So much has happened in InsurTech in the recent past that it's easy to forget that it's not yet three years old.  We started InsTech London in April 2015 as a way to bring together those interested in insurance innovation and provide a place for for the innovators to showcase what they were doing. We do largely the same today, just bigger.

I had the pleasure to meet with Brenton Charnley last week who has just founded InsurTech Australia. The purpose of his group is bolder than ours, and I think better. Its principal sponsors and funders are the industry itself who recognise the importance of innovation and in particular the key role that partnering with innovators will play in that. They also have a lobbying role (there's no body lobbying for InsurTech in the UK and we just rely on the individual efforts of people like Paolo Cuomo and Craig Polley).

What Brenton helped me understand is that it's time to create a global InsurTech community by forming links between the relevent groups in each country. We can share interesting content and ideas, help make introductions for travelling members, globalise the investor base and most importantly learn from the best of what other communities are doing. 

As we head towards the Ashes, I can't help drawing parallels between InsurTech and cricket. Is this going to be another example of the English creating something only for another country to come along and show us how the game should be played? It feels like InsurTech Australia is a game being played professionally, while we at InsTech London have to be amateurs who have other jobs and only get to play in our spare time!

Brenton and I are not going to let the cricket get in the way of creating an alliance between our respective organisations. We'd like to hear from other non cricket playing nations who would like to join in. Despite Ireland joining the ICC in 2017, we're treating Ireland as a non cricket nation for this purpose!