Driving innovation forward: 12 winning initiatives of Zurich Innovation Championship 2023 set for local roll-out

TechnologyArticleSeptember 28, 2023

From submission to winner and now local execution – with the chance to be scaled globally. That’s the action-packed journey that this year’s Zurich Innovation Championship winners have undertaken over the past nine months.

Yesterday, Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich) held its first Innovation Demo Day to celebrate the 12 winning initiatives that have successfully made it through a four-month long accelerator and will now be executed locally – and, in one case, even be launched as a global service.

True innovation requires relentless determination to turn challenges into growth opportunities. The Zurich Innovation Championship embodies this, and I'm thrilled to see the 12 winning initiatives. They're stepping stones towards the future of insurance.

Joel Agard

Head of Innovation at Zurich Insurance Group and Zurich Innovation Championship co-lead

During the event at Zurich’s headquarters, the 12 startups presented their initiatives, supported by executive judges for each of the five program categories: Sierra Signorelli (CEO Commercial Insurance) representing Commercial Insurance, Conny Kalcher (Group Chief Customer Officer) for Customer Experience, Jack Howell (CEO Zurich Global Ventures) for Digital Enablement and Distribution Partnerships, and Alison Martin (CEO EMEA and Bank Distribution) for Sustainability. Other guests that took the stage included Juan Beer (CEO, Zurich Switzerland), Sabine VanderLinden (Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew), Omeed Mehrinfar (Managing Partner EMEA, Plug and Play), and Norbert Dohmen (Managing Director, Caruso, one of last year’s winners). Program co-sponsors Ericson Chan (Group Chief Information and Digital Officer) and Paolo Mantero (Group Chief Strategy Officer) closed the event and, by that, also brought the Zurich Innovation Championship 2023 to an end.

Zurich kicked off the fourth edition of its global startup program, the Zurich Innovation Championship, in January 2023. In May 2023, it announced this year’s winners from more than 3,500 submissions. The winners then entered a four-month accelerator during which they worked on testing the practical viability of their initiatives and preparing a business plan together with the Zurich business units that selected them. All the initiatives are now preparing for local roll-out, with the potential to be scaled globally. In the case of Paris-based startup Citalid, it is already ramping up to integrate its cyber risk quantification platform as part of a new global service of Zurich Resilience Solutions.

The Zurich Innovation Championship is a transformative learning experience for both the startups and Zurich alike. By combining the expertise of our business unit teams with innovative, tech-savvy startups, I believe we have built 12 initiatives that really have the potential to shake things up in the industry.

Antony Elliott

Head of Digital R&D at Zurich Insurance Group and
Zurich Innovation Championship co-lead

Altogether, more than 45 collaborations are ongoing globally with previous winners and participants from the four editions of the Zurich Innovation Championship, including some that have started to be rolled out globally.

The next edition of the Zurich Innovation Championship is due to launch in late January 2024. Startups can sign up on the website to be notified about any updates.

The winning initiatives 2023 are:

Citalid

Zurich France, Zurich Resilience Solutions

KorrAI

Zurich North America

Wysa

Zurich North America

Fisify

Zurich Chile, Zurich Mexico, Zurich Spain

EpiQMax

Zurich Germany

Hence

Zurich Canada, Group Claims

Minalea

Zurich Italy, Zurich Portugal

Miss Money Penny

Zurich Germany, Zurich Global Ventures

omni:us

Zurich Switzerland

Agave Biosensors

LiveWell by Zurich, Group Claims

Truera

Group Digital Business Intelligence

Spotr

Zurich Ireland

“I love the Zurich Innovation Championship – it’s a movement now. This has been the fourth edition, but every time we do it again feels like the first time because we keep learning from past editions. The three things that stood out to me are the opportunity to scale and reusability; that 11 out of the 12 startups are using AI; and that seven out of the 12 are looking beyond the insurance value chain [from tonight’s pitches].”

- Ericson Chan, Group Chief Information and Digital Officer
“The risk landscape is changing and risks are increasing in frequency and severity. As an insurance company, we have a big role to play. But as risk is ever-evolving, we need to stay up-to-date. That’s the reason we have the Innovation Championship and it’s been a great success.”

- Paolo Mantero, Group Chief Strategy Officer
Also attending were representatives of Make the Difference, Zurich's global employee program that helps to accelerate Zurich’s efforts to execute on its strategy and embrace new ways of working via a bottom-up empowerment of employees. Cassandra Galloway, Group Head of Strategic Workforce Transformation and Make the Difference lead, said: “I’m immensely proud of this year’s outstanding Make the Difference participants who have actively worked with the winning initiatives throughout the accelerator, acting as entrepreneurs in residence to help accelerate the outcomes.”
“What I like most about the Zurich Innovation Championship is that we’re solving real world challenges. Over the years, we’ve gotten better and better at being really focused on what the challenges are that we’re trying to solve.”

- Sierra Signorelli, CEO Commercial Insurance
“It’s amazing to see how far insurers have come in terms of distribution but we can go so much further by helping our distributors build more meaningful relationships with their customers. That’s what the winning initiatives of the distribution partnership category are looking into. Distribution is an important part of who we’re going to be in the future.”

- Jack Howell, CEO Zurich Global Ventures
“Going forward, we aim to build a meaningful relationship with our customers. To do that, we need to make every interaction count. But this is easier said than done, so we need to continue to take action. The “Customer Experience” category received 875 submissions and the three propositions we picked are very strong.”

- Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer
“Sustainability – why is it so important to us? Simply put, because it’s the right thing to do. I’m pleased that both of the winners from the sustainability category are from the “S” space [in ESG] – there were many brilliant entries.”

- Alison Martin, CEO EMEA and Bank Distribution
Panel discussion with Juan Beer (CEO, Zurich Switzerland), Sabine VanderLinden (Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew), Omeed Mehrinfar (Managing Director EMEA, Plug’n’Play), and Norbert Dohmen (Managing Director, Caruso) about collaboration between insurers and startups.