On the 11th and 12th of May the Digital Insurance Agenda took place in Amsterdam, an amazing world class event where over 700 executives of 200 companies from 36 countries showed up! It was very special for a few reasons. Usually the insurance industry can be quite boring for not focussing on new technology, but at this years event they managed to make InsureTech extremely hip and interesting. They turned the Westergasfabriek into a beautiful venue and there were lots of amazing speakers of different companies every 15 minutes, over 50 incredible startups, great food and wonderful people. Everyone was in a great mood, wanting to improve and looking for innovation.
DIA initiators Reggy de Feniks, Roger Peverelli and Conny Dorrestijn are absolutely world class entrepreneurs with a deep knowledge of the insurance industry. Because of their network they gained the trust of hundreds of people to come the previous edition in Barcelona. Everybody was talking about it and from that moment every one in the insurance industry wanted to be a part of it. I interviewed them about the event and reinventing customer engagement! How did they come up with the idea to do something this cool for InsureTech?
One of the amazing startups was Sentiance, a Belgium company that intelligently tracks and traces everybody! By taking raw data from mobile phones they know exactly where all your customers are and what they are doing. You can see it in real time on amazing animations. It’s kind of creepy but also handy and unbelievable in how much detail you can see what people are doing. By using this kind of data companies can provide more suitable services. Already used by millions all over the world but it’s only the beginning and for a euro a month you can join it. CBDO Tom Vandendooren explains how it works!
Hover makes 3D models of your house by using pictures you took on your phone, an extremely handy feature for contractors and insurance companies! It shows you all measurements, from the roof to the windows to the basement without having to visit the property. The company was founded in 2011 to support USA troops in Iraq/Afghanistan and is now growing very fast having already 800 people working. For 20 dollars you can make a model of a house anywhere in the world!
Reply.ai make a very interesting chat bot that by their estimations will be powering 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020. The company is just a year old and are already working for all the big players like HP, Unilever, Starbucks, Ryanair and many more. In the interview I asked CEO Clara the Soto how this is possible in just 15 months! It’s her 3rd company and together with cofounders from Google they started this project. If a company has all the right papers to make it, this is it! We also demo all the very creative features of the bot.
BIMA Mobile is bringing insurance to people all over the world who never had it before. Offering simple life insurance, personal accident insurance (for 3 cents a day!) and basic hospitalization. So for about 3 dollar a month you can get the full insurance package with income protection. BIMA currently has 30 million customers worldwide, 3000 employees and has been funded for 75 million by investors. Started out in 2010, now active in 16 countries and growing each day. How do they do this? I interviewed head of communication Nicola Smith and included a demo on not a smart phone, but a feature phone! Very interesting and a socially extremely useful company!
Dacadoo, a health care platform that tracks the health of the user with 50% engagement rate. It helps you stay healthy by tracking your daily patterns and advising what to eat, drink and when and how much to move. It also motivates you by giving rewards and keeping score. Insurance companies can use this information and currently they are starting a project with Mensis in the Netherlands. I interviewed Lucas Ammann about the app!
On April 21st the Dutch FinTech Awards took place at the Rabobank headquarters in Utrecht! As chairman it was a hell of a job to organise a total of 21 companies who where fighting to be the number 1 FinTech company of The Netherlands! Over 15.000 enthousiasts voted for their favorite startup and combined with the vote of a judge of experts a top 3 in each category was featured, of which each company could pitch their idea in front of all attending stakeholders.
The overall winner is BUX, an interactive app that allows everyone to participate in the stock market and makes it accessible to all, even if you have no previous experience whatsoever. CEO Nick Bortot has inspired over a million people to play with investments in stock. First you start off with funny money and once you get a hang of it you can begin investing. Over 70.000 users are already using the app for serious transactions. The number of users is growing rapidly and are, besides the Netherlands, also based in Germany and the United Kingdom. It’s very remarkable that of the 40 people working for BUX, only 3 have a financial background, others are all active in gaming, design and customer interaction. A very interesting company in the FinTech industry! What can we expect from BUX in the future?
Alex Weber of the amazing German startup N26 was one of the great keynote speakers at the Award show. N26 is an entirely mobile European bank. After getting myself an account I found out it’s a real smooth process and completely optimized for smart phone usage. It’s also free to use, with is great since withdrawals from banks in Germany are really expensive. N26 currently has 55 million in investments and 300.000 clients of which 10.000 in The Netherlands. With just one license from the German national bank, they can do business in 17 countries in Europe, without first having to go to each central national bank, very convenient! What is their business model? And how is their idea different from the current system?
Rabobank hosted the event and works together with young FinTech companies on an amazing scale. COO Ralf Dekker talks about speeding up innovation after fully stabilizing the system for the last few years. He thinks the new and quick companies are a great way to experiment with all kinds of changes and sees these startups as a big opportunity rather than a threat. What are the future challenges for Rabobank and what is their vision towards FinTech?
InsureTech was a very interesting category and has 2 winners! One of them is Friss, an insurance platform with a fantastic fraud detection system. Second winner is Openclaims, an auction platform on which you can upload the damage of your vehicle and immediately get all kinds of suitable offers for your specific case. Jeroen Morrenhof, CEO Friss, has been working under the radar on this project for 10 years and expects to expand at a very big rate for the upcoming 10 years! How is he planning to do so?
Last week I attended the event ‘My phone, my phone, my irresistible phone’ by The John Adams Institute in Amsterdam. During the event about the dominance of the smart phone in current times, several speakers shared their opinions on this big topic that we’re all part of. One of them was Adam Alter, American author of Irresistible (translated by Maven Publishing as Superverslavend). He talked about techniques used by tech-companies to make their products more and more addictive and explains it’s not always the fault of our own weaknesses when we’re once again unable put the phone down. Watch the video below to get an impression of what it was like and get an insight in the views of Adam.
Wouter van Noort is a Dutch journalist for NRC and author of recently published Is daar Iemand?. His book shares the topics Adam talked about and Wouter dives even further into our relationship to technology. The smart phone is taking over our lives. How is this obsession changing us? And why or why isn’t that a bad thing? In the interview in Dutch he tells all about it. Is it really as bad as we sometimes think?
Marleen Stikker, founder of the Waag society, an institute for arts, science and technology, thinks questions the ethical sides of current tech-developments and business models originating in Silicon Valley. The smartphone addiction and data exploitation on us, the user, has reached unprecedented heights. Marleen believes we should develop more ethical business models in Europe instead of joining Donald Trump. We discussed some of the examples in the Dutch interview.
Naar Barcelona gaan bij Mobile World Congres is overweldigend. Je weet niet waar je moet beginnen. Ik organiseer namens @CMtelecom een VIP tour met 40 nieuwe trends op gebied van Handsets, AI, 5G. Loop lekker mee!
Borstkanker, wie heeft er niet mee te maken gehad? Deze vreselijke ziekte detecteren kan gemakkelijker. De Pezy Groep heeft in 12 maanden een apparaat ontwikkeld van 250 euro waarmee je zelf kunt controleren of je borstkanker hebt.
De thermische camera voor consumenten kan weefsel scannen en is te verbinden met je smartphone. Via een slimme cloudoplossing gaan de gescande gegevens naar een kenniscentrum dat beoordeelt of de borst nog gezond is. Test en diagnose zijn gratis voor mensen die de Breaster kopen. In de toekomst is ook een maandabonnement beschikbaar.
Rob van Helvoirt, Director bij de Pezy Group in Eindhoven, legt in een interview uit waar de technologie vandaan komt en hoe de Pezy Group deze zo snel op de markt kan brengen.
Ik hield er een verhaal over digitale Innovatie in de electronica maak industrie.
Are you coming to Mobile World Conference in Barcelona on Feb 26,27, march 1s? Then let me guide you on a VIP tour (real or virtual)? The most importants gadgets, applications, mobile payments and identifications, internet of things.
Ik hield een verhaal over digitale disruptie op de AVnet TS klantendag. Hoe gaat de business van een gigantische IT hardware distribiteur naar de cloud en welke rol moeten ze gaan spelen?
AVnet heeft een totale omzet van $27 miljard dollar. Hun Technical services divisie waar ik aanwezig was distribueert $10 miljard IT hardware en software in netwerken en datacenters technologie van bedrijven als HP, IBM, VmWare, EMC, Oracle & Appnet naar het indirecte partner kanaal. Hub business wordt nu verkocht aan gigant Tech Data waardoor ze de grootste worden in de business.
Nu distribueerde ze vooral hardware maar software wordt in sneltrein vaart belangrijker. Hoe kan een hardware distibuteur de overgang maken naar cloud en software waar fysieke distributie helemaal niet meer bestaat? Het blijkt dat er wel een rol is in orderflow, financiering, voorlichting, deal making.
Marco van Ierland is de MD van de benelux en ik interviewde hem over de trends in distributie en welke rol ze gaan spelen. Ook vroeg ik hem welke bijdrage ik als spreker speelde aan het einde van de dag na 25+ sprekers die diep in de techniek ingingen. “Verfrissend en confronterend” waren zijn woorden.
Video van een soortgelijk presentatie tijdens Cloud dag bij Oracle.
Marc Wullings heeft een Finse vrouw getrouwd en help Health technologie bedrijven uit Finland hoe ze in Europa verder moet gaan. Hij geeft hier een introductie over het Finse healthcare system. 1 ziektekosten verzekeraar van de staat maar onafhankelijke health care providers. Hoe slim is het? Welk identiteits systeem gebruiken ze (van de Banken) en wat kunnen wij in NL ervan leren!
Look how the heath care system works in practice.. Pretty scary!
I talked with John Mattison on Big data & innovation. He is the MD and Chief medical information officer & medical director for Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plan. How can the big huge technological innovation in the medical sector chance the system. What does the Dutch healthcare system need to do? What is the end result but more important how is the change road?
John is a also speaker at Singularity University! These are the most positive people concerning the concequences of technology change on the industry!
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