Aviva and Founders Factory, which invests in young companies, have announced the first five start-ups for its joint fintech programme.
Aviva is a strategic partner in the initiative with Founders Factory, which was founded by Brent Hoberman and Henry Lane Fox.
Mr Hoberman is a British entrepreneur, who, together with Martha Lane Fox, founded Lastminute.com in 1998, an online travel and gift business.
According to Aviva, the plan for the initiative is to each year each year support the growth of five high potential early stage start-ups and jointly establish two new businesses from scratch.
The five startups, which receive a range of operational, business and technical support from Aviva to accelerate their development are:
- Luther Systems - a developer of blockchain (digital ledger) based products, focused on improving efficiency and transparency of transaction management systems. Luther and Aviva have completed a pilot to automate large parts of the supplier invoicing process within supply chains and a further two pilots are in development.
- Psious – which helps patients tackle their mental health problems with virtual reality (VR) technology by simulating real scenarios through VR enabling clinicians to improve their therapies on-site and remotely.
- Shepherd – monitoring technology which can be connected to any machinery to detect anomalies and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to predict when maintenance will be required. Should machinery breakdown, the most relevant people receive alerts removing the need for expensive and irrelevant engineer call outs.
- Previse – which enables faster business payments using AI technology. Late payments from large corporations to small suppliers can bankrupt SMEs and damage the economy. Previse uses the power of artificial intelligence to allow suppliers to receive payments for invoices instantly.
- Fitwell – which helps people stay fit with an AI powered fitness app and wellbeing coach ‘Hailee’ with over one million users globally. The data-led approach aims to help personalise people’s fitness and keep them motivated.
Also part of the programme is a business which has already run full scale pilots, OnCare, a software platform for the care industry.
OnCare is an app which allows care workers to report on each of their visits so with less time spent on paperwork carers have more time to deliver care to their clients.
The platform also unlocks the useful data ordinarily stored on a piece of paper in the client’s home. OnCare has run full scale pilots with care agencies.
Serge Taborin, director of innovation and new business at Aviva, said: “The insurance industry is facing some of the biggest challenges in its 300-year history. People’s needs are rapidly evolving, while a number of emerging technologies have the potential to transform insurance and provide numerous opportunities to serve our customers better. Start-up collaboration is one of the ways we are tackling this challenge.”
Mr Lane Fox, co-founder and CEO at Founders Factory, said: “We are providing these startups with an unrivalled platform of support both via our operations team and the insights and scale of Aviva.”
Regarding OnCare he said: “ Technology is heavily under-utilised within social care and OnCare represents an important first step in dramatically improving the delivery of care here in the UK and abroad.”
