The Insurance Boom in Fintech, Street Contxt and Bloomberg Terminal Rivals

One of our portfolio companies StreetContxt has raised a large round of financing from Stevie Cohen’s firm Point72.

I cringe when journalists call any company a Bloomberg Rival, but everything else about Blair Livingston (the founder) and StreetContxt in the piece is fantastic!

I have read all the death of Bloomberg Terminal pieces and they all read like the death of Microsoft pieces (insert bank behemoth for tech behemoth). It’s not happening.

That said, it is hard to imagine Bloomberg Terminal growth.

I continue to be bullish and fasciated with all things do-it yourself in capital markets and the rest of financial services. I believe the Robinhood new user and transaction growth is setting off a transformational era.

A first time stock buyer of Snapchat can buy 1 shares at $23 and change their mind the next day and sell it for $22.90 – losing 10 cents not $16.10 at an online brokerage. In a $200 account you can see how the cost of learning is dropping at an astronomical rate.

Combined with the fact that financial experts are contributing endlessly on social media streams…you will have a massive increase in financial literacy.

The transformation in fintech won’t just take place in capital markets.

The hot topic of the last year in fintech is insurance technology.

I google searched it for you to do some reading of your own.

I have met with a lot of insurance companies over the last few years and their innovation departments to hear about the industry and the opportunities to disrupt and partner.

Some context for how big these Companies are…Geico spends approximately $1 billion a year (5 percent of auto premium sales) and $450 plus to acquire a customer. Insurance companies that use sales agents pay nearly $1,000 per customer. That strategy wont work for millennials or Generation Y, so it’s easy to see why the insurance tech space is hot right now.

I imagine Google and Facebook will have a huge piece of all insurance business 30 years out.