If you are new to insurance technology, the first difficulty is that the word "insurance" hides at least four different kinds of company, and the software market makes sense only once you can tell them apart. This is the map. No prior knowledge assumed.
Who's who in insurance
Carriers (also called insurers or underwriters) are the companies that actually carry the risk. When you buy a policy, a carrier is the entity promising to pay your claim, backed by capital and regulated by the state. Think of the big names on stadium signage.
Brokers and agents sell and advise. They sit between you and the carrier. An independent broker represents you across many carriers; a captive agent represents one. They earn commission and increasingly run on their own technology stacks.
MGAs (Managing General Agents) are a hybrid that confuses newcomers: they act like a mini-carrier (designing products, pricing risk, handling claims) but do not hold the capital themselves. They operate on a carrier's balance sheet under delegated authority. Much insurtech innovation happens here, because MGAs can move faster than carriers.
Reinsurers insure the insurers. When a carrier wants to offload some of its risk, a reinsurer takes it on. This layer is enormous, quiet, and, as our research notes, almost untouched by modern APIs so far.
And then there is the layer this index is about: the technology vendors who sell software, data, and infrastructure to all of the above. That is insurance technology, or "insurtech" when the vendor is also a startup.
The value chain: where technology plugs in
Insurance is a sequence of jobs, and every vendor targets one or more of them. From front to back:
- Product design, defining what a policy covers and how it is structured.
- Distribution, getting insurance in front of buyers: agents, embedded checkouts, marketplaces, comparison sites. This is the most crowded technology segment by far.
- New business and underwriting, quoting a price and deciding whether to accept the risk. Underwriting is where much of the AI money is going.
- Policy administration, the system of record that manages a policy over its life. Often called the "core."
- Claims, handling what happens when something goes wrong: filing, assessing, paying.
- Fraud and compliance, running across all of the above.