Norton Rose Fulbright announces inaugural Insurathon 2017 winners
Global | Press release | November 6, 2017
Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright is delighted to announce the winners and results of its inaugural Insurathon 2017 event.
The Insurathon, aimed at supporting the development of innovative technology for the insurance sector and rethinking insurance related processes, took place at the firm’s London offices from November 3 to 5.
The event included a pitch event on November 3 where InsurTech start-ups competed for a prize fund of £25,000 of UK legal and regulatory advice from the firm. All participating start-ups were also given the opportunity to speak to a Norton Rose Fulbright team of partners and associates with expertise in corporate, regulatory, data protection and intellectual property matters during pro-bono legal and regulatory advice clinics as part of the event. The event was judged by a five-strong judging panel, which included two insurance industry leaders, a computer scientist, and two Norton Rose Fulbright partners (listed below).
Flock was named the winner of the inaugural Insurathon pitch event and awarded £20,000 of the prize fund. Flock is a start-up offering a drone insurance product. The judges were impressed by Flock’s platform and its potential for its product and analytics capabilities to be used in other contexts such as autonomous vehicles.
The runner up was Nexus Mutual, a blockchain-enabled peer-to-peer platform designed around a tokenised discretionary mutual structure. It was awarded the remaining £5,000 of the fund to enable it to get initial advice as to the viability of digitising a discretionary mutual model in this way.
The Insurathon also included a two-day weekend hackathon on November 4 and 5 with an insurance legal services theme. Over 20 staff from Norton Rose Fulbright took part in the event, including from the firm’s London, Newcastle, Sydney, Munich and Amsterdam offices. They were joined by about 20 coders from King’s College London (KCL) and the KCL student Tech Society to work together on the Saturday to develop new products and services and put together a business case. The proof-of-concepts were presented to a panel of judges on the Sunday morning and the winners were announced in the early afternoon. The aim of the hackathon was to develop proof-of-concepts in the insurance legal and regulatory services space, with a focus on using technology to improve insurance related legal and regulatory services, such as regulatory guidance or reporting or transactional processes.
The winners of the hackathon were a Norton Rose Fulbright team who developed a proof of concept for a claims e-reporting system. The aim of the platform is to provide a claims reporting platform when acting for a lead insurer on London market claims. The envisaged functions of the platform include the digitisation of current paper processes and the ability to use data collected by the platform to analyse claims and settlement trends.
Norton Rose Fulbright corporate insurance partner Nico Berry, who heads up the firm’s London InsurTech practice, said: “We are thrilled with all our winners. The event has been a tremendous success and we are looking at ways of replicating it across our other offices. Our overriding aim for this first Insurathon was to assist those developing new insurance models and processes, and to promote innovation in the sector. We recognise that the future of the insurance market will involve collaboration across different businesses. With this event, we sought to foster that engagement and cooperation. From those competing in our pitch competition and in our own hackathon, we want to support ideas that will be relevant to the sector and our own InsurTech practice in the years to come.”
Ed Leon Klinger, CEO at Flock, said: “Here at Flock we are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the insurance space, using real-time data to quantify risk for complex operations such as drone flights. As a small start-up working with large partners, and straddling both the insurance and aviation industries, it cannot be overstated just how valuable it is to have won the support of a world leading law firm such as Norton Rose Fulbright. It's a real honour to have been awarded this £20,000, and I look forward to engaging with their exceptional team on the range of legal and regulatory challenges ahead.”
Hugh Karp, Founder of Nexus Mutual, said: “Nexus Mutual is just at the beginning of its journey to provide a decentralised alternative for the insurance industry by combining Ethereum smart contracts with specialised legal entities. Winning the runner-up prize at Norton Rose Fulbright’s Insurathon is invaluable to us as we will gain the support of a leading cryptocurrency law firm to guide us through complex and often novel legal questions.”
The full list of firms who competed during the November 3 pitch event included:
The judging panel for the pitch event included:
- Eva-Maria Barbosa, Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
- Helen Crooks, Chief Data Officer, Lloyd’s of London
- Raj Karia, Head of Corporate, M&A and Securities, Europe, Middle East and Asia
- Peter McBurney, Professor of Computer Science, King’s College London
- David Melvin, Head of Corporate Transformation Strategy, MS Amlin
Visit Norton Rose Fulbright’s dedicated InsurTech page for its latest insights on legal and regulatory issues affecting the use of new technologies in the insurance sector.
For further information please contact:
Louise Nelson, Senior PR Manager
Tel: +44 (0)20 7444 5086; Mob: +44 (0)7909 684 893
louise.nelson@nortonrosefulbright.com
Norton Rose Fulbright
Norton Rose Fulbright is a global law firm providing the world’s preeminent corporations and financial institutions with a full business law service. The firm has more than 4,000 lawyers and other legal staff based in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Recognized for its industry focus, Norton Rose Fulbright is strong across all the key industry sectors: financial institutions; energy; infrastructure, mining and commodities; transport; technology and innovation; and life sciences and healthcare. Through its global risk advisory group, the firm leverages its industry experience with its knowledge of legal, regulatory, compliance and governance issues to provide clients with practical solutions to the legal and regulatory risks facing their businesses.
Norton Rose Fulbright operates in accordance with its global business principles of quality, unity and integrity, aiming to provide the highest possible standard of legal service in each of its offices and to maintain that level of quality at every point of contact.
Norton Rose Fulbright Verein, a Swiss verein, helps coordinate the activities of Norton Rose Fulbright members but does not itself provide legal services to clients. Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities worldwide, including London, Houston, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johannesburg. For more information, see nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices.
