The FinTech Book – the first globally crowdsourced book on the financial technology revolution – was published by Wiley in 2016 and has become a global bestseller. It exceeded all our expectations, and, in the meantime, the book is available in five languages across 107 countries both in paperback, e-book, and as an audiobook. More than 160 authors from 27 countries submitted 189 abstracts to be part of the book. About 50% of all contributors were chosen to write for the final book. When we launched The FinTech Book during 2017 across the world, our authors and readers had many opportunities to meet in person, sign the books together at global book launch events, and deepen our FinTech friendships worldwide.

In 2017 we decided to extend our FinTech Book Series by writing three new books on how new business models and technology innovation will change the global asset management and private banking sector (“WealthTech”), the insurance sector (“InsurTech”), and regulatory compliance (“RegTech”). We followed our approach of crowdsourcing the best experts for you to give you the most cutting-edge insight into the changes unfolding in our industry.

The InsurTech Book is the first book taking this approach globally – a book that provides food for thought to FinTech newbies, pioneers, and well-seasoned experts alike. Let me introduce you to our contributors and authors.

The reason we decided to reach out to the global FinTech and InsurTech communities in sourcing the book’s contributors lies in the inherently fragmented nature of the field of Financial Technology applied to insurance globally. There was no single author, group of authors, or indeed region in the world that could cover all the facets and nuances of InsurTech in an exhaustive manner. What is more, by being able to reach out to a truly global contributor base, we not only stayed true to the spirit of FinTech and InsurTech, making use of technological channels of communication in reaching out to, selecting, and reviewing our would-be contributors, we also made sure that every corner of the globe had the chance to have its say. Particularly those that have very distinct views as to where InsurTech is going and the unique challenges it faces due to the inherent building blocks on which insurance grew. Thus, we aimed to fulfil one of the most important purposes of The InsurTech Book, namely to give a voice to those that would remain unheard and to spread that voice to an international audience. We have immensely enjoyed the journey of editing The InsurTech Book and sincerely hope that you will enjoy the journey of reading it, at least as much.

More than 250 authors from 25 countries submitted 244 abstracts to be part of the book. We asked our global FinTech and InsurTech communities for their views regarding which abstracts they would like to have fully expanded for The InsurTech Book. Out of all these contributors, we selected 75 authors who have been asked to write their full article, which has now been included in this book. We conducted a questionnaire among all our selected authors to gain greater insight into their background and expertise. More than 70% of our authors have postgraduate university degrees (see Table 1) and strong domain expertise across many fields (see Table 2), and 77% of our authors had their articles published before.

Tables 3 and 4 show that 35% of our authors are entrepreneurs working for InsurTech startups (many of them part of the founding team), 40% come from established financial and technology companies, and another quarter from service providers such as consulting firms or law firms servicing the financial services and insurance sectors.

More than a fifth of our authors work for startups with up to five people and another 35% for startups/small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) up to 50 people. Twenty-two percent of our authors are employed by a large organization of more than 1,000 employees.

In summary, we are very proud of our highly qualified authors, their strong expertise, and passion for InsurTech by being either entrepreneurs or often “intrapreneurs” in large established organizations who all are committed to playing a significant role in the global FinTech and InsurTech revolution. These remarkable people are willing to share their insights with all of us over the next pages.

Thus, this project would not have been possible without the dedication and efforts of all contributors to The InsurTech Book (both those who submitted their initial abstracts for consideration by the global FinTech community, as well as the final authors whose insights you will be reading shortly). In addition, we would like to thank our editors at Wiley whose guidance and help made sure that what started off as an idea, you are now holding in your hands.

Finally, I would like to thank the fantastic editors, Sabine VanderLinden, Shân M. Millie, and Nicole Anderson. Editing a crowdsourced book naturally takes several months and it was always a pleasure to work with their strong domain expertise and vision for the future of InsurTech globally!

Susanne Chishti

Co-Founder, The FinTech Book Series

Editor in Chief, The InsurTech Book

CEO and Founder FINTECH Circle and the FINTECH Circle Institute

Twitter: @SusanneChishti @FINTECHCircle @InsurTECH_Book

LinkedIn: FINTECH Circle Group