction, user-friendly disclosure statements, and advanced underwriting models.
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Start-up entrants in Pitch Fest were then tasked with finding ways to improve one of the five areas.
Four start-ups participated in Tuesday’s final: OneClaim, Data Republic, BrightWrite by Cover Genius, and Claims Logik.
OneClaim took the award for Most Innovative Solution, while Data Republic went home with the Market Impact Prize.
OneClaim is a claim lodgement and tracking solution that centralises insurance claims, regardless of insurance provider. The OneClaim integration platform, it’s said, results in a faster, streamlined capability.
Data Republic has devised a platform for organisations to share data in a safe, secure and well-governed manner. It provides the necessary data, technology and legals to assist in the development of applications, including fraud identification.
“This is a milestone event for Data Republic to see our platform used for something that will have such great impact and savings for so many companies,” said Ed Harris, head of partner ecosystem at Data Republic.
Each of the winners has earned a share in $90k worth of prizes, including two desks at Stone & Chalk for three months and mentorship to bring their idea to fruition.
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