🚗 Amazon now sells auto insurance in India. The coverage will be offered via Amazon Pay and will take ~2 min with no paperwork required. The company claims that it is planning to expand its insurance service to offer coverage on health, flight, and cabs. (Read more)
Mark McLaughlin, Insurers used to ask me all the time "when is Google going to get into insurance?" -- particularly when they were experimenting with Google Compare. My answer was "never" because it did not make financial sense for them to deal with the regulatory headaches and reserving, and that turned out to be correct. Although... (link)
Global Insurance Director @IBM:
Amazon though- a different kettle of fish.
Interesting thoughts from IBM Insurtech Decoded below.
Amazon, though, is a kettle of fish of another color. Amazon sells goods and increasingly, services that are insurable assets, and so there is a value proposition there that makes sense for buyers. They have been making a number of forays into the insurance space with Berkshire Hathaway, with Asurion and SquareTrade, and Travelers. They've also been expanding Amazon Pay, leveraging the same "credit card on file" access to extend reach into many new markets. Their foray into auto insurance in India is a logical step for them in this context.
https://decoded.substack.com/p/-amazon-taking-over-insurance