A week after the global final of our startup tournament and announcing our three winners, I look back on an incredible journey that spanned 13 months.
Stuart Domingos, Zurich’s Head of Group Innovation and initiator of Zurich’s own startup tournament
This year’s Zurich Innovation Championship faced some extraordinary challenges that were thrown at it by the coronavirus pandemic. What do you do at a time when so many things were stopping around the world? We decided that we shouldn’t wait for the world to return to some sort of normal – innovation was needed now more than ever, and with so many innovative ideas shining bright on the immediate horizon, we got to work. Our teams from 26 countries and territories showed a commitment and enthusiasm that – even though I’ve worked at Zurich for almost 15 years – I’ve never experienced to that extent. Everyone was truly coming together as one team while engaging with the startups to bring their best ideas into fruition within Zurich. What’s come out of it shows me that innovation truly never stops.
The idea for the Zurich Innovation Championship goes back to 2018: I re-watched an old movie, “The Karate Kid”, which just so happened to coincide with the soccer world cup. Both featured competition that narrowed the field through a number of rounds. If it worked for sports, why not for creating the biggest call for innovation within the financial industry? It was the perfect way to structure a global competition and set the stage for some of the world’s most interesting startups to make their work available.
People sometimes ask me, “But why would Zurich even want to host its own startup tournament?” Sixty percent of new products and innovations come from startups. This is the way we keep our ears close to the ground, see what works, kick the tires a little and uncover the most amazing new ideas in the world. More than anything, startups are nimble and able to bring their ideas to life quickly. I’m the first to admit that we can – and must – learn a lot from startups, and vice-versa, which is why a tournament like ours is so beneficial: for the startups, for us at Zurich and, most importantly, for Zurich’s customers around the world.
Every once in a while, I still encounter the common argument that startups disrupt industries and are out to compete against a company like Zurich. What we’ve seen, however, is a common thread of collaboration that’s been apparent throughout the whole competition. It might seem counterintuitive to talk about collaboration and disruption in the same breath, but we’ve found that the best way to disrupt is to go at it together. It’s not about David vs. Goliath, but about David and Goliath working together to create something big.
We call this “entrepreneurship with a purpose.” There were so many incredible ideas in more than a thousand submissions that addressed climate change, health issues, agriculture problems and financial literacy, just to name a few. We congratulate our winners who perfectly illustrate this approach to purposeful business. ClaimFlo, our Gold winner, and the two Silver winners, Pops! Diabetes Care and Jupiter Intelligence, have created innovative technologies that can lead to changes in business, health and managing environmental risks. You can watch the winners’ announcement in our video.
To round up everything I’ve said, I believe that startups are going to be an important part of the future of business in an age when digitalization and sustainability are among our biggest ambitions. These bright and bold innovators are going to be out front in the move to new ways of doing business. Our role as a large multinational insurer and their experienced collaborator is to work closely with them, providing the help and guidance they need so that together we can provide our customers with solutions that will help improve their lives and the way they do business.
The Zurich Innovation Championship began in September 2019 and by January 2020 had received 1,358 entries from around the world. The field was narrowed to eight finalists who advanced through country and regional rounds. In October 2020, the finalists made their pitches to Zurich’s Executive Committee, who chose ClaimFlo, a North America-based startup as the Gold winner. ClaimFlo is a rules-driven straight-through processing platform for property and casualty claims. Two Silver winners were named: Pops! Diabetes Care’s app that works from a mobile phone and Jupiter Intelligence, a catastrophic risk modeling service that factors in ongoing climate change.
