Sydney-based Open, best-known for its artificial intelligence-driven brand Huddle, and local “unicorn” Cover Genius have been listed among the world’s top 100 insurtechs in a report by innovation platform Sonr.

Cover Genius was founded in 2014 by Angus McDonald and Chris Bayley, a first employee in Google's Sydney office where he managed the insurance team. It is now licensed in more than 60 countries and 50 US states and recently secured $100 million in new funding, to be valued by Bloomberg at $1 billion after signing 20 new partners from multiple industries and tripling its gross written premium.

Sonr’s latest global top 100 list ranked Cover Genius at 12 – one above Lemonade – while Open placed at 58. The compilation is scored by industry experts.

Sonr CEO Matt Connolly says there has been a “huge uptick” in partnering between incumbents and insurtechs, as well as a rise in insurtech acquisitions.

“The insurtech market is maturing, as is their positioning and relationship with incumbents,” Mr Connolly said. “We’re seeing a year-on-year increase of insurtech investment and most interestingly, half of all deals heading into early stage companies. This signals a continuing healthy and vibrant industry.”

Hollard-backed Open, which launched in Australia in 2016, plans to replicate its business model in New Zealand this year and in the UK by mid-2022. Its partners - such as fintechs, car and home lenders, utilities and insurers - can embed Open car, home and travel insurance into any app or website.

Open’s Huddle car, home and travel embedded insurance offering has over 80,000 customers in Australia.

“We had taken a bet that most problems could be solved by technology. And we won,” Open says.

Taking first place on the Sonr 100 list this year was China-based ZhongAn, followed by US-based Hippo and commercial insurance exchange Bold Penguin.

Also named was California-based Upguard, which has offices in Sydney and Hobart and uses proprietary technology to calculate potential risk of cyber outages and intrusions.

See the full list here.