Fewer Buzzwords, More Solutions: Insurtech Gets Back to Work

By Ian Carpenter, ITC Europe

When Generali, one of Europe's largest insurance carriers, posted an open challenge asking insurtechs to help it tackle a problem around climate and social good, twenty-nine companies responded. That number was whittled down to five, each of which pitched their solution on stage in front of a live audience at ITC's London event. It was, by several accounts, the most talked-about session of the entire conference. Not because of the technology on display, but because of what it represented: a large incumbent actively engaging with a room full of early-stage companies to explore new ideas and opportunities.

That format, which ITC calls the Challenge Lab, is now being rolled out at ITC Europe in Barcelona this May, again in partnership with Generali. For Ian Carpenter, who leads the European operation, it captures something essential about what the event is trying to be. "It actually solves a problem for big insurance companies, and gives early-stage insurtechs a chance to shine," he says. The model is simple but unusually direct: a carrier defines its pain point, startups apply with proposed solutions, a shortlist is selected, and the pitches happen live. It is, in effect, a curated collision between the people who have the problems and the people who think they have the answers.

ITC Europe traces its roots back to InsureTech Connect, which launched in Las Vegas in 2016 as one of the first dedicated gatherings of insurtech founders, carriers, and investors. That initial event drew around a thousand people. The European edition, which merged with the Digital Insurance Agenda brand, held its first event in Barcelona in 2019 and has since grown into a fixture of the continental calendar. This year's edition will bring together roughly 650 attendees, a deliberately curated group drawn from carriers, MGAs, brokers, investors, and insurtechs from across continental Europe and, increasingly, from Asia. Delegates from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and China have become a growing presence, most attending on what Carpenter describes as a kind of fact-finding mission.

The curation matters. Carpenter sees the core value not in keynote speeches or panel discussions, though both feature on the programme, but in the quieter, more practical formats the event has been building around. Small roundtables of ten to twelve senior underwriters or innovation leaders, gathered to compare notes on shared challenges, have become a growing part of the agenda. "Someone in that conversation would actually have at least one thought or idea on something they've tried," Carpenter says, "and that's where the magic happens."

The themes shaping this year's programme reflect where insurtech energy is concentrating: claims, underwriting, and pricing. These are the areas where Carpenter says pilot projects between carriers and insurtechs are most active, and where the solutions feel most tangible. AI features prominently, as it does everywhere in financial services, but Carpenter is careful to note that the event is not an AI conference in disguise. Many of the companies exhibiting were using machine learning years before it was rebranded. "Last year seemed to be AI everywhere," he says. "But these are the core themes of the event." According to a 2025 report by McKinsey, insurers that have moved beyond proof-of-concept AI deployments into scaled operations remain a small minority, suggesting that the gap between aspiration and execution is precisely the space events like ITC Europe are trying to close.

There is a pragmatism to all of this that feels deliberate. The event runs on a Thursday and Friday so that attendees can extend into a Barcelona weekend. There is a Gaudi walking tour the day before the conference opens, and a beach party to mark its start. Ticket sales are well ahead of where they were at this point last year, which Carpenter attributes partly to the pull of the city itself. But underneath the networking dinners and the Mediterranean light, the real draw remains something harder to manufacture: access to peers who are working on the same problems, in the same markets, with the same constraints. The Challenge Lab, for all its structured theatre, is really just a formalised version of that impulse, a way of making visible the questions that insurance has always asked behind closed doors, and inviting new voices into the room to answer them.