Zurich Insurance Group recently hosted its first Innovation Festival, bringing together startups, AI specialists, investors and customers to explore how technology is transforming insurance.
At the event, Zurich named 10 winners of the Zurich Innovation Championship 2025, its global competition to find technology solutions that address insurance challenges and improve customer outcomes. The competition is now in its sixth year.
Two winners were chosen from 25 pilot projects launched this year. Nexoya was recognised for using AI analytics to optimise marketing budgets, while Optimizely Opal was commended for enabling personalised digital experiences through its agent orchestration platform.
Five other winners came from Zurich’s Agentic AI Hyper Challenge, a large-scale hackathon that drew more than 1,000 participants from 40 countries. Their projects focused on automating and improving key insurance processes. AgentricAI’s Clara streamlines travel claims processing; Interloom enhances internal knowledge sharing; Wangari Global’s Etio automates IFRS 17 reporting; WordLift improves Zurich’s online visibility; and ZuriFault, developed in-house, accelerates motor liability decisions.
Three former championship winners were also recognised for the ongoing impact of their work with Zurich. Lisa Insurtech’s health claims platform now processes over one million claims a year, while Nearmap supports property underwriting through high-resolution imagery and analytics. Sixfold AI, meanwhile, impacts commercial underwriting by cutting document-processing times from hours to minutes.
Zurich said the programme demonstrates how partnerships with insurtechs and AI developers can improve efficiency, strengthen underwriting accuracy and enhance customer service. The insurer plans to continue expanding these collaborations to support its broader digital transformation strategy.
By integrating agentic AI systems and automation tools, Zurich aims to advance the use of intelligent data and analytics in core insurance functions, reflecting a wider industry trend toward technology-driven risk assessment and claims management.
