Zurich updates Innovation Championship programme to scout for problem solving startups

Insurer Zurich has today (12 March 2025) relaunched its Innovation Championship programme to focus on proactively scouting “zebra” startups or ringfencing internal technologies, such as application programming interfaces or artificial intelligence, that can be used to help tackle market-wide challenges for brokers and direct customers.

Led by Zurich’s group head of innovation, Joel Agard, the Innovation Championship first launched in 2018 as a key deliverable against one of the insurer’s newly introduced strategic pillars – its business plan at the time set out these focus areas as customers, simplification and innovation.

To fulfil its ambitions around being innovative, Agard was inspired by 2018’s World Cup in Russia to establish a gamified, group-wide, global initiative where Zurich’s various business units selected startups from a pool of applicants to collaborate with over a three to four-month period in order “to build the insurance industry of the future”.

As part of this partnership between Zurich and selected startups, the insurer would provide access to its leadership team, subject matter experts and branding, offering a combination of mentoring, coaching and the clout of Zurich’s extensive resources to help bring new projects to fruition.

The startups applying for the Innovation Championship were typically insurtechs, although technology startups from other sectors also engaged with the scheme, seeking to contribute to the insurance value chain – this included, for example, property technology firms, mobility technology businesses, health technology companies, legal technology organisations or even marketing firms.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Agard explained that Zurich’s Innovation Championship has grown hugely since its inception in 2018. Back then, following an initial call to action in that year’s first quarter, the insurer collected up to 500 applications from startups and launched five global pilots in conjunction with chosen businesses.

By comparison, more than 3,000 startups entered the Innovation Championship in 2024, with Zurich supporting successful applicants to launch around 15 global pilots in total over 2023 and 2024. Agard confirmed that around 10 to 15 pilot launches is the scheme’s year-on-year global average.

Nine of the pilots launched last year were based in the UK – alumni of the Innovation Championship in the UK include referral platform Mention Me, artificial intelligence driven business Hence Technology and flood resilience company Previsico.

For Agard, Zurich’s Innovation Championship is more than just a public relation stunt or lip service to innovation. He described the scheme as “a launch pad for fruitful collaborations to start”.

He continued: “We have built this reputation in the startup ecosystem that we are a partner that stands for eye to eye relationships.”

Era of innovation

For Agard, today’s update marks the next “era” of Zurich’s Innovation Championship.

The initial 2018 version of the programme focused heavily on “matchmaking”, creating the scheme’s “era of collaboration” as startups flocked to work with Zurich.

Then, at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards, the Innovation Championship progressed to provide an “accelerator element” that went “beyond just doing the matchmaking”, to instead “deliver pilots in a time boxed way” to “really accelerate time to market”.

Now, for 2025, Zurich is “transforming this programme into a venture client engine”, Agard said.

A venture client model enables large corporations to work with startups to develop new products and services – differing to a venture capital approach that centres on the provision of investment, a venture client relationship sees a corporate firm work with startups as a client, without taking equity. Following collaboration, the corporate business then purchases or adopts the resultant technology from the project or pilot.

Agard explained that the change in methodology for the Innovation Championship is subtle, but impactful. For example, rather than relying on startup applications, Zurich will now internally explore market-wide challenges and problems connected to the remits of its three pillar business strategy.

The insurer’s business units will then proactively “scout” for solutions for these problems – whether that be in forming venture client relationships with “zebra” startups focused on “collaboration” and “sustainable growth”, or in unearthing and utilising existing technologies that Zurich already has within its business.

“In the past, we had this call to action and then we tried to match the solution with the problem. We now start the other way around,” Agard said.

“This venture client engine always starts with the problem. We now know how to scout [in a] laser focused [way] for the best solution out there.”

Problem solving

Zurich has already started the process of searching for its first challenges to tackle.

Agard noted: “We need to make sure that every problem we solve has a strategic relevance. It needs to be connected to our strategic priorities around mid-market, life, protection, profitability, simplification. At the end of the day, it needs to be meaningful and impactful for us as a company.

“We want to really double down on what we promise to our shareholders and to our customers. We want to make sure that everything we do will have a positive impact on our customers.

“So, whatever will help us [to build] more positive relationships with our customers, making it easier for customers to get in touch with us and to interact with us when they really need us. Whatever helps us [become] an even better insurer and getting even closer to our customers is definitely something that we will scout for in the future.”

And, as for the startups the Innovation Championship will be looking for, Agard explained that the programme will be looking for technologies that “will help us become even more efficient, more simple, more customer oriented”.

He continued: “Everything that can help us build relationships with our partners, with our affinities, with brokers, with customers will definitely trigger our interests.”

However, Agard warned that Zurich would only be seeking startups that already have a tangible offering – just having a “prototype” or a “slide deck” is “not a good fit for this programme”.

He added: “[Startups] need to be mature enough that [they] can already demonstrate traction in the market with existing customers, users, or ideally paying customers.”

For 2025, Agard is hoping the Innovation Championship will double the number of pilots it finishes to reach 25 or 30 – however, he emphasises that the scheme is not heavily focused on this metric and that it is more important to tap into “meaningful opportunities” rather than clock up a preset number of completed pilots.

Furthermore, Zurich is not writing off applicants to the programme. Agard confirmed that startups will still be able to contact Zurich about being involved in the Innovation Championship because there will undoubtedly be “unknown unknowns” that the insurer is currently unaware of but will want to tackle – he envisions an 80:20 ratio of scouting for startups versus screening applicants.

Proud to collaborate

Agard described the Innovation Championship as his “baby that has now grown up”.

He told Insurance Times: “I’m really proud [of] this new venture client approach.

“I’m proud to be leading this Innovation Championship for so many years and to have brought it to what it is now – really focusing on the collaboration element, not just the investment.

“It’s really inspiring to see how we were able to help these ventures by just working with them, by just collaborating with them in a fair and eye to eye setup.”