Method is a mix of followers and social authority on social networks.
Research by @Mandalore_Minh / @MortaKaz / @Minh_Q_Tran
For more information, contact: minh@mandalorepartners.com / @Minh_Q_Tran
Top 25 Green Finance Influencers September 2020
Method is a mix of followers and social authority on social networks.
Research by @Mandalore_Minh/ @MortaKaz / @Minh_Q_Tran
For more information, contact: minh@mandalorepartners.com / @Minh_Q_Tran
Top 25 Green Finance Influencers August 2020
Research by @OdysseusPartner / @MortaKaz / @Minh_Q_Tran
For more information, contact: minh@odysseuspartners.com / @Minh_Q_Tran
Mandalore Partners: Why are we rebranding?
Luxembourg and Paris - 17th August 2020
Odysseus Partners, recognized for its innovative approach to venture capital investing, is evolving and today announced its rebranding as Mandalore Partners, with a new logo and identity that reflect its new team and positioning.
"We’re excited to announce that Odysseus Partners is rebranding as Mandalore Partners, an evolution that reflects our growth and aligns with our new team and positioning..." Minh Q. TRAN, Founder and Managing partner of Mandalore Partners.
"... As we have grown, our customer and investor base has internationalized. Our anchor investors have moved from French- to EU-focused, and our leads have moved beyond the EU to include the US and Asia.
This exciting internationalization has led us to evolve in our market positioning, from a VC firm to Innovation-as-a-service. Our focus on de-risking innovation venturing allows us to better serve our customers: innovative investments require innovative investors!"
As an asset builder for corporations and mid-sized companies, we de-risk strategic and financial investments by sourcing, investing, and partnering in innovative technology companies fitting our customers’ venture programs.
Our team has shifted alongside our approach, from our friends at Reech Corp, to a collaboration with Alchemy Crew, a digital transformation, venture validation and innovation ecosystem, whose CEO, Sabine VanderLinden, is joining us as Partner.
Odysseus took its name from Greek mythology; its investment method was tried and true. Mandalore is inspired by Star Wars, an inventive technology-driven universe that reflects the spirit of a new generation of investors. As we move from old to new, however, one thing stays the same: the importance of Partners in our brand. We’re alongside our customers from the ground up and know that relationships are key to innovation and growth.
Mandalore Partners is general partner of Insurtech Capital and also works with Proptech Capital and other Strategic Partner Vehicles (SPV).
About us
Mandalore Partners, formerly Odysseus Partners, specializes in Innovation-as-a-service. As an asset builder for corporations and mid-sized companies, we de-risk strategic and financial investments by sourcing, investing, and partnering in innovative technology companies fitting our customers’ venture programs.
#Sustainable #Finance - Influencers' lists for July 2020
Here is our updated list for July 2020
#InsurtechChat – Ten new customer realities from COVID-19 for insurers to address
Q1: Ninety has launched a new white paper for insurers considering the opportunities beyond Covid-19. What were you trying to do with this paper?
A1: Ninety advocates customer-centricity in insurance innovation. What we’ve done with this white paper is to consider 10 “new customer realities” that will impact insurers and suggest 27 new ideas for insurers beyond Covid-19.
Download the whitepaper here: https://bit.ly/3eHmmAX
Q2: The world is changing in the light of Covid-19 pandemic. What should insurers do to remain relevant in a new reality?
A2: Check out our ideas: https://bit.ly/3eHmmAX
Support vulnerable customers through this crisis - it will be remembered
Listen to customer voice and develop a deep empathy for their needs
Ideate and experiment with new products, technologies and channels
Q3: How exactly is Covid-19 impacting #insurance?
A3: Pandemic has unleashed a domino effect on the industry – it is one big lesson on macroeconomics! Here is a mindmap to help visualise some of the new threats and opportunities for the #insurance industry. https://bit.ly/2C6X2GV.
Q4: First and foremost, Covid-19 is a health crisis. What is the biggest concern for life and health insurers right now?
A4: Neglecting mental health issues now may lead to reoccurring episodes and an increase in physical diseases such as obesity, diabetes or cardio-vascular problems in later life; all leading to earlier mortality, higher associated healthcare expenditures and insurance claims.
Q5: Which of Ninety’s new customer realities you are most excited about?
A5: Future of Work – it’s not just about how differently we will work ourselves, but also how can we cater for emerging insurance risks to:
support gig economy
ensure cybersecurity
adopt automation
enable the Reskilling Revolution
For some inspiration: https://bit.ly/3cTvzF3
Q6: What is the single biggest trend that the #insurance industry should be aware of?
A6: Low Touch Economy - customers will expect convenient and user-friendly digital insurance platforms. We will see more disruptors like Lemonade shaking up the industry. Will big insurers be able to keep up? Watch this space! Join the debate here: https://bit.ly/3d0EKDP
Q7: Do you have any examples on how insurance companies are helping the world to fight the pandemic that made you feel proud to be part of the industry?
A7: Insurers are key to managing risk in society. In China Ping An’s Good Doctor virtual health platform saw a 10x increase, keeping the vulnerable safer and balancing out health worker workload to stay up to date, sign up for our Covid-19 Pulse Alerts: https://bit.ly/2XW6zsA
Q8: Where to find more information on new emerging risks and opportunities for the insurance industry?
A8: Our recommendations:
@SwissRe on New Risks https://bit.ly/2UCdLb9
@TheDIACommunity on Digital Transformation https://bit.ly/2zu77N5
@CreditSuisse on Supertrends https://bit.ly/3feG87g
@WTWhr on Scenario Planning for Key Classes https://bit.ly/2XXyHvt
Q9: Finally, where can our readers download the white paper in question?
A9: Via the Ninety website, or go directly to the white paper here: https://bit.ly/3eHmmAX
Insurtech Chat is a Twitter chat hosted by Minh Q. Tran, Managing Partner of Odysseus Partners. For more information, please contact minh@odysseuspartners.com.
Odysseus Partners’ Top Green Influencer List Featured in Politico
Odysseus Partners’ Green Influencer List was featured in Politico, a global political media based in Washington, D.C.
In the June 5th edition of Global Translations, which unpacks essential global news, trends, and decisions, Politico’s editor Ryan Heath wrote about the lack of comprehensive data and standardised systems for sustainable investment, and featured Odysseus Partners’ Top 25 Green Finance Influencers List under the Sustainable Finance spotlight.
In our recent article, Impact Investing: Why It Is A Growing Asset Class and How to Scale It Forward, our analysis concluded that the impact investing landscape in Europe is still difficult to size due to limited consensus on definition lack of statistical data, and absent impact measurement system, and proposed next steps for scaling the impact investing market in Europe.
Odysseus Partners is committed to working with emerging businesses and investors to continue and expand our work in sustainable and green finance. For more information about the Green Influencer List and our projects in impact finance, please contact Mr. Minh Q. Tran at minh@odysseuspartners.com.
Launch of Alchemy with the merge of experiences from Sabine VanderLinden, Minh Q. Tran from Odysseus Partners and Dan White from Ninety
Founders include Sabine VanderLinden, Minh Q. Tran from Odysseus Partners and Dan White from Ninety
11 June 2020, London, UK: Three insurance industry leaders have joined forces to launch ‘Alchemy Crew’ (Alchemy) – a new growth venture validation company to enable insurers, reinsurers, wealth managers and healthcare providers to grow in a post pandemic era. The company has developed a new applied collaborative framework that accelerates the identification of corporate-venture transfer strategies, and solves challenges through venture validation, partnering and investing, which can be completed through a virtual engagement model.
The founding team brings together 70+ years of experience in the insurance sector:
Sabine VanderLinden - renowned ecosystem builder that launched and grew Startupbootcamp InsurTech accelerator to become the leading Insurance accelerator in Europe and subsequently in the USA
Minh Q. Tran - previously founder of AXA Seed Factory and former GP of AXA Strategic Ventures’ $500m fund
Dan White - specialist insurance innovation leader and Managing Partner at Ninety Consulting - the leading and only global Insurance Innovation Consultancy
Sabine VanderLinden, Co-founder and Managing Partner of the Alchemy Crew, said: “Covid-19 is predicted to cost the global insurance industry approximately $203 billion. The damage will be economical, societal and operational. To survive and grow in a post-pandemic world will require insurers to rapidly adapt to the new normal and build highly adaptable operating models and functions. That’s where Alchemy comes in. Our systemic approach de-risks game-changing initiatives for executive, transformation and innovation leaders in the insurance sector, and adds speed and convenience to project delivery regardless of market dynamics.”
Alchemy’s model combines a series of evaluation exercises with short, targeted and iterative validation cycles. It has developed a bespoke six-phased criterion to de-risk portfolio related decisions, across: defining customer needs, viability, scalability, long term relevance, sustainability and transferability. This makes it easy and quick for insurers, reinsurers and other players within the finance sector to determine the most suited, relevant and resilient growth ventures.
The model delivers a series of programmatic and iterative Reinvention Engines. Each programme lasts four months and dives into major group level and business unit strategic problems. It engages with the most dispersed cross functional teams and evaluates and matches international growth-stage ventures able to solve complex challenges. The validation process can be delivered face to face, or virtually. Each Reinvention Engine requires the involvement of one problem owner and five to six experts from each corporation for an average of 20 days over a four-month period. The delivery has been fully virtualized to meet emerging needs from Covid-19.
Minh Q Tran, Managing Partner, Odysseus Partners – Co-founder and Investor in Alchemy Crew: “With Alchemy we are industrialising virtual Reinvention Engines, which includes the discovery, evaluation, sourcing and acceleration of demonstrable applications of top digital tech entrants, which are able to deploy their solution in the cloud. Couple this approach with our deep industry expertise, data and research from decades delivering impact from executing growth-led innovations, and we believe we are perfectly positioned to become the partner of choice for insurance and reinsurance providers that want to assess, validate, invest and spearhead growth in 2020 and beyond.”
Dan White, Managing Partner, Ninety Consulting – Co-founder and Investor in Alchemy Crew: “What I’m seeing from our work in the insurance space is a new hardening of the mandate for innovation in the face of a currently fast changed world. But it is a mandate with a different focus. Gone is much of the ‘optional’ innovation, to be replaced with ‘must do’ innovation problems: how to stay relevant, how to pivot operations to 100% digital, how to serve customers and clients in times of hardship, and how to do all that whilst engaging with climate challenge priorities. It is a fascinating time to be involved, and I’m proud that Ninety is a founder of Alchemy and joint forces with two other recognised leaders within the industry.”
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About Alchemy Crew
Alchemy Crew (Alchemy) is a new venture validation firm for the insurance sector and financial services institutions. It has launched an accelerated Reinvention Engine that sources the very best global tech ventures to fast-solve some of the most pressing challenges across the financial services sector today. By using a structured collaborative and virtualized framework, its approach short-cuts the evaluation and validation of game-changing improvements, products, services and business models to significantly de-risks corporate-led venturing initiatives.
Alchemy’s global transformation & innovation platform digitizes and codifies knowledge on emerging tech ventures to create long-term sustainable impact through authentic execution and the sharing of key learnings. It combines the collective knowledge of experts from all around the globe to contribute to the emerging networked economy.
For more information, please see: https://alchemycrew.com/
Contact: hello@alchemycrew.com
Top 25 Green Finance Influencers May 2020
Method is a mix of followers and social authority on social networks.
Research by @OdysseusPartner / @MortaKaz / @Minh_Q_Tran
For more information, contact: minh@odysseuspartners.com / @Minh_Q_Tran
#InsurtechChat – Shaping resilient businesses through a better understanding of emerging risks
Q1: What are those emerging risks that insurers must pay attention to whether now or post Covid-19?
A1: Recent Willis Towers Watson survey shared that insurance executives stated that the top 3 most dangerous risks within the coming year were cybercrime, disruptive technology, as well as pricing and profit. I believe that Covid-19 will drive increase interest in additional emerging risks types and topics including financial instability, pollution and climate change, gig economy and SME coverage, as well as risks such as business continuity, operational resilience, supply chain management including the evolution of renown risks such as D&O liability, employment practices liability (including wages and hours), and communicable disease coverage.
Q2: From the lists, you shared above, which emerging risks you consider to be the number one risk of all?
A2: Weather-watchers know that climate change is a clear threat globally. Insurers such as Allianz, AXA, Munich Re, and Zurich used to cite it as their top emerging risk on their materiality assessment matrices, as well as inclusive workplaces and digital transformation.
I have two risks actually! Cybercrime or climate change... telling you which one I select between the two: "it is hard to say!"
Cybercrime is also progressing to become a micro risk. It doesn't just affect others; it affects all businesses including the insurer business too.
Q3: We often hear that disruptive technologies are increasingly becoming one of the most pressing threats of the century. Do you feel this is correct?
A3: Whether we are talking about threats coming from Tech giants or those rising from emerging InsurTechs, FinTechs, and WealthTechs insurers are not only faced with dynamic external market forces, but also competitive threats from advanced technology-first players. Tech giants e.g. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Tesla are still valued at Billions of US$ & young ventures focused on immediate digitization & transformation needs are also doing OK. InsurTech received $1.3Bn and HealthTech $6.2Bn in funding in Q1 2020.
Q4: Whether emerging risks or disruptive technologies. Where should insurers concentrate their attention right now?
A4: Insurers must recover quickly from the pandemic and market flux and uncertainties to spring back into health. The pandemic is testing the operational resilience of many business models, and their ability to respond quickly to customer demands. Right now, insurers need to deploy resilience strategies to support more advanced sales and distribution, pricing, claims and servicing operations too. It is for many a clear time for prioritization. Many insurers are assessing and selecting those emerging risks that need evaluating most to drive the right future impact, and that will yield the most interesting long-term growth opportunities.
Q5: What does this actually mean in terms of future technological requirements?
A5: Companies must improve their understanding of their risk portfolio on an individual and aggregated risk basis to mitigate upcoming risks. They must build highly detailed risk profiles to facilitate more flexible risk-based pricing for instance. This requires technology enablers. "Tech" is at the core of future transformations. Problems will be solved with better predictions through machine learning, advanced big data sources, and other sophisticated tech solutions that are coming to market.
Q6: Will emerging risks create a new generation of insurance models?
A6: It is likely. Dynamic economic shifts, pandemics, climate change, sudden poverty, changing consumer behavior are creating new risk types for which insurers have no expertise. For example, there is a need for a joint consortium like co-creation forums to tackle the climate change challenge. Insurers must determine a series of paths forward and help policyholders become more sustainable to minimize such types of risk long term. Another example, autonomous driving and intelligent systems drive new risk types too. The question is who is liable if a driver instructs an autonomous car to do something and causes an accident? Driver or Car Manufacturer? Counterparty exposures must be revisited. Many insurers already have a series of activities in place to determine how to assess risk and drive future efficiencies. Everyone has to keep up to date with emerging developments to design customer aligned products and services of the future. For gig economy and SME workers, new technologies enable flexibility in the way we as individuals manage work and life. Adaptive insurance models must and will continue to come to market Insurtech.
Q7: You shared with us earlier that we must pay attention to Cyber risk. Could you elaborate a little bit more about your viewpoint on the topic?
A7: With COVID-19 and homeworking, we will start to see new cybercrimes (e.g. home networks and personal devices). Coverage gaps will increase for individuals and businesses as the usage of tech evolves and more sensitive digitally kept records appear. Insurers must gain a better view of their total aggregated risk exposures. Some insurers have in-house dedicated cybercrime detection engineers which look at weak points and ensure that customers’ systems are kept secure. Risk profiling, footprint, and prevention. As we all know, Covid-19 creates new types of commercial liability. New opportunities will emerge to evolve underwriting techniques and welcome more sophisticated modelling approaches. InsurTechs cannot yet solve the problem end-to-end as it takes time to do so.
One significant risk from cyber is the increasing fragility of information and data, and the subsequent impact on intangible assets such as intellectual property. Thanks to Raconteur for a great infographic.
The process of continuous data sharing to inform continuous underwriting will shape future system requirements. The sector must build a robust & ongoing defence against cybercrime to gain a better picture of where the liability lies.
Q8: What would your recommendations be to those insurers that are today focusing their attention solely on immediate short-term priorities?
A8: A ‘wait and see’ approach is certainly not an option. While emerging, these risks are real, significant and increasing drastically in exposure every day of the week, impacting large segments of society, including businesses and individuals. Emerging risks are continually evolving, changing, and growing. Let’s not forget that we could have planned but may not have been able to fully comprehend the scope of COVID-19 as other unforeseen crises that struck economies around the world before. For example, cybercrime is expected to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021 cybercrime expert Frank Abagnale predicts. Connectivity-related changes are increasingly driving a new focus on emerging risks for re/insurers.
Insurers today must test and evaluate their business models and then develop strategies that are capable of weathering and absorbing the impact of a constantly changing risk landscape.
Q9: What should insurers do to keep abreast of those opportunities that are emerging right now, as well as the accelerating trends we were hoping would come in the far future?
A9: Insurers must find new products and services that address customers’ needs in a much more bespoke, personalised and customizable way. This means increased segmentation and profiling activities, in addition to development of new adaptable pricing models.
Q10: Would you like to share any final words of wisdom with our audience today?
A10: Don’t expect someone else to sort this out. Many market players are waiting for someone else to take the first step. We are all accountable in some way. Let’s start working together to create a better and more joined-up world. Looking forward to reading the comments and continuing the conversation. Do reach out if you have a question!
Insurtech Chat is a Twitter chat hosted by Minh Q. Tran, Managing Partner of Odysseus Partners. For more information, please contact minh@odysseuspartners.com.