The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

Give People the 'Psychological Safety' to Innovate (w/Richard De Sousa, SCOR)

Richard De Sousa is Deputy Head for Growth & Development at SCOR, its US new business and client-facing unit. His entrepreneurial experience has helped enormously in particular building partnerships with smaller, more nimble companies. SCOR as a major reinsurer has been super active in working with and acquiring companies in Life and P&C. He talks about the advantages of working at a reinsurer, seeing across many different carriers and understanding what the market and distribution needs on a macro level. Richard says working in insurance is about protecting families so has an important mission to join.

Follow 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.

Don't be Surprised by Market Feedback - Be Dynamic & Adapt Fast! (w/Doug Roth, Insurtech Investor at Connecticut Innovations)

Doug Roth, MD & at Connecticut Innovations is one of the top most active east-coast investors, with CI having closed more than 100 direct equity investments over the past 12 months including insurtechs. They focus on producing and re-investing financial returns on investment as an evergreen fund into new startups on a continual basis. Investments include direct Insurtech's like Aureus Analytics and more indirect, complementary insurance plays. Doug shares how CI runs its investment scouting strategy, investment diligence process and more, so don't miss out! 

Follow 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.

Managing the Frequency vs. Severity of Claims (w/Doug Ver Mulm, CEO Stable Insurance)

Doug Ver Mulm, CEO Stable Insurance built ride-share apps operations, onboarding drivers, maintenance. Uber/Lyft have opened their databases to driver scores, trip and earnings data and started using it for credit modeling and rentals. While scaling that for Mercer, outside investors realized taking this into an insurance product would make more sense and Doug made the jump to co-founder.

Rideshare is now a decade-old and allows underwriters to look at large amounts of data in real-time, and the current drivers in that pool today vs. those from a year ago or longer. This allows underwriting to solve for real-time fleet and driver management. The new field of real-time underwriting requires meaningful ties to data and linkages to resulting claims processes. 

Follow 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.

Be Omnipresent for the Customers Who Really Need You (w/Nestor Solari, Founder SIGO)

Nestor worked in investment banking, focused on emerging markets and lower-income 'base of the pyramid'. He witnessed many new sustainability business models, coupled with his desire to get closer to the customer. He took his own family's struggle getting auto insurance gave him a personal mission and he created Sigo-Seguros as an inclusive insurance provider focused on affordability, accessibility and removing bias from underwriting.

Nestor started the business as a brokerage direct-dialing customers, building it brick-by-brick into the Omnichannel experience it is today. Sigo solves for hispanic working-class people who end up pushed into in-person ID and car checks just because of their 'non-privileged' address, employment, education or ethnic background.

What Sigo does exceptionally well is figure out what effects the customer negatively. They are not trying to be fancy using telemetry data or having a mobile-only experience, rather just focusing on being omnipresent for the customers who really need a solution.

Follow 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.

 

It's Getting Incredibly Hard to Find Yield - Why We Need More Innovative Products (w/Paul Tyler, CMO Nassau Re)

Paul Tyler is Chief Marketing Officer for Nassau Re, a 5-year old company driving innovation and new partners in the heart of the Insurance capital Hartford.

ReImagine! was designed to bring insurtech to Hartford and create new jobs. Nassau is focused on re-shaping retirement advice and services. They will soon be releasing a map of the 100-companies driving innovation and change in the space.

Paul sees room for more innovative products, for example focusing more on how long people live that returns, or managing their decumulation of assets. The lines between the traditional life stages have blurred as people prioritize quality-of-life over the goal of retirement. 

Follow 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.

Prediction Has a Value - Why Insurance Should Stop Bad Things from Happening (w/ Blake Hill, Dacadoo)

Today's episode features Blake Hill from the executive team at Dacadoo, which is a Series C insurtech located in Waterloo which is like a combination of Silicon Valley + the Hartford of the north. Blake formerly worked in strategy at Manulife and is an actuary by trade. He "saw the light" on what insurance could become, and joined Dacadoo to help create that shift.

Dacadoo helps change the insurance business from risk to a services business. Healthcare has tons of money and demand, but still is not known as a services business. A true health and wellness platform will enable those two things and move the insurance industry from its current "Repair & Replace" mode into a new services-industry mode.  

Follow 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's Killing Companies is not Lack of Analytics, it's Bad Data (w/Michael Davis, eGGHEAD Ai)

Michael Davis is the CEO at eGGHEAD Ai based on Hartford, improves data quality to enhance management decisions, create new insights and ultimately reduce risk.

Michael says finding an issue early on can be worth 100-times the value by avoiding errors. However, people do not like to work with data, citing a Gartner study where 30% of workers would rather call out sick than work with data. This leads to a massive, $5T opportunity to use technology leveraging data to create better analytics. 

eGGHEAD Ai helps senior leadership to take charge of data governance, taking companies from a volunteer, bottoms-up approaches, to one that is well-funded, driven top-down and coordinated to achieve impact.  

Data teams need to find pain points, investigate and then prove their own worth by creating a useful solution. Only then can teams scale-up and help drive the core business model.

Follow 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.

Customers are Used to an Amazon Experience (w/ Nick Gerhart, Chief Innovation Officer, Homesteaders Life)

Proud welcome to Nick Gerhart, Chief Innovation Officer at Homesteaders Life, former Iowa Insurance Commissioner, Board member and investor at several successful insurtechs including Carpedata and Sureify.

Top Trends & Predictions in today's episode:

1. 7 of the Top 10 carriers today will still be there in a decade. However there will be a strong series of acquisitions from the companies with a massive capital-base.

2. Access to capital, whether VC or insurers, is critical to improving insurance

3. Iowa's Global Insurance Accelerator is an example of bringing together all the tech themes and solutions that specifically solve problems insurers have identified

4. Becoming a subject matter expert and being inquisitive on how the insurance core business works is key for young people to try out their new ideas

5. Insurance may be 'different' but customers don't care - they still compare it to Amazon and expect the same seamless experience

6. Agents/brokers own the customer but insurers have a part of that relationship, it's the innovator's dilemma as to who owns the customer experience with a nuanced-hybrid approach to distribution

Follow 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.

3 Reasons Why There Will Be 199 More Lemonades over the Next Decade (w/Dave Bruno, Founder Red Planet Ventures)

Dave Bruno founder Red Planet Ventures and former UBS Head Global Wealth Management Innovation.  

He talks with Josh about having launched innovation at UBS, the world's largest private wealth manager, by exiting the "immune system" and unlocking doors to the outside market and innovators. Dave sees deep parallels to today's younger insurtech industry, how transforming a 200-year old industry and IT systems from the 1980s is in a similar state. 

Banking has moved to a much lower marginal cost, whereas insurance still remains the top-line item in many people's budgets and is unwieldy and lacking customer-orientation.

Just like "Digital Banking is 1% Done" - Insurtech has one Lemonade whereas in Fintech there are 200 Lemonade-sized propositions across the entire spectrum of banking services.

Red Planet sees the rise of "super agencies" where the need for wealth, insurance, real estate, all financial services around the consumer. The pressure of VC-led investment will take hold to reduce margins for the end consumer. "The Amazon of Financial Services is yet to be created"

Dave makes a call-to-action for all Insurers: "Your people know what to do - You just need to go ask them." He strongly advocates for skunkworks models and allowing freedom to attack core assumptions about your business model.

Follow 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.

Staying Committed to Change During the Ups & Downs (w/Bobby Touran, CEO Pathpoint)

Meet Bobby Touran, started Pathpoint four years ago and is software talent that has shifted to commercial insurance (excess & surplus lines). Pathpoint is a digital-wholesale brokerage for retail agents to receive bindable quotes instantly. 

Bobby says not having an insurance background is an advantage. He was able to very quickly pull together a sounding board of industry insiders who can supplant that legacy knowledge, but retain the speed of a software company. This gave the team the luxury of how to think about things without any baggage in a 500-year old industry.

It took two years to build the online platform and taking feedback from underwriters and agents, using domain expertise to build the core. The second two years brought in E&S experts who can help sell and ramp up the product.

Bobby sees a future where digital trading of insurance products keeps becoming more the norm. He emphasizes commitment to using the change through, from building relationships and hopping from small win to win over the years and keep building them. He emphasizes stacking the momentum of repeated small wins instead of having all the pieces stalled at an early-stage for years, and identifying the right partners for feedback.

Follow 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.