The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

How the Proliferation of Ridesharing Created a New $2B Insurance Segment (w/Les Schlesinger, CEO ClaimRide)

Les Schlesinger is CEO at ClaimRide. Claim Ride is the leading facilitator of ride share/hailing service providers (Uber, Lyft, YellowCab) for policy holders receiving transportation (rental reimbursement) benefits under their automobile insurance coverage. The solution provides access to ride share services that enhance and or replace a typical rental car benefit received from an insurance company, Motor Club or Roadside Assistance Company. Claim Ride offers an end-to-end solution including a Mobile Application that facilitates ride share benefits in the event of a covered loss.

Les talks about seeing this major opportunity early as a reputable industry insider, and still having to move the market along towards adoption step-by-step.  The challenge is not about the confirmed opportunity, but rather the implementation challenges of a new product and the "not-invented-here" syndrome that exists in the top 10 carriers. However the other 300+ carriers are more attune to taking advantage to new market offerings and quicker to adopt. Les also comments on the proliferation of MGAs, the impact of insurtech and the role for niche expertise in the industry to provide a quicker response to new market needs.

Les is also Owner at Links Insurance Services. Links Insurance Services is a Managing General Agency (MGA) representing insurance carriers in the State of Florida, Texas and California for the sale of automobile insurance. Partner carries have included Direct General Insurance Company, AssuranceAmerica Insurance Company, Hudson Insurance Company and Federated National Insurance Company. 

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

How Better Understanding Intent Drives Life & Health Insurability Scores (w/Sudhama Gopalan, AveriSana)

Sudhama Gopalan is founder and CEO of AveriSana Inc., an insurtech startup that uses data science and machine learning to make customer acquisition in life and health insurance more cost-efficient and productive.  

Matching customers to products used to be about understanding intent and then looking at insurability (health and medical records) later on in the sales funnel. Technology now enables insurers to aligning intent with insurability simultaneously in order to reduce the total cost of acquiring a customer and a higher match and customer experience. 

The team started by modeling outcomes however using more data were able to define proxies for individuals' health risk. Averisana is thus able to better match customers to insurance products across the marketing, sales, and underwriting process, both digital and traditional. This also enables agents to quantify their leads pipeline up-front and accurately.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

How Actuaries and Insurers Can Deal With Crypto (w/Eyhab Aejaz, CEO Breach)

Eyhab Aejaz is CEO at Breach, developing cyber insurance solutions for the growing $2T+ cryptocurrency market.

Breach has built a proprietary policy issuance and administration platform and an industry-first solution to insure clients of popular cryptocurrency custodians and exchanges.

Eyhab says crypto is built on trust and transparency, yet decentralized markets the product is based on those same standards. Crypto is not illegal because it is taxed, so they see it as a type of asset, with a buyer, seller, and exposure to risk.

Eyhab sees crypto coverage being similar to jewelry insurance, assets are in custody, in order to underwrite they only need to confirm applicable State rules, the custodian of record and the insured amount.

Breach partnered with Boost Insurance to figure out the actuarial and reinsurance side and operations of the business. This essentially de-risked the company launch, but Eyhab says he still felt the act of 'taking the leap' into a startup, being early and not having enough on-board, yet also feeling in hindsight that was the exact right time to start the company.

Breach is now in the process of standing up a carrier to defray its own reinsurance costs, so is one of the new wave of companies making the jump from insurtech to insurer.

The company is backed by Raptor Group, LightShed Ventures, Ted Rogers, Foundation Capital, Global Founders Capital, Road Capital, PJC, and Goodwater Capital.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

Digital Underwriting Might Take Ten Minutes, but Insurance Remains About Personal Relationships (w/Upasana Unni at Sayata)

Upasana Unni is the Chief Commercial Officer of Sayata, a marketplace where wholesale brokers can find small business insurance from multiple carriers in just a few minutes.

Upasana oversees market partnerships and carrier relationships and says insurance remains a relationships business, with people on the phone. Insurance remains a very relationship-driven place, needing well-respected voices making the calls to place business. She does not see a zero-touch digital-only experience being possible in more complex insurance areas like commercial and speciality lines. Brokers need support on the 20% of policies that do not fly through the underwriting/renewal process, and to learn where to place policies in speciality markets like cyber. 

In the current state of insurtech evolution, insurance carriers still own the product and MGA insurtechs' own distribution. Carriers have tried to launch or buy their own marketplaces, but there is a disincentive to list on that marketplace if you are an agent who does not work with that carrier and seek truly neutral offers. They tend to buy marketplaces that do not have a profitable, growth-ready customer acquisition process. 

Upasana sees tremendous growth opportunity for marketplaces. There are many more uninsured risks to cover today, for example how could insurers cover an invasion, which is considered uninsurable much the same as cyber risk was ten years ago. Upasana sees a future evolving where insurtech MGAs are acquiring their own capital and becoming full-stack insurers.

Upasana is actively seeking candidates in various roles at Sayata so get in touch with her to find out more!

Previously, Upasana spent 10 years at McKinsey & Co. as an Associate Partner guiding blue-chip insurers to develop digital strategies and build platforms for digital risk placement. Upasana served over a dozen carriers on topics ranging from board strategy, portfolio optimization, capital strategy, and operating model transformation. Upasana is a graduate of Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar and holds a Bachelor's, magna cum laude, from Harvard College.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

How an Actuary Repurposed His Math Skills, Founder an AI Company and Changed Company Ratings (w/Dr.Holger Bartel, CEO RealRate)

Dr. Holger Bartel is CEO and founder of RealRate. Working at insurers, Holger saw first-hand how the company ratings process is biased and filled with conflicts of interest.

RealRate fills a niche of automating company ratings. Instead of analysts conducting personal interviews and spending half-year on a rating, RealRate automates and scales ratings using publicly available data.  RealRate uses hybrid AI brain to make the results 'explainable-by-design, by providing a structure that restricts data usage. Holger sees RealRate scaling by providing boutique M&A support services in the future.

He also explains what it's like being a European by values and culture working in the US environment, which often feels bigger and more aggressive in making claims.

After getting his PhD in statistics Holger founded several fintech companies, driven by the idea of changing markets using new technology, also working as appointed actuary in the insurance industry and with rating agencies.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

 

Why There Will Still Be Human Intermediaries for a Long Time (w/Mark Breading, Strategy Meets Action)

Mark Breading, Partner at Strategy Meets Action is known for his insights on the future of the insurance industry and innovative uses of technology.

Mark says expertise and relationships are at the heart of every business, whether origination or distribution, and digital-only models will not be taking over for a long time. His belief is everyone in the industry needs to develop more relationship skills and responsibilities, and that agencies in particular will maintain their strong role.

While recruiting people from other industries and geographies is also having a high impact on cultural norms, larger insurers remain slower-moving due to the drag of the organization whereas some of the regional powerhouses seem to be more on the edge.  He also says we are not headed to a large percentage of autonomous vehicles until the late 2030s.

Mark leads SMA’s research program, publishing 25-30 research reports per year and conducting various custom research projects for insurer and vendor clients.

His thought leadership in the areas of InsurTech, transformational technologies, customer experience, and digital strategies has earned him a ranking of one of the "Top Global Influencers in InsurTech" by InsurTech News and Onalytica and a place in the ten finalists for the "Top Global IoT in Insurance Influencer Award." 

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

What are Legal Predictive Analytics? Adding Data Science to the Art of Claims Adjusting (w/Frank Giaoui, Optimalex)

Frank Giaoui is President of Optimalex, a legal predictive analytics insurtech. Wait...What are legal predictive analytics, exactly?

Insurance companies today apply their own benchmarks to settling legal cases, and may share medical claims but typically do not have access to external benchmarks.  Optimalex adds science to the historical art of claims adjustment.

The head of legal claims analysis and/or chief risk officer typically engage with Optimalex, defining key success metrics, ie. reducing the loss ratio by an accretive amount.

Optimalex starts by extracting unstructured public data on litigated cases, whether motor vehicle accident, personal bodily injury, workers compensation or medical malpractice.

Through applying data analytics the company can predict the outcome with a higher confidence level, reducing uncertainty, cost and creating a fairer compensation amount.

Data extraction, rating and curation forms the basis of its better prediction. The company supplements each client's data set to improve prediction and make it more relevant to their own track record.

Frank has owned a boutique investment bank Hera Finance, holds a PhD from La Sorbonne Law School, and is a Post Doc JSD at Columbia Law School.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

Insurance Risk Monitoring for Decentralized Internet Transactions (w/Spyridon Antonopoulos, Solidus Labs)

Spyridon Antonopoulos is Director of Solutions Architecture at Solidus Labs, providing trade surveillance, transaction monitoring, and threat intelligence to corporates.

In this episode, Spiro discusses how the insurance life cycle can begin to cover crypto assets, for example using photo and video evidence as part of the risk assessment and claims process. 

Spiro has experience in the Life, Annuities, and Long Term Care insurance verticals, spending the first decade of his career advising senior leadership at many of the Top-100 North American carriers across new business, underwriting, and claims. 

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

Using Customer-Facing Employees Mobile Data to Boost CRM Assets (w/Josh Behar, CEO Mobile2CRM)

Joshua Behar is CEO of Mobile2CRM, which solves an organizational blind spot by capturing business communications (Voice, Text, WhatsApp) conducted via cellular devices without violating users' privacy.

-The core problem Mobile2CRM solves is customer-facing employees' usage of mobile phones to do business, whether managing customer data in their own personal excel rather than the CRM, or the common high turnover and customer poaching amongst salespeople.

-The core product records and documents business mobile calls and SMS records in the CRM without infringing on the privacy of employees’ personal mobile devices.

-Compliance can allow people to use a single phone to run both personal and business communication with a clear separation between the two, whether W2 or 1099 employees during peak seasonality.

-Mobile2CRM is seeking strategic investment and distribution partners in the US.

Previously, Joshua was CEO of Ericom Software, GM of Time To Know Inc and COO at Amdocs. 

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.

Why Hitting Insurance Innovation Singles is Just as Important as Home Runs (w/Dan Israel, MD Global Insurance Accelerator)

At the GIA, Dan Israel is responsible for the overall strategy and operations of the organization - emphasizing the growth, development, and success of the programs, as well as ongoing support of all of the accelerator’s portfolio companies. His goal is to bring together strategic and forward-thinking investors with innovative founders who can enhance both groups’ opportunities for growth and the insurance space overall.

Key things to know about working with the GIA:

-GIA lets the enterprise's strategy, champions and leadership drive where the work should happen 

-Measuring results at GIA means understanding how innovation impacts their business, typically how many PoCs, partnerships, whereas GIA defines success as progress and depth of challenges partners are trying to solve 

-GIA differentiates itself as an accelerator as it was founded by insurers, so the primary mission has never been equity stakes but rather innovation outcomes for carriers 

-GIA focus all activities whether mentorship or workshops on building a business ie. product market fit and customer understanding rather than the funding journey or just finding your next investor

Prior to the GIA, Dan worked in innovation, management and strategy, finance, and operations at Rolls-Royce and Target Corporation. Dan has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.B.A. in Finance and Economics from the University of Iowa Henry B. Tippie College of Business.

Follow the Insurtech Leadership Podcast airing weekly hosted by Joshua R. Hollander. We give you up-close access and personal insights from the leaders of the fastest-growing #insurtechs and most innovative #insurance carriers and brokers.