At InsTech London’s 5th March 2019 event ‘Claims Innovations in 2019’, Robin Merttens interviewed Shift Technology’s Jeff Manricks and Thomas Verduzco-Weisel, after the start-up won $60m investment in a further funding round.
Shift Technology is reinventing insurance fraud detection with AI. Shift’s sister platforms, Force, and Luke (yes, they’re Star Wars fans), use big data sets to scan a claim to identify potential fraud, and provide end-to-end claims solutions to seamlessly manage detection through, respectively.
Founded in 2013 by Axa Paris interns, David Durrleman, Eric Sibony, Jeremy Jawish, Shift’s latest funding round in March 2019 raised $60 million via new investor Bessemer Venture Partners, and existing investors Accel, General Catalyst, Iris Capital and Elaia Partners. Like many start-ups, Shift are, for the present, less about profit, and all about scalability – they currently have around 200 employees, and in addition to headquarters in Paris, Shift has offices in Boston, London, Hong Kong, Madrid, Singapore and Zurich.
Shift Technology’s USP was to identify and automate the essentially manual nature of the way insurers detect, refer and investigate fraud detection. They provide a cleanliness score on a claim that also allows for consumer benefits for the estimated 80% of claimants (Shift estimate) who are not fraudulent, to process their claim in real-time, without delays.
To date, 70 insurance companies around the world rely on Shift’s products, such as MACIF in France, Axa in Spain, and CNA and HyreCar in the U.S. The huge dataset Shift are working with creates a significant barrier to competitor entry. The company state that at present fraud detection rate is 99% accurate, 60% of the time, and growing.
The full conversation with Shift Technology is available on a Podcast, or in the iTunes store.