Insurtechs Ladder, Bestow and Boost Insurance are the best-placed trio of insurance start-ups to reach valuations of $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) and be deemed “unicorns,” analytics firm GlobalData says.

New York-based Boost Insurance offers an API-driven platform for property & casualty insurers, packaging the operational, compliance and capital components, while California-based Ladder and Texas-based Bestow are both digital life insurance businesses.

GlobalData’s Future Unicorns in Fintech report reveals that in the third quarter, more than US$27.2 billion ($38.09 billion) was invested in fintechs across 650 global deals. Asia-Pacific made up almost a quarter of venture capital deal volume.

GlobalData’s Startup Scorecard, which ranks 10,000 startups, shortlisted 30 potential future unicorns based on GlobalData’s proprietary machine learning Unicorn Prediction Model. The scorecard ranks fintech startups on investments, innovation and market presence.