Swiss InsurTech Hub: The Winners & Agenda 2026

The December online meetup of the Swiss InsurTech Hub focused on the winners of this year’s awards: from cyber risk quantification and core modernization to closing the security gap in life insurance. At the same time, the focus was on the most important industry events at the start of the year. A review with an outlook.

Citalid, the overall winner of this year’s Swiss InsurTech Hub Awards, kicked things off. Thebrokernews reported on this in detail in an in-depth interview with CEO and co-founder Maxime Cartan, formerly a threat expert at the French cyber defense agency ANSSI.

LedgerTech: Core system modernization without a big bang

Eran Tirer, CEO of Ledgertech, then joined us from Hong Kong. His topic: how decades-old policy administration systems, often operated in COBOL on mainframes, can be transferred to the era of AI, embedded insurance and the cloud without big-bang migration and mammoth projects. Tirer speaks of a “perfect orchestration” of several forces: AI and automation, changing customer expectations around digital and embedded products, growing regulatory pressure and the fact that almost all peripheral systems have already migrated to the cloud, while the core system remains as an on-premise island.

Ledgertech is positioning itself as a cloud-native, AI-supported policy administration platform on a low-code/no-code basis. The approach: The platform is initially based on the existing core system, which remains as the recording platform. New or selected product lines, such as travel, SME or motor, are built on Ledgertech, with an AI co-pilot supporting product configuration. Underwriting, claims, servicing and distribution will be gradually moved to the new architecture, including API-based, embedded use cases. The old system can only be phased out once sufficient volume has been migrated. As a reference, Tirer cited Phoenix Insurance in Israel, among others, which ultimately preferred Ledgertech for the digital transformation after a thorough analysis of classic core modernization paths. This was not least due to the complexity, costs and time-to-market of traditional projects.

ViteSicure: The protection gap in life insurance

ViteSicure focused on the protection gap in life insurance. CEO Eleonora Del Vento described the current situation in Italy: every second family saves nothing, two out of three millennials are struggling with fears about the future and at the same time only around six percent of households have life insurance. The result is a massive protection gap and a market with billions in potential that has yet to be truly tapped.

ViteSicure sees itself as an impact-oriented InsurTech that aims to make financial protection for death, illness, accidents and loss of income digitally accessible and consistently adapts life insurance policies to new purchasing habits. The platform offers a fully digital journey: the policy can be taken out in just a few minutes and is immediately available online. The key figures underpin the model: high conversion, low churn rate, a lifetime value well above acquisition costs and a portfolio built up in the double-digit millions in premiums and commissions. ViteSicure operates as a broker registered in Italy with an EU passport, is expanding into Spain and other countries and now works B2C, B2B2C and embedded. It is based on an end-to-end proprietary platform with a front end, back end, database and APIs along the entire value chain. The team is currently preparing a Series A round to accelerate its expansion in Europe.

InsureMO: Middle office for the API economy

With InsureMO, Antoniya Karakulova presented the perspective of a global middle office player. InsureMO, short for Insurance Middle Office, sees itself as an infrastructure layer between old core systems and the digital outside world. The platform addresses the known bottlenecks of many insurers: long time-to-market for new products, limited scalability for high volumes and a fragmented data landscape that slows down the use of modern AI and analytical solutions.

InsureMO relies on a headless, API-first architecture that docks onto existing core systems, consolidates data and simultaneously orchestrates sales partners, MGAs, brokers and third-party systems. The product library includes thousands of configurable templates that can be used to launch new products in weeks rather than months. The platform processes enormous volumes at peak times and is used in more than 50 countries. Depending on the initial situation, it can digitize individual business areas or serve as the basis for a later core replacement, with the idea of limiting transformation risks while still achieving visible effects quickly.

Stopping the loss of knowledge: Automation from practice

Finally, Stefan Majnek from UpQuAI, a Swiss InsurTech based in Zug, presented and addressed an often underestimated topic: the loss of expert knowledge in insurance. Hundreds of thousands of specialists will retire in Europe by the end of next year, and a large part of their operational knowledge is not documented anywhere. This makes automation more difficult and, in the start-up’s view, is a key reason why many automation initiatives fail.

The answer is a self-service SaaS platform that allows professionals to record screen activity, accompanying audio comments and relevant metadata during their normal work. This data is used to create a knowledge infrastructure that makes processes visible, can be used for automation and analysis and is also suitable for standard operating procedures and training purposes.

One practical example comes from a Swiss insurer that was struggling with a rapidly growing claims volume and a shortage of specialists: After a short time, enough knowledge had been captured to largely automate the claims process from initial notification of loss to payment. Employees could be reallocated to customer-related tasks, and the annual savings were estimated to be in the six-figure range. The startup is also opening an office in the House of InsurTechs at Generali headquarters and is launching a light version of its product for process managers, consultants and SMEs.

Looking ahead: ETH Symposium and ITC London

In addition to the winners, the President of Swiss InsurTech Hub, Silvia Signoretti, looked to the future. On January 20, a full-day symposium on “Embedded Insurance” will take place at ETH Zurich, together with ETH, the Open Embedded Insurance Observatory and international experts. Places are limited and demand is already high. The second edition of ITC London, curated by Ian Carpenter, will follow at the end of January with a deliberately limited number of participants, a high proportion of insurers, brokers and MGAs, an innovation zone, a startup showcase and a new Challenge Lab, which is being sponsored by Generali for the first time. Special packages and a joint pavilion are planned for members of the Swiss InsurTech Hub.

There are also community formats such as the annual Insure-Bingo Apéro in Zurich, which promote informal exchanges and build bridges between start-ups, established insurers and international innovation platforms. Although the December meeting was smaller than usual, the content was dense: from cyber risks as a growth area to core modernization and life insurance 2.0 to securing expert knowledge. 2026 is likely to show which of these innovations will actually scale in the everyday lives of insurers and where pilot projects will develop into new industry standards.

Binci Heeb

Read also: Swiss InsurTech Hub Summit and Awards: A celebration of innovation