Here’s hoping what happened in Vegas won’t stay there for long. Because, for the second year in a row, I had the honor of facilitating the Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards Pitch Day competition to its epic finale—and the innovation arrived in spades.

Picture five pioneering insurtech startups putting their best pitch forward to one of the year’s largest gatherings of top industry leaders. The results were simply breathtaking. Minds were suitably blown. No wonder everyone’s calling Pitch Day the biggest thing to hit insurtech since, well, insurtech. To understand why, let’s zoom out for a more expansive view.

Where the Cutting Edge Plays to Win

Now in its second year, Insurtech Vanguards Pitch Day is a one-of-a-kind competition for members of the Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards incubator program. This access-acceleration initiative helps P&C insurers learn about the hottest up-and-coming insurtechs as Guidewire scouts potential new members of our industry-leading Marketplace ecosystem.

At stake: the chance to pitch their value propositions to a live audience of Guidewire customers, employees, and partners. Our event was held November 1 in Libertine Social at Mandalay Bay Resort during ITC Las Vegas, with Imran Ilyas and PwC returning as our official sponsor. Later this month, the Grand Prize winner will also be showcased in the Demo Theater at Connections 2023. It’s the ultimate opportunity to reach 3,000 top P&C executives, investors, and the industry press.

The competition’s call to action was irresistible. Members of the Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards program were invited to submit a video that crystallizes the value of their solution to insurers—the business challenges it solves and its bottom-line benefits—in 60 seconds.

On August 24, we posted the video pitches to the Pitch Day web page, and invited members of the industry community to vote for their favorite value propositions. The five entrants to generate the most votes advanced to our Pitch Day 2023 event. With more than 10,000 unique visitors, and over 4,000 votes, it’s clear those value props struck a chord with P&C insurers worldwide.

Fast Pitch to a Full House

Whatever our expectations were after the stunning success of last year’s inaugural event, the tsunami of votes and the industry’s enthusiasm for this year’s competition was nothing short of astounding.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why. Pitch Day 2023 entrants perfectly underscored the growing importance of harnessing a universe of new data sources and advanced analytics capabilities to protect and grow margins, optimize ecosystem efficiencies, extend distribution, maximize customer retention, and control out-of-control litigation costs. Because cloud-based platforms like Guidewire enable insurers to quickly leverage the latest insurtech innovations, identifying the most promising and powerful technologies is now essential to gaining a meaningful and differentiating competitive advantage.

With votes in and totaled, the following contestants advanced to the final round of competition at Pitch Day 2023 (shown here in alphabetical order):

CaseGlide

CaseGlide’s claims litigation solution helps insurers beat social inflation that has added up to $105 billion in loss and containment costs over the past 10 years—and levels the field against the plaintiff bar.

Codafication

Ecosystem innovation comes to managing insurer supplier networks: Codafication’s intelligent claims ecosystem management helps unlock better expense ratios through faster, more brilliant, claims fulfillment.

Nauto

The car of the future is smarter and more connected—and the same is true for insurers. Nauto’s AI-powered, in-vehicle driver alerts leverage predictive AI to help reduce collisions by up to 80%.

Roots Automation

Roots Automation harnesses generative AI to enable “digital coworkers” that process unstructured data in seconds, with 99% accuracy, removing administrative burdens so insurers can grow their businesses.

Veruna 

With 1 in 10 consumers shopping for a new insurer, Veruna’s all-in-one CRM and AMS distribution solution empowers independent insurance agencies to increase revenues and retention rates by 50% or more.

A Vanguard Most Victorious

It would be pointless to try to capture the vibrancy that took hold of Libertine Social as industry luminaries from around the world gathered to hear each competitor’s game-changing value propositions. Personally, the opportunity to nurture this competition from concept to reality to a second blockbuster event has been an absolute privilege for me. I felt a profound sense of pride as the proceedings crackled to life before me.

Our insurtech competitors scored big just by being here. Imran Ilyas, a partner at PwC, offered expert insights on the importance of being part of an insurtech ecosystem.

For those in attendance, casting a vote for their favorite value proposition was tough—especially knowing that votes are factored into the official judges’ own votes for the team to be named the Grand Prize winner. In the end, one competitor was declared victorious:

CaseGlide

CaseGlide was founded in 2013 by claims industry veterans with extensive experience in insurance defense law. Having experienced firsthand the inefficiencies, the high operational costs, the rise of social inflation, and the sharp increase in the number of jury verdicts exceeding $10 million, this visionary Vanguard decided to do something about it.

Today, CaseGlide ranks among the most innovative and fastest-growing claims litigation management solutions in the industry—helping carriers across the country reduce legal spend, improve loss costs, lower cycle times, and level the playing field against the well-funded, highly tech-enabled plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Congratulations to Team CaseGlide and all our Pitch Day competitors!

Two Down—a Third on the Way

Sure, our second annual Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards Pitch Day competition has reached its stirring conclusion. But we’re really just getting started. If you’ve got what it takes to become a Guidewire Insurtech Vanguard, learn more and apply here. If you’re lucky, maybe we’ll even see you around this time next year—at Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards Pitch Day 2024.

A Shout-Out to My Guidewire Crew

In closing, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the members of the team who made this event possible:

Our sponsor and judge, Imran Ilyas

Our judges, Mike Chen, Roger Arnemann, Eric Apse

Our events team led by Cecilia Bautista-Sablan

And all of our participating Insurtech Vanguards

Without the contribution each of you made, none of this would have been possible.

Thank you!