Leading The Israeli InsurTech Ecosystem Through Crisis

In this episode, our hosts James Benham and Rob Galbraith interview Kobi Bandelak, CEO at InsurTech Israel.

How do Israelis handle risk management and innovation? What brought an experienced member of the army to the insurance industry and to insurtech in particular?

Kobi Bandelak explains how his years of experience managing crises and creating innovative solutions, helped him establish the largest insurtech company in Israel to this date.

After graduating college, Kobi Bandelak spent 19 years in the Israeli Defense Force.

When he found himself in the Army Reserve, he realized he needed another job, so after looking through the paper, an insurance ad caught his interest. This marked the beginning of his journey into the insurance industry.

Eventually Kobi founded his first company, Rachef, around 2004 and for the next 12 years he dedicated his time to building that company. During his tenure asCEO, he decided to sell 50% of his shares to Generaly, another insurance MGA group, transforming Rachefinto a subsidiary company of Generality Group until 2015…

When the entire company was acquired, at the age of 45 years old, he deicded to retire, but soon realized he needed an adventure:

“So I decided to open my heart and I said to myself open your heart good things will happen to you and this is what I did. Open my heart and one day I receive email that written this subject was InsurTech meet up.”

That insurtech meetup ended up being an insurtech conference, and after hearing what was being said about all the endless possibilities of technology and insurance he decided to launch InsurTech Israel.

The ways of an insurtech entrepreneur

So, what exactly is InsurTech Israel and how does it help the startup ecosystems?

For Kobi, it’s all about culture. Firstly, he states “The infrastructure to be an entrepreneur in Israel is great”.

Additionally, Kobi highlights the significance of the infrastructure for entrepreneurship and the role of the army, explaining how early exposure to technology during military service translates into civilian innovation upon completion of service.

Kobi makes a very interesting remark about how people behave towards innovation, stating, “It’s mainly more solving big problems with great ideas and then implementing technology You need to have a great success story to attract the entrepreneurs to join. So all that made Israel one of the insurtech capitals of the world.”

According to Kobi, there are four pillars to the Israeli InsurTech Ecosystem: investment, development activities –helping those startups connect to other, media, and the accelerator programs aimed at fast-tracking startups to become leaders.

A Disrupted Nation

Kobi reflects on Israel’s resilience amidst the ongoing conflicts, acknowledging the sadness following recent attacks.

Despite the challenges, he emphasizes the nation’s strength, “One week we woke up and we decided that we couldn’t let that situation destroy what we have built here, this great ecosystem. So we decided to to operate and even accelerate our activity around the world”

He believes that the top 3 things needed to build an ecosystem are: building connections abroad, fostering trust in the ecosystem, and always keep going and believe in what you are doing.

Kobi wants his message to the world to be clear, “we are strong, stable and resilient” and we care about our customers, clients, and partners” They have amplified this messageby travelling worldwide, addressing these terrible events and affirming their commiment to resilience.

A Look into the Future

Following their discussion on the situation in Israel, Kobi, James and Rob discuss the state of the InsurTech Market in Israel. Kobi states that even though there was a lot of overvaluations, he believes that things will straighten out not only for Israeli insurtech Startups, but for all insurtech companies.