Welcome to this inaugural edition of Verdict InsurTech – a digital magazine committed to providing the latest analysis, news and data on global InsurTech developments and innovation worldwide.

This Verdict InsurTech digital edition builds on the success and global readership of the previous Life Insurance International digital editions.

Given the InsurTech revolution occurring in the life and non-life insurance markets worldwide, there is a significant appetite across the world for rich InsurTech insight, data and news that is written in an accessible and engaging style.

Verdict InsurTech fulfils that need by offering richer and more insightful coverage of all the latest insurance innovations in both the global life, and non-life insurance sectors.

Verdict InsurTech will continue to feature all the latest innovations from the global life and health insurance market.

But future digital editions will also showcase all the exciting innovations and InsurTech disruptions that are transforming general insurance and non-life markets around the world.

In this issue, we examine how players such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon pose alternative FinTech threats to the global insurance industry.

The insurance industry has been nervously tracking these alternative providers in the belief they might join the insurance market, and Amazon is the first to make the move by entering the US employee healthcare market.

This digital edition also charts how InsurTech funding volume increased 36% year-over-year in 2017, according to Willis Towers Watson.

Very importantly, this issue showcases practical examples of how InsurTech is impacting insurance. It also underlines the importance of partnership between insurance players and InsurTech start-ups.

For example, according to research from McKinsey & Company, 61% of InsurTech companies aim to enable the value chain, while 30% are attempting to disintermediate incumbents from customers and just 9% are targeting full scale value chain disruption.

Key topics in this Verdict InsurTech digital edition include:

• Alternative FinTech threats to the insurance industry
• InsurTech funding overview
• How InsurTech is impacting insurance
• Wearable tech and insurance

Thank you for reading this issue. We hope you find the content insightful and useful.

Ronan McCaughey, editor of Verdict InsurTech