Plug and Play, a global startup accelerator and corporate innovation platform headquartered in Silicon Valley, and NTUC Income (Income), a leading composite insurer in Singapore, announced today that the latter will be a corporate partner of Plug and Play APAC's Insurtech program.
The strategic partnership, which spans across Southeast Asia, will see Income working with regional insurers, start-ups and digital ecosystem partners within Plug and Play's network to scale its innovative products and services to serve consumers across the ASEAN region.
The partnership will be the first regional collaboration between Plug and Play and Income that not only focuses on cross-vertical business collaborations but also enhances financial access and value-adds to the existing customer journeys of non-financial ecosystem partners.
Over the last few years, Income has created and launched innovative insurance products such as lifestyle-based microinsurance propositions, Droplet and SNACK to fit the needs of increasingly digitally-savvy customers in Singapore.
These innovations and know-how are folded into and powered by HIVE by Income's Insurance-as-a-Service (IaaS) API platform where regional partners will be able to connect to and take advantage of pre-built insurtech integrations with minimal additional cost and development time. This value-adds to partners' existing solutions and strengthens their value propositions, allowing them to capture new customer segments and drive greater accessibility to insurance.
"One of the key enablers for redefining the playing field is trust. As Income continues to expand in the region, it is important for us to partner reputable like-minded brands to build on valuable customer relationships to expand into adjacencies. We believe digital platforms have the ability to orchestrate end-to-end visibility through a wide array of data, to continue to create value with customers' need at the heart of the proposition. This partnership with Plug and Play is very timely as it brings speed to our recent foray overseas via HIVE's Insurance-as-a-Service platform." said Edlyn Khoo, Deputy Vice President, Digital Transformation Office, Income.
As part of the strategic partnership, Income and Plug and Play will jointly launch a series of regional innovation showcases to provide a springboard for exchange of ideas and sharing of best practices. The first of such events, known as HIVE Innovation Day, will take place via a hybrid format in Vietnam on 25 March. It will discuss the sharp advantage that data can bring to digital ecosystems to drive innovative financial offerings via various industry case studies.
"Since the launch of our Insurtech accelerator in Singapore in 2018, we have always been keen on a partnership with Income, given that it's a reputable household name in Singapore and amongst the largest composite insurer in the country. More significantly, this partnership with Income denotes our first regional foray into launching our corporate partners in new markets, where we will look to ideate, pivot, localize and scale products and ventures, through in-market partnerships within our network of over 500 corporations across the world. We are eager to see how this exciting partnership with Income will unfold given the diverse and extensive opportunities that are set to come with our multi-industry partner ecosystem in Asia Pacific," added Jupe Tan, Managing Partner at Plug and Play APAC.
