This year’s winners tackled challenges in the fields of Commercial Insurance, Digital SImplification, Life & Health, and Retail P&C alongside two wild-card winners. From helping to streamline the claims and underwriting process, retaining customers through innovative health solutions and building a journey towards climate  resilience, all the winning initiatives have the potential to have an impact for the group globally.

In its fifth edition, Zurich called for startups around the globe to apply and received more than 3,300 applications in the span of just under four weeks. This makes it one of the largest innovation contests for startups in the financial services industry. The programme maintains about 40 collaborations from previous contestants.

Ericson Chan, Group Chief Innovation and Digital Officer commented on the awards: “As technology continues to advance rapidly, we must keep innovating at pace. All of this year’s winners use AI to redefine risk assessment, underwriting, claims, and customer interaction. By working together with these startups, we can rapidly leverage those new ideas and technologies to deliver a standout customer experience.”

This year’s winners across the four challenges, with an additional two wild-card winners, are:

A key part of the Zurich Innovation Championships is fostering the relationship with the startups. The next stage of the contest will see the winners enter a four month accelerator during which they will pilot the practical viability of the initiatives and develop business plans with the Zurich business units which chose them. Those who are successful in showing proof of concept will work locally and globally with Zurich towards joint adoption.

About the Winners  (Source: Zurich)

Commercial Insurance

CLIMADA Technologies, together with Zurich Resilience Solutions, will launch a property damage and business interruption quantification tool for climate risk, providing customers globally with the financial benefits of climate adaptation measures.

Sixfold will work with Zurich North America to improve underwriting efficiency by leveraging its purpose-built AI. By understanding ZNA’s unique underwriting guidelines, the platform will boost underwriter capacity and accuracy while saving time for brokers and customers.

Digital Simplification

Parloa GmbH is teaming up with Zurich Germany to enhance customer service using AI automation. The joint initiative aims to use Parloa’s AI platform to manage repetitive inquiries, freeing up resources for more complex customer concerns.

Merlynn and Zurich North America will be jointly developing digital twins of insurance knowledge workers. Learning from human expert decisions, this technology enables the automation of decisions, enhancing loss outcomes, decreasing training times, and improving consistency for claims processes.

Life & Health

NalaGenetics , a biotechnology company, will be working alongside Zurich Malaysia to create a personalised care program enhanced by genetic tests for chronic disease management. By identifying risks early, customers can be provided with personalised care plans that help them tackle chronic conditions and adapt healthier habits.

AccuHealth and Zurich Chile will together explore the mitigation of chronic disease impacts on insurance claims through a data-driven digital service, targeting B2B2E customers. The service collects biomarker data to run personalised health programs, aiming to help control chronic illnesses. Benefits include healthier individuals, reduced absenteeism for employers, and, in the long-term, potentially a reduction in premiums.

Retail P&C

LoyJoy, a Conversational AI Platform, is collaborating with Zurich Germany to enhance customer service, sales, and marketing processes via chat and social media. The platform’s ability to personalise communication could help address individual customer needs, while its gamification feature could engage younger customers in understanding insurance. This collaboration is also expected to facilitate booking of consultation appointments, benefiting Zurich’s sales force.

Wild cards

AlphaGeo, a geospatial data science company, is working together with Zurich Group Investment Management to optimise its Global Real Estate portfolio performance. Using AlphaGeo’s AI-powered analytics platform, the collaboration aims to enhance investment performance by identifying regions with higher growth prospects based on climate risk and social resilience, potentially leading to significant improvements in asset valuations.

MentionMe, a Customer Advocacy Intelligence Platform, has been matched with Zurich UK to leverage the value of customer advocacy as a growth driver, converting Net Promoter Score promoters into active customer referrals. This is expected to increase customer retention in line with Zurich’s customer loyalty strategy

Paolo Mantero, Group Chief Strategy Officer commented on the winners: Solutions that are tailored to customers and their evolving needs are the future of insurance. Whether it’s making the financial impact of climate risks more tangible, improving underwriting efficiency or creating personalised health programs, these innovative initiatives can truly transform the industry.