Paul Prendergast and Peter Bermingham. Image: Gerard McCarthy
Kayna was founded in 2021 by Paul Prendergast and Peter Bermingham to help SMEs to get the right insurance for their needs.
Irish insurance tech start-up Kayna has announced today (4 April) that it has won a global competition for early-stage insurtech companies.
Kayna emerged victorious at the Carrier/Broker Competition for Global Early-Stage Insurtech start-ups at InsurTech NY’s spring conference held in New York. The win follows a pitch presentation to a panel of industry experts after being selected to the top 10 from a pool of 125 global applications.
Based in Cork, Kayna was founded in 2021 by CEO Paul Prendergast and CTO Peter Bermingham. The start-up focuses on the embedded insurance market which, according to Kayna, is forecast to grow to U$722bn in gross written premium by 2030.
Kayna helps small and medium businesses get insurance fit for their needs, aiming to eliminate the risk of being underinsured. Its technology offers insurers access to unique data to allow accurate insurance throughout the lifetime of the policy.
Prendergast said that the latest InsuTech NY award is a “great validation” of Kayna’s technology and business model.
“We are focused on working with carriers and brokers to allow them to compete in an increasingly crowded small and medium-sized business (SMB) insurance sector,” Prendergast said.
“We provide an end-to-end service regardless of carrier and broker technology capability and our infrastructure works across any platform to use real-time SMB data. This is unique and transformative in terms of embedded insurance distribution, and it fixes a massive problem of over and underinsurance.”
David Gritz , managing director of InsurTech NY, said that the Carrier/Broker award is given to the start-up that is seen to have the largest commercial potential. “The award was developed to recognise the early-stage innovators in the space,” Gritz said.
InsurTech NY was founded in 2019 to bring together carriers, brokers, investors and insurtech start-ups and support the insurance industry in taking advantage of the latest digital technologies.
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