InsurTech Israel to bring its mission to Des Moines

Kobi Bendelak, the founder and CEO of InsurTech Israel, found himself idle after selling his ownership of Reshef, an insurance agency based near Tel Aviv, in 2016.

Kobi Bendelak, CEO, InsurTech Israel

Attending an insurtech-themed meet-up, Bendelak said, he “found some entrepreneurs, some with great ideas, speaking about how they can or want to disrupt the insurance industry.”

From that, he jumped right into establishing InsurTech Israel, in January 2017, to develop and promote Israeli insurtech startups. The organization gets investment for startups, builds connections to clients, does roadshows as outreach, and runs an annual accelerator program. It also has offices or representatives in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

The organization capitalizes on a growing insurtech ecosystem, according to Bendelak. “Tel Aviv is one of the capitals of the insurtech world. It’s really amazing,” he said. “The ecosystem is always growing – growing from new entrepreneurs that look for a solution for barriers or problems that they identified in the insurance space, or by startups that already operated in other industries.”

InsurTech Israel has incubated or supported several insurtech startups that later secured more funding, including Honeycomb, a property insurer that reaped $36 million in funding, and DigitalOwl, an AI-based medical data review company with $12 million in funding. Other insurtechs also supported include Planck, Novidea, Healthee and Cytactic.

In addition to these incubated companies, InsurTech Israel’s accelerator program, held last year for the first time in Tel Aviv, is going on the road this fall, coming to Des Moines, Iowa from November 11-14. The event will be held in partnership with BrokerTech Ventures, the Des Moines-based insurance broker-led accelerator.

Bendelak said they expect 12 to 15 startups from regions all over the world to take part in the program. “Imagine how it is to be in a venue where we now have a meeting room with 15 startups from all over the world speaking about the same topics. It’s something amazing,” he said. “I’m so impressed by how small the world is, and how insurers can connect people. That is a great initiative. I’m very proud of that, because we are doing good things for the insurance and the insurtech world.”