InsurLab Germany in Cologne

The City of Cologne, IHK Cologne, the University of Cologne and TH Köln founded InsurLab Germany together with insurers and startups. The association works from Hohenzollernring, in a city with more than 50 insurance and reinsurance headquarters. This concentration of insurers also shapes fintech in Cologne.

Its members fall into five groups in the member directory: insurers, startups and scaleups, technology providers, consultancies, and associates such as universities. As the Cologne hub of de:hub, InsurLab connects startups with insurers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It also has coworking space, with the University of Cologne as knowledge partner.

InsurLab names three focus topics. The first is scaling AI: it classifies AI use cases, maturity levels and prerequisites so that members can rank their projects and build one AI strategy. Its program has covered agentic AI for legacy applications, AI in claims handling, generative AI in insurance fraud and the dependencies an insurer takes on with AI providers, a question of digital sovereignty.

The second topic is venture clienting, where an insurer becomes a startup's customer for a defined need, and the third is the future of insurance, with trend workshops and tests of new technology. The EU AI Act lists AI that assesses risk and sets prices in life and health insurance as a high-risk use; AI in insurance and the EU AI Act in finance cover those rules.

InsurLab runs nine formats: Topic Days, masterclasses, webinars of about an hour, peer meetups for people in the same role, circles that meet regularly across the insurance value chain, venture clienting, bootcamps, future workshops, and insureNXT.

insureNXT is the congress fair that Koelnmesse and InsurLab Germany organize together at the Cologne exhibition center each spring. For the 2024 edition, the organizers reported about 3,300 participants, 150 partners and exhibitors and more than 200 speakers over two days. Startups pitch there, and insurers present cases from their own business.

InsurLab Germany e.V. is an association of insurers, startups, technology providers and universities in Cologne that works on innovation in insurance. It is the insurtech hub of the federal de:hub initiative and co-organizes the insureNXT congress with Koelnmesse.

Both are insurtech hubs of the de:hub initiative. InsurLab Germany is in Cologne, where many German insurers have their headquarters, and runs insureNXT. InsurTech Hub Munich works with the Munich insurers and reinsurers, with its own venture client program and an AI scaling program. The insurtech in Germany page sets both side by side.