I'm hearing plenty of challenge as to whether the velocity of tech-driven change in insurance is any more now than in the last half century, where first mainframes and punchcards, and the excel, truly revolutionised the back office before the Internet and comparison sites equally disrupted the front-end of personal lines.
This is a fair challenge as much of the #instech noise over the past year has been exactly that: noise. Yes, lots of startup ideas and discussions but that is true of every industry in the past 20 years.
As was stated at a recent InsTech London event "once the lawyers start circling you know you're on to a good thing". Well, with the Lemonade deal detailed below it seems likely that lawyers, bankers etc were likely all circling. While $13m is far from massive in the world of FinTech unicorn hunting, it's a lot for an unproven p2p insurer.
Let's see if this is a one off of the firing gun for a 2016 full where VCs and InsTech really collide.
New York-based Lemonade, a p2p insurance company which has yet to launch, has landed $13m (£8.7m) from the Sequoia and London-based VC firm Aleph Capital.