From Matthew Grant and Instech London. 

Embedded insurance is a topic we are definitely going to be hearing more about. Serge Corel from Wakam knows this area well. “There are many platforms and brands who are going to want to sell insurance products, by embedding them into the purchasing process - so you will buy a product or service, and you'll be adding insurance at the same time and that will create opportunities for new entrants”.

Serge sees this as a chance to reduce some of the “insurance gap” by making the customer journey simpler and making insurance more relevant, especially to younger generations. "It will make people better insured”.

"Amazon will be making its major play in the insurance market"

Rumours of Amazon entering insurance at scale have been around for a while. But could this be the year? Yes according to Nick Pester. “It’s something which has been mentioned over and again, but this is the year that is going to come to fruition. Amazon will be making its major play in the insurance market in 2021”. He has two reasons. First, the impact of the pandemic. "There's probably nobody within the country that doesn't use Amazon. It's in everybody's lives. It's major intention is to be the lifestyle platform for consumers”.

The second reason is what Nick has discovered as a result of piecing together some of the things that Amazon has been up to over the last couple of years. “They've been very quiet about it, it's below the radar in some respects. Amazon is licenced for insurance distribution within Luxembourg, there are passports to rights already across the EU and I suspect that it has already applied for extended UK permissions to continue being able to use those insurance distribution rights within the UK. It's already offering accidental damage cover on some of the gadgets it sells”.

Nick goes on “in November 2019, Amazon started to provide its Seattle based employees with in-house health insurance. In 2020, it is partnering with insurtechs in Africa and India to offer motor insurance.” And look out for Amazon Prime. “Amazon Prime members will get additional benefits as part of that cover. The Amazon Managing Director in India has said that the next step will be to expand into health, private hire, cabs, flights and travel”.

"All the pieces are in place, we just can’t quite see them yet"

All the pieces are in place, we just can’t quite see them yet, but says Nick “this is the year where Amazon really do take advantage of some of the upheaval and change within the market”. Yes, we agree.