Apply for Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 and help build innovative solutions to transform the future of fintech and insurtech

Apply for Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 and help build innovative solutions to transform the future of fintech and insurtech

After a successful first edition of the Max Life Innovation Labs in 2019, Max Life Insurance Company Ltd. has announced the launch of the second edition of its flagship insurtech accelerator programme – Max Life Innovation Labs. With the launch of the second edition, the life insurer is now inviting technology startups to build smart fintech and insurtech solutions for specific business challenges.

Conceptualised in partnership with Invest India – the national investment promotion and facilitation agency of India - that will host the programme on the Startup India Hub, the programme will provide startups with the opportunity to access knowledge, infrastructure, and support from Max Life to transform business processes through technology. Max Life plans to select startups to co-develop solutions in the areas of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, smart underwriting, blockchain, health and wellness, intelligent data acquisition and advanced data analytics.

Commenting on the evolving role of fintech startups in the Indian insurance industry, Manu Lavanya, Chief Operations Officer, Max Life Insurance says, “Traditionally, the relationship with the insurer and its policyholders has been seen as an infrequent transactional and financial interaction. As a result, till the last decade, insurers in India did not feel an urgent need to be at the leading edge of digital technologies. But over the last decade, technology-driven change has seen a significant acceleration, driven by Internet penetration, changing the digital persona of the buyers, and democratisation of data and analytics. In the year 2020, this got further accelerated by COVID-19, as it forced businesses to disrupt traditional models through digital means even to keep the businesses as a going concern.”

He adds, “Insurance companies understand the need to become more customer-focused, easier to do business with, and more responsive to customer needs and expectations. They also realise that an organic approach to building a rapidly evolving digital capability, will hamper speed to market and hence an ecosystem approach to innovation is the need of the hour. Fintech ecosystem gives an ideal platform to the insurance providers to accelerate the innovation across the value chain, be it blockchain for insurance networks, digital twins as robo-advisors, and non-invasive medical tests, among others. Max Life Insurance, through its accelerator programme Max Innovation Labs, wants to tap into the limitless potential of the startup ecosystem to forge partnerships and drive collaboration to bring industry-first insurtech solutions.”

What is the larger theme of the programme?

The focus for Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 is to foray into the ‘Technologies of the Future’. This year, Max Life’s business team has crowdsourced use cases from within the organisation and selected seven areas of focus.

• Smart customer profile report - Ability to generate insights from medical, financial documents, external sources, and provide goal-based decisions to enhance financial credibility and health and wellness
• Digital twin - Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality solutions in the areas of sales, customer engagement, and marketing
• Data acquisition - Intelligent data acquisition on customers/prospects from online and offline sources
• Health and wellness - Provide health and wellness propositions to the customers that improve their health outcomes through targeted programmes
• Non-invasive medical tests - Non-invasive technology solutions to capture medical profile
• Insurance in a box - Build a white-label platform that can allow insurers to sell on-demand insurance on partner ecosystem/underserved segments
• Blockchain networks for insurance - Solutions that help create network relationships across the insurance value chain to simplify claims, onboarding, policy issuance, renewals, etc.

What will Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 focus on?

While insurtechs have already made a significant contribution to the insurance industry, most of the solutions are currently in the property and casualty market. Going forward, Max Life predicts a shift in focus as insurtechs will start focusing on Life and Commercial markets. However, the purchasing and onboarding process is still behind the tech-curve. Some areas that we see evolving in the future are:

• Tighter embedding of insurance products with the ecosystem.
• As customers are getting more and more tuned to buy and transact digitally, agents and brokers who supplement existing processes with technology in the future will be ahead of the game, we expect insurtechs to circle back to agencies and brokers soon to disrupt the distribution channel.
• Automate customer acquisition while improving user experience. To be able to offer products, services, contracts, and all kinds of procedures remotely and online.
• A significant application of analytics, AI/ML to make each of the enterprise processes more intelligent, leading to online decisioning rather than offline reporting-based decision making.

What's in it for applicants?

Apart from the opportunity of production deployment, the shortlisted startups are provided access to added incentives:

• Best-in-class mentoring – We engaged with the startups and held boot camps, provided one-on-one dedicated mentor support. Along with that, startups had access to our ecosystem partners, the likes of AWS Activate programme, as well as venture capitalists
• 360-degree support – In terms of technology infrastructure, along with support from business, IT, and infosec
• Dedicated innovation space – Workspace at our partner premises in tier-1 cities
• Exclusive data – Access to relevant data from our databases as required, to test one’s product/solution
• Dedicated support – A single point of contact with the organisation to mitigate any issue and ensure speedy implementation of ideas
• Marketing and brand presence– Promoting the startups on our website, social media channels, print and electronic media partners

Rewinding the clock - Max Life Innovation Labs 1.0

Last year, Max Life ran the industry-first corporate accelerator Programme, which became an instant success, receiving more than 150 applications. Through the shortlisting process, Max Life was able to select seven startups for sharing Proof of Concept (POCs). From the shortlisted startups, four were concluded with successful outcomes, while one is underway. As a promise through this programme, all the successful POCs were converted into a full-scale commercial production deployment.

All the selected startups work as an extended arm of the organisation and are fully immersed in creating some of the most innovative solutions in the industry. Max Life believes that the real win-win of the programme will only get delivered when one can scale the outcome of this programme to provide a differentiated and innovative capability to the business at scale.

Kickstarting your journey

Applications for the Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 are now open and the last date to apply is December 30, 2020. The final cohort will be announced on January 31, 2021, post which the formal onboarding process will begin. Know more about the Max Life Innovation Labs 2.0 here.

To be a part of this engaging programme, interested startups can apply here.

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