It was a busy October for the team at Boost, wrapping up with one of our favorite industry events: Money20/20. The conference was a super interesting contrast to ITC which was laser-focused on insurance, while Money 20/20 was more about fintech in general and much, much bigger! With fintech about ten years ahead of insurtech in terms of maturity, it’s interesting to see the level of innovation and diversity of companies in our big brother industry. Here’s some of the big trends we noticed.
New Opportunities Through Cooperation
One of the really interesting trends that kept being repeated at Money20/20 was a shift in mindset among both fintechs and banks. In the past they have tended to see each other as competition for consumers’ business and attention but now everyone is moving towards viewing each other as complementary vs. competitive.
We saw multiple collaborative efforts between the upstarts and the established, working together to create a better customer experience. This works because they each have a specialization (fintechs excel at meeting modern consumer expectations and banks are experts in profitably navigating a very regulated, very complex business), and partnership lets them bring both those strengths to the table.
This was extra interesting to us at Boost because it reflects what we see in insurance, with insurtechs and carriers working together and bringing their own strengths together to meet modern consumer needs and expectations. For example - Boost has built a modern tech platform making various insurance products available via API but partners with established reinsurance companies to facilitate risk transfer. There will still be winners and losers between the incumbents and the upstarts, but as collaboration and competition continue consumers will be the clear winners.
Tightened Focus on Right Product, Right People
A trend I’ve written about before, and one that we continue to see play out, is tech companies’ focus on affinity groups. Fintechs are springing up all over with explicit goals of serving a relatively narrow group of people, and serving them well. Companies like Paceline for people focused on health and wellness, Daylight for the LGBTQ+ community and First Boulevard for African-Americans are just some of the fintechs concentrating on being the best option for a specific set of consumers.
This is pretty much the opposite of traditional one-size-fits-all programs - instead of creating something broad that can be good-enough for the biggest slice of people, creating something very targeted that can be great for a specific niche. This trend is great news for consumers who traditionally have not been served well by financial services in general. At Boost we’re starting to work with more affinity focused companies because our modular, customizable product structure allows partners to tailor insurance for their customer needs. It’s exciting to be part of making insurance more accessible to all groups of people!
Interest in Innovation and Openness to Change
Finally, it was really exciting and validating to see so much interest in new approaches to traditional industries. Finance and insurance have historically had a reputation for being very slow to change, sometimes for good reason (highly regulated, handling people’s money is a big responsibility, etc). This year though there’s a ton of interest in potential innovations, look no further than the enormous presence of blockchain and crypto-focused companies at Money20/20! Boost met with a TON of different companies during the show, and we cannot talk about anything yet but be on the lookout for some very interesting things coming in the near future!
Money2020 was a heck of a conference and while my conference year is wrapped, the Boost team will be out and about at shows the rest of the year. We are looking forward to more opportunities to meet people in 2022, so if you did not get a chance to connect with us at Money2020, just drop us a line.
