Tech-focused investor New York Life Ventures has?invested?more than $200m?in committed capital.
New York Life Ventures has noticed a significant investment and interest to customer experience and digital product distribution related companies,?Head of New York Life Ventures Joel Albarella told FinTech Global.
The firm, which is the venture capital arm of New York Life, now aims to speed up the impact of new innovations that drive value for a company’s policy owners and clients. Since it started investing in 2012, the investment arm has?completed 29 deals and worked with more than 100 startups.
The venture unit offers its partners a research and development lab to explore and test new technologies while helping to develop new ideas through a number of programmes.
Head of New York Life Ventures Joel Albarella said, “While our focus areas are constantly evolving based on market dynamics, we remain focused on any new technologies that enhance the insurance value chain, e.g., financial services technologies, data and analytics, and health and wellness.”
The firm mainly focuses on making investments in to US-based companies, but it does also ‘opportunistically pursue’ non-US opportunities.
Albarella said, “As one of the first life insurers to enter the corporate venture capital space, we are a first-mover in successfully connecting New York Life with some of the best and brightest firms in the startup ecosystem.
“We continue to see great promise in our ever-growing network of early stage companies, and believe that innovation to date has just scratched the surface of what possible in the insurance industry.”
The firm claims to have delivered strong and consistent returns to its policy owners and produced top quartile investment returns since its inception.
It boasts a current portfolio of 12 businesses including blockchain and bitcoin startup investment firm Digital Currency Group, machine learning data platform DataRobot and financial advice company SmartAsset.
Albarella said, “We strongly believe FinTech will continue to experience growth. Specifically, Insurtech to date has just scratched the surface of what possible across the insurance value chain. The vast opportunities in this space keep us excited.”
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