Innovation Through Collaboration

As an internationally respected and well-regulated financial services centre of excellence, with a reputation for innovation, the Isle of Man was always going to be a natural choice for emerging FinTech and InsurTech opportunities. 

Central to supporting the island’s ambitions to create an InsurTech ecosystem is Finance Isle of Man, an executive agency of the Department for Enterprise.

Simon Pickering is Finance Isle of Man’s head of insurance and pensions. He’s seen first-hand the benefits collaboration can bring to growing the Manx economy, promoting the Isle of Man to an international audience and, crucially, expanding the Isle of Man’s growing portfolio of technology-driven financial services.  

He said: ‘We’ve been working on our InsurTech project for some two years but October 2021 was our first collaborative exercise – a joint event with the FinTech Scotland festival in Edinburgh. As a small independent jurisdiction, we found we had a lot in common with our opposite numbers in Scotland so kept in regular contact. We discovered that the Scottish product offering was really light on insurance, though, so we could see there was an opportunity for us to plug that gap. The first move to plug that gap was when Finance Isle of Man signed a memorandum of understanding with FinTech Scotland. This gained good media traction and helped to put the Isle of Man on the map by promoting our wealth of experience in the insurance industry and our emerging InsurTech ecosystem.’

Those early collaborative links with Scotland are set to be strengthened when, as part of the 2022 FinTech Scotland festival, InsurTech Isle of Man will be in Edinburgh on October 5 to host an event that will tell ‘the story so far’ and outline future plans for international collaboration.

Central to those future plans for collaboration is Finance Isle of Man’s joint-venture accelerator programme with F10 in Zurich. Simon explains: ‘We were first introduced to F10 began back in October 2021. Funded by the Swiss and Spanish stock exchanges and with offices in Zurich, Singapore, Madrid and Barcelona, it’s a global FinTech and InsurTech ecosystem that sees collaboration as the key to innovation. 

‘F10 scouts the globe for suitable partners and is attracting a cohort of some great names. There’s a selection process where applicants are whittled down first to 25 and ultimately to a final 10, hence the name, F10.’

He says that although the Isle of Man fell outside of the first 10, such was the strength of the Isle of Man’s InsurTech accelerator programme proposition that Finance Isle of Man hosted an induction programme for F10 stakeholders at UCM’s Nunnery campus. ‘We pulled out all the stops for delegates flying in from the UK, Europe and Singapore for what was a series of masterclasses with top-flight speakers and an opportunity for us to showcase just how much the Isle of Man has to offer. 

‘This is truly pioneering stuff. In all, it’s a 12-week programme that people have signed up for. It runs until November and, apart from the initial session in September, will be conducted virtually. But in January 2023, everybody will come back to the Isle of Man to make their final pitches at an event in the Villa Marina.  So, by the end of January 2023, we hope that some 50 per cent of the companies who signed up to our incubator programme will have submitted proof-of-concept plans with our incumbent insurance companies.

‘We see huge benefits in delivering the programme. It puts the Isle of Man on the FinTech/InsurTech map; it creates an entrepreneurial environment in which to air proof-of-concept ideas and share skills, experience and insight; and it has the power to firm up interest already shown by some organisations in setting up branch offices in the Isle of Man. This, in turn, could create a potential for filling some of the island’s skills vacancies and upskilling existing workforces.

‘For too long we in the Isle of Man have been reluctant to tell the world how great we are. Now we have an opportunity to reverse that. A lot of the people I’ve met in the course of these meetings know only very little about the Isle of Man, apart from that it’s home to the TT races. When I explain that out of the 42 per cent that financial services contribute to the Manx GDP, 19.2 per cent is generated by the insurance industry, that the Isle of Man is home to some 107 captive insurers and holds around £72 billion of funds under management and that the International Investment Awards have voted the Isle of Man Best International Finance Centre four out of five times, people aren’t only surprised but also excited by the opportunities those statistics present.

‘The world’s got a lot smaller; we’re linking to Insurtech UK along with InsurTech Ireland and InsurTech Israel amongst others. There’s been an Insurtech industry in the Isle of Man for around 18 years, but now it’s time to shout about what we have to offer, advance technology and accelerate growth, and key to all of this will be collaboration on a global scale.’

To find out more, visit https://www.financeisleofman.com/sectors/insurtech-3/

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