Founded in 2012 as one of the life insurance industry’s first corporate venture capital arms, the New York Life Ventures team quickly identified an emerging startup ecosystem distinctly different from what would become the insurtech space and realised the potentially profound impacts these start-ups promised to have on insurers. This ecosystem included technologies that not only addressed opportunities specific to life insurance, but also those that went beyond insurance into areas like cloud architecture and cybersecurity. The team eventually coined “LifeTech” to describe this ecosystem.
According to Joel Albarella, Head of New York Life Ventures, “The value at the intersection of technology and life insurance has yet to be fully realised and the startups with the most promise are often new to the insurance industry; herein lies the embedded potential of the growing LifeTech ecosystem.”
LifeTech includes technologies that are both “enabling” and “adjacent”. Enabling technologies are those that directly support existing industry value chains. Adjacent ones have the potential to become complementary to life insurance companies over time.
As New York Life Ventures seeks opportunities to accelerate the pace of innovation at New York Life and fuel the future of the life insurance sector, the team has invested in a variety of both enabling and adjacent startups. Two of these portfolio companies are Trifacta, a leader in the data wrangling space, and Carrot, a startup at the forefront of the digital health and wellness space.
San Francisco-based Trifacta develops technology that converts raw data into analysable formats for companies across a wide range of industries, including insurance. Trifacta’s core focus is simplifying how people interact with and utilise data. Through the work of New York Life Ventures, New York Life not only became an investor in Trifacta, but also a user. The company partnered with Trifacta to modernise its analytics platform and has experienced positive impacts in areas like customer relationship management and risk analysis.
The use case exemplifies how the combination of modern technology and a human touch enables incumbent insurers to improve process and provide increased value to customers. Albarella explains, “Speed to insight will separate winners from losers in the insurance industry, but insight generation at scale requires efficient data preparation. Trifacta helps solve for this exact challenge.”
In 2018, New York Life Ventures invested in Carrot, a digital health company on a mission to use mobile technology, behavioural science and clinical expertise to empower millions of people to quit smoking. The New York Life Ventures team sees the digital health and wellness space as having significant potential to deliver additional value and support to customers over time.
Both life insurance policy owners and insurers benefit in a variety of ways from individuals living longer, healthier lives. Abandoning unhealthy habits can yield lifestyle advantages and lower future medical expenses – and the financial implications can be substantial. While no Carrot use cases are currently underway at New York Life, the team’s investment has delivered a front row seat to the quickly evolving digital health and wellness landscape.
Tim Del Bello, director of investments at New York Life Ventures, notes, “Carrot is a strong example of those companies that are driving exciting innovations at the intersection of digital health and life insurance. These technologies have the potential to play a meaningful role in the future of the life insurance industry.”
The New York Life Ventures team continues to facilitate proof-of-concept tests with and invest in LifeTech ecosystem startups.
Albarella concludes, “There is a massive opportunity to create value in the life insurance industry and profoundly impact the space’s future by connecting with LifeTech startups operating both inside and outside the sector. This has been New York Life Ventures’ focus since our founding and we continue to derive value from this approach.”
Read the New York Life Ventures whitepaper Emerging LifeTech ecosystem promises profound impacts on life insurance here.