At the General Assembly of the Swiss InsurTech Hub, the focus was less on association routines and more on market mechanics: international roadshows, a London evening at the Swiss embassy, concrete pitch formats and a lot of realism when it comes to fundraising for European InsurTechs.
The Swiss InsurTech Hub (SIH) used the General Assembly on February 24, 2026 to sharpen its event schedule for the rest of the year, with a clear highlight in London in March. A London roadshow is planned with a delegation of start-ups and visits to insurance incumbents in the City. The evening before the InsurTech Insights conference (18/19 March), there will be a networking event at the Swiss Embassy, co-organized by Starmind.
The embassy event is to include keynotes, a panel discussion and – a rather rare format in the InsurTech environment – a book signing. The hub called on the community to use the London Days as a “cluster moment”: Delegation, side events, panels, social activities and exchanges between incumbents and InsurTechs as a recurring recipe for success.
Roadshows as a matchmaking engine between incumbents and InsurTechs
In terms of content, the hub explained why the roadshow format has now “proven itself” (fourth run): Insurers provide concrete catalogs of topics and objectives in advance, and the hub matches these with suitable solutions from the network. This creates a structured dialog: less “pitching into the blue”, more goal-oriented exchange. In addition to London, Italy (spring) and Switzerland (summer) are also mentioned as recurring stops; clarifications are also underway for other destinations.
Fundraising: “It’s statistically tougher in Europe”
A clear signal came from the investor’s perspective: Ernesto Costa, former VC and impact investor with a focus on private insurance, announced a webinar to be held before an upcoming InsurAngel Swiss pitch session. His diagnosis: fundraising is not only difficult “right now”, but is structurally more challenging for European InsurTechs. He referred to the discrepancy between European InsurTech density and the proportion of financing rounds completed in 2025.
He wants to cover four fields in the webinar:
- Investor logic and de-risking depending on business model (MGA, distribution, software)
- Valuation & KPIs typically expected for Seed/Series A
- Process management, investor search, material quality, momentum – including tooling
- Term sheet clauses affecting control, follow-on rounds and exit economics
At the same time, InsurAngel Suisse advertised the next pitch session (March 23 in Zurich, four start-ups; participation by invitation).
European funding: Switzerland once again “fully on board” with Horizon Europe
Euresearch set a second focus: Tim Llewellyn (Digital National Contact Point) explained to the community which EU instruments are relevant for deep tech and AI-driven projects and what will change as a result of Switzerland’s reassociation with Horizon Europe at the end of 2025. His key message: Swiss start-ups and SMEs will once again have full access to programs, including advice from Euresearch.
He also referred to the European AI policy stack: “AI Continent Action Plan” (April 2025): Infrastructure, data access, skills, algorithms, regulation and “Apply AI Strategy” (November): more sector- and competition-oriented funding.
Of pragmatic interest to InsurTechs are quickly available computing resources (“AI factories”) and, in the long term, domain-specific data laboratories (e.g. for climate, weather or earth observation data), which can become relevant in risk models and fraud setups.
For the EIC Accelerator, Llewellyn outlined a “VC-like” funding instrument with blended finance (grant plus equity) and ticket sizes “typically up to EUR 10 million” including mentoring and networking. He categorized the figures and volume as 2025 activity (including around 100 funded companies; several Swiss successes). In practice, it is important that submissions are generally possible on an ongoing basis, but that the evaluation windows are bundled.
Four solutions, four bottlenecks – one common motif: speed
The startup pitches reflected an industry-wide pattern: time is the bottleneck in policy issuance, document flow, risk selection and sales training.
Lifeinsure positioned itself as a digital platform for pure death risks in Switzerland with the promise of “insured in five minutes”, in some cases without medical examinations up to a defined sum insured. The market claim behind it: The need for protection is high, but the process today is too slow and paper-heavy.
The Basel-based AI provider Parashift AG (document automation) showed how data capture and OCR can be industrialized in banks and insurance companies, including high automation rates in suitable use cases and compliance arguments (hosting, deletion concepts, certifications). Major insurance companies from Switzerland were cited as references, and the benefits were clearly quantified: shorter processing times and less manual work.
Parsewise (AI agents for complex risk decisions) demonstrated a platform that analyses unstructured data sets from claims/underwriting, highlights risk signals and prioritizes the “top 5-10 percent” of critical cases for manual review. The added value: moving away from random samples to a portfolio view that includes every document, including a tracking claim.
Rolevo addressed the productivity gap in sales: top consultants are two to three times more productive than average. Traditional training is too theoretical, too infrequent and too generic; after two weeks, a large part of the investment is wasted. Rolevo relies on AI role-playing games with immediate feedback and personalized learning paths and received support from hub management with reference to stricter requirements for regular training for tied and non-tied agents.
The Swiss InsurTech Hub is becoming more international and operational
The Annual General Meeting made it clear where the Swiss InsurTech Hub is heading: less networking rhetoric, more implementation architecture. Roadshows as structured matchmaking, London as an international touchpoint, pitch formats with fundraising enablement and EU programs as an additional source of capital and infrastructure.
The subtext is clear: anyone scaling InsurTech in Switzerland today not only needs a good product, but also market access, financing expertise, data/compute access and clear compliance narratives. It is precisely at this interface that the hub wants to position the community in the coming months.
Binci Heeb
Read also: Swiss InsurTech Hub gets off to a flying start in 2026
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