The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

The Miracle of Software Applied to Insurance (w/Dan Woods, CEO Socotra)

Dan Woods is the founder and CEO of Socotra, the first modern, cloud-based platform for technology-driven insurers.

Socotra has its own app marketplace and APIs to connect software to insurance businesses, providing open access and clean documentation to get started. Socotra provides solutions that are off-the-shelf, true cloud and fully documented.

With computer science being the most popular degree at most universities, we have more people who can implement solutions that go-live and work.

Dan created data platforms and smart enterprise software at 8VC and Palantir. He holds a MS in Computer Science from Stanford.  

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.

The Last 100 Years of Climate Data Can’t Be Used to Predict What Will Happen in the Next Ten (w/Steve Bennett, Chief Climate Officer at Demex)

Steve is cofounder and Chief Climate Officer for The Demex Group, providing actionable risk management solutions at the hyper-local level for non-catastrophic but extreme weather events. Demex offers solutions for insurers, reinsurers, and other companies with exposure to extreme weather to price risk and provide a valuation basis for weather and climate-related information.

What is the impact of extreme weather on a business operations? Where are companies weather-sensitive, what impacts cost structure and revenue.  How should the company best manage that risk, via reinsurance or capital market products?  Demex was built to help clients understand their risk profile and enter into financial risk instruments that best cover that risk.

Demex starts by having a tech stack that can quickly and easily parts large sets of specialist data, then to value risk based on weather data so that insurance and capital markets can certify and price suitable protection. Steve talks about each Florida storm changing the building codes, and companies activating policyholders to take actions that help mitigate losses, all resulting in lower industry risk. 

Steve began his career working as a meteorologist in newspapers, radio and television, including The Weather Channel. He went on to focus his career on linking extreme weather and natural disasters to financial impact for Enron and Citadel where he led projects in energy, agriculture, insurance, reinsurance, and equity valuations. Steve went on to build and lead the team that developed software to identify climate risks to global supply chain operations. He is chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Financial Weather and Climate Risk Management.

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.

Giving People More Choices for Long-term Healthcare in the Middle Market (w/Tom Beauregard, Founder & CEO at HCG Secure)

Tom Beauregard is the Founder and CEO of HCG Secure, a product and solution builder transforming the aging at-home experience. HSG produces alternatives to long-term care solutions for middle income families who retire, do not have long-term care and will not qualify for Medicare. Many people in this category may have adequate income but do not understand that Medicare does not cover their long-term care, and 70% of people face larger-than planned healthcare expenditures that are the leading cause of bankruptcy of people over age 75.

HCG is licensed in 50 States and is selling through brokerages who sell to the pre-65 population with an average buyer aged 60. HCG now has 15+ larger brokers as partners, who have confirmed this industry coverage gap. 

Tom was inspired to found HCG Secure when his parents reached an age where they were unable to fully care for themselves but wished to age at home. Limited by geography and his parents’ need for local resources, he found the process both overwhelming and difficult for him to ensure that his parents were receiving the best possible care from afar. Stunned by the lack of coverage resulting in out-of-pocket expenses and the lack of resources, Tom made it his mission to create products that offer the network and coverage needed for individuals and their loved ones to age comfortably, and as they wish. 

With over 30 years of innovation experience across healthcare, public policy, academia, and non-profit organizations, Tom’s career has centered around building disruptive solutions to problems he has personally encountered and identified within the healthcare space. Tom was the former Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of UnitedHealth Group, where he oversaw the R&D department for both UnitedHealth and Optum. He brought over 100 R&D initiatives to market across various innovation categories, including value-based payment models, digital health, consumer engagement, and home-based care models. 

Tom graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the University of Connecticut with a Masters in Business Administration. He also received an Emmy for his work with the National Diabetes Prevention Program in partnership with the Y-USA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Project NOT ME, where he was the Executive Producer. 

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 Technology Has Enabled Digital Brokers to Improve Choice and Neutrality (w/Bryan Davis, Executive Vice President at HUB)

Bryan Davis serves as Executive Vice President, HUB International Corporate as the leader of its VIU online broker. HUB is a top 5 global brokerage and largest personal lines brokerage, and Bryan leads VIU, a full-stack 21st century digital brokerage. VIU executes omni-channel (digital + call center + field) strategies impacting product development, consumer segmentation, digital marketing, and the customer & broker experience. Unlike traditional carriers, VIU brings speed through faster services in the cloud making it easy for strategic partners to plug into its brokerage.

About Brokers: Bryan says a full-stack broker brings choice and neutrality across the entire value chain of insurance. But being a great digital broker doesn't just mean being neutral, you need size and scale to be a great distribution channel for your carrier partners.

About Digital Strategy: Bryan talks about creating an enablement layer first, avoiding channel conflicts within the existing organization by being intentionally externally focused on customer needs and complementing HUB's existing portfolio. Business is Business, Technology Enables Business, the value chain of insurance has not changed: look for a policy, sell a policy, service a policy, pay a claim. Tech and digital strategy are just new ways of figuring out how to connect a value proposition to a customer to deliver the service. AI is not a strategy, it's just a means to power a strategy or business value proposition. HUB knows its value proposition, knows it is a very good broker, and is using technology to deliver that value proposition that resonates with the end customer.

About Talent: Bryan took talent across technology & data, sales, product expertise to connect a strategy to implementation. HUB sees the talent strategy as core to building VIU, and has been tenacious about the competencies for every role.    

Bryan has over 20 years of industry success and is widely viewed in the industry as a transformational insurance executive with P&L experience across Property Casualty & Financial Services; including personal lines & commercial lines in product management & pricing, sales/business development, underwriting and operations. Bryan achieved success at a number to top P&C companies, including Nationwide, Safeco, & AIG. Prior to joining  HUB, Bryan served as the Chief Strategy Officer for USAA’s P&C division, reporting to Wayne Peacock, current CEO of USAA.

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.

Generating More Useful Results for Reinsurers Using AI Systems (w/Isaac Hicks, CEO Slipbot)

Isaac Hicks, CEO Slipbot, which extracts nuanced information from Facultative and Treaty Slips of all kinds in the Reinsurance space using a novel approach to natural language processing.

Issac is an advanced Software Integrations Expert and AI practitioner that combines iPaaS solutions, Robotic Process Automation, and Artificial intelligence to create innovative, state-of-the-art business solutions that produce practical, concrete value for growing organizations.  

Slipbot is his team's custom AI system built for the reinsurance market, focusing on unstructured document processes such as the reinsurance slip. Users can now simply drag-and-drop documents into their management system for reading and onward processing.

Isaac describes how AI systems learn just as a human learn how insurance terms are set and what more sophisticated questions to ask in a review. The AI models the business and loss layers so that managers can make more informed decisions about their book.

Longer-term, Slipknot seeks to remove the need for manual data entry and document understanding, to enable reinsurers to focus more on business management and results. Isaac sees a future that will rely on the human component of evaluating risk, that there is a limit to the algorithmization of everything in terms of doing good 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.

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.