Insurtech VCs talk COVID fallout, diversity, and growth opportunities: Roundtable

Among the many sectors put on pause by the coronavirus pandemic was insurtech. By March, the brakes had been put on new rounds. Overall, in the second quarter of 2020, insurtech funding rounds dipped by half year-over-year. Yet by the end of the year, things had rebounded nicely. In the third quarter, funding rounds doubled back to pre-pandemic levels, with a record high in mega-rounds of more than $10 million for single companies.

These developments illustrate an industry expressing cautious optimism. While capital is constrained by an overall global economic slowdown, insurance companies and their customers have been forced to adapt quickly to increased digital interaction and rapidly changing macro circumstances. So in some ways, the pandemic increased the urgency for carriers and startups to partner and transform legacy processes for the social-distancing world. Digital Insurance proprietary research will be released in Februrary with more on this trend. But first, we reached out directly to the venture leaders who hold the purse strings and asked how the COVID-19 crisis impacted how they tackled 2020, and what we can expect in 2021.

Here's the six questions:

Finally, let's meet our panelists. (They're in alphabetical order here, but we'll change up the answer order for each question.)