Innovation InsurTech

Prudential’s PRU Fintegrate 2018 Taps Scale-Ups For Deeper Innovation

Prudential Singapore’s second edition of its digital innovation programme, the PRU Fintegrate Partnership (PRU Fintegrate) is this year inviting scale-ups from all over the world to join its innovation fray.

The insurance provider is aiming to build synergistic partnerships with scale-ups from 10 targeted areas to build new, end-to-end scaleable digital solutions for the future.

Prudential’s selected partners will win the opportunity to showcase their solutions at Prudential’s booth at the upcoming Singapore FinTech Festival 2018 (12-16 November).

They will thereafter, in 2019, also begin a fully-paid up pilot programme to further develop their solutions.

Prudential’s 10 Problem Statements To Be Addressed By Participating Scale-ups

Areas for disruption

Some of the 10 targeted insurance areas include preventative healthcare, enterprise solutions, customer engagement and underwriting.

Wilf Blackburn, CEO of Prudential Singapore, explained how tapping into new growth channels in these areas would be crucial for Prudential’s transition towards a digital future:

Wilf Blackburn

“We see tremendous untapped opportunities to innovate with the right partners in a number of areas, for example, by using technology to improve preventative healthcare and provide community support for customers with pre-existing conditions. Through such initiatives, we are proud to support Singapore’s Smart Nation vision where people are empowered by technology to lead meaningful and fulfilled lives.”

Scale-ups represent firms that already have a valid business model and who demonstrate readiness to accelerate growth in their business at this point in time.

Prudential is also looking for potential partners with a valid product set, an existing customer base and secured funding. They should also be able to show a proven track record in creating solutions that can be applied at both speed and scale.

Collaboration Is Key

PRU Fintegrate was first launched in 2017 to build an ecosystem of partners from the FinTech, InsurTech, HealthTech and MedTech communities to help solve business challenges with creative solutions.

This year, it will introduce the team challenge, whereby scale-ups will be encouraged to team up and design comprehensive, end-to-end digital solutions together. These solutions will aim to address any of the 10 problem statements laid out by Prudential.

Ms. Kalai Natarajan, Head of Strategic Engagements, Prudential Singapore, noted how collaboration was the essential ingredient towards creating novel, workable digital solutions:

Kalai Natarajan

To develop an end-to-end solution, collaboration between various parties is key. That is why we are introducing the team challenge category this year to encourage the building of more complete solutions that we can bring to market with speed and scale.”

New opportunities

Additionally, this year’s edition of Fintegrate will also feature an open category, whereby firms with solutions that fall outside the stipulated 10 target areas can still present their ideas.

Alternatively, they may also identify a completely different opportunity in the insurance market, and tap into that.

Participating scale-ups will be assessed based on their ability to put forward a value proposition capable of meeting business and consumer needs, taking into account technical and commercial factors as well as prevailing market conditions.

Selected finalists will also have a chance to work with Prudential’s team of experts to help them enhance their value proposition and develop their proof-of-concept.

Prudential will announce its selected partners at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2018 itself.

In the meantime, all applications for the 2018 PRU Fintegrate Partnership programme must be submitted no later than 16 September 2018.

Interested applicants may visit the official PRU Fintegrate Partnership website at www.prudential.com.sg/fintech.