Bitesize InsurTech: Slipcase

March 8, 2019 Chris Sandilands

This week we spoke to Alex Hearn, CEO of Slipcase. Subscribers to their service will have seen the Oxbow Partners InsurTech Impact 25 go out on their Tuesday email this week.

Oxbow Partners: What does Slipcase do?

Alex Hearn: Slipcase is the central content platform for the global commercial and specialty (re)insurance industry.

OP: Who are your clients and who do you speak to in those companies?

AH: We target carriers, brokers and service providers who have a focus on commercial and specialty insurance and reinsurance. We generally deal with marketing & communications directors or managers as well as COOs (who manage these functions) or innovation teams (who are looking for new value enhancing technologies).

OP: How do you help them?

AH: We enable organisations to communicate their brand, expertise and latest news and insights direct to relevant audiences around the world. Our clients spend a lot of time and effort building their brand and expertise; we help them clearly communicate this to the market.

OP: Please provide an example.

AH: Organisations who have signed up with us include AIG, Hiscox, Liberty, Beazley, Travelers, MS Amlin and QBE on the carrier side, and Aon, Willis Towers Watson, Ed and Guy Carpenter on the broker side. Service providers such as Fitch Ratings, EY, KPMG, RMS and Crawford are also clients. All of our client organisations have an interest in particular segments of our audience.

Mark Shaw, Head of Business Development and Marketing at Hiscox recently said: “The Slipcase platform is a fantastic distribution channel for our thought leadership content to targeted audiences and for showcasing the expertise within our London Market business. We’re excited to work with Slipcase as it continues to grow and innovate.”

OP: Why did you set up Slipcase in the first place?

I wanted to build a place that made it easy for everyone in the industry to get information that was relevant to them.

OP: How has your strategy or proposition evolved since you set up?

AH: We started out as social media platform for the industry and evolved into our existing model after much learning from user behaviour and feedback. Our model is continuously adapting to what we learn.

OP: What are some of your recent successes?

AH: Last month we announced John Cavanagh, until recently global Chairman & CEO of Willis Re, as our Chairman which is a very exciting step to support our growth ambitions.

18 months ago we launched a mobile app, which has had over 2,500 downloads from brokers, underwriters and service providers. Later this year we will be releasing an upgraded version with better design and functionality such as optional push notifications.

We also recently developed an API which is a significant step for us. This enables us to plug the platform directly into an organisation’s internal systems (e.g. intranet, trading platform) to provide relevant information from across the market where the eyeballs are. We are in the final stages of plugging this into a top-3 global broking organisation and are in advanced conversations with a number of other global carriers and brokers.

Finally, we recently provided data for a report on who is reading what and why across the insurance industry. A summary can be read here.

OP: What do you dream that Slipcase will become?

AH: We want Slipcase to be the engine that delivers the best and most informative content to professionals across the global industry: on our desktop site, mobile app and through API integration.

The Oxbow Partners view

We have found Slipcase to be a valuable source of information in our work. It’s surprising how many papers are published each week on different aspects of the industry and Slipcase is a great way to find them.

Registration for users is free of charge at www.slipcase.com or through the Appstore.