Insurance has been around forever and hasn’t been an industry that is being driven by technology, up until now, thanks to Trov, a new company that provides on-demand insurance coverage for individual assets.
According to Reuters, Trov, which is backed by AXA Insurance, went live Tuesday (Nov. 22) in the U.K., offering consumers the ability to insure things like computers and cameras via an app. “We literally track risk to the second, so when you turn something on, it turns it on to the second, and then, it prices your usage to the second should you want to turn it off,” Scott Walchek, Trov’s chief executive officer, said in an interview with Reuters. “It’s literally the same swipe right to turn it on, swipe left to turn it off.”
But it’s not only Trov that is poised to overhaul the stodgy insurance industry. Reuters cited CommerzVentures, the FinTech venture capital fund, as saying in March that the insurance industry is rife for change and will be transformed “beyond recognition” thanks to new technologies, including artificial intelligence, drones, blockchain and new payment systems. “Effectively cooperating with startups may be the only way for incumbent insurers to fend off potential competitors, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and other non-traditional players,” CommerzVentures said in the report.
Trov has already been operational in Australia for the last five months via a partnership with Suncorp Group. The company has aspirations to launch in the U.S. next, where it is teaming up with Munich Re to provide the insurance service. The company is targeting millennials who are on the go and work at home or in a coffee shop and, therefore, want insurance to protect their laptop. Walchek told Reuters that Trov started with electronics and photography equipment and will add more insurable categories in the future, including sporting goods.