This year was a breakout one forinsurtech companies. The insurance industry has been long overduefor innovation and disruption,  and 2018 saw the industryattracting both talent and funding. FT Partners Research announcedinsurtech's quarterly financing volume for Q3 2018 totaled $1.2billion, which is up from $749 million in Q2 2018. The excitementincreasingly surrounding insurtech indicates that 2019 promises tobe an even more meaningful and game-changing time for the insurtechspace. Here are three insurtech trends you should keep an eye outfor in 2019 and beyond.

Sophisticated analytics

Any successful insurtech startup is not onlypassionate about transforming the current insurance model to bemore cost-effective and automated, but is invested in exploring therole data analytics plays at the core of this process. Intelligentand productive data aggregation, integration and analysis, arecrucial in achieving this.

Related: Insurtech's impact expected to be greatest in next2 years

When it comes to data analytics, the insuranceindustry's antiquated business model has much room for improvement.Insurtech is modernizing insurance as we know it by implementingadvanced big data analytics to optimize insurance products andservices. And investors are taking notice. Significant investmentsare being made in data analytics and modeling techniques to improvenearly every part of the business. By embracing data analytics,your business can gain a competitive advantage by finding revenueopportunities, enhancing customer service, , and improvingoperational efficiency.” Over time, this rise in digital innovationis sure to bring significant opportunities for a more efficient,competitive and sustainable progress for insurtech as a whole.

Transparency

The vast and complex insurance industry has longawaited simplification. Insurers' underwriting models havehistorically been a black box for consumers, while easy comparisonsof complex data have been reserved for the experts. Transparency iscritical to earning the trust of customers, especially in thisdigital age. People are now accustomed to online shopping, and theywant procuring insurance plans to be less complicated — similar toshopping for and purchasing other high ticket items such as homesand financial products. Consumers desire their pricing and productinformation to not only be transparent, but comparable as “applesto apples” so they can make smarter choices. Users can accessonline marketplaces to compare prices and benefits of differentplans side-by-side.

Partnerships between carriers and innovators

There is a deepening need for laser-focusedinvestments and partnerships between carriers and innovators asinsurtech has now matured into an everyday business. Insuranceexecutive and insurtech dealmaker, Stephen Goldstein argues that“the team is what is ultimately going to make an Insurtechinitiative a success,” meaning that incumbents and insuranceleaders executing partnerships with insurtech companies are part ofthe recipe that is going to provide a positive ROI and makeinsurtech thrive as an industry. While 2018 was a year of exploringand experimentation for insurtech, 2019 will be the year ofengaging and deepening those relationships.

At the start of 2018, insurance professionalspredicted that the number of partnerships and collaborationsbetween carriers and innovators would only gather momentum over the next year.And in June 2018, The Digital Insurer reported that partnerships remained a priority whereinsurtech was concerned. Insurtech companies are actively enablingnew technologies which are utilized to provide increased efficiencyand the ability to execute new tasks and analyses. Thesetechnologies are changing the industry on a fundamental level, allthe while causing more incumbents to adopt these capabilities throughinvestments or partnerships to compete effectively. Thepossibilities alone suggest that there will be expected growth inpartnerships throughout the end of 2018 and well into 2019.

Conclusion

2018 proved to be a massive year for insurtech, with adramatic increase in funding from Q2 2018 to Q3 2018. There hasbeen demand for skillfully acquired and implemented analytics,transparent experiences for consumers and mutually beneficialpartnerships. All three trends are being successfully observed in2018, and are believed to gather more momentum to lead us into 2019and later.