The target remains one billion euros for 2023. In fact, the Italian insurtech sector continues to march at great strides on the wave of an insurance offer that has ample scope for digitization, albeit remaining at levels that are decidedly inadequate as funds compared to other European reference markets. In the first half of the year, investments more than tripled to 200 million euros compared to 60 a year earlier, with the forecast of reaching 500 million by the end of 2022, according to the estimates of the Insurtech Investment Index, created by the Observatory Fintech & Insurtech of the Politecnico di Milano for the Italian Insurtech Association.
Despite the period of great uncertainty, the insurtech market continues at a rapid pace: a total of 510 million euros have been invested in two and a half years. On the other hand, it is the global insurtech sector that is consolidating in the name of growth that marked a record jump of 90% in investments in 2021, which continued this year despite the Ukrainian crisis and the consequent economic situation. In Italy, which started from a situation of backwardness, the development was more relevant than in other European countries. For this reason, the association that brings together 200 players in the insurance world keeps the outlook on the goal of one billion euros unchanged.
However, Italy confirms itself as the bottom of the European scenario where Great Britain, Germany and France all have performances around or above three billion euros in the last two and a half years, led by the 3.7 billion British. The report confirms the weaknesses of the insurtech ecosystem, starting from the difficult relationship of traditional companies with start-ups and innovative SMEs: it is true that in the last thirty months investments in start-ups have reached 120 million euros, but other countries Europeans recorded values about ten times higher. The difficulty of innovative companies to scale with adequate funding and with the support of companies remains a brake on the development of the Italian ecosystem.
The spring that can trigger a virtuous circle is represented by the digitization of the sector. 71% of the players in the insurance sector believe that there is a technical and digital gap in their skills and therefore it becomes a priority to reduce this gap and start agreements with innovative partners in order to compete in the current scenario. Also because it is about satisfying an increasingly digital consumer who today represents 42% of the insurance target (it was 33% in the pre-pandemic). And, according to IIA estimates, within ten years more than eight out of ten people will apply for insurance products in a digital key.