The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

Learning About the New Insurance Marketplace at an Incumbent (w/Dan Findley, The Andover Companies)

Dan Findley is Director of Strategy & Business Development at The Andover Companies, responsible for scaling a Business Development vertical. His key responsibilities of the role include marketing, digital agency experience, existing and emerging agency technology, external industry relationships and representation, market analysis and product innovation, and agency partners success.

Dan talks about the large cultural change mindset inside a large incumbent insurer, as employees shift over from 30-40 year veterans to new generations. His team focus on understanding the core competencies of insurance while also learning how to make it better.

The Andover is owned by its policyholders so puts the customer-first, which on a practical basis means modernizing core systems and user experience as well as the digital agency experience. Part of the team's mission is understanding the enduring value proposition but also embracing change and how to work with younger talent.

Dan talks about the speed at which insurers are moving versus brokers, and how professional development in the industry is taking shape. Dan has earned his Master of Science in Insurance Management from Boston University along with his CPCU and ARe designations.

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.

Integrating Modern Digital Tools into Life Insurance (w/Mark Scafaro, CEO Afficiency)

Mark Scafaro is the CEO and co-founder of Afficiency, an insurtech transforming the end-to-end life insurance buying process and accelerating the time it takes to get applicants approved and covered. 

Afficiency delivers life insurance products on an all-encompassing digital platform, available for digital distributors from quote to policy all via API. Its focus is on building life insurance products that a consumer can purchase in less than ten minutes.

Afficiency's API allows distributors to offer innovative digital life insurance products. Its proprietary "likelihood to be approved score" or ApprovedAPI optimizes conversion funnels and spikes approval rates by identifying and targeting highly-likely-to-be-approved prospects.

Afficiency also powers carriers with a digital platform that enables them to build and distribute completely new products in less than six months.

Mark spent nearly two decades working at major financial service institutions, including Morgan Stanley, American Express and MetLife, while rising to leadership positions and honing expertise in strategy, marketing, operations, finance, and data science.

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 eCommerce Insurance Products Run on Real-time Data (w/Amit Batzir, Co-CEO Spott)

Amit Batzir is the co-founder and Chief Product and Risk Officer at Spott, an eCommerce insurance platform that helps sellers protect their businesses from unexpected losses.

Spott provides Liability Insurance, Suspension Coverage, and Stockout Protection. Its solutions are geography-agnostic, revolving around real-time data and underwriting capabilities. For example Spott launched "Pay as You Sell" such that coverage spins up based on actual product sales when they occur. 

Amit describes how in eCommerce you have many more data points and signals prior to a claim being filed that provides a basis to train models and create more accurate decisions enabled by real-time measurement of exposure whether number of units sold or other business changes.

Amit also discusses Spott's go-to-market strategy, whether being part of Facebook or Whatsapp groups, or being bundled as part of an embedded insurance product.

Prior to co-founding Spott, Amit spent eight years at PayPal, most recently as Head of Data Intelligence. Over the course of his career in technology, Amit has acquired more than twenty years of leadership experience working in product, analytics, and data science roles. Amit is a veteran of the IDF’s elite intelligence unit and holds a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

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 Embedded Insurance for the Sharing Economy Market (w/Arik Shpak, Connected Insurance)

Arik Shpak is Co-Founder and Chief Insurance Officer at Connected insurance, focused on the creation of new insurance markets in the "sharing economy" such as transportation and mobility. These new markets are growing at over 30% per year but lack of traditional actuarial models and experience. 

Connected helps any sharing economy business embed insurance into their product offering creation. Their technological invention is to utilize advanced event sourcing technology and provide real-time data analysis algorithms and machine learning. This helps fill the gap on actuarial data and discovers a way to price and write the required insurance.

Arik is former the head of innovation at Kesh Underwriters, and an insurance broker at Shepherd Compello Ltd in London (a Lloyd’s Broker and Coverholder). He describes how he sees what Lloyd's is doing in discovering and innovating new insurance markets as being a true basis for the insurance world.

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.

Translating Claims Stories into Predictive Models using AI (w/Sri Ramaswamy, CEO Charlee.ai)

Sri Ramaswamy is founding CEO of Charlee.ai a Silicon Valley technology company specializing in claims and underwriting solutions. Charlee leverages natural language processing to streamline claim workflows and risks to reduce claims expenses, litigation and efficiently manage reserves.

Charlee's core product addresses the rising severity of claims when attorneys get involved, which has grown by more than 30% since Covid. Charlee augments claims teams' intelligence by assimilating past claims data to detect patterns and trends, the risk characteristics that correlate with litigation and rising claims severity, as well as actuaries development of coverage models. 

Charlee also helps parse and strengthen the dataset so that adjusters can bring in multiple data points to make non-emotional decisions to settle claims in the right way. The product was build upon decades of claims adjuster knowledge and experience and 'mimics' the experts to build exactly the right domain libraries and ontologies relevant to the P&C claims process.

Sri spent more than 20 years in architecting and launching business intelligence, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions for banking and Insurance industries.

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 is Semi-Parametric Insurance in Social Media Cyber Protection (w/Rafael Broshi, CEO Notch)

Rafael Broshi is Co-Founder and CEO of Notch, an MGA offering new insurance products for individuals and micro businesses.  Notch provides insurance and security solutions for digital assets, starting with a business' digital storefront - their social media account.

Medium- and large-sized businesses have access to cyber insurance for damages created via email, social media, direct messengers etc. Businesses rely on social media for distribution and as a source of growth and income. Notch's social media coverage product is admitted in the US, written on HSB paper (an AA+ rated carrier) and protects against account takeover. The outcome is loss of income insurance for up to three months with a semi-parametric and semi-automated claims process.

Notch's product specializes on micro-businesses with up to 20 employees, with most of its customers making up to half-million dollars in revenue per year. Notch is selling direct to small businesses to understand the market, and is now starting retail agent expansion with an exact knowledge of their customer typology.

The brain of Notch's product uses public data to instantly evaluate the customer need, rather than relying on collecting information from the customer. Parametric insurance relies on an outside check to trigger the claims process, but it relies on whether there was a real loss. Notch is semi-parametric because they determine semi-automatically whether an incident has occurred and when to pay a claim.

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.

A National Agency Just Created its own Brokertech Accelerator - Here’s What We Know (w/Dan Keough, CEO Holmes Murphy)

Daniel Keough is the Chairman & CEO of Holmes Murphy & Associates, one of the nation’s largest independent insurance agencies. Dan also serves as co-CEO of BrokerTech Ventures, the first broker-led convening platform focused on delivering innovation to the insurance broker industry, or #brokertech. 

Dan talks about how BrokerTech Ventures supports the technological and business development of #brokertech companies and is at the forefront of change for the insurance industry.

Prior to leading Holmes Murphy, Dan founded Innovative Captive Strategies, a subsidiary company of Holmes Murphy. His goal was to develop captive alternatives that would provide businesses with unexpected sources of
revenue while alleviating unnecessary business expenses. Dan earned an MBA with a specialty in Finance from Loyola University Graduate School of Business, and he holds an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from the University of Iowa.

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.

Personal Wellness as Insurance Growth Engine in 2023 (w/Danny Amir, CEO BetterTogether)

Danny Amir is CEO of BetterTogether, a direct-to-consumer personal wellness and weight loss app that is bringing simple and effective well-being and weight loss products to millions of people. 

BetterTogether is answering to the main trends in the insurance in industry in personal health and bringing a new benefit into their offering. Reinsurers are moving into preventative activities, life and health insurance companies are seeking to differentiate and reduce churn with new wellness offerings for insureds. Brokers are seeking creativity in their offering for employers.  While no one wants to increase risk, all parties in the insurance value chain seek innovative new services that delight the end customers.

BetterTogether brings a social-first approach to well-being empowers individuals to make healthier lifestyle choices and achieve success at a much higher rate than traditional approaches.

The well-being product is unique in its ability to engage customers on health and wellness and create shared value for all parties in the insurance industry, including reinsurers, carriers, brokers, employers, and consumers.

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.

Providing the Connective Tissue for Construction Industry Insurance (Nyasha Gutsa, CEO at Billy)

Nyasha Gutsa is CEO and co-founder of Billy, which digitizes and connects the process by which construction contractors work with insurance brokers. Billy is redefining construction insurance technology, managing insurers, certificates of insurance and requirements, working with brokers to retain and engage customers. This can mean commercial general liability, workers compensation, auto and excess liability and more specialist forms of insurance that can be required to sign a customer.

Billy does not want to compete with brokers so is not an MGA, rather acting as the connective tissue between insureds and brokers/agents and focusing on the specialist area of insurance including the claims management process.

Nyasha has built strong cultural values at Billy that drive engagement with the business, based on ownership, openness and optimism. Employees work four days a week (Thursdays are always off), and give opportunities to travel or spend more time with their family. 

Nyasha was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, and began his construction career as a mailroom clerk and rose through the ranks to become a project accountant at Plaza Construction, a New York City General Contractor. He was one of the early employees at Procore, where he spent 6.5 years working as a Sr. Product Manager responsible for building contracts, invoices, and integrations into Procore's financial tools.   

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.

Auto Claims: People Want to Move On, But Insurance Needs to Remember The Details (w/Itay Bengad, CEO Sensa Insurance)

Itay Bengay is CEO at Sensa, the first proactive auto insurance company, focused on help - not just compensation. Sensa provides lifesaving services 24/7.

Itay believes people should not be left alone during a car accident. In the moments after a car accident, people want to deny and move beyond it whereas the insurance need is to remember every detail of that incident to avoid any unnecessary claims inflation. 

Sensa is a "proactive" insurance company engaged in redefining the standards for profitability and loss ratios while helping each policyholder through this important "moment of truth". Itay says removing the policyholder systematically from the claims process and instead relying on hard data will strengthen and improve settlements. 

Itay is a physician by training, and technology executive by experience.He is driven by real-life problems to develop financially viable solutions. He discusses building change from outside the insurance industry but using people from inside the industry to achieve that change.

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.