Are Insurtechs fulfilling their promises towards the vulnerable populations of the world? @jcgraz.bsky.social and myself provide an answer in our new @finandsoc.bsky.social article out! Open access: bit.ly/3YPJmGO. A short 🧵 1/8

The paper engages current debates on digital financial inclusion and platform capitalism. It offers insights into the contradictory principles driving Insurtech in the inclusive insurance market and the limits to the ongoing global expansion of platform capitalism. 2/8

Contradictions occur between the principles of platform scalability and insurance risk pooling. We analyse how the qualification and expansion of Insurtech depends on three processes: interoperability, valuation, and aggregation. Yet… 4/8

(i) a dysfunctional ecosystem constrains platforms’ interoperability; (ii) sites of valuation collide as a result of unsuccessful attempts to collect both traditional and alternative data; (iii) and price personalisation runs counter scaling up by aggregation and instead tends to unpool risk. 5/8

The larger picture: a debate between private & social insurance. Microinsurance was originally conceived as an alternative form of social insurance. 6/8

Insurtech is now increasingly jeopardising the solidarity principle on which microinsurance was initially conceived. It is high time to re-think the agenda that reinscribes the state as the primary risk holder and provider of universal social measures. 7/8