(Marina Bay, Singapore. Photo credit: William Cho.)
Zia Zaman, Chief Innovation Officer, MetLife Asia.
Insurers are experimenting with a variety of ways to rapidly surface new and potentially disruptive solutions, including internal and shared accelerator platforms, dedicated investment entities and innovation labs. MetLife’s (New York) Singapore-based innovation lab LumenLabs utilizes the prize model. The entity launched its third such offer today, collab 3.0 EMEA, which offers a $100,000 contract to the winner from a pool of global entrepreneurs addressing MetLife’s challenges across its business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
LumenLab’s previous collab programs in Singapore (2016) and Japan (2017), attracted 250 applications from insurtechs in more than 35 different countries.
“We are serious about transforming the insurance industry and the way we interact with our customers—but we know we cannot do it alone,” comments Zia Zaman, CEO, LumenLab and chief innovation officer, MetLife Asia. “You can never innovate faster than the market. We are building a stronger ecosystem for the future by engaging insurtechs through programmes like collab.”
MetLife reports that it will identify eight finalists through a rigorous selection and pair them with MetLife EMEA employee champions to help develop their solutions. The insurer has awarded more than half a million U.S. dollars’ worth of contracts through collab in Asia so far. The insurer says these business contracts have gone into developing practical solutions that are delivering value to MetLife’s business and customer experience.
Matching Real Business Challenges with External Ideas
“MetLife continues to be at the forefront of innovation and collab 3.0 EMEA is a great example of this,” comments Michel Khalaf, President of MetLife’s EMEA and U.S. Regions. “We are matching real business challenges from across our global enterprise with external ideas to build the best solutions for our business and customers. Crucially, our employee champions will support and collaborate with the finalists throughout the process.”
collab 3.0 finalists will be invited to attend the collab Summit EMEA and Demo Day in London on 11-12 July, 2018 to present their solutions where the ultimate winner will be announced. Applications opened via the collab website today and will close on 20 April, 2018.
MetLife’s LumenLab Launches Second Startup Engagement Program, ‘collab 2.0’