“Becoming a unicorn puts pressure”

Assurtech Shift Technology is …

A solution to solve problems related to theassurance. In the industry, we see that when a disaster strikes, the first stress people experience is not how it will be repaired, but how insurance will cover it. For this, we have developed a suite of artificial intelligence solutions (IA) to help insurers, like individuals. It ranges from automating decision-making to customer guidance.

And the idea, where does it come from?

We created Shift in 2014. The specialization started with fraud detection. Then, our first client arrived in 2015. Then, we developed our international extension realizing that we could solve multiple problems under the same idea. The covid also increased this need in view of the stress of the situation. Today, we are investing heavily in the creation of a multitude of insurance products.

How do you stand out from the competition?

The competitors are mostly large American companies. They take data scientists and work on the sector. But unlike them, we have the advantage of being specialized exclusively on insurance.

Compared to a traditional software company, Shift has a large proportion of employees on the R&D (out of more than 300 people, 200 do R&D). With a majority of employees in this branch, our strike force is much greater.

How did you get through the crisis?

This was violent because our model is indexed on the number of accidents and claims. The confinements have therefore caused a huge drop. As a young company, we managed everything remotely without much experience. Then a cohesive force, the adaptation to teleworking happened naturally. This made it possible to redefine our roadmap and to take a step back.

We have strengthened our strategy ofmulti-product investment by showing the importance of AI in customer service. From this observation, theindustrialization of our process.

You complete a 183 million euro fundraising campaign led by Advent International, a record for the insurance industry. Why so much?

Our ambition is to create the largest research Center in artificial intelligence dedicated to insurance. That is to say more than 300 data scientists who will do just that. This will allow much stronger commercial penetration in our markets, particularly in the United States. This change of scale requires a lot of investment …

What are your future projects besides hiring, international growth and the creation of this research center?

The vision is to say: When insurers around the world want to scale up customer relations, they’ll think of us. We want to develop all the necessary tools so that insurers can change the way they support their clients. We therefore wish to continue to innovate, and this, from France.

You have become the thirteenth French unicorn. What does this status change for you?

It does not change much, except to put a little pression ! But valuation is not really what matters. It is more of a market indicator which is important to show that French software companies specialize and have great ambitions.