Bitesize InsurTech: Fitsense
April 23, 2016 Chris Sandilands
Fitsense is a health telematics startup. It was one of nine startups selected for this year’s Startup Bootcamp InsurTech accelerator, which finished last week.
The Fitsense data analytics platform draws data from wearables and smartphones to help insurers understand their customers better. Their IP comprises two items:
- The ability to normalise a lot of disperate data to create a single risk factor
- An “activity score”, developed in conjunction with the National University of Singapore School of Public Health
The level of detail is immense and it’s fair to say that Fitsense is still working on what the most valuable use of their data is. For example, insurers can see a consumer’s physical movements and overlay risk factors such as road traffic accidents on a stretch of road; consumers can get an activity tracker app with lifestyle points and rewards. It remains to be seen which “use case” prevails when the business matures.
Insurer interest and uptake looks promising. We see two challenges for Fitsense. First, to what extent will consumers be willing to share their data, and will the benefit compensate for the loss of privacy, and second will insurers find a way to use the enormous detail in their risk assessment. More immediately, the challenge will be to persuade insurers to invest in backtesting “big lifestyle data” against their actual financial exposures and to experiment with using Fitsense’s risk factor scores in their pricing..
Similar startups (more on these guys another time):
WeSavvy’s “mHealth” app allows consumers to “Walk, Run or Cycle cash points out of your insurance premium”, but acting as a broker rather than a SaaS business.
4-year-old Sureify until very recently acted as a mobile broker, managing consumer health data and premium discounts on its own account. It has now built the app into a platform for insurers.
