Startupbootcamp Insurance Accelerator gets support from JSE listed financial group

Global startup accelerator Startupbootcamp’s Insurance Accelerator programme is getting early investment support from South African financial services group MMI Holdings, which along with Lloyds Banking Group, Momentum and many others hope to foster innovation in the financial services space.

Based in London, the three-month accelerator programme invites startups from all over the world, that focuses on different areas within insurance, including consumer, re-insurance, back-office efficiency and new risk models.

Nektarios Liolios, the co-founder of Startupbootcamp FinTech, says in a press release that the Insurance Accelerator programme aims to connect early-stage companies with relevant communities. “The insurance industry is calling out for innovation and there are hundreds of startups out there waiting to be discovered, and we want to nurture that untapped talent,” she says.

With clients such as Momentum, Metropolitan, Guardrisk and Eris, MMI Holdings is a JSE listed financial group involved in insurance, asset management, savings, investment and more. With its involvement in the Insurance Accelerator programme, MMI Holdings has the opportunity to invest further in the innovative insurance solutions using external innovation.

The insurance programme comprises Fast Track days, an Insurance Hackathon and an Insurance Lounge. Fast Track days are sessions that take place over a six-month period where ten startups in various venues across 12 countries are given five minutes to pitch their insurance related business idea to a panel of judges.

At the 48-hour Insurance Hackathon, the insurance industry will challenge talent to come up with innovative and practical solutions to some of the questions they face as sector. The Insurance Lounge will provide later-stage startups an opportunity to engage with executives and present their innovation idea to the Startupbootcamp investors.

The ten successful startups sourced from the 12 countries will then go into a three-month accelerator programme where they will be provided with resources necessary to birth their startup idea.

“There is a clear and ever-growing need to harness startup innovation and join it up with the developed insurance sector,” Liolios adds. With the help of organisations such as MMI Holdings, we can create the only industry-wide initiative that looks to develop the digital innovation set to transform the insurance industry.

MMI CEO Nicolaas Kruger adds that rapid change has become the norm and that disruptive innovation has become important to create a sustainable future for the industry. “It is with a bigger disruptive innovation journey in mind that we have thrown our weight behind the Insurance Startupbootcamp.”

For more information on the Startupbootcamp Insurance London Accelerator programme visit the website here.