I-Sprint'21
IFSC Regulator Backed Global Hackathons
Sprint03 –InsureTechHosted by IFSCA & GIFT City in collaboration with FICCI
Insurance Partners
Knowledge Partners
Program Partners
Overview
International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) is a unified regulatory authority vested with the powers of all four financial sector regulators in India namely, the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA for the purpose of enabling regulatory framework towards the development of International Financial Services Centres (IFSCs) in India. The aim of IFSCA is to provide an efficient and facilitative regulatory system comparable with the best in the world that is complemented with complete ease of doing business to develop IFSCs as a preferred global hub for international financial services.
Globally, FinTech hubs have been successful when FinTechs are able to collaborate with Financial Institutions (Banks, Insurance Companies, Stock Exchanges, Funds, etc.) and Regulators. Government and government agencies around the world have supported various types of initiatives to enable and augment such collaboration and have fostered ecosystems for the FinTechs.
...In the Union Budget 2021, the Hon’ble Finance Minister announced that Government of India would be supporting a world class FinTech hub at GIFT IFSC. In line with this mandate, IFSCA has planned to hold a FinTech thought leadership event “InFinity Forum” as an annual feature beginning 2021.
A series of Hackathons (“I-Sprint’21” Series) are also being planned as a prelude to “InFinity Forum’. Sprint01: BankTech, the first of the series focused on the "Banking" sector has been launched. We are now launching ‘Sprint03-Insure-Tech’ focusing on Insure-Tech and shall be hosted by IFSCA and GIFT City in collaboration with FICCI. Two partner insurance companies are expected to add value to the proceedings. The plan is to provide the winners an entry into the “Regulatory Sandbox” of IFSCA and subsequently result into successful business. The two partner insurance companies are expected to collaborate with the winning FinTechs in the regulatory sandbox to usher in a business environment that can validate the commercial viability of the product/service as required by the industry, there-by adding value to all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.
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Hackathon Details
The following entities shall be eligible for participating in the hack:
- All entities registered with Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) OR
- All start-ups registered with Start-up India and meeting the criteria of a start-up as defined in the Gazette notification of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade dated February 19, 2019 or later versions OR
- Companies incorporated and registered in India OR
- International Entities/ Companies incorporated and regulated in Financial Action Task Force (FATF) compliant jurisdictions by a financial services or banking or capital market or insurance or pensions regulator OR
- Individuals who are citizens of India OR
- Individuals from FATF compliant jurisdiction
A. Development of technologies for increasing penetration, better underwriting, claims management of life/health products:
- The IFSC Authority supports IIOs (IFSCA Insurance Offices) to underwrite health and life insurance risks for Indian diaspora.
- Identification of people, validation of documents and authenticity of data, are problems faced by the insurers in defining the ideal customer experience – starting from customer onboarding to fraud detection for claims.
- New technology, such as video and speech detection technology may help IIOs to address these problems.
- The solution proposed should be complaint with all applicable laws (including FATF compliance) and reporting requirements. B. Digital Innovation for Global Health Insurance Cover:
- Patients and their family members spend a significant amount of time at the time of discharge. Integration of digital health ID with hospital and insurance systems need to be prototyped and developed to help smoother and quicker checkout at hospitals for claims settlement. The digital health data is available for innovation (example - National Digital Health Mission [NDHM] and the digital health ID).
- Combination of the available digital health data with external health parameters such as wearables or other technologies to help prevent hospitalization. This will help insurance organizations in holistic risk management.
- The solution proposed should be complaint with all applicable laws (including FATF compliance) and reporting requirements. C. Innovations in Commercial insurance:
- Both Indian and foreign Insurance & Reinsurance Companies based at IFSC GIFT City will benefit from the innovation in commercial insurance.
- InsureTechs can develop new commercial insurance products or underwriting methods for entities based out of IFSC GIFT City.
- The solution proposed should be complaint with all applicable laws (including FATF compliance) and reporting requirements.
- Some of the sample use cases:
- Drone based aerial survey and instant claim settlement: A start up may carry out risk inspections, natural disaster monitoring and surveys, etc and build edge-based processing using AI/ML algorithms that help in intimating claims and provide instant digital settlement of claims.
- Parametric based insurance products for the digital economy: A start-up that can help in identifying digital outages (such as website or cloud outages) and help immediately compensate businesses through integration with various data providers. Such products will become more and more critical in the digital economy.
- Cyber insurance for the Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs): Solutions to continuously monitoring SMBs of their cyber risk and mitigating them at an affordable unit economics.
D. Digital platform for settlement of balances between insurance companies:
- It is a common concern that balances in re-insurance and co-insurance business are significantly high. The re-insurance and co-insurance transactions typically involve multiple organizations across various geographies giving rise to following issues:
- Inability of parties to the transactions to agree, resulting in growing inter-company balances;
- Lack of cooperation between the companies and inadequate documentation, posing a problem towards the efforts to minimize these balances;
- Lack of a common platform to handle the re-insurance and co-insurance transactions;
- Delayed settlement of balances;
- High turnaround times.
InsureTechs can provide technology to address the same and come up with a unified approach.
The solution proposed should be complaint with all applicable laws (including FATF compliance) and reporting requirements.
- Register for the Hackathon by clicking the “Start Sprinting” button on the webpage.
- Applicants will be directed to a ‘Hackathon Platform’ wherein a detailed application form needs to be filled and submitted.
- Complete and enter all of the required fields (including uploading details like product presentation, product video, etc.)
- The detailed guidelines on the application form is provided on the ‘Hackathon Platform’.
- Application can be submitted once. Modification is not allowed after submission.
- The applicant may apply by registering on the ‘Hackathon Platform’. On successful registration, the applicant may then login and complete the application form. Each applicant will further submit the following along with the application form. Details about them are provided in the application form.
- Presentation Pitch (Not more than 15 slides)
- 3-minute Video
- Direct-Entry into IFSCA Regulatory/Innovation Sandbox. After successful exit from the Sandbox, the FinTechs gets an opportunity to set up businesses at GIFT IFSC.
- Regulatory guidance and handholding.
- Opportunity to show-case in “Infinity Forum” the Flagship event of IFSCA scheduled in Dec’2021.
- Opportunity to get access to API, mentoring and guidance from Partner Insurance Companies.
- Opportunity to avail various Incentives (Upto INR 5 Million per FinTech) during the sandbox experimentation stage; subject to IFSCA’s terms and conditions.
| Steps | Description |
| 1st round evaluation | The applications will be screened for relevance to the problem statement and the stage of the product/solution.
The screened applications will be subjected to detailed evaluation by Insurance Partners basis technology / business model / scalability / and (demo) |
| 2nd round evaluation | The evaluated applicants will be required to present/pitch before the Jury. |
| Mentoring | The selected FinTechs will undergo a 1-week mentoring to fine-tune solutions as per requirements of the Insurance Partners |
| 3rd round evaluation | The selected FinTechs will give a final presentation / pitch to the Jury |
Application Stage
Proposed Dates
Launch Date
2nd Nov 2021
Last date for Application
15th Nov 2021
Jury Round
24th Nov 2021
Mentoring Sessions
25th Nov 2021 to 3rd Dec 2021
Final Jury
4th Dec 2021
