MetLife, today launched “collab 3.0 EMEA,” a global open innovation platform inviting entrepreneurs and insurtechs to scale their business with MetLife, while solving some of the insurer’s biggest innovation challenges across its business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The company is inviting insurtech startups to compete for a USD 100,000 contract to develop solutions across insurance value chains in areas such as customer engagement, sales, and operations, and to pilot these solutions with MetLife EMEA.

Created by LumenLab, MetLife Asia’s innovation center, collab 3.0 EMEA follows two successful collab programmes in Singapore (2016) and Japan (2017), which attracted 250 applications from insurtechs in more than 35 different countries.

“We are serious about transforming the insurance industry and the way we interact with our customers – but we know we cannot do it alone. You can never innovate faster than the market. We are building a stronger ecosystem for the future by engaging insurtechs through programmes like collab,” said Zia Zaman, LumenLab’s chief executive officer and chief innovation officer of MetLife Asia.

Following a rigorous selection process, MetLife will determine eight finalists and pair them with MetLife EMEA employee champions to help develop their solutions.

To date, MetLife has awarded more than half a million U.S. dollars’ worth of contracts through collab in Asia. These business contracts have gone into developing practical solutions that are delivering value to MetLife’s business and customer experience.

“MetLife continues to be at the forefront of innovation and collab 3.0 EMEA is a great example of this. We are matching real business challenges from across our global enterprise with external ideas to build the best solutions for our business and customers. Crucially, our employee champions will support and collaborate with the finalists throughout the process,” said Michael Khalaf, President of MetLife’s EMEA and U.S. Regions.

Finalists will be invited to attend the collab Summit EMEA and Demo Day in London on 11-12 July, 2018 to present their solutions where the ultimate winner will be announced.

Applications opened via the collab website today and will close on 20 April, 2018. To learn more and apply for collab 3.0 EMEA, please visit: collab.lumenlab.sg.