Upcover’s delivery rider insurance offer has taken out Finder’s 2021 Best Insurtech Innovation award while Fast Cover Travel Insurance took honours for Best Insurance Innovation with its alert status innovation.

Upcover was recognised for the launch of its PAYG Embedded Insurance for businesses, beating fellow finalists handdii, Fast Cover and Wilbur.

Upcover’s mobile app offers simple pay-as-you-go insurance and healthcare benefits to gig economy workers, who can purchase coverage suited to their type and duration of work, providing an affordable solution.

Finder senior editor Sarah Megginson said during a virtual award presentation the judges noticed Upcover had taken advantage of a gap in the market for a “potentially vulnerable” cohort of workers in the gig economy. This represents “an entirely new approach to insurance underwriting” and offered “huge transformative potential as the gig economy grows”.

Upcover, which says it has now expanded its product offering beyond the delivery rider segment, describes itself as "a team of insurance geeks, software engineers and actuaries with decades of experience building and launching insurance products, scaling technology products and e-commerce marketplaces”.

Fast Cover took the win for its Live DFAT Travel Alert Status, which integrates government travel warnings with policy underwriting restrictions.

It competed against NobleOak Life, Pet Insurance Australia and Stella Insurance.

“The potential impact of this is massive and will represent a huge win for consumers, especially if this becomes a standard across the industry,” Finder Publisher Tim Bennett said.

The change would likely reduce Fast Cover sales numbers in the short term while travel warnings are the rule not the exception, he said, though many of those sales would have been for insurance products that “don't offer the customer any actual coverage”.

Finder praised Fast Cover’s “ethical approach” and said the innovation was an impressive technical feat and had the potential to make insurance products more fit-for-purpose.