The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

Creating the Venmo-Paypal of Insurtech with a Verified Data Layer for Insurance Customers (w/Tolga Tezel, CEO Canopy Connect)

Did you know that over 1900 companies and 8000 agents are using Canopy Connect to increase conversion in insurance sales and verification?

Today we talk to Tolga Tezel, Founder & CEO at Canopy Connect, who was an early engineer at Dropbox. He helped build Nova Credit for US newcomers to obtain fair access to credit through their international data.

These experiences drove him to discover other areas where consumers have a difficult time getting value and convenience from their own data. From 2019 he began interviewing literally hundreds of insurance agencies and learned that getting accurate, comprehensive data from their prospects and customers was painfully difficult.

Tolga says that consumers want insurance to be personalized, seamless and easy, and they want basic control over their data, and carriers need better data to write better risks. Canopy Connect provides the technical infrastructure to do so.

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.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Digital for Carriers’ Operating Models (w/Jamie Yoder, President & GM Sapiens N.A.)

Jamie Yoder is President of Sapiens North America, a leading global provider of software solutions and services for all sectors of insurance. 

Jamie talks about the over-hype cycle of AI and ChatGPT, where companies tend to over-estimate the impacts in the short-term but grossly underestimate the impacts in the longer term. The technology has now caught up such that it can be applied to huge amounts of data and be practically applied to create insights and answers out of unstructured data.

He also talks through how Sapiens approaches IT and the business in an organization and gets past the initial excitement about the latest trends and into incorporating these new technologies to solve a sizable business opportunity. Sapiens removes existing impediments to implementation in an organization to produce a business result and capture the value of new technologies rather than prove an unrealistic business case. 

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.

Helping Patients and Insurers to Better Manage Chronic Conditions to Drive Down Costs (w/Michael Hennessy, CEO Diathrive Health)

Michael Hennessy founded Diathrive Health to helps patients and plans manage diabetes and its costs, with test strips that are 90% less expensive than market. 

Diathrive seeks to reverse the traditional model and give patients better care and outcomes while reducing the cost. Michael heard early-on "To not go into healthcare because the insurance companies are ruining it." But he found his finance and VC background could be put to work for both healthcare plans and patients, filling the gap between preventative services and patients' everyday lives. 

Diathrive performs an up-front claims analysis on an individual patient and guarantees a reduction in spend between $1,000-3,000 per person per year, putting 100% of its fees at-risk to achieve results that on average can save a carrier 70-80% per year. Michael says the science is in performing a complex claims analysis and applying the behavioural standards on diabetes to remove financial and administrative barriers for the individual at no-cost to them.  

Diathrive works without prescription and without a wait time, and allows physicians to not work. in a fee-for-service model, providing more time to focus on providing direct care for patients. The company distributes over health plans as the diabetes solution, benefits management organizations, brokers-consultants and also direct to employers including municipal government. 

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.

Solving the Value Chain on Surety Bonds from Carrier to Broker to End Customer (w/Aaron Steffey and Chris Kolger, Propeller Bonds)

Aaron Steffey and Chris Kolger are co-founders of Propeller Bonds, an insurtech managing general underwriter (MGU) equipped with a proprietary instant issue surety bond platform housing nearly 7,000 instant issue surety bonds.

Propeller is a tech company built to simplify, automate, and distribute surety bonds more efficiently for agents and carriers. Aaron manages the company’s strategy, fundraising, and growth efforts, and Chris oversees the Propeller's daily underwriting operations and technological advancements of the platform.

The company sold its first bond in 2020 and now has 3,500 agents signed up to the platform, signing thousands of bonds per month and responsible for fulfillment. Aaron describes how the company built in from the "ends" and have listened to and created new product variations for creative agents where needed. 

Chris talks through why speciality surety bonds such as oil & gas or cannabis can be written at much better pricing with Propeller. The tech helps increase ROI for agents and brokers who often ignore surety but can include it as a piece of a viable business for themselves. Chris sees a future where the MGA model continues to reduce friction between broker and carrier.  

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.

Insuring Expats, One of the Country’s Fastest Growing Insurance Segments (w/Daniel McChesney, CEO TripDoctor)

Daniel McChesney, MD is the Founder and CEO of TripDoctor, pioneering digital health insurance and health care access for expats and nomads. As a world traveler and long-time expat, he saw an opportunity to improve the healthcare access issues of his fellow expats and nomads through better insurance products.

Expat insurance is a much larger market than travel insurance, a market of $25B where the rate of Americans moving abroad having tripled since the pandemic. TripDoctor is responding to that demand with an insurtech that makes expat healthcare simple, acting as a digital broker with access to the best plans and doctors for expats in their country-of-choice.

TripDoctor is a graduate of the Global Insurance Accelerator. The company's mission is to make expat healthcare simple, affordable, and accessible, and to improve the quality of life for expats.  In the longer-term, the company will help drive down the cost of care by keeping people out of the emergency department and utilizing more telehealth and outpatient visits. 

TripDoctor understands the local market policy standards and costs of care and expats situation, coupling them to products that make sense in that market, and connecting them with the best providers in that market.

Daniel describes a classic insurtech story of how the company pre-GIA would meet with carriers and ramp up meetings until they reached the predictable "no" person, either a threatened PnL owner or IT. And how the company realized through GIA they would write insurance themselves.

The company launched in Mexico, where expats are concentrated in five cities, building a network of physicians through neighborhoods where expats live. They work with local insurers to create products that are both attractive and accessible to expats. 

In terms of growth markets, TripDoctor is seeing high demand for other types of insurance beyond healthcare, for example in commercial business lines, as well as life products that work outside the US and work with reputable carriers.  

Daniel has +20 years of experience in early-stage MedTech, digital health and other healthcare ventures, Prior to TripDoctor, he co-founded DeciBio and helped to grow it into the industry standard for molecular testing and next-generation sequencing data analytics.  

This episode was recorded live at Insurtech Insights New York 2023 in conjunction with InsurTech Association. 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.

Creating a New Underwriting Advantage in Small Commercial Insurance (w/Bobby Touran, CEO Rainbow)

Bobby Touran is CEO of Rainbow (www.userainbow.com), insurance that rewards businesses for putting safety first and evolves with small business’ ups and downs.

Bobby talks about how this latest company is transforming insurance into a positive, risk-preventing force for small businesses, starting with restaurants. Previously, Bobby was CEO of Pathpoint, a digital surplus lines brokerage focused on small commercial E&S business.  

Rainbow is operating as an MGU formed at the end of 2022 focused more on small commercial insurance and delivering a customer-centric experience leveraging technology. 

Rainbow is distributing through agents and focuses on continuous underwriting, specializing in a class of business and creating an "underwriting advantage".  Last year's market headwinds helped the company focus on creating a differentiated value proposition and front-load building their insurance product, filing and experienced underwriting operators to immediately meet market capacity.

Bobby talks about how he's "fallen in love with the insurance industry," and reveals the journey of the company's rapid growth, from bringing on new coverage products and agency focused quoting features to expanding across the states.

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.

Implementing New Data Pipelines to Bring Life Insurance into the 21st Century (w/Nick Bowman, CEO Motif Insurance)

Nicholas Bowman is the Founder and CEO of Motif Insurance building the first data clearinghouse for the independent life insurance market. Motif seeks to create a comprehensive ecosystem that harnesses the power of data and AI/ML to revolutionize how carriers, IMOs, brokers, and consumers interact and manage life insurance policies.

In this episode Nick describes how being agent and understanding the pain points has helped to transition into working with carriers to help improve the life insurance process.  He forecasts the shift towards independent broker networks. More than 80% of customers want to talk with an agent, yet accessing online information will help modernize life insurance in particular the renewals process and the back-end of life insurance that has largely been neglected by insurtech to-date.  The old adage may be that, "Life insurance is sold, not bought" but agent servicing is labor-intensive and involves assessing changes in the customers' circumstances, and complex retirement planning issues.

Nick has worked as an agent, taught insurance for the CFP Board, and most recently worked for Lion Street, a large Independent Marketing Organization with 1,000 agents. 

This episode was recorded live at Insurtech Insights New York 2023 in conjunction with InsurTech Association and our friends Joanna England Sebastian Tollak Megan Kuczynski.

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.

Helping Carriers Move from Risk-Sharing to Data-Sharing in the Multi-Family Residential Market (w/Alice Melendez, CEO of BOON)

Alice Melendez is CEO of BOON, an insurance marketplace for multi-family residential buildings.

In this episode, Alice describes how she is simplifying the process of issuing and managing all insurance lines within a building, providing cross-risk visibility for carriers and real-time risk alerts.

BOON solves for managing risk for a single building, which can involve the support of multiple carriers such as for personal lines, commercial lines, or financial lines. The service manages the sector like a digital MGA, connecting all the systems and documentation for carriers, and benefiting all stakeholders from brokers to end consumers and mortgagees. 

This platform connects multiple carriers and their distribution channels, enabling the handling of personal, commercial, and financial lines of different carriers related to a building on a single platform.  

Alice is an architect who has grown up in the insurance industry and founded Boon to address the challenges encountered in multi-family properties. She combines her expertise in construction, risk management, and insurance to deliver a comprehensive solution for the industry.

This episode was recorded live at Insurtech Insights New York 2023 in conjunction with InsurTech Association and our friends Joanna England Sebastian Tollak Megan Kuczynski.

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 Do Insurers Address Financial Stress in the Millennials & Gen Z Workforce? (w/David Thorne, CEO Thumbscore)

David Thorne is CEO of Thumbscore, a financial wellness platform that reduces the stress of managing personal finance.

Thumbscore solves for the workforce of millennials and Gen Z, who have strong financial literacy and positive financial habits but have high financial stress. In the episode, David explains why simple budgeting or micro-managing approaches are ineffective for these groups. They tend to be curious and want to be free to explore, but also value timely advice at the right moment.

Thumbscore serves users at their 'financial moments of truth' providing insights, education, gamification, and the recommended next step to reduce financial stressors. Its customers are B2B2C insurance companies (for products), other financial products and services (emergency savings accounts, investments), and employers who wish to offer Financial Wellness as a Shared Service. 

David is a nationally awarded software and data engineer. He was a corporate program manager for Boeing before starting his entrepreneurial journey, has an Executive MBA from Wichita State University and serves on the Hispanic Chamber board and on the Gathered board, a foster care nonprofit. 

This episode was recorded live at Insurtech Insights New York 2023 in conjunction with InsurTech Association and our friends Joanna England Sebastian Tollak Megan Kuczynski.

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.

Adapting Parametric Insurance to the Customer Needs of Today (w/Andrew Jernigan, CEO & Co-Founder of Insured Nomads)

Andrew Jernigan is co-founder and CEO of Insured Nomads, an emerging leader globally in disrupting the way insurance is designed and delivered for the modern company.

Insured Nomads is positioned at the intersection of insurance and safety innovation, building a delivery model for health insurance enabling employers to provide health, medical, wellbeing and security for their team no matter where they are in the world.

In this episode, Andrew shares his passion for protecting people around the world and what it takes to build a completely new insurance model, adapting an antiquated travel insurance product to the needs of remote workers. His extensive experience in the healthcare, insurance and banking industries locally provided him with the unique experiences and perspective to break boundaries through the merging of technology with humanity. In particular, how the need for remote workers in a new global workforce has continued evolving into a more flexible format for the employer and their team.  

Andrew is a graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. In addition to serving as CEO, Andrew is also a passionate fighter for justice through support of Not For Sale, and a Strategic Advisor for Shap, and Share Hope International, and co-host of the popular podcast, The New Nomad.

This episode was recorded live at Insurtech Insights New York 2023 in conjunction with InsurTech Association and our friends Joanna England Sebastian Tollak Megan Kuczynski.

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.