The Leadership in Insurance Podcast (The LIIP): Recent Episodes
Alex Bond
The leadership in Insurance (LIIP) podcast is a podcast helping Insurance professionals, Investors and supporters learn what it takes to achieve and succeed in the global insurance industry.
We look to interview the leaders and pioneers of the insurance industry focussing on stories of success and discussing what it takes to succeed in today's changing insurance landscape.
We specifically look at what it takes to build a modern insurance business and how great teams are built.
Attracting & Empowering Tomorrow's Insurance Workforce, but what does that actually mean?
In today's highly competitive insurance industry, attracting and retaining top talent has become a critical strategic imperative. As the industry undergoes rapid digital transformation and faces evolving customer demands, the "War for Talent" intensifies.
Tune into this panel discussion with Catherine Richardson, Bill Martin, Alex Bond, Anupam Malhotra and moderated by Stephen Goldstein to hear our takes on this topic 📣 📣
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Good morning and welcome to the next episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast
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Good morning and welcome to the next episode of the Leadership In Insurance Podcast
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Good morning and weelcome back to a very special episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where we are joined by Andrew Johnston & Freddie Scarratt to lok at Galllagher Re's Q2 report.
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Good mornign and welcome back to the next episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where this week we are joined by James Hobson, CEO of Attune
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Good morning and welcome to a very spcial episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where we are joined by no other than Rosie Denee for an episode all about The Lloyd's Lab.
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Good morning and welcome o a very special episode of the Leadership In Insurance Podcast where we bring you 'A Tour of Innovation Village' with Michael Lewis Live From ITI London, with Claim Technology, Paperbox, Your Pass, Sprout.AI & Wex
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Good morning and welcome back to a very special edition episode f the LEadership In Insurance Podcast where we are recording live from the Insurtech Insights Europe conference with a special guest V8, CEO of Resilience
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Delighted to have Tom Clark, Field CTO of hyperexponential on the podcast this week 🎤
Tom walks us through his role and provides an interesting insight into his evolving role from being a traditional CTO to a "Field CTO".
We got a great insight into how hyperexponential's platform is revolutionizing the traditional actuarial modeling process, and why after 7 years Tom and the team have decided to shift the technology strategy.
hyperexponential (hx) a startup that serves the property-casualty insurance industry with decision intelligence for pricing.
Their Pricing Decision Intelligence platform - hx Renew, provides insurers with the ability to leverage large and alternative datasets, develop and refine rating tools rapidly, employ machine learning approaches to price risk, and ultimately make data-driven pricing decisions at the portfolio and individual level.
Since being founded in 2017, the company has grown 10x while staying profitable and is now expanding beyond the current operations in the UK over to the US, off the back of their $73 million Series B equity round of funding 💸
Tom thank you for joining me, it was a lot of fun 👏
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Transforming the insurance industry through the power of decision intelligence
Tune into our episode with Richard Gunn, hyperexponential's CRO with Alex Bond for their discussion on the hashtag
evolution of the insurance industry towards a more hashtag
data-driven and efficient model, pricing intelligence and the use of hashtag
emerging technologies
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Good morninf and welcome to the next episode of the Leadership In Insurance Podcast, where this wk we are joined by Aaron Letzeiser, the co-founder of Obie
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Hello and good mornignto th next episode of The Leadership in Insurance Podcast where our host Alex Bond is joined by Richard Gunn, CRO of HyperExponential
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This week on The Emerging Tech Series, Gavin savage had the pleasure of chatting with Thierry Bonfante, the CPO of Unqork.
Thierry possesses 25 years of enterprise software experience, ranging from early startups to large corporations, and is a true expert in AI.
He masterfully walks us through how Gen AI is transforming how insurance companies can do business and at Unqork, how they are integrating GenAI into their solutions.
Thierry also discusses how these advanced AI features will impact their codeless platform's users.
Unqork brings codeless tech to insurance. Founded in 2017, raising over $350M to date and scaling the team to 350+ people they have been a huge hit in the insurance space
Their Codeless as a Service platform enables customers to democratize technology and free themselves from the pitfalls of legacy code, unlocking innovation and speed to market with enterprise-grade performance, scale, and security.
Here's a clip of Thierry describing what their platform is capable of, and why they have built this for the insurance industry.
Tune in via the link in the comments to hear the full discussion on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast "Emerging Tech Series ".
You don't want to miss this one!
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Good morning and welcome to the next episode of The Emerging Tech Series with Brian Moseley, Co-Founder & CTO of Sixfold
The Sixofld team was founded by a world-class team with deep AI, SaaS, security, and insurance industry expertise.
They have developed GenAI to handle the most difficult problems in the insurance industry and created it to assist insurance underwriters in increasing accuracy, maximizing capacity, and improving their overall quality of life.
Brian provides a great insight into how Sixfold is using AI specifically within underwriting and how he thinks an underwriters role be different compared to now in 5 years.
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Goof morning and welcm to the next epsiode of The Emerging Tech Series where this week our host Gavin Savage is joined by Alexander Igwe-Ufendu, Co-Founder & CPO of MyCover.AI
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Insurtech vs incumbent? Incumbent vs incumbent? Who will will?
In this week's episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast we are joined by a dear friend of FinPro. and a returning guest to the pod - none other than Matt Connolly, CEO of Sønr.
We dig in to the future state of insurtechs, Sønr's future 50 reports and how can we actually drive innovation?
Matt - always a pleasure to have you on - thanks for joining us
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Good morning and welcome back to the next episode of The Emerging Tech Series with Casey Hancock, SVP, Flume Health
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Insurtech investing, the power of people and looking for that why.
This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast I was joined by Jane Podbelskaya, Principal at Information Venture Partners for a discussion about the investment landscape, what she looks for in a founder and more.
IVP is a fintech fund, their sweet spot being Series A investing - we discuss the recent investment landscape, its turbulence and more.
Jane looks at the venture trends from a wider lens and the broader fintech market. We discuss the mirrored patterns, and what insurtech could learn and expect from the fintech market.
We discuss the power of people, the integral role that having the right team plays for those early stage start ups and what stands out in a founder when watching pitch after pitch.
& Of course we discuss Wisedocs - IVP's latest investment, the investment journey, what stood out to Jane about Wisedocs vision. Connor Atchison MHA
Jane - thank you for joining me for this one - a truly insightful conversation.
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Happy Wednesday!
Welcome back to the next episode of The Emerging Tech Series where this week our host Gavin Savag is joined by Nathan Milford, CTO of Pumpkin
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, where this week our host Alex Bond is joined by Cyrus Karai, CEO and Founder of CoverForce.
CoverForce's API offers access to leading P&C carriers, enabling instant business insurance quotes and a one-click purchase experience.
They discuss their mission to strengthen independent agencies, wholesalers and corporates for closer relationships with their preferred carriers.
Delve into their funding journey, gaining investment from QED Investors, the Penn Wharton Innovation Fund, NYCA Partners amongst others.
And what CoverForce have in store for 2024.
Be sure to listen to this one - it’s a good one!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up Insurtechs
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Wednesday morning means we have a new episode of The Emerging Tech Series!
For this week's epiisode our host Gavin Savage is joined by Dan Langevin, CTO & Co-Founder of Ideon
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Sharing somthing fun and a little different on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast today...
Back in October I was invited to host the 'Live at ITC' conversations at the Vegas InsureTech Connect confernce.
I was lucky enough to meet, get to know and interview several founders about the products they are creating and visions they are building
Many of you were there (it's Vegas - it's one not to miss!) but for those that weren't, you can listen back to these discussions on the pod this week
First up we've got Hamesh Chawla, CEO of Mulberri, Inc. & stay tuned for more!
Thank you to our media partners at ITC and the sponsors at bolt for this happen 👏 👏
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Good morning andwelcomebackto this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series where. our host Gavin Savage is joined by Mike Calhoun, VP of Engineering at Overalls
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We are sharing something a little differnt on the podcast today, and we are tunring the table (and microphone!) on our host Alex Bond and hearing a bit more from him about his insights into insurtech and the future of the industry's talent.
Stepping in to the 'interviewer' role today in Alex's is place is FinPro's own Gavin Savage, our Head of Tech and Engineering and host of our Wednesday series, 'The Emerging Tech Series'
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Good morning and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series where our host Gavin nSavage is joined by Azeem Ansar, CTO, Attune.
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Good morning and welcome to The Leadership In Insurance Podcat where this week Alex Bond is joined by Bobby Touran, Co-Founder Of Rainbow
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Wildfire science and satellite imagery expertise to solve homeowners’ wildfire insurance...
Super excited for the first podcast episode release of 2024 😁. This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast "𝗘𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀" I was joined by Arik Yelovitch, CTO of Delos Insurance Solutions.
The home insurance market in California is broken and while wildfire risk isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, neither are Californians. Delos leverages a depth of understanding in data-modeling, ML, and wildfire behavior that traditional markets currently don’t possess.
Some of the highlights from our conversation 👇
💡 The dynamic of the Delos team was a talking point, with leading fire scientists, expert underwriting staff, and of course the tech team, we get into what the biggest challenges, and successes have been when it comes to innovation
💡 AI, supercomputers, and other emerging technologies are making a huge impact on the insurtech industry. Arik gives us some insight into the possibilities for the future in the context of catastrophe insurance.
💡 The Delos team's approach of vertically integrating its wildfire science expertise and data from its custom built suite of wildfire models is very unique. We discuss the advantages of build v buy and why this has been key to their success.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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Product builder, distribution, policy admin, the no-code platform transforming the insurance industry…
This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast "𝗘𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀" I was joined by Ahmad Mosa, the CTO of CoverGo | Insurtech.
CoverGo's product agnostic, unique no-code platform and modular approach allow them to build and launch new insurance products in days instead of months. In over 3 years, they have built 500+ APIs covering any process and product imaginable in an insurance business ecosystem.
Ahmad being a seasoned Insurance and Insurtech technology executive, we get into the lessons he has learned from his previous ventures in the space and what he feels it takes to be a global insurtech market leader.
We dive deep into the topic of API’s within insurance and what Ahmad thinks the future of API development in insurance will look like.
CoverGo has employees across Silicon Valley, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Europe, so I wanted to get an insight into what it takes to build a culture in different time zones in the ever-changing nature of the start-up environment.
Give this one a listen via the links in the comments below and please let me know what you think 😁
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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Keeping AI honest is a full-time job.
And that's what Monitaur do.
Live from InsureTech Connect Vegas, this week's episode explores AI governance & mitigating AI risk - responsible AI is a business problem, not just a tech problem.
Tune into this week's episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where I sat down with Anthony Habayeb to discuss just that.
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Happy Monday everyone - starting off the week with a very exciting episode where I was joined by no other than Andy Moss, CEO of Send.
Blending a composable SaaS platform with deep industry knowledge and open-minded collaboration, Send offers modular commercial insurance software to insurers, reinsurers and MGAs.
We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, from tech's role in underwriting and expanding investment in the pre-bind space and more. Here are some of the highlights...
🚀 How do you drive engagement and adoption for an underwriting tool?
🚀 Do you think there is a perception problem with UK companies going into the USA? How are you tackling this?
🚀 What do you think this type of technology means for the underwriter of the future? Do we need a new type of underwriting talent profile? More tech savvy?
🚀 How are you using AI in your products? How can we embrace AI – do we need to think differently in insurance?
🚀 And last but not least, what's on the horizon for Send?
Thank you again for joining me Andy Moss - I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did & thank you Sarah Sutton for helping us make this happen
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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🚨 Brand new episode of #TheEmergingTechSeries is out today 🚨
Thank you to everyone who tuned into last week’s episode with Patrick Koeller from When Insurance
In this week’s episode, our tech expert Gavin Savage was joined by James Keal the Co-Founder, of Inktrap, a design and development studio that creates brilliant interfaces, websites, and apps for disruptive insurtech startups - design experts that understand insurance products
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation…
🎙 Gavin asks James about his background, how he got into product design, and ended up designing innovative products for insurtechs startups
🎙James discusses what inspired him to start Inktrap
🎙James talks about when startups and businesses should consider investing in design for their products or services
🎙They discuss design trends and the significance of getting the user experience right from the start
🎙What are some emerging design trends or technologies in the insurtech space, and how do these trends impact the user experience?
🎙They discuss culture when building a design team. What qualities or skills do you believe are essential for a successful design and development team?
🎙James gives his advice to aspiring designers and startups looking to make their mark in the insurtech industry.
🎙Finally, Gavin asks James if he could redesign any famous product or interface from history, what would it be, and why?
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Happy Monday everyone - coming off the back of a week of insurtech madness last week in Vegas we have a great podcast episode to share to continue the insurtech innovation conversation. This week I was joined by ARMD Limited's CEO Devin Chawda.
ARMD is reinventing the way tradespeople protect their livelihoods. Addressing an underserved £6.5B UK market opportunity, ARMD offers a unique combination of IoT technology with embedded insurance, designed to increase sales, reduce risk and minimise downtime.
We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, here are some of the highlights...
🚀 ARMD's famous raise on Seedrs; we all saw the great press, but has it been successful? What are your key learnings for this experience? Did it cause any complications?
🚀 All things Lloyd’s lab – you went through the process – what are your key takeaways – what would you say to people considering being part of the lab? How would you advise they make best use of the experience?
🚀 How long into the evolution of the business was Insurance seen as a key part of the offering?
🚀 You have numerous distribution opportunities – how many evolved out of the deepening understanding of the insurance industry?
🚀 Explain how new capacity has allowed you to wholesale you product what is the thinking here?
🚀 How do you define embedded insurance? Do we even need to mention “insurance” ?
🚀 What's next for ARMD?
ARMD have been on our podcast guest bucket list for a while now, so Devin, thanks for joining me and making this episode happen!
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🚨 Brand new episode of #TheEmergingTechSeries is out today 🚨
In this week’s episode our tech expert Gavin Savage interviewed Patrick Koeller, the Co- Founder & CTO of When Insurance. When Insurance is an employee benefit and an off boarding platform to help protect employee access to healthcare
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation…
🎙 Gavin asks about Patrick’s background & how he ended up in the world of #InsurTech
🎙 Patrick explains the USPs of the HR processes of When Insurance offboarding platform
🎙 Gavin asks Patrick about the risks of using AI in the HR perspective - is AI bias?
🎙 Who is Jamie? Patrick talks about the tool that helps to humanise the AI tool that When Insurance uses
🎙 Patrick's thoughts on AI & how AI has changed over the last years
🎙 Gavin asks about the role of an InsurTech to change insurance space & Patrick’s thoughts on the whole insurance space
🎙 Finally, Patrick explains the dynamic of the When Insurance team and the team culture & they cover what’s next for When Insurance and for Patrick as the CTO
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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🚨 Brand new episode of #TheEmergingTechSeries is out today 🚨
Thank you to everyone who has tuned into last week’s episode with Tom Beale from Converge Insurance
In this week’s episode- our tech expert Gavin Savage had the opportunity to talk to Sven G., the CTO of Turris
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation…
👉 Gavin asks Sven about his unusual journey from investment banking into InsurTech and being a CTO of Turris
👉 Sven talks about the mission of Turris and how they want to ‘rewire how insurance agencies manage their funds flow’
👉 Sven explains what’s different about Turris and what differentiates them from the competitors in the market
👉 They discuss the main benefits of using Turris as a banking solution for entrepreneurs
👉 Sven explains Turris business module and understanding what the industry needs - technology as a superpower in the forefront of insurance innovation
👉 Gavin asks Sven what’s next for Turris
👉 Finally, Sven shares his recommendation for a must- read book: Advanced React by Nadia Makarevich 🇺🇦
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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It's always nice to start the week with something fun to share and this week is no exception.
This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast I'm joined by the brilliant Garret Gray of CoreLogic to reflect on his entrepreneurial journey and discuss all things #disruption, #development and #acquisition.
We got into a lot of interesting topics, so without giving too many spoilers, here are some of the highlights...
& be sure to catch to the full conversation here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eQkvbGxx
🚀 Will carriers become the largest distributors..? Do you think we might start to see that analogy with software?
🚀 Buy vs Build vs Partnership – is there ever still an argument for build? Is it not augment not build?
🚀 What do you think the change in tech stacks means for carrier and broker tech talent?
🚀 Can a company as large as CoreLogic get close to the earliest developments in Insurtech outside of those made in-house?
🚀 You obviously went through an acquisition with CoreLogic – how do you make that sort of transition successful?
Thank you Garret Gray for joining me!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start-up and scale-up insurtechs
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🚨 Brand new episode of #TheEmergingTechSeries is out today 🚨
Thank you to everyone who tuned into last week’s episode with Mo El Mahallawy from Shepherd
Tune into this week’s episode - where we get an insight into the world of cyber insurance, security, and advanced data technology with Tom Beale, the CTO of Converge
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation with our tech expert Gavin Savage…
👉 Tom’s career journey into tech, and entering the world of insurtech with Converge
👉 Gavin asks Tom about building loss models without historical data and the challenges Converge has overcome to tackle this issue
👉 Tom explains the gaps in cyber risk management
👉 They discuss the mindset businesses have around technology insurance and why cyber insurance is necessary
👉 Gavin asks Tom about the USP of Converge and what makes them stand out in the cyber insurance world
👉 Tom talks about their “everything as code” approach, and why DevOps plays such a significant role in their operations
👉 Gavin asks Tom about the onboarding process of Converge and the claims process
👉 Finally, they talk about the company culture of Converge and Tom shares his top tips for starting up a product and engineering-driven insurtech
Hope you enjoy this one!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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🚨 New episode out today 🚨
On this week’s The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, host Alex Bond was joined by Thomas Kang, the CEO of Converge Insurance to talk about all things #cybersecurity & #cyberinsurance
💥 The risk prevention vs. risk reduction trend across insurance – health and cyber are the first movers on this – helping insured lower their risk rather than just paying claims – what do you think this means for the future of insurance?
💥 Do you think insurance has been slow to embrace sector specific educations within their teams e.g. attracting cyber security experts to insurance etc? How do you think we could do a better job of attracting talent
💥 Cyber is a heavily populated field for Insurtechs – what’s unique about your approach?
💥 How does your blend of technology and insurance change or challenge the role of the underwriter?
💥 What is unique about the challenges SMBs face when it comes to Cyber risk and accessing Cyber Insurance?
💥 Does competition drive positives for the wider market when it comes to education of the insured? How much do you still have to educate the customer?
Thank you Tom for joining me and I hope you all enjoy this one as much as I did - give it a listen via the links below
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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On today’s episode, Gavin Savage got to do a deep dive into the world of construction insurance and construction technology - with Mo El Mahallawy, the CTO & Co-Founder of Shepherd
There were so many highlights for me on this one, but here are some of the main topics of discussion:
👉 Mo's journey into insurance and the story of starting Shepherd
👉 Mo talks about the biggest shifts from making the transition from being an individual contributor to being a CTO and building his own company
👉 How the construction industry is advancing and adopting technology
👉 Mo talks about Shepherd’s experience going through the famous Y-Combinator programme!
👉 The USP of Shepherd and the gaps in the industry they are filling
👉Shepherds company culture and how they drive productivity and innovation within the team
👉Finally, what the future holds for Shepherd
Tune in to listen to the rest 😊, hope you enjoy this one
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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On this week’s The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, host Alex Bond was joined by Sean Harper, the Founder & CEO of Kin
Kin doesn’t need much introduction in the #InsurTech world, but for those who don’t know, Kin offers personalized home insurance solutions for everyone, even in areas most impacted by #climatechange
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation…
🎙 Sean talks about Kin’s unique approach to market - targeting specific homes and addresses
🎙 Alex asks Sean about the sticky customer & value proposition of Kin
🎙 They discuss the insurance value chain
🎙 Alex asks Sean about the future of Kin & plans for going public
🎙 Sean explains the responsibility the insurance industry has to climate change and the importance of doing at least 1 thing each year to move towards being carbon neutral
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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Tune into this week’s episode with Nathan Hall, the CTO of Ledgebrook, hosted by our tech expert Gavin Savage.
Here are some of the highlights from the episode...
🎙 Gavin asks Nathan about Ledgebrook’s mission - speed & what differentiates Ledgebrook from others?
🎙 Nathan shares his story of coming on board with Ledgebrook right after the funding Seed Round - his journey coming to a company with less than 10 full time people after coming from a big company
🎙 Nathan talks about the difference of being a CTO for a small company vs a big company- main challenges, differences & how the challenges have changed over time
🎙 Gavin and Nathan discuss how the definition of a CTO changes when the company is scaling up
🎙 They talk about E&S- why is it receiving so much attention at the moment?
🎙 Nathan explains his view on the “when do you build vs when do you buy?” decision
🎙Finally, they discuss Ledgebrook’s unique team & company culture
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, our host Alex Bond was joined by Karthik Ramakrishnan, the CEO & Co- Founder of Armilla Assurance to discuss all things #AI and the future of AI insurance
Here are some of the highlights...
🎙Alex asks Karthik about the future of AI and how are we going to see insurance improve moving forward
🎙 Karthik explains the role Armilla plays in helping companies make the right decisions when analysing the risks involving AI software
🎙 Alex and Karthik discuss the various uses of software and AI, using the chat GPT example
🎙They discuss the importance of trust and the trust deficit of AI and the future of self-driving organisations
🎙 Karthik talks about Armilla’s experience in the Lloyds Lab and how much it helped shape where the business is today
🎙Finally, they cover the embedded business opportunities for Armilla
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tune in to this week's episode where our tech expert Gavin Savage is joined by William Steenbergen, the Co-Founder & CTO of Federato to discuss the founding story of Federato and the importance of investing into modern technology
👉 They talk about William’s background - how he moved from mathematics to #engineering, his career path so far and the growth opportunities ahead
👉 Gavin asks William about Federato’s mission in the insurtech market - risk & risk management
👉 William explains the challenges of fundraising - from the first round until now
👉 They discuss what has surprised William the most about the #insurance space - the lack of modern #technology in big insurance companies
👉 Gavin asks William about Federato’s biggest success stories and how companies have adjusted to Federato’s products - have they been an instant success?
👉 Finally, they cover the company culture of Federato
Hope you enjoy this one!
🎙 Catch this episode here - https://lnkd.in/eQkvbGxx
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Another great episode to share on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast today - I was joined by Rashid Galadanci to discuss all things AI, telematics and how him and the Driver Technologies Inc. team are seeking to democratise car safety
I met Rashid in New York back in spring, and have been looking forward to having him on the podcast ever since. A lot has happened since then, they raised, ( 🎉 in a round led by IA Capital Group and CT Innovations) grown, announced new products & partnerships and more..
I’ve included some of the highlights below but be sure to give the full conversation a listen..
🎙 We discuss entrepreneurship, where the drive to build this business comes from & the founder story of driver
🎙 We get into the challenges of road safety: rapidly changing technology, resistance to investing in tech and the average age of cars on the road 10+ years plus - how can we tackle this?
🎙 Rashid explains how over 50% of accidents are caused by a distracted or drowsy driver and how they are using AI to mitigate this risk
🎙 We discuss the cultural push backs to surveillance technology and how Rashid and the team seek to avoid the ‘big brother approach’
🎙 Finally, we discuss what’s next for Driver Technologies
Thank you again Rashid for joining me - I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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Tune in to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series. Our tech expert Gavin Savage is joined by Talha Zubair, the Director of Product & Design from TheGuarantors to discuss #productdevelopment in the #insurance space.
👉 They discuss Talha’s career journey, what led him from consulting to product development and what drew him to TheGuarantors team
👉 Gavin and Talha chat about the importance of having a role that makes an impact and the #financial services industry
👉 Talha explains the inequalities and protection gaps in the rental market and how TheGuarantors are on a mission to address these disparities
👉 They discuss company culture, #startup & #scaleup environments, and how to empower and motivate a fast moving team
👉 Gavin asks about Talha’s experience as a product leader and what he believes it takes to be successful
👉 Finally, they cover what’s in store for TheGuarantors team in Q4 and beyond
We loved this one, a truly inspiring discussion this week - thank you Talha for joining us!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs.
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We are sharing a really special episode on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast this morning, with a familiar face and returning guest…
I was joined by the one and only Douglas Ver Mulm, for long time podcast followers you’ll remember Doug’s first episode on the pod back in spring of 2022, in this episode we catch up on Doug latest venture Turris, his journey thus far and what the future holds
Find out about all that and more in this episode, here are some of the highlights..
🎙 We discuss Doug’s goal of building a FinTech for InsurTechs & the problems they are wanting to solve…
🎙 Why do we need a bank for insurtechs? Why innovate in this space? & Why hasn’t this been done before?
🎙 We talk about the lessons learnt from being a serial entrepreneur - why take the leap from law to start-up life? As a now three-time founder, what have you learnt about entrepreneurship?
🎙 Diving into the Insurtech Association, we discuss the importance and impacts of networks and communities
🎙 Finally, we discuss what’s next for Turris - new products, new partners & more!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs
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Tune in to this week's episode where our tech expert Gavin Savage is joined by Nav Dhuti, the Product and Innovation Lead & Fergus Cooney, the Lead Analytics Engineer from Carbon Underwriting to talk about the role of #technology & #innovation in the #underwriting space.
👉 They discuss the #usp of Carbon Underwriters and why they stand out from the competitors with their unique approach to business
👉 On shaping Carbon’s identity - Gavin asks Nav & Fergus about the decision to transfer Carbon Underwriters into analytics & #data led #tech company
👉 Nav & Fergus explain the journey of understanding the potential of the Graphene platform for revolutionising the insurance industry with #ai and #automatisation
👉 They discuss how they have engineered a product that disrupts the insurance market and makes them stand out by being transparent and having a highly effective data model and how it helps to fast #microservices
👉 They cover the biggest wins for Carbon Underwriters and caps in the market they fill
👉 Finally, Gavin asks them about the most valuable takeaways from integrating the tech team with the underwriters and how it has transformed their business
We loved this one, a truly insightful conversation this week - thank you Nav & Fergus for joining us!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro - the leading executive search firm, for start up and scale up insurtechs.
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We have a really great conversation out on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast this week - I was joined by Mylo’s CEO and Founder David Embry for a discussion all about small business coverage, underserved markets and his story of growing an ‘insurtech’ before the term insurtech existed…
Find out about all that and more in this episode, here are some of the highlights..
🎙 David’s experience building and scaling Mylo, the ‘independent broker insurtech’ : from launching with backing from Lockton, to their funding journey and investment from Guggneheim Partners
🎙 Being an early adopter of digitisation and the challenges and rewards of being a pioneering insurtech
🎙 Providing coverage for small businesses and why this market is underserved…Is there a lack of knowledge as to what insurance SME’s need?
🎙 Finally we discuss whats next for the Mylo team..growth, expansion and more
Hope you all enjoy this one as much as I did - thank you David for joining me
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series on The Leadership on Insurance Podcast
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Good morning and welcome to the next episode of The Emerging Tech Sereies on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where our eetch expert, Gavin Savage is joined by Loris Candylaftis, Founder & Head Of Technology at Loro Inusrtech
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Welcome to the next episode of FinPro's podcast where this week we release our Interview with Will Ross, CEO & Co-Founder of Federato
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where our eetch expert, Gavin Savage is joined by Eyal Bar-Noy , VP of Engineering and GM at Atidot
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Another great episode going live on the pod today - this week I’m joined by Paul Monasterio, CEO & Co-Founder of Kalepa to discuss AI & how they are enabling insurers to bind with confidence.
We love talking about innovation on this podcast, and this episode is just that…
🎙 Our conversation covers the origin of Kalepa, their mission & defining a workbench
🎙 We look at the origin story of Kalepa and how the team came together (Shout out Paul’s other co-founder Daniel Hillman, the Kalepa team & Chris D'Angelo for helping us put this conversation together)
🎙 We discuss how important is it to talk in a language your target market understands - speak insurance to insurance people..!
🎙 We talk about AI - what is hype vs reality in AI conversation when it comes to insurance?
🎙 We delve into regulation - how can regulation be expected to cope – what would your advice to regulators be?
🎙 We look at Paul’s prediction that the insurers who reap the biggest benefits from LLMs in the next five years will be those who adopt effective augmentation strategies, not automation strategies... why is this?
🎙 Finally we discuss how insurers that are not tech pioneers set themselves up for success in the AI age
Hope you all enjoy this one - this was a particularly insightful one - thank you Paul for joining me - catch our conversation via links in the comments below 👇
For more on this Kalepa also have a great article on their website about the impact of ChatGPT and LLMs on underwriting - give it a read if you have some time spare - it's a good one
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast where our eetch expert, Gavin Savage is joined by Martjin Rutten, CTO of Insify.
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Hello and welcome o the next episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast with this week's guests Natalia Dorgman, CEO & Co-Founder & James Kench, Head of Insurance at Kita
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series where our host Gavin Savage is joined by Al Robertson, CTO of ICE Insuretech.
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We are sharing a very exciting episode on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast today. We talk about innovation a lot on this podcast, often to start up and scale up insurtechs, but Kennedys brings a new perspective to insurtech innovation.
In this episode I am joined by Richard West who wears many hats; Partner at Kennedys, a leading global insurance legal service provider. Richard is the Global Head of Liability Defence and most importantly for this conversation, Head of Client Innovation.
Our conversation covers all things innovation in law - Why innovate in law? What does that look like, both internally and externally? And what role does Kennedys play within the insurance innovation ecosystem?
🎙 We look at the need for differentiation and client innovation - the launch of Kennedys IQ in 2022, identifying emerging risks and the importance of providing insights and more certainty for the insurance industry
🎙 We discuss Richard idea of helping clients use lawyers less - Lawyers are a distress purchase, used at moments of crisis - how can we evolve this?
🎙 We talk about the resistance to the idea to become less dependent on lawyers - Are you innovating yourself out of revenue? Will innovation engineer human lawyers out of the process?
🎙 We delve into AI - to what extent is it an opportunity or a threat? Will this force the legal profession to evolve again?
🎙 We examine the link between lawyers and trust, and how this will evolve with AI - people still want humans - but will start to see less reliance on humans for advice? When will society tolerate a robot performing surgery?
🎙 Finally we look at what’s on the horizon for Richard and his team; scaling the IQ offering, smart projects launch and more! Watch this space!
Hope you all enjoy this one - this was a particularly insightful one - thank you Richard for joining me
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Emerging Tech Series where our host Gavin Savage is joined by Jezen Thomas, Co-Founder & CTO of Supercede.
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This episode dive's into all things #Tech, #ESG & Engineering #Culture.
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Good morning and welcome back to episode 5 of The Emerging Tech Series on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast
Thank you to everyone who has tuned into last week’s episode with Jason Bingham from Stubben Edge
Tune in to this week's episode where our tech expert Gavin Savage is joined by Dipti Dhawan to discuss Omnis innovative approach to #insurance.
This episode dive's into all things #Tech #AI & #Leadership.
👉 They discuss Omnius’ series A raise and the turbulent investment landscape
👉 Dipti and Gavin discuss AI and the changing perspectives on such developments - is AI, or was AI considered taboo within insurance?
👉 They get into Dipti’s background and her non-traditional route to a VP of Engineering role
👉 Finally, they discuss culture, Omnius’ remote first team and culture of championing autonomy at all levels
We loved this one, a truly inspiring discussion this week - thank you Dipti for joining us
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This episode dive's into all things #Tech, #ESG & Engineering #Culture. They discuss all things from the cultural shift towards lean tech teams and how this impacts culture to ho Hometree's #decarbonisation initiatives & the insurance industry's responsibility to be more #sustainable.
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Good morning and welcome to a very special episode on Thee Leadership In Insurance Podcast where we are sharing our live recording of the live discussion from ITC DIA Barcelona last week.
The Workforce of the Future : How Innovation, Diversity & the War for Talent Go Hand in Hand : with Pamela Thomson-Hall, Alan De Bruyne & Marguerite Soeteman-Reijnen
I’m excited to announce the release of a particularly special episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast today…
Last week we were lucky enough to welcome, Instanda’s CEO and Co-Founder, Tim Hardcastle into FinPro. towers to record a live episode all about #entrepreneurship. Many of you will know Tim and the Instanda team, they’ve been on our podcast guest hit list for a while now so we’re glad the day has come!
For each episode, we typically plan out the episode structure prior to the recording (previous guests, you’ll know the process!) We delve into each founder’s unique view on the #insurtech landscape and how their company are contributing to the #insurance innovation ecosystem.
We try and maintain a candid nature while also (mostly!) sticking to script - this episode was slightly different… Tim is a natural presenter and our conversation evolved into a much richer and wider discussion around the mindsets of founders and what it takes to be an #entrepreneur.
Tim also flipped the interviewer / interviewee role on me and asked about my career as an entrepreneur. We discussed what motivates people to start their own business, is it restlessness? the need to make your own path? a mid-life crisis?
We discussed #funding and #bootstrapping and Tim’s choices to take the path less trodden. The Instanda team bootstrapped for five years and we get into the lessons learnt from this - the importance of ‘backing yourself with your own sweat capital and personal capital’ as he puts it - how deep do you learn those lessons if you don’t have as much at stake?
This conversation was a really fun one, you’ll hear the laughter throughout - thank you Tim joining me - and we’ve got those pre-planned questions to cover so you’ll have to come back soon!
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We are sharing a really great episode on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast today. I sat down with Aviad Pinkovezky, President at First Connect, a Hippo Insurance company to discuss all things from Hippo’s story, to acquiring First Connect and beyond.
Acquired by Hippo in 2020, First Connect is a digital platform that helps independent insurance agents access carriers and insurtechs they may not otherwise reach on their own.
Aviad and I discuss a whole host of topics (and could have spoken for much longer!) digging into Aviad’s background in product, to the growth of Hippo, to why partner and the opportunities that lie in collaboration. Here are some of the highlights…
👉 As someone from the product side of technology - how do you think perception of insurance as an employment destination for product and tech people has evolved over time?
👉 The Insurtech landscape from a wider lense - What have been the biggest improvements of insurance customer experience in the time you’ve been at hippo? What part has product played in that?
👉 First Connect Acquisition - What the rational? What’s the opportunity you saw? Why this route as opposed to doubling down on the existing success you have?
👉 First Connect on a personal level - does it feel like a start up? Does it need to?
👉 Collaboration in the Insurance industry, what have you learnt? How can we empace this more?
👉 & Finally, what’s next for First Connect?
Thank you Aviad for your time, it was great to speak to you!
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Well its a big week for #insurtech and The Leadership In Insurance Podcast... we are releasing an episode every day this week for our new #MENAInsights series
At the end of May I was invited by Lars Gehrmann and the incredible team at QIC Digital Venture Partners to come out to Doha for their #MENA insurtech summit to report on the innovation taking place in the region.
I'm lucky enough to travel to lots of insurtech events globally, and I'd say that the Doha event has been a true highlight so far. From sand dune surfing to podcasting, the energy of the whole event was inspiring.
So we're excited to release episode one in our five part #MENAInsights series where I was joined by...
👉 Lars Gehrmann, Group Chief Digital Officer, QIC Digital Venture Partners
👉 Shwetank Verma, Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Leo Capital
👉 Markus Lampinen, CEO & Co-Founder
Prifina - Liberty. Equality. Data.
👉 Tunde Salako, Co-Founder, Hadiel Health Coop &
Managing Partner, Africa Insurtech Lab
Hope you enjoy this episode - it was a really fun one - we're releasing an episode every day this week so stay tuned for episode two coming out tomorrow... 🎧
🚨 Links in the comments below 🚨
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Nico Stainfeld, Partner at Foundation Capital.
Nico is an early-stage investment expert from the team at Foundation Capital, who since 1995 have been leading the way in fintech, enterprise, and consumer investments. Their tag line 'building companies is in our bones' summarises just that and these values are clear throughout this conversation.
We discuss a whole host of topics (and could have spoken for much longer!) but here are some of the highlights...
- Total early-stage focus - the value of honing in & the rarity of 'staying in your lane'
- Foundations 1+1+3 approach
- How many firms actually make it past their first fund?
- 'The Emperor Has No Tech' as Nico puts it - Why the Insurance Industry Desperately Needs Startups
- If they are not going to spend the money, then they need to bring on board the start-ups
- There is no bad risk, only bad premium
- Do we need more of a sense of urgency?
- 2023 insurtech landscape - Profitability is not for losers anymore!
- Technology was meant to transform the insurance industry but it hasn’t - why?
- Embedded solutions and buying behaviour - is there trust?
- Next-generation risk needs next-generation data
- You're not still doing insurtech investing, are you?
- Insurtech locals vs. tourists?
- What's next for insurtech?
Thank you Nico for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Sharing a rather special episode on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast this week, with one of our favourite podcasting guests. It’s not often that we invite people back on pod, so when we do you know it’s a good one…
This week we welcome back Bryan Falchuk for a conversation all about #collaboration, to celebrate the release of his new book, ‘The Future of Insurance : Volume III. The Collaborators’.
Bryan is one of the thought leaders I truly admire in this space. Inspired by the findings of the Insurance Collaboration Index, Bryan and David Gritz of InsurTech NY collaborated on this project to help the industry as we strive to innovate and evolve.
In this episode we touch on some of the broader themes explored in the book...
👉 How do we get better at collaboration? What could we achieve if we truly embraced this?
👉 How do we innovate and collaborate in an inherently risk averse environment? & How do we work around that?
👉 Do we reward risk enough? In Insurance no new book will ever perform well - can we really push boundaries if this is how the industry operates?
I really enjoyed this one - and thank you Bryan for joining me to share some of the book's findings.
If you enjoyed this conversation (which I’m sure you will!), you’ll be sure to enjoy the book, which expands on this podcast in much more detail, & of course, got to mention the lovely forward by Sabine VanderLinden.
‘The Future of Insurance : Volume III. The Collaborators' is available on 8th of June 2023 - Congratulations once again Bryan & David -
For more info and to pre-order or buy the book: http://future-of-insurance.com/3
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Maya Prosor, Chief Business Officer at Lemonade.
- Lemonade has expanded into new markets and product lines since its founding. How do you decide which areas to enter, and what are your criteria for success in these ventures?
- Can you discuss Lemonade's approach to customer acquisition and retention, and how it has evolved over time?
- You led heavily with the social impact side of the business – do you have a measure on how this has affected customer acquisition – I'm interested to see how this trended over Covid lockdown time?
- Looking ahead, what are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities you see for Lemonade in the next 5-10 years, and how do you plan to address them?
- You have a bot named after you? Is that the ultimate staff retention tool, your own chat bot?
- Have you put any thought into how tools such as Chat GPT might impact your competitive advantage? Does it allow the insurance world to supercharge its CX – how will lemonade be addressing that?
- You have obviously been through a hugely evolving business environment – large investment round, IPO, Post IPO challenges – How does Lemonade maintain a strong sense of culture and employee brand through such a dynamic period of time?
Thank you Maya for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to this week's episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast - we're back with the 3rd episode in the #VCInsights Series recorded live from the InsurTech NY Spring Conference.
The #VCInsights series is quickly becoming my favourite series of the pod. In this episode, I was lucky enough to sit down with five more of the leading VC's and CVC's to get their insight on the current state of play in the insurtech scene.
Tune into part two of this feature to hear from Douglas Roth, from CI Ventures, Dominique Roudaut from MS&AD Ventures , Brian Gong from Cameron Ventures, Veronica Gabriele from Munich Re Ventures & Jonathan Crystal from Crystal Venture Partners.
Thank you all for joining me for this - another fun one to record 🎧
& a special thanks to the InsurTech NY team for putting on a brilliant event & making this episode happen 🚀 David Gritz Tony L. Bryan Falchuk.
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Trent Brown CEO of Australia-based Knightcorp.
As well as sharing a truly inspiring story of insurance innovation, Trent also shares a lot of insight that I will take forward into my own business. Do give this one a listen, I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Here are some of the highlights…
- Creating an agile and innovative culture with a customer-centric ethos
- What defines an insurtech? Technologically native insurance businesses vs. insurance SaaS
- Knightcorp’s mission to do things differently in an inherently non-traditional environment
- Change is who then what - we need people to drive change
- How do we augment the process not replace?
- Who is the true customer?
- To change broking you need to change the whole ecosystem
- People are looking for a better experience, at a point they are going to demand it
- ‘First who then what’ - Change is a people action, once you have the people right, the rest falls into place
- Building loyalty into the culture and fostering a growth mindset, not a replacement mindset
- Insurance has a replacement mindset - we replace like for like - that inhibits growth. Growth democratizes influence and power in organizations
- Balance is key to building a team - talent beats experience but you need experience in your team. Promote talent not tenure
- regulation and 3rd parties in the broking ecosystems are the inhibitors to growth - we cant evolve beyond our carrier partners but that is not an excuse to stand still
Thank you Trent for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Roy Mill, CEO of Joshu.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Roy's background, from working at Ancestry then moving into insurtech just five years ago at At-Bay, to becoming an insurtech start-up founder…
- What has that journey been like? What inspired the decision to start Joshu?
- How has each experience informed your role as a founder? & What are the key lessons you’ve learnt along the way?
- Launching in January 2020 – how did Covid impact your development journey? Did it cause you to pivot?
- Joshu's fund raising journey in January 2021) You had a ringside seat in a hyper-growth business that went through several funding rounds, what’s it like now leading a business through that process yourself? Were there any surprises in that experience?
- Your solution offers insurance carriers and MGAs a full suite of digital tools needed to bring their commercial insurance business online. Innovation is imperative to what you provide, how do you go about building a team and culture at Joshu that fosters this?
- We talk a lot about the waves of insurtech, what do you think the next wave will be?
Thank you Roy for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Roy Mill, CEO of Joshu.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Roy's background, from working at Ancestry then moving into insurtech just five years ago at At-Bay, to becoming an insurtech start-up founder…
- What has that journey been like? What inspired the decision to start Joshu?
- How has each experience informed your role as a founder? & What are the key lessons you’ve learnt along the way?
- Launching in January 2020 – how did Covid impact your development journey? Did it cause you to pivot?
- Joshu's fund raising journey in January 2021) You had a ringside seat in a hyper-growth business that went through several funding rounds, what’s it like now leading a business through that process yourself? Were there any surprises in that experience?
- Your solution offers insurance carriers and MGAs a full suite of digital tools needed to bring their commercial insurance business online. Innovation is imperative to what you provide, how do you go about building a team and culture at Joshu that fosters this?
- We talk a lot about the waves of insurtech, what do you think the next wave will be?
Thank you Roy for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Dan Woods, CEO of Socotra.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Revolutionising core systems
- Technology stacks within incumbents & core system road blocks
- Misinformation in legacy systems
- Making chances for efficiency and how that will impact company culture
- 2017 & the cultural shift towards cloud systems
- Risk profiles shifting
- How the insurance industry chooses the low risk path
- How cloud is now seen as the safer option
- How true cloud can revolutionize innovation
- ITC & Socotra's new app market place
Thank you Dan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Dan Woods, CEO of Socotra.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Revolutionising core systems
- Technology stacks within incumbents & core system road blocks
- Misinformation in legacy systems
- Making chances for efficiency and how that will impact company culture
- 2017 & the cultural shift towards cloud systems
- Risk profiles shifting
- How the insurance industry chooses the low risk path
- How cloud is now seen as the safer option
- How true cloud can revolutionize innovation
- ITC & Socotra's new app market place
Thank you Dan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matt Connolly, CEO of Sønr.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What was the idea behind Sønr and how did it come about? Why insurtech, what drew you to insurtech in 2015?
- What have you learned from this experience?
- How have the changes in the insurtech market in recent years shaped what you are doing at Sønr today?
- You work with some major insurance players - how does the dynamic work across different businesses and where does it work best?
- The Insurtech 100
- When ‘scouting innovation’ what are you looking for?
- When collating the insurtech 100 what stands out to you?
- How do you identify the real game changers even if they are at an early stage?
- What are you most excited for the next insurtech 100?
- Tuesday
- What is Tuesday and what prompted you to create the platform?
- Whats next for Sønr? Expanding, Adding attentional products?
Thank you Matt for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matt Connolly, CEO of Sønr.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What was the idea behind Sønr and how did it come about? Why insurtech, what drew you to insurtech in 2015?
- What have you learned from this experience?
- How have the changes in the insurtech market in recent years shaped what you are doing at Sønr today?
- You work with some major insurance players - how does the dynamic work across different businesses and where does it work best?
- The Insurtech 100
- When ‘scouting innovation’ what are you looking for?
- When collating the insurtech 100 what stands out to you?
- How do you identify the real game changers even if they are at an early stage?
- What are you most excited for the next insurtech 100?
- Tuesday
- What is Tuesday and what prompted you to create the platform?
- Whats next for Sønr? Expanding, Adding attentional products?
Thank you Matt for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Upasana Unni, CCO at Sayata.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What does innovation mean for you?
- Sayata's funding journey
- Upasana's experience making the move into insurtech
- How has your McKinsey background influenced your role in the c-suite of an Insurtech start up?
- Many large insurers are working with management consultancies on their innovation – as someone who worked in that field do you think this is the best approach? What are the weaknesses of this?
- As someone who has made the transition into insurtech, how can we continue to encourage more talent into the industry?
- The importance of a humanising our working relationships
- Sayata has a strong female leadership team, what can we do to encourage more women into these roles?
Thank you Upasana for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Maria Enrica Angelone, CEO of Wallife.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Staying ahead when insuring against emerging and unknown risks
- The unique challenges of insuring genetic manipulation and biohacking
- How do you go about building a team and culture at Wallife that fosters innovation?
- Technology poses different risks to different generations.. How important is it to consider diverse age ranges when assessing such risks?
- How do you create an interest for a new product and get capacity?
- You have recently raised your series A round, one of the largest funding rounds in the European insurtech space, what was this journey like?
- Have you seen an uptake in demand since the world has shifted towards remote?
- You have research first, create insurance products second but without the vanilla/run of the mill products to drive consistent income – how do you balance that challenge?
- How important will collaboration with third party tech businesses – such as advanced sensor data, biometric data – are there any exciting developments external that you are keeping an eye on?
Thank you Maria for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Brian McLoughlin & Kevin McLoughlin, Partners & Co-Founders, MTech Capital
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
Is it circumstance or strategic that one of you is based stateside and one of you is based in the UK?
How important are networks and the consensus of your networks when it comes to investing?
You have an ESG policy on your website ‘diversity goes beyond optics’ - What role does venture play in driving de&I agenda within its portfolios and in practical terms, what do you do to make this happen?
How do you differentiate yourself as a venture capital firm?
Has your thesis changed in the past 12 months?
Geographically, has there been a shift in the distribution in your deployment of capital?
Is the price correction that we’ve seen on the larger insurtech stocks a positive thing for insurtech specific funds such as mtech capital?
Given the state of the market, will we see more later-stage capital for m&a activity?
Thank you Brian & Kevin for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Tiago Prado, Co-Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BRZ Insurance the Boston-based start-up helping to build the next generation of financial services for Latinx in the US.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Tiago's journey founding BRZ
- Focusing on the underserved Latinx community that make up 18% of the population
- Where does a new product start and finish?
- How does this thinking play out into your company culture and hiring strategy?
- How do you tackle hiring experienced talent when there is an underrepresentation of talent that fits your mission?
- Why do you think the incumbent industry sees diversity as a challenge as opposed to an opportunity?
- Are there parallel problems in other industries, such as other wider finical services? Where is insurance on this journey?
- Is this a global issue or something unique to the US?
- Is the success of BRZ a result of the increasing economic power the latinx community
- Are we living society where we demand more products that are more representative of our needs?
Thank you Tiago for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Chris Cheatham, Product Evangelist at Bold Penguin.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Being known as the “Luke Skywalker of Insurance Policies” & the story behind the name
- Which problem does Bold Penguin solve?
- Chris' background as the former CEO of RiskGenius
- BoldPenguin acquiring RiskGenius
- Bold Penguin was acquired by American Family in 2021
- Did you find any pushback from commercial carriers?
- What does Bold Penguin do for agents?
- Why do you think independent agents have struggled to move quickly on insurance technology?
- What will be the next wave of insurtech?
Thank you Chris for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by no other than Bruce Carnegie Brown, Chairman at Lloyd's of London.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What does innovation mean to you?
- What forms does it take in insurance?
- How is that different to banking/other sectors?
- How is Lloyd’s involved in innovation
- for the insurance sector, and how have you innovated to stay relevant?
- When it comes to ESG initiatives, Lloyd’s has the power to set the tone for the industry to follow..
- Do you think you’ve been brave enough in how you approach them?
- How are you approaching DE&I initiatives?
- What is currently being done at Lloyd’s, and what still needs to change?
- What role does innovation play in supporting those goals?
- What are the macro challenges of attracting new talent into the industry?
- When it comes to innovation, are we still falling into the trap of only being reactive?
- Do we need to go further to stay ahead?
Thank you Bruce for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Phil Reynolds, CEO of DevStride & Chairman of BriteCore
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- When did you realise it was the right time for you to step away from the CEO role?
- What did you learn about fund raising that they don’t teach you in the text books?
- What’s the best piece of advice you would give a start-up founder?
- What was the best piece of advice you personally received?
- How do you manage culture as a business grows and scales? Can you?
- Knowing what you know now – what do you look for in a funding partner?
- You have launched your next venture – what are you doing differently that other people might not think of?
Thank you Phil for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast. We are sharing an exciting episode this week, our second panel episode in our new monthly series...for July we bring you 'The Leadership In Insurance Product Special'.
We are lucky enough to be joined by a panel of some of the most prominent product leaders in insurtech...
🎙 Richard Giaannetti - Head of Product, Zego
🎙 Monique Nelson - VP Product, Highwing
🎙 Colleen Wells - Chief Strategy Officer, Veruna
This episode takes a deep dive into all things product, discussing how to scale both product and product teams, the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires, the core challenge in tech-driven businesses and the advice and lessons they have learned throughout their journey leading product teams.
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Ryan Sachtjen, CEO &. Co-Founder, Threeflow.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Benefits and the post covid world
- The shift towards working from home and its impact on the benefits space
- The changing demand in a post covid market
- How has ThreeFlow evolved thier products because of this?
- How do you maintain culture in a rapidly scaling business?
- Changed name from WatchTower benefits - why are names important?
- What was the shift from the insurance industry to tech startup founder like?
- Why do you think the insurance industry has generally been underserved by tech?
- How do you get people to adapt to new tools/processes?
- Interoperability is a popular topic in other industries like healthcare, what role does it play in the world of insurance?
Thank you Ryan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Caribou Honig, Partner, Semper Virens VC.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What Macro trends are interesting to you in the Insurtech space at present?
- The different “flavors” of entrepreneur
- Starting up an events business
- How have investor's profiles changed?
- What do you zero in on when making an investment decision? People? Product? Other?
- 'Legacy culture vs legacy technology'
- What is actually standing in the way of change
- Making the move into insurance without an insurance background
- Being one of the first adopters of insurtech
- What attracted you to insurtech in those early stages?
- What's next for insurance?
Thank you Caribou for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Florian Graillot, Founding Partner at Astorya VC
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What are the key trends dominating Europe right now?
- How do you decide what your portfolio should look like? What do you look for specifically?
- How does the European market differ from that in the us?
- What are the most exciting innovations you’ve seen lately?
- What will be the next ‘wave’ of InsurTech?
Thank you Florian for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Rotem Iram, CEO & Founder of At-Bay.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What was the formation thesis for At-Bay?
- What was the problem you saw that you wanted to solve? What is it that’s disruptive about your business?
- Where are you on your journey today?
- What was the most surprising thing you learned getting to this point?
- What has been the most challenging and what changed throughout this journey?
- Have you evolved your offering?
- What did you get wrong - was it right thesis, wrong application?
- What excites you most about the future of your business and the industry?
Thank you Rotem for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast. We are sharing an exciting on this week, our first panel episode in our new monthly series. This episode brings together some thought leaders in InsurTech for a special edition panel episode to discuss the latest InsurTech trends. In this episode, we will look back at the trend predictions made at the start of year, discuss their accuracy and what we’ve seen so far, as well going into what’s still to come.
Our panelists:
- Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, CEO, Tapoly
- Mark McDonald, Head of Strategy, Atlus LTD
- Matt Connolly, CEO, Sonr
- David Fontain, CEO , Foresight
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Sten Saar, CEO of Zego.
Zego is a commercial motor insurance provider that powers opportunities for businesses, from entire fleets of vehicles to self-employed drivers and riders. It combines best-in-class technology with sophisticated data sources to offer insurance products that save businesses time and money. Since its inception, Zego has believed that the problem with traditional insurance is that it holds businesses back. It’s too expensive and time consuming, and it no longer suits businesses who use vehicles to earn money. Zego’s products represent a solution to this problem for businesses based across the UK, Europe and beyond.
In this episode Sten and podcast host, Alex Bond look to the future of insurance and discuss Zego's vision for the future of mobility going into a wide range of topics such as:
- Why is it important to future think for insurers?
- Regulation seems to be the great restriction on that vision - what part can the insurance industry do to help that vision a reality
- With the complexity of risk associated with anonymous vehicles do you think we will see a rise in internal risk solutions such as Mercedes announcing its insurance for autonomous vehicles - What can insurance do to continue its relevance when we see these types of developments?
- This vision of the future isn't new (blade runner came out in the 80s!) but it does feel more tangible, do you think tech is catching up to culture?
- How important do you think art and culture are to innovation?
- Do you think insurance as an industry should be doing more to encourage a move sway from fossil fuels? If it can't be insured it would stop...
Thank you Sten for your time, it was great to speak to you!
You can take a further look at Zego's2040 vision for the future of mobility at zego.com/2040
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Mauro Levi D'Ancona, CEO & Co-Founder, 180° Insurance.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- How did your founding team come together and what was that journey like?
- You have a manifesto of ‘digital, diverse and plural’ what does that mean in practical terms?
- How does your ‘insurance as a service’ model work?
- You started out in October 2020 and have grown rapidly since then, securing the largest seed round for an inusrtech in Latin America , how has that journey been?
- Why do you think latin America has such an under-penetrated market?
- What opportunities have partnerships provided for you?
Thank you Mauro for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Robert Kozikowski, Chief Product Officer at Tensorflight.
Founded by ex-Google and ex-Microsoft engineers, Tensorflight is a leader in secure, ethical use of property data and artificial intelligence to make commercial property insurance fair and accessible.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What is your personal mission that led you to found Tensorflight?
- How did the founding team come together?
- Providing insurance companies with actionable insights from aerial and street view imagery
- Using building records, geospatial imagery, and machine learning algorithms to help underwriters with risk assessment
- Being the first company to provide property data on-demand and to integrate different imagery sources
- The massive market opportunity in computer vision
- What do you think are the biggest opportunities in insurance right now?
- How AI and computer vision are improving the previous manual in-person property inspection process
- How do you think this industry will evolve in the next 3 to 5 years?
- What are other much-needed automations in this space?
Thank you Robert for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Noam Shapira, Co-founder and President at Pattern insurance.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Embedded insurance being buzz term on 2022
- How do you differentiate yourself in a market that has so much investment?
- Many embedded solutions appear to be built technology first – do you think this is where some of the market gaps appear? Or is it something else?
- What is driving the rise in embedded insurance?
- How much of a threat does embedded insurance pose to the traditional insurance market?
- How are customers are actually making decisions about purchasing insurance?
- How should customer journeys be done to really "embed insurance”?
Thank you Noam for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Joseph D'Souza, CEO and Founder of Pronavigator.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Being the 'Google of Insurance'
- And what does that mean in practical terms?
- How does your product Sage work?
- The key trends we are seeing in 2022
- How do these trends relate to hiring challenges, technology & AI?
- What’s going on with AI in insurance?
- What is Pronavigator doing with AI?
- How is Knowledge Management critical for insurance and what role does it play?
- How can technology help boost employee productivity and improve customer satisfaction?
- How does a remote working environment accelerate this?
- Addressing the technology gap
- Are we seeing much innovation in AI and are there any applications that you’re yet to see using AI?
Thank you Joseph for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Douglas Ver Mulm, CEO and Co-Founder of Stable Insurance a distribution and analytics platform for mobility that helps rideshare, carshare, and delivery vehicle owners more efficiently and profitably run their business.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- How did your founding team come together and what was that journey like?
- Innovation starts in leadership, how do you approach this at stable?
- ‘Insurance as a social good?’ how important is hiring the right personality types when providing a social good?
- Doug’s background in law
- What made you make the move into insurance?
- What have you brought from that experience to your team at stable?
- What opportunities have partnerships provided for you?
- Has there needed to be a cultural shift for customers to be more comfortable with collecting behavioural based data?
- What’s next for stable?
Thank you Doug for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Manish Bhatt, CEO & Co-Founder, Plum Life.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Agents have had to adapt the ways in which they sell, from a face-to-face interaction to a remote setting
- How has this cultural shift impacted the market?
- How has your direct to consumer experience helped you?
- Has technology actually made people want insurance? What role does the play?
- How does analytics help improve sales for the broker
- I think we are in the 3rd wave of Insurtech – working with the market rather than disrupting/evolving – would you agree?
- Do you think this says something about the founders of today's Insurtechs
- Previous guests have said the broker is the only true customer of insurance – do you think that’s fair?
- Have we been customer-centric enough?
Thank you Manish for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by James Benham, CEO of JBKnowledge. We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
How important do you think insurance domain knowledge is important to Insurtech businesses? Do we overplay the need for this experience when hiring? How smart compliance digitises and streamlines the compliance process As we move towards more open information sharing, how will compliance offering evolve? Do you think the general public would be surprised how manual this process is? Will the lack of industry wide collaboration hold this back? Will those who hold back their data be left behind? Does it surprise you that more investment hasn’t been made with claims tech? How far can we go with claims tech? Is the ultimate goal to have full automation on as many classes of business as possible? Do you feel there are still certain circumstances where the “white glove” approach is better even if not faster? Will claims service be an added cost of insurance – could we go that far? How much is what you do fixing vs future building? How much do you see integrating new tech vs building tech?
Thank you James for your time, it was great to speak to you! This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space. Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Mark Scafaro, CEO and Co-Founder of 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. He is an entrepreneur who is passionate about overhauling the outdated life insurance process by enabling distributors and valued partners to white-label and distribute its digital life insurance products. Prior to Afficiency, Scafaro previously worked at Morgan Stanley, American Express and MetLife.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- The lag in distribution of embedded solutions in the life insurance space
- Why has this sector been so slow to digitise?
- What are the most common challenges you find when working with distribution partners?
- How can they be better set up to work with you?
- How are you able to offer such speed in launching new products?
- How much of the product design come from the carrier?
- How does the new product design process work when working with a carrier?
- Overcoming obstacles
- How do you personally tackle adversity?
- What do you look for in carrier partners?
- Did you or would you consider becoming a full stack insurer with an embedded distribution?
Thank you Mark for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Megan Bingham-Walker, CEO and Co-Founder of Anansi the automated insurance platform for global businesses providing seamless integration, automated claims, zero admin solutions.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- How claims is key to having an excellent experience in insurance
- Partnerships and the opportunities they offer
- Building a remote team
- The importance of having strong company values
- How do you look at diversity and inclusion at Anansi?
- Anansi’s embedded insurance model
Thank you Megan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Alex Maffeo CEO of Boost.
Boost powers digital insurance programs for innovators across all industries. Their customers are leading technology companies and game changing startups that want to offer white-labeled insurance products tailored to their users’ needs. Their infrastructure-as-a-service (“IaaS”) makes it simple to monetize the insurance vertical by packaging all the back-end components needed to build, launch, and manage a program – including ‘A’-rated paper, dedicated risk capacity, and claims administration – all powered programmatically by thier API-driven policy admin system. Technically, they're a licensed managing general agency. They're just redefining what that means.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Embedded Insurance being the insurtech theme of 2022
- Where have you had most success in your business?
- ‘Create your own’ product - what are the limitations from your capacity on what you can create? Any unusual products that you have been asked to create/develop?
- What is Boost’s team like?
- How much in-house Insurance support do you have?
- How do you create the right culture balance because fast moving tech and established insurance teams have a very different feel?
- Why do you feel now is the time when embedded solutions have exploded?
- Partnerships
- What is it about your solution that has attracted such marquee names?
- Alex’s investment background
- What’s your take on the valuations we have seen in the Insurtech space?
- The fall of the largest InsTech stock
- Are the more traditional Insurance carriers and businesses undervalued?
- As an insurtech veteran, what is interesting you in the space?
Thank you Alex for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Stephen Leguillon, CEO of Seyna, the all-in-one platform for insurance brokers who provide tailored insurance products and software tools to grow brokerage businesses.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- How can we make sure that insurance is an enabler of progress?
- Seynas founding team How did you come together & what was that journey like?
- What problems and concerns have you noticed people have in the industry?
- Coming from a leadership role, where do you put your attention?
- We have seen a cultural shift to the value add being put on customer experience over product, have you seen this?
- This is a hard transition for the industry, what are the implications of that?
- How have you found being in this industry with a non-tech background?
- Traditional insurance relies on in-house software whereas many other industries are comfortable with using 3rd party software, where do you think this resistance comes from?
Thank you Stephen for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matan Slagter, CEO of Armadillo, the tech-enabled, subscription-based home warranty provider for homeowners and landlords, who are pioneers in the new age of home warranty.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Matan's insurance career & why warranty?
- Is t surprising that the warranty market has only 4% penetration when we spend an increasing amount on technology in our homes?
- What do you think this says about our relationship with insurance?
- Do we need to help people fall in love with insurance?
- Do they not see its value because we haven’t shown them what that truly is?
- Is insurance lacking clarity of message and communication?
- Being 'tech forward'
- Are you an Insurtech or something else?
- Armadillo's distribution model
- Will you narrow distribution over time?
- Why was now the right time to launch?
- How did Covid impact Armadillo's plans?
- How did it impact the funding round?
- You took on outside funding – at what stage had you taken the business before you did so?
Thank you Matan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Benjamin Piening, Honeycomb Insurance's Chief Underwriting Officer.
Honeycomb provide reinvented real estate insurance with better coverage in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost, their unique product leverages advanced Artificial Intelligence and computer-vision to completely reinvent real-estate insurance.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What does being ‘People first, tech driven’ practically mean for you as Chief Underwriting Officer?
- Are technology and people complementing or conflicting forces?
- Technology helps achieve a means to an end – People breathe life into technology
- People are the originators of thought, ideas, innovation
- Are technology and people mutually exclusive?
- The Inspector app
- From an insurance perspective what’s unique about the product - or is it the delivery/tech that makes it unique?
- Being underwriting driven
- Do investors look at underwriting?
- Long term partnerships
- Why are we still operating with year to year contracts?
Thank you Benjamin for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Vinodkumar Iyer, CEO of iNube, the leading provider of digital insurance solutions for the global insurance industry.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Offering a whole insurance product suite
- Which area has the most demand?
- How this has changed over the last 2 years?
- Has the pandemic had an impact on businesses as Insurers push for more digital solutions?
- How important is technology to be consumer first?
- How far can the technology go?
- Could we have a fully automated insurer? Should we?
- How does regulation impact your ability to innovate?
Thank you Vinodkumar for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, CEO of Tapoly. Tapoly is the award-winning Insurtech providing on-demand business insurance for SMEs and freelancers, they provide an extensive list of insurance types to cover your business for a day, a year, or anything in between as well as offering a SAAS solution for corporates wishing to rapidly deploy their own white-labelled insurance schemes. We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
From a practical perspective is the insurance industry set up to serve small businesses? Innovation starts in leadership, how do you approach this at Tapoly? ‘Insurance as a social good?’ How important is hiring the right personality types when providing a social good and selling trust? Is there ever a clash between morals and motives in insurance? How important is it to acknowledge the needs of different personality types, more introverted people for example, when leading a team? What are the practical measures you put in place to lead and support your team in a remote setting? How does this impact the funding experience for women? Men are naturally more inclined to overestimate their projections, should we evaluate female-founded pitches in a different way? Issues around networking, inherently male dynamic, what is the knock-on impact for women? (issues around finding women outside of the network)
Thank you Janthana for your time, it was great to speak to you! This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space. Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Simon Bentholm, Chief Customer Officer at Penni.io.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Embedded insurance being the buzz term of 2022 already
- How do you differentiate yourself in a market that has so much investment?
- Many embedded solutions appear to be built technology first
- Do you think this is where some of the market gaps appear? Or is it something else?
- What is driving the rise in embedded insurance?
- How much of a threat does embedded insurance pose to the traditional insurance market?
- How are customers are actually making decisions about purchasing insurance?
- How should customer journeys be done to really "embed insurance”?
- The solution is in scalability, and how do you create software that enables that?
Thank you Simon for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Alex Bargmann, Pathpoint's CEO and Co-Founder & Ralph Blust, Pathpoint's President and CRO.
Pathpoint is the insurtech on a mission to make it faster and easier for retail agents to get great E&S coverage options. Pathpoint allows you to quote and bind coverage for your small business clients online with one streamlined submission and receive multiple bindable quotes for your clients in minutes, not days.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Being an advocate for insurtech in the 90s before it even was insurtech
- How can we address the client's needs using technology?
- Striving for efficiency both in the user experience and the operational experience
- Revolutionizing the way we integrate with carriers
- Embracing technology
- Marrying together the backgrounds in technological knowledge and insurance experience
- How has technology changed how agents place accounts today compared to 5 years ago?
- Looking at the wholesale distribution channel from the carrier perspective
- The difficulty in encouraging trading partners to utilise technology
- The self-service revolution
- Why has this revolution in E&S lagged behind that of other areas?
- The lack of connectivity in the wholesale marketplace
Thank you Alex and Ralph for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by LeX Tan, CEO and Co-Founder of MotionsCloud.
MotionsCloud helps property & vehicle inspection teams to streamline and automate inspection processes by using their tools to empower inspection teams to be efficient and effective.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- The recent developments in claims technology
- Is it surprising that claims has lagged behind in digitisation?
- Claims as the main customer engagement point
- How did the founding team come together?
- The instantaneous action and ease that parametric products provide
- The potential opportunity for partnerships
- Computer vision technology
- White labeling the solution
- Who is adopting this solution?
Thank you LeX for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by David Bryant, CEO and Co-Founder of MonarkHQ.
MonarkHQ is a real-time quoting platform for employee benefits who are committed to streamlining benefits procurement by providing instant quotes, proposal management, and analytic dashboards to track vendor trends.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Solving real-world issues
- Dave’s 15 years of experience in the insurance industry
- Monark’s mission to solve the underserved inefficiencies in the insurtech space
- MonarkHQ’s InsurTech 100 nomination!
- The importance of networks in the insurance industry
- What is it like as a non-technical founder running a tech-led business?
- Why was the timing right for you to start Monark?
- The need for transparency in marketplace solutions
- Is there a resistance to transparency?
- what goes into creating an effective marketplace?
- Boot-strapping vs Raising seed
- Choosing the self-funded route - what was that journey like?
- The innovation in the benefits space
- What's next for Monark?
Thank you David for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Jacqueline Legrand, CEO and Co-Founder of Maptycs.
Maptycs is a New York-based insurtech start-up that use geospatial risk visualization and advanced analytics technology to help insurance professional better understand property risk exposure in real-time. Their software integrates its own proprietary Geographic Information System (GIS) along with a broad set of algorithms to deliver a high level of performance while managing large volumes of data.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Projecting losses in realtime
- What important is a network in getting an insurtech off the ground?
- The growing importance of relationships in the post-covid world
- What is Maptycs’ USP?
- The acceleration of natural disasters driving demand
- The recent explosion of location-based data
- Is this information currently inaccessible to insurance companies?
- The long path from data to information to insight
- Is there a resistance to true data transparency?
Thank you Jacqueline for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Alan Ringvald, CEO, Relativity6.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Solving the industry classification problem
- How can you predict the value of a company when you don’t know what industry they are in?
- Taking a new approach to building tech
- Finding alternatives to buying 3rd party databases
- How has this unique stance impacted the success of Relativity6?
- How have you found working in this space with a non-insurance background?
- The impact of covid on Relativity6's journey
- How do you distinguish pivot from panic?
- Trusting what feels right
- How do you think pivot stories impact the ability to raise capital? & Is it seen as a fail?
Thank you Alan for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Neta Rozy, CTO, Parametrix.
Parametrix is the insurtech start-up that offers financial protection against Cloud downtime, their hassle-free fast-paying policies protect you from financial losses when those services go down, enabling you to quickly get back to business.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Creating downtime insurance
- Cloud space is the 2nd or 3rd largest expense for a business - why isn’t this covered?
- The team dynamic being both friends and co-founders
- How do you go about creating a new product?
- The challenges of making those first hires at the early stages
- How do you generate interest and capacity?
- What are you looking at that’s new data wise?
- Was there ever a consideration of producing a pure technology product?
- The value in understanding the customer needs
- What’s been the consumer feedback?
- Shortening the claims process to improve the customer experience
Thank you Neta for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by James Cowen, Chief Commercial Officer at Humn.AI.
Humn.AI are a commercial motor insurance solution based on data science, they use their unique data platform to understand the risk of a vehicle at any moment in time by looking at drivers, vehicles and the environment around vehicles in real time.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Why offer an insurance product as opposed to a pure SaaS play?
- Expansion in the UK and entering into the European market
- Remote working culture and how that works for Humn's team
- Using real time data to improve safety for commercial motor fleets
- The differences between the UK & the US VC market and differing cultures around funding
- Humn’s organic and inorganic growth plans
- Do you think there is an advantage to being tech-first as opposed to insurance first?
- How did you gain the insurance knowledge coming from a tech background?
- Data transparency gives a major USP for the consumer, why was it not like this before?
Thank you James for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Kata Ludvig, CEO and Co-Founder of Baoba Insurance, the insurtech start up who are combining location intelligence with technology to create a data driven market place for geo-trigged and data driven products to provide on-demand, realtime automated coverage.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Kata’s serial entrepreneur background
- Centralisation of information and the utilisation of data
- Why does the digitisation of insurance lag behind that of neo-banking?
- Increasing the level of engagement for the consumer
- What stands out to you in insurance adverts?
- Marketing for insurance doesn’t reach the customer on a person level - why?
- What are the practical steps for creating a people first culture?
- Drawing on the diverse background’s of Baoba’s team to really tackle the pain points in the industry
- Acknowledging that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to creating niche products
- The insurance industry has so much knowledge, but why isn’t it being shared?
Thank you Kata for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Rob Galbraith, an 'Insurance Futurist', a keynote speaker and thought leader on the evolution of insurance and the author of 'The End of Insurance As We Know It' which he released in 2019.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Rob’s 20 year long Insurance background and working at USAA
- The drive for innovation at USAA
- Launching ‘The End of Insurance As We Know It’ in 2019
- What does insurance look like in 2030?
- Technology has actually been around in insurance for a long time
- We are actually still in the early days of insurtech
- S.C.A.L.E.D Technologies
- The ability to offer insurance to people who have never had insurance before
- Competing on both algorithms and experiences
- To what extent has insurance evolved to cater our more nuanced needs?
- The seven fatal flaws of insurance
- Insurance as a social good
- Are the current neo-insurers really fundamentally different to their incumbent counterpart?
- Can you get enough touch points with the customer to maintain loyalty?
- Are we seeing true innovation in insurtech or just a natural evolution?
Thank you Rob for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Daniel Fogarty, CEO of Evari.
Evari is an Australia-based SaaS platform who empower insurers to launch and manage insurance products that are easy to buy, easy to manage and flexible to changing needs.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Approaching insurtech from the small business angle
- Utilising cloud accounting to make insurance more flexible
- Rethinking the entire policy administration system
- What does it take to build a successful entrepreneurial team?
- Serendipitous meetings and being open minded to opportunities
- Remote working across continents
- Encouraging the industry to embrace the customer
- Pivoting towards being a SaaS business
- The challenge of adopting broad skills as a founder in an insurtech
- Encouraging more touch points and clarity for the customer
- What do you look for in a typical partnership?
- Does insurance only serve the broker?
- Daniel’s role on the board of Insurtech Australia
- The growing tech environment in Australia
Thank you Daniel for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by David Fontain, CEO and Founder of Foresight, the insurtech start up on a mission to improve safety and lower rates by providing smarter workers compensation insurance.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Creating a better incentive for businesses to improve their workplace safety
- What specific USP does Foresight’s technology give to the workers comp market?
- Why is the middle market underserved?
- Why opt for the traditional broker distribution channel?
- The greater the complexity of risk the more value the brokers can add
- Why did the first-wave insurtechs move away from that avenue?
- Delivering value to policy holders
- Enabling long term business sustainability
- Without insurance there is no business
- How having a background in brokerage allows insight into the main pain points that the consumer faces
- Launching just before the pandemic and how this impacted the fully remote working model
- Hybrid working model and satellite offices
- What’s your take on the investment market right now?
- Diversification of what insurtech looks like
- How do you make a remote culture work for you?
- Bringing people onboard from incumbent carriers and encouraging the tech ethos
- What is the next leap forward for insurtech?
Thank you David for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by a special guest and our first returning podcast guest Paul Prendergast, CEO of Kayna.
Paul first joined us on the podcast in January 2021 where we discussed his previous business Blink Parametrics, one year on and it's great to have him back to introduce his latest venture Kayna, the embedded platform that leverages unique data to provide more accurate and dynamic insurance for small businesses.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Tackling the issues around small businesses insurance
- Thinking how can we do better?
- Taking an innovative approach to embedded insurance
- Innovation through distribution, product and claims
- Great customer experience starts with underwriting
- Small businesses aren’t simple and their insurance needs to reflect that
- 40% of small businesses in the US don’t have insurance
- Why has it taken so long for these issues to be addressed?
- Is there a systemic risk attached to vertical stacks?
- Removing costs from the delivery of insurance
- Working with Founders Factory
- Whats interesting in insurtech right now?
Thank you Paul for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Geoff Keast, CEO of Montoux.
Montoux is the Actuarial Automation and Decision Science platform for life and health insurers who enable carriers to improve profitability, grow sales and better understand and serve customers. They do this is by combining actuarial and data science expertise with automation and machine learning techniques - all in one game-changing platform.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- The lack of technology adoption in the life and health domain
- The lag in digitisation of actuarial science
- Where does data science sit within an insurance carrier?
- Decision science - data science and actuarial teams working together
- Problem first thinking
- Can you be too successful to innovate?
- The lack of opportunity to create better decisions
- How do you penetrate a market that has a long term mindset?
- Pricing optimisation
Thank you Geoff for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matthias Naumann, CEO of Companjon, the Dublin-based tech venture specialising in bespoke embedded insurance solutions.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- What is unique about Companjon’s approach to embedded insurance?
- Going full stack? Is being a full stack insurance provider essential for trust?
- Redesigning the whole insurance process, end-to-end.
- Offering flexible coverage to suit customer’s changing lifestyles
- How do you deal with customer perceptions of insurance?
- Why is this embedded and hyper personalised insurance model so successful in Asia?
- How do you go about penetrating the European market?
- The challenges of operating within a mature market
- Partnerships and innovation Is imagination (or lack of) the limitation of innovation?
- How embedded insurance improves customer experience
- The timeline for producing an embedded product
- The impact of the pandemic for Companjon
- Was the pandemic needed for large scale adopting of digital solutions?
- What has 2022 got in store for Companjon?
Thank you Matthias for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome the latest episode of the Leadership In Insurance Podcast, we are sharing a special episode this week, the live recording of our first FLITe series panel event.
The FLITe series is FinPro's new events series that brings together aspiring future female leaders in InsurTech through round tables, panel events, and discussions. Our aim is to help close the InsurTech gender gap and inspire the future leaders of the InsurTech world. We believe that a balanced and representative workforce drives innovation. We want to encourage organisations to retain women and strive to promote gender equality.
We hosted our first webinar last week, a discussion on 'The Career Opportunities in InsurTech' and were joined by an amazing panel of inspiring speakers:
- Caroline Langridge, Head of ACT Underwriting Management, AON
- Ines Cheaib, COO, Gaia
- Caroline Garrow, CIO, Flock
- Along with Alex Bond, MD, FinPro and The Leadership In Insurance Podcast host
Our debut event was a great success, thank you to everyone who joined us online for the live event and for those who were unable to make it, we hope you enjoyed listening back. We covered a wide variety of topics such as:
- Why should people be interested in insurtech as sector
- What are the biggest misconceptions about working in insurtech?
- How do you demonstrate broad skill sets?
- What is it like working in insurance with a non-insurance background?
- Where have you historically found it hardest to recruit people?
- How do you identify who and what you're looking for when hiring for a start up?
- How important are networks and relationships to success in these environments?
- Is insurtech a useful term?
- We often discuss the need to be adaptable but is that narrative inaccessible? Does that impact women more ?
Please join us at our next FLITe series discussion 'People, Innovation and Culture' on March 17th 2022 at The Folly, London where we will be hearing from more inspiring female leaders about their journeys through overcoming imposter syndrome, discussing cognitive diversity and looking at the ways we utilise our networks.
We are already looking forward to the next event - reserve your place here to join us (face-to-face this time!)
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Chris Finan, COO of cyber security start up ActZero.AI.
The California based start up ActZero uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to increase the likelihood of identifying and preventing attacks while reducing the duration and impact of incidents should they occur, as well as helping to remediate vulnerabilities and mitigate risks so their customers can focus on their core competencies and driving business growth.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Are smaller companies aware of the risks that they are exposed to?
- Targeting the smaller to midsize companies - is this the key differentiator?
- How contextualising risk is key
- The challenge of education at scale
- Where do cyber security and insurance meet?
- Defining the outcomes of risk mitigation
- What roles do partnerships play for ActZero?
- How important is transparency?
- The challenge of protecting against an ever-evolving threat
- How do you engage with your end consumer in a meaningful manner?
- How covid and remote working shifts a small business’ cyber protection needs
- What is and isn’t a cyber threat nowadays?
- Will the insurance industry be able to keep up to speed to continue to protect against cyber threats?
- How has the pandemic impacts ActZero?
- Empowering teams
- Encouraging a creative approach to problem solving
- What’s next for ActZero in 2022?
Thank you Chris for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined bySam White, CEO of Stella Insurance, the car insurance provider for women by women.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Setting up her own company 24
- Male dominance in insurance
- What would an insurance product look like from a female perspective?
- The importance of meaningful action
- The Australian regulatory landscape
- Using gender as a pricing metric
- Is insurance fundamentally discriminatory?
- Which aspects change when marketing your product specifically towards women?
- The Stella Expert Series
- The key to success lies in engagement
- The challenges when raising money and in particular as a young female founder
- Prevention questions vs promotion questions and how women are treated differently to their male counterparts when raising capital
- Feeling overly challenged and overly questioned due to unconscious bias
- Creating psychologically healthy work environment are crucial to produce the best outcome
- Utilising social media and having an online presence to make as many connections and opportunities as possible
Thank you Sam for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by , Lotta Rauséus, COO & Co-Founder of Insurely, who are using their open insurance ecosystem to help insurance companies and banks give proper peace-of-mind to their customers.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide range of topics such as:
- Injecting transparency into the insurance industry
- Open banking - what does that actually mean?
- The empowerment of open data and transparency
- Why has insurance lagged behind banking in digitisation?
- Was there an incentive to make insurance transparent?
- The reaction on the regulatory side
- The lack of touch points insurance companies have with the consumer
- How do we build loyalty with a lack of touch points?
- The difficultly of engaging with your insurer as a consumer
- Are brokers the true customer of the insurance market?
- Taking back the control of the customer experience, its about more than just price
- How our experiences as a consumer drive our decisions in business
- How important is transparency to the insurance industry?
- How transparency is key to making informed decisions
- The positive correlation of transparency and innovation
- How restrictions drive creativity
Thank you Lotta for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Adrien Lebegue, Managing Director, Europe, ZA Tech.
ZA Tech is the technology venture founded by ZhongAn Online, a global leader in online insurance, and backed by Softbank’s Vision Fund. ZA Tech is redefining the insurance landscape by enabling digital ecosystems to easily embed relevant protection within their customer journeys.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Start ups to Scale ups
- Incubated by ZhongAn and SoftBank
- How does this background impact ZA Tech’s day to day?
- The value of being consumer first
- ZA Tech’s differentiated value
- How being digitally-native has no limits
- How being a pioneer in the market brings new regulation challenges
- Optimisation comes down to nailing technology, vision, people and regulation
- How do you find people who are suited to this high speed environment?
- Trust the people and the vision
- Asking people what frustrates them about the industry
- Taking the leap from traditional insurance to hyper growth insurtech
- The impact covid had on embedded solutions
- How the pandemic accelerated consumer adoption
- The influx of investment thanks to covid
- The cultural shift towards a remote structure
- What makes a good partner?
Thank you Adrien for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Ana Zamora CEO of Vitaance, the Madrid-based life insurance start up who are applying artificial intelligence and data science to help their members live a better life.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Encouraging wellness habits and helping people improve their life style
- Translating lifestyle changes into rewards
- Turning death insurance into life insurance
- Was a cultural shift necessary for customers to be comfortable sharing data with their insurers?
- How AI can improve life style
- Making an intangible product more tangible by generating engagement
- Providing more than just peace of mind
- Customers are historically indirect in life insurance and how Vitaance are changing
- Does insurance just serve the broker?
- What does fairness and transparency mean from a practical perspective?
- Removing the complexity for the members benefit
- What does building customer-first products look like from a technology perspective?
- Data science as an evolution of actuarial science
- What is the true nature and purpose of insurance?
- Has insurance culturally lost sight of the customer?
- Does regulation cause or hinder innovation?
- Vitaance’s promise of having a diverse and inclusive team
- Cultural add as opposed to cultural fit
- The different metrics for measuring companies for funding in Spain as opposed to elsewhere
- What does 2022 have in store for Vitaance?
Thank you Ana for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Anthony Beilin and Benjamin Hay, CEO & COO of Collective Benefits, the Insurtech start up who are on a mission to make independent work work for everyone.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Building a solution that allows platforms to deliver dynamic, usage based, realtime protections and benefits for their workers
- Being driven by the need for flexibility in independent work
- Is this a business born out of a regulatory environment and have restrictions created this opportunity?
- The protection gap for independent workers
- Evolving the route to the customer
- Is the gig economy good for society?
- The flexibility of gig working
- Do people find their work meaningful in the gig economy?
- The importance of accuracy of information when discussing the gig economy
- Collective Benefit’s Head of Social Impact
- Social impact being at the heart of Collective Benefit’s mission
- The lack of a metric to track worker’s wellbeing
- What impacts worker well being?
- The importance of partnerships
- The B Corp movement
- Creating a benchmark for what we think social impact means within this framework
- B Corps - it’s not just about the certificate its about fundamental change
- Giving people tools and removing challenges of access to basic finical and well being products
- How new demographics require new models
- Launching in lockdown!
- How the pandemic helped people understand who Collective Benefits are and what they are trying to achieve
- Improving member experience and keeping members at the heart of our thinking
- Collective Benefits pop ups!
- What does the New Year have in store for Collective Benefits?
Thank you Anthony and Benjamin for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by John Fohr, CEO of TrustLayer.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- The surprising lack of digitisation
- Automating mundane processes to focus on the complex issues
- Augmented AI vs Assisted AI
- Providing value for each stakeholder
- Who are the clients?
- Focusing on the end user
- White labelling the product?
- The balance between insurance and tech knowledge
- Building insurance knowledge in-house
- The challenge of finding people who are broad-thinkers
- The motivation to open up systems
- The challenges of integrations
- Finding better and faster ways to provide real-time proof of coverage
- What does this better visibility allow us to do?
- How consumer experience influences commercial experience
- What does 2022 look like for TrustLayer?
Thank you John for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Jenny Cohen Derfler, CEO & Founder of AirDoctor.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- What was the impact of Covid-19 on AirDoctor?
- How the pandemic highlighted the need for AirDoctor and telemedicine
- How covid-19 has impacted the demand for insurance
- AirDoctor’s founding team and their team dynamics
- Insurance partnerships
- The competitor landscape and what makes AirDoctor different?
- The challenge of language barriers in telemedicine
- The importance of AirDoctor’s network
- What surprised you about working with insurers?
- The need for innovation
- How often technology just provides maintenance instead of innovation
- The willingness to take risks
Thank you Jenny for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Richard King, CEO & Founder of Ticker.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Building Ticker’s ‘ecosystem’
- The thin line between being an InsurTech and a tech-enabled insurer
- The success of an insurtech comes down to data
- The importance of a forensic focus on loss-ratio
- How Ticker provides for a wide range of clients
- Improving underwriting information
- How the competition in the motor market impacts the customer
- Two new products soon to be released as well as other propositions in the pipeline
- Bringing connected data to a wider market by providing niche offerings
- The importance of collecting high quality data
- Increasing engagement with connected motor
- How lockdown impacted motor insurance
- A full-stack ambition?
- The different attitudes toward motor in the us vs the uk
- How do we achieve long term, sustainable profitability?
- The importance of varied backgrounds in a successful team
- Embracing new talent into the industry
- What makes a good partnership?
- The importance of work life balance
- How COVID forced us to focus on people
- How lockdown routines have become lasting habits
- Reaching the finals of the Great British Wellbeing Awards!
Thank you Richard for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Carey Anne Nadeau, Co-CEO & Co-Founder of LOOP, the Texas-based motor insurance start-up on the mission to make motor insurance more fair and transparent for more people.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- How LOOP looks at data that other insurance carriers ignore
- Changing how we think about insurance and serving people in an honest and fair way
- Raising capital
- Asking the right questions
- What makes LOOP different?
- InsurTech’s waves of evolution
- Taking a community driven approach to growth
- The cost of play in a saturated market
- How LOOP pays attention to modern forms of communication
- Do you think insurance today is fair and transparent?
- Is trust in financial services broken?
- The outcome we care about is trust and how LOOP focuses on that
- How mis-trust impacts client relationships
- Adding value and building relationships - it’s not all about price
- The need for technological advance in customer service and road side assistance
- The need to be forward thinking for the benefit of the customers
- What does transparency mean for you?
- The importance of cultural values
- The challenges of building a diverse community
- The process of ‘forming, storming, norming, and then performing’
- Using AI to provide transparency
- How bias is baked in to AI
- Giving people access to insurance when they might not be able to get it otherwise
- Ultimately, lets take care of eachother...and crash less!
Thank you Carey Anne for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Henri Winand, CEO and Co-Founder, AkinovA.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Enabling risk transfer on a large scale
- How does the marketplace actually work?
- The social fabric of the environment
- Building relationships in real time
- Does innovation mean replacing people and professions?
- Creating more fulfilling role
- Obsoletation and moving jobs forward
- A good market place gives you information at the time you need it
- Do market places risk making the broker obsolete?
- How can they take advantage of the opportunities?
- What effect fo you think market places will have on price in the long term?
- The importance of having the right access to the right capital
- The best market places significantly increase the size of the market
- Good market places should allow us to underwrite intangibles
- What value can we add?
- How do we justify long term innovation when we are rewarded on short term performance
- The unique challenges AkinovA faces
Thank you Herni for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Adam Blumencranz, Partner of Distributed Ventures (formerly known as NFP Ventures).
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- What are the advantages of working in the corporate ventures as opposed to the stand alone?
- Has the shift from one to the other played to an advantage?
- How being associated with an incumbent has advantages but this also comes with its pitfalls
- When you’re associated with a large national incumbent, how flexible are you? How rigid is your mandate?
- The importance of their network of subject matter experts
- The time input into these relationships
- The importance of having differentiation as an investor
- The ability to tap into this network being NFP’s differentiator
- People want to work with people they want to spend time with
- What’s your view on the market today?
- The time to make a decision is going down and valuations are going up
- Critically important to know your strategy as an investor
- The importance of being thesis driven
- What’s your view on the market today?
- The time to make a decision is going down and valuations are going up
- Critically important to know your strategy as an investor
- The importance of being thesis driven
- What do you specifically look for in a good pitch?
- The importance of finding a founder with passion
- Subject matter expertise, clarity and focus
Thank you Adam for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In this week's episode we hear from Alex Bond, FinPro founder and the Leadership in Insurance Podcast host himself.
We wanted to do something slightly different with this podcast and it reflects some of the wider initiatives we are developing with FinPro. FinPro is a recruitment business specialising in the Insurtech sector and have been fortunate to work with some of the most exciting and innovative people operating within the sector. We have had fantastic guests who have shared their journeys and their experiences all with the objective of moving the Insurtech industry forward. Something we have done less is get to know the people behind the stories. Businesses are an net result of the talent and efforts of the people employed within them. This is a statement of the obvious but when we operate within the tech sector it can be easy to forget that despite how tech focussed you might be it is the people that drive the business and its innovation. We wanted to get to know more about the challenges that are not directly the work – particularly we wanted to know the challenges founders face when trying to drive fledgling businesses to success.
We didn’t feel we could ask our guests to share their fears, hopes and aspirations if we do not share some of our own biggest challenges so we have taken a different path with the podcast today and we have our host Alex discuss his challenges with mental health, his experiences with managing his mental health and what he thinks we can do to accommodate and help people manage their mental health in the world of start-ups.
We hope by doing this we will be able to have more honest and transparent conversations that touch on the founders challenges on a personal level – hopefully if we make the first move we can encourage more conversations about mental health.
We hope you enjoy it.
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Stuart Winchester, CEO and Founder, Marble.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Do we do the simple things in insurance badly or do we not do the simple things?
- Do people want to engage with insurance?
- Change from outside the industry
- Why do we have friction?
- Juggling the different perspectives of brokers and consumers
- Did you look else where for inspiration when starting out with Marble?
- Rewards components in the UK and Australia
- How white men soliciting other white men can render life insurance exclusive
- Marble’s investment journey
- 120 conversations..!
- The challenges of having these conversations virtually
- ‘Do not be a solo founder?’
- The importance of a team, and the support they provide while pitching
- Doing too much - an advantage or a disadvantage?
- Stretching vs. over hiring
- The advantages of a flexible team
- Rewards vs. Wins
- Hiring part time experts
- Interview processes, does this need to be done by the CEO?
- First time vs second time founders
- Marble’s full time and part time flexible dynamic
- LinkedIn’s as a social media, and it’s more personal side
- Should we post personal posts on LinkedIn?
- Marble allows its customers to learn, organise and feel engaged with the asset class that protects the things they love
- Building trust, community and rewards that are meaningful
- Will Marble look at picking up risk themselves and consider setting up MGA carrier relationships?
- Starting conversations about insurance with clients
- What's next for Marble? Enterprise partners, mobile app launch, fund raising and more!
Thank you Stuart for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Jeff Radke, CEO and Co-Founder, Accelerant.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- The attraction of the MGA model as an entrepreneur
- Is the MGA market a scapegoat?
- Accelerant's longer-term capacity commitment
- How Accelerant has members instead of customers, and how this perspective fosters positive relationships and reminds the team, 'we are only successful if they are successful'
- Capacity provision as an investment form
- The benefits of a diversified portfolio
- Short-term-ism in insurance
- Do we suffer from a short-term view?
- The importance of clarity and ownership in a long term member relationship
- The difficultly for a publicly-traded company to think on a long enough term to drive true innovation
- 5-year thinking, and asking how can we be most successful in 2026?
- Over investing time in development, as opposed to money
- Accelerant's software Insightful
- Why build software rather than buy?
- Creating a member user board
- The real value in data being making connections
- The relationship dynamics with members
- What makes a good member MGA for Accelerant?
- The importance of being underwriting driven
- Customer centricity
- Is going full-stack worth it?
- What's next for Accelerant? Expansion into Canada and beyond!
Thank you Jeff for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Anthony Mayer, VP Engineering & Konrad Heimpel, VP Product and Data, at Getsafe.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Is Getsafe a tech company operating in insurance or is Getsafe an insurance company?
- Whats the difference these days
- Insurance and technology go hand in hand
- The advantages of bringing perspectives from both parties together
- The importance of understanding the complexity of insurtech
- How does the product interact with tech?
- GetSafe being a user-centric company that solve user problems
- Needs may differ between insurance products but the underlying problems remain the same
- Creating a scalable product
- Where does product end and tech take over?
- The challenge of restructuring when moving to a remote working dynamic
- Where does Getsafe differ from an incumbent insurer?
- The challenge of tackling the complexity of insurance and distilling it down to simple technical solutions
- How important is insurance experience?
- How approaching things with naivety encourages innovation instead of being tied to our past experiences
- Being open to adapting to new ideas is a requirement for working at Getsafe
- How has getting a license to be a full-stack insurer changed things for Getsafe?
- How no longer being dependant on 3rd party systems facilitates the creation of new products
- Decreasing product turnaround time
- The advantages of having full control of the value chain
- How this improves the customer experience
- The move towards hybrid working
- The impact on the talent pool
- Why should we come and join the Getsafe team? (They're hiring!)
Thank you Anthony and Konrad for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space.
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Hermann Fried, Managing Director, at bsurance.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Insurance being 20 years behind banks in terms of digitisation
- Embedded insurance providing ease for the customer
- How the pandemic has encouraged demand for accessible insurance
- The general shopping experience is now extremely accessible, why isn’t insurance this way?
- Why did it take so long to challenge the insurance model?
- How the normalisation of online retail has impacted our tolerance for time
- What is driving the rise in embedded insurance?
- Offering the real time delivery of insurance policies
- Asking who the client?
- The real client being the insurance broker
- Insurance’s broker driven model being the slowest aspect to change
- How do we tackle trust in embedded insurance?
- bsurance’s partner relationships
- Discussing regulation, how does that impact embedded insurance?
- Borderless trades
- How much of a threat does embedded insurance pose to the traditional insurance market?
- Most of the incumbents dont see the threat
- Loosing aspects of the value chain
- Addressing the gaps in the value chain
- Insurance of the intangible world
- How is the face of insurance changing?
- Is insurance broken or is it lacking in customer centricity?
- ‘Insurance is sold not bought’
- We need to be incentivised to change
- What’s next for bsurance?
Thank you Hermann for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space .
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by George Beattie, Head of Incubation Underwriting at Beazley.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Beazley’s value statement of; future profitability, situational awareness, brand and culture
- Deconstructing innovation into different channels of activity
- Incentivising innovators
- Recognising failure as part of success
- The clash between conservative values around constant underwriting and the need to adapt to a changing world
- Insuring intangible assets
- The industry wide struggle for continued relevance
- The false concept that age represents capability
- Maintaining relevance by working with a more diverse team of people
- Is insurance broken or has it just not adapted?
- How our lateral view of the market impacts innovation
- Innovation through partnerships
- How products need to reflect our changing needs and demands
- Do we do a good enough job attracting new talent?
- How do we avoid an echo chamber?
- Encouraging opportunity by working with smaller, more focused groups
- Avoiding treating people as commodities
- Meritocracy as the defining characteristic for progress
- Not being scared of hiring people better than ourselves
- Asking if insurance experience is necessary when hiring
- Being problem oriented
- The importance of curiosity
- How do you incubate ideas?
Thank you George for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space .
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Siddhartha Jha, Founder and CEO of Arbol.
Arbol provides a platform for parametric coverage which allows clients to access reduced risk and hassle free protection using their automated processes and facilitates a straightforward experience for the customer.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- How does Arbol's parametric platform work?
- Parametric insurance lending itself to be easily scalable and transferable
- Making the platform as convenient for the agents as possible
- Providing cover for situations which the traditional insurance industry is unable or unwilling to write risk for
- Claiming the unwanted gap in the market
- Parametrics as a facilitator for financial security
- Increased accuracy has allowed the risk to shrink
- Climate risk is currently largely uninsured
- Parametric insurance enables the broad-scale adoption of insurance
- Smart contracts, condensing information and accessibiity
- The demand for a changing insurance experience
- The increasing demand for parametric insurance in energy
- How the pandemic has encouraged trust in digital solutions
- The value of transparency
- The move away from pricing risk in an isolated way
- Large-scale adoption of parametric insurance only being feasible if we are able to lower the costs of business
- Parametric insurance as a social good - increasing distribution and accessibility
- The surprising elements of the insurance market
- Insurance as an industry being highly protected by regulation
- Arbol's mission "1 . The customer will love Parametrics, 2. The capital market will love Parametrics"
Thank you Sid for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Christian Macht, CEO of Element Insurance - the Berlin-based start-up and leader in insurance digitization.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- Is there anything you learned from the insurance market that surprised you?
- Investing in start-ups - Insurance being surprisingly not boring..!
- The deep integration of the value chain within the insurance
- Playing a part in changing the structure of insurance
- Is insurance broken?
- Discussing rapid growth
- The challenges of providing both parts of the ‘insur’ and the ‘tech’
- The B2B2X dynamic
- Looking at alternative business models
- Building a relevant insurance product that will continue to be relevant in the future
- The value of spending on marketing vs customer engagement
- The room for improvement in insurance
- Setting up a company without the legacy of a traditional insurer
- The importance of a trusting relationship with a customer
- The challenge of changing the traditional insurance delivery model and customer experience
- Cultural resistance to change
- The advantages of being more consumer-centric
- The makings of a successful partnership
- The importance of a USP
- How do you maintain a strong culture during rapid growth?
- The idea of culture being fluid and evolving
- How do you specifically describe a culture which is constantly evolving?
- Bringing a co-ceo on board
Thank you Christian for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Taylor Perkins, co-founder and CTO of Slope Software, who offer an actuarial modelling platform that helps insurance companies understand and quantify their risk so that they can make better decisions about their business.
We had a great conversation this week where we discussed a wide variety of topics such as:
- How approaching the market with a developed product was a key factor in Slope Software's success
- However this meant working evenings and weekends
- What were the unique challenges for Slope Software?
- Life insurance, 30 year contacts and the challenge of ‘thinking in decades’
- Demonstrating the ROI of a platform
- Taylor’s background in being outside of insurance and how this brings an innovative perspective
- Innovation in the insurance industry
- Innovation vs adoption
- Increasing innovation on the p&c side
- The life cycle of insurance contracts
- How innovation mirrors life cycles
- The inherent problems in innovation teams
- The importance of organisation-wide buy-in for successful innovation
- What were the biggest surprises when entering the insurance industry?
- Is there an incentive for a profitable, traditional insurance business to change?
- The danger of being too comfortable in a position and risk-averse
- The ripple effects of a small mistake
- The threat of not embracing new technologies
- Small constant change as opposed to large upheaval
- Do you think the tech-side of insurance needs to do something to attract new talent?
- How fostering and cultivating innovation will attract talent
- The importance of recruiting people who enjoy solving problems
- “Business owner or entrepreneur?”
- Does advanced modelling risk making the current skills of actuaries obsolete?
- Will actuaries exist in 10 years?
- The necessary time input to become an actuary, years (7-10 years!)
- 10000 years to become an expert, 20000 years to become an actuary
- Technology replaces the junior level roles, not the advanced roles
- How does this impact the journey and journey of becoming a fully certified actuary?
- Does embracing technology impact job enjoyment?
- Slope Software's new funding! Their plans to move upmarket and focusing on enterprise-level clients, build and grow the Slope Software team and expand internationally!
Thank you Taylor for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by James Poole, founder and managing director of Agile Risk, a venture-backed risk intermediation team based in London who's aim is to drive down the cost for clients by securitising risk.
We had a great conversation where we covered a wide variety of topics such as:
-
What are Agile Risk doing that is different from the status quo?
-
The importance and influence of a businesses purpose
-
The universal objective of driving down the cost of risk for clients
-
Agile Risk's approach of creating a new asset class
-
The increasing demand for insurable risk in capital markets - Investing in reinsurable risk
-
The misperception there being insufficient data in this particular area of insurance risk and the risk being too complexed to understand
-
Capital markets are structured around the allocation of real debt and equity capital and cash
-
How important is culture in driving change?
-
Our ingrained resistance to change
-
Embracing forward looking models, eg. Monte Carlo risk model
-
Hindsight as a hindrance to change,
-
The three perennial certainties; change, principles and choice
-
These constant changes drives need for constant movement and reevaluation
-
Seeing the loss of a team member as an asset and an opportunity to embrace change
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Can insurance businesses be too profitable to change?
-
"If it ain't broke don't fix it?!"
-
There is no fundamental requirement for a business to change, rather change is driven by the purpose of the business
-
Solely profit-driven businesses being naturally imbued to be resistant to change
-
Speed being highly valued in start-ups and the issues this can create
-
Could insurance benefit from engaging with other forms of capital?
-
How do you avoid group think?
-
The opportunities and perspectives brought into a business through continuous learning
Thank you James for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matt Carter & Mark Huxley, co-founders of Cognitive Risk - the strategic digital change consultancy focusing on insurance and technology which operates in the space where 'insur meets tech' and helps businesses get smarter.
In this conversation we talk about:
-
'Smart insurance' - what does that mean to you?
-
Connecting smarter insurance
-
Reimagining the relationship with the customer and asking are you working in an environment where you have a quality relationship with the customer?
-
What can we do for the consumer?
-
Taking a new perspective on the conversation around insurance
-
The importance of understanding the values of your business
-
How Cognitive Risk seeks to become the connective glue between the thinkers, doers and executers
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Facilitating and utilising existing technology
-
The technology is there so what are the challenges?
-
The inherent challenges which insurance faces due to time scales
-
How do you mitigate risk whilst being open-minded to new technologies?
-
How do you facilitate the use of existing technologies?
-
What are the more macro challenges?
-
The risk of going with the new unknown
-
And the benefits of the journey
-
Risk being paramount to everything
-
Insurance is not about trying to create a new process rather the challenge of shifting to adopt the new
-
The need for partnership is imperative
-
Corporate culture and understanding what innovation is going to look like inside your own organisation
-
Process thinking vs system thinking
-
The importance of micro-innovation
-
"The digital age is over, we are know in the intelligence age"
-
Insure Scale Up providing a support mechanism and providing a community space for those who want to improve the insurance
Thank you Matt for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky enough to be joined by Matt Duke, Head of Global Actuarial & Analytics Services at Xceedance.
In this conversation we talk about:
-
Why work with actuarial as a consultancy as opposed to having in-house capability?
-
Does consultancy work suit that entrepreneurial mindset?
-
Is it harder to attract actuaries to a consultancy business?
-
Reimagining the employee experience post-pandemic
– how do we make the quality of work better?
-
How Matt identifies as a business leader with actuarial qualifications rather than an actuary first
-
How will the role of data science impact Actuaries
– is an actuary required anymore?
- Actuarial exams are the basis
– experience is what makes a great actuary
-
Automation opportunity within Actuarial as enablement to more products and services
-
Where does Actuarial science fit within the data analytics suite of an insurer today?
-
Role of regulated environment in analytics
– limitations, and challenges
-
Does hyper-personalization of risk mean we make some people un-insurable?
-
Reducing the insurance as a public good argument?
-
Hiring vs re-training?
-
Why don’t we do more with improving internal skills?
-
Cryptocurrency and Insurance – is it viable?
-
The future of actuarial?
-
Quantum computing and RPA
– Bots?
- Collaboration in the Insurance market? Look for places where the market is un-profitable – auto insurance as an example
Thank you Matt for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This Podcast was brought to you by FinPro, an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Insurtech space
Our host in FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky to be joined by Alvaro Sanz Perez, co-founder of Cleverea the Barcelona based digital insurance provider.
In this conversation we talk about:
- Innovation throughout the entire value chain of insurance
- Appealing to a millennial customer
- Differentiation through improved customer experience
- Doing things digitally without losing the human touch
- The challenges of creating an insurtech start-up without any insurance background
- Is insurance broken?
- Expanding into Portugal and the benefit of cultural similarities
- Cross-selling being fundamental to Cleverea’s success and the advantages of being multiline
- Multiline as a risk strategy
- The investment landscape in the Spanish Insurtech market
- The need for a ‘European ambition’ for funding and looking beyond just Spain
- The importance of the start up community in Barcelona
- The team dynamic of three co-founders - and when two of the three are twin brothers!
- Cleverea’s plans to expand throughout the year and their new products which are coming soon
Thank you Alvaro for your time, it was great to speak to you!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we are lucky to be joined by Kevin Mackey who is COO and Co-Founder of Coterie an award-winning Insurtech that aims to make buying small business insurance easy by integrating it into the apps and platforms you already use.
This was a great conversation, Kevin was super engaging and we get into it straight away. Discussing a wide variety of topics such as:
- The importance of culture specifically in startups
- The disconnect between what people think is their culture and what it is
- How to create an environment - opportunity to thrive
- Simplicity in culture and values is key
- The culture of healthy questioning
- Building culture through the interview process
- Culture is a living thing - it will grow and evolve but can also die
- Language challenges within tech and insurance
- Tech and Insurance product timelines
- Going from Chips and Salsa to Insurance!
- What reverse acquisitions mean to Insurtech space - Hippo and Spinnaker
- Embedded insurance - reducing friction and improving education around insurance buying
- By sharing more information with your customers means you can sell more in Insurance - why don't we share more?
- What brand value means in embedded insurance - would I buy my health insurance from Nike? Where do the synergies lie?
- insurance is a social good? It can be for many reasons - but a social convenience is enough of a start!
Thank you to Kevin for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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I was super excited to have Niranjan "Niji" Sabharwal as a guest on the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
Niji is one-half of a husband and wife co-founding team behind AgentSync the broker compliance management system.
Agentsync has been super successful from the outset and when your founding team has resumes like this one: LinkedIn, Stripe, Dropbox, and Zenefits you can see why.
It's out of the most problematic time of Nijis career at Zenefits that AgentSync was born.
In this episode we discuss:
- The bottleneck of compliance
- Building on the Salesforce platform
- How compliance is a barrier to entry and therefore creativity in insurance
- Not realizing how large the demand would be - timing is everything
- Tech debt in the incumbent market and how tools such as AgentSync can help
- The importance of failure in success
- Funding rounds and timing - the difference in USA and Europe attitudes and failure rates
- Why AgentSync bootstrapped
- Raising too much money can lead to disillusionment
- Is there too much money in the market
- What is it like being a founding team and husband and wife?
- What raising capital has enabled them to do
- Senior hires and the importance of capital raises
- What else investors bring to the table beyond capital
- Do we expect too much from staff who join start-ups?
- Why is Insurance having its tech moment?
- How to build the right culture and the importance of hiring well
- Acknowledging Hiring representatively is time-consuming
- Why talent pipelining is important
- The advantage of having high profile female leaders especially in engineering
- Head of Talent and their role in driving diversity
- The challenge of remote hiring
Thanks, Niji for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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In today's episode of the leadership in Insurance podcast, we were lucky to be joined by Arvid De Coster, CEO of Belgium Insurtech WeGroup.
WeGroup helps brokers, MGA's, and other distributors of insurance to more efficiently distribute their insurance products by utilizing the WeGroup technology.
In this conversation we talk about:
- The ROI of Insurtech pitch competitions
- Why all entrepreneurs need to learn to sell
- How some of the best conversations come with target customers who "Won't" buy
- Insurance isn't broken - its a lazy marketing line but it can do better
- Pivoting - starting with the "lemonade for Europe"
- B2C teaches you so much that works in B2B
- Belgium Fintech scene - Investors and businesses a cautious scene - you need MRR
- Talent shortages in talent - not unique to Belgium but not helped!
- Clubhouse strategies - the office as a meeting hub
- The benefits of remote working on salaries - are we really seeing reductions?
- The importance of investing in staff mental health
- Salaries being dictated by demand - not location
- Missed opportunities to sell insurance by distributors who don't understand insurance
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us Arvid.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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When running an Insurance leadership Podcast it's sometimes nice to connect with someone on something that isn't just Insurance. Huw Edwards is a CEO and Co-Founder on a mission firstly to deliver a world-class insurance solution to eCommerce businesses with Cyber Fortress but also to rescue "over-educated, high achievers from corporate suffering".
It's a mission that we both share - you can work hard, be successful outside of the big corporate world so why don't more people do it?
This was a fun conversation, in it we talk about:
- How the Welsh accent is received in the USA (as Australian)
- How parametric applies to the eCommerce industry and why it's a better model for SMEs
- Capturing the human element in the cyber risk model
- Building the right partnerships for cyber cover
- SME cyber - is the consumer educated enough to the risk?
- Embedded insurance finding the right partners and the right touchpoints on the consumer journey
- Corporate life - why is Huw on a mission to "alleviate suffering" for corporate
- We talk entrepreneurship and ultra-marathons - you can't control all the variables bad things will happen
- I foolishly announce I'm doing an Ultra-marathon.....
- Can you learn entrepreneurship?
- Huws journey from Oxford - Goldmans - Bridgewater capital to entrepreneur the search for purpose
- Entrepreneurship theme - we don't like to be told what to do!
- Is creativity the thing corporate culture crushes?
- Can we allow people more freedoms in corporate culture? What's the balance?
- How do we connect as teams in a fully remote environment?
- Does the office make way for the creative hubs/meeting space/clubhouse?
- Don't demonize the corporate culture - all corporates were a start-up once!
- Intrapreneur? BS?
Innovation labs - without budget and authority what's the point?
Thanks, Huw for your time - I really enjoyed that conversation!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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We talk often of pivots in the start-up world but I have yet to speak to someone that truly pivoted - often I would argue it's a deviation. Today I was lucky enough to sit down with Meeri Rebane, Co-CEO of Inzmo, an insurance provider born out of a motorbike tracking business.
In the ultimate example of listening to customer feedback, Meeri told me how the business was born from the feedback they got from their original business model - tracking stolen bikes.
In this episode we discuss:
- How to spot a gap in the market - listen to your customers
- The benefits of being an outsider - no pre-loaded restrictive attitude
- The importance of luck How supportive insurance companies can be?
- Time to build new products in Insurance can kill a new start-up! You need a plan!
- How owning the customer experience is key to success
- Benefits of the MGA model in product design and testing product
- Why Inzmo moved to Berlin - talent. market size and investability (if that's a word?)
- Why go B2B2C?
- Talent challenges of Berlin - how to attract talent to a start-up?
- Gamification of Insurance - can we make insurance as fun as other financial services?
- Why can't we make money in certain lines of business - we need to challenge the status quo!
- Marketing and advertising in personal lines - how to surpass that
- The importance of strong partnerships and maintaining relationships
- How to spot applicable trends in Insurance in a pandemic world
Thank you Meeri for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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This is one I have been looking forward to for a while. We have talked often about insurance trading platforms but most platforms focus on insurance with the reinsurance market slightly underserved. In this week's episode, I was joined by Jerad Leigh and Ben Rose, Co-Founders of Supercede.
Supercede is a platform for stakeholders in reinsurance to network and trade with software made exclusively for the reinsurance industry.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Supercedes goal of being the Zoopla of reinsurance and why it's such a good analogy
- The role of the broker in a world of digital networks and marketplaces
- How our personal experience as consumers must impact how we view technology in our professional lives
- What can we learn from consumer tech and take into the commercial market
- The importance of clearly defining the problem you are trying to solve
- Codifying the uncodified - the culture of insurance and how it can be intrinsically anti-tech
- Is there an optimum moment in your career to launch a start-up? Know enough to do it, not so much to be fearful
- Tech roles in incumbents - Maintenence vs innovation
- Raising money for a nuanced business
- The importance of angel investors
- Sticking with your solution in the face of investor feedback - when to update the deck
- The responsibility of taking investment
- Sacrifice for success - do you owe it to your investors and staff?
Thanks to Jerad and Ben for their time.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Digitally distributed MGAs have been a popular topic on the podcast as it's been the basis for many Insurtechs to go live in the industry so I was pleased to speak to MGA veteran Philip Cabaud.
Philip is CEO of Now Insurance an AI-driven insurance platform to providing professional liability cover within 3 minutes.
This was a far-reaching conversation where we discussed:
The importance of driving your own traffic - not leaking money on acquisition costs
How do you build an AI underwriting solution - where do the people fit in
The importance of speed and customer journey to the small business customer
Why launch as an MGA first? Why go full-stack?
Challenges of building new products in an MGA
USA capacity cycles vs Lloyd's
The ironic balance between SME business - great business for underwriters but the bad experience for the consumer
The importance of digital marketing to the success of SME business
Why there are no cheap costs of customer acquisition
The broker model means that the insurer focuses on the broker as the customer, not the consumer
We discuss how to create more touchpoints with the customer - add value
I NEARLY get a scoop on some patented tech - but don't!
How to run a tech-enabled platform as a non-tech person
The creative challenge of insurance businesses
Thanks to Philip for being a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond.
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One of the most prominent discussions on the Leadership in Insurance Podcast is Investment - how to get it and who to get it from.
I wanted to speak to people who really know the process: the VC. I was very lucky this week to be joined by James Tootell.
James is the investment director of Insurtech specific venture fund - Eos Venture Partners.
This is a talk I have wanted to engage with for some time. In this conversation we discussed:
- The formation of the Eos Venture Partners
- How they engage with their Investors, how does it differ between each company?
- The importance of independence
- What makes a good strategic relationship?
- Why investments into portfolio companies are more than just money
- SMART money - what does it mean?
- We make some attempt to define Insurtech - in the broadest sense
- I get to understand the scale of the investment opportunities - 5 new companies a week
- Why they have only made 7 new investments?
- The importance of referrals and references within the VC community
- At what point does Eos want to be involved with a portfolio company?
- What are the indicators for a good investment?
- The importance of the Angel investor model the USA vs European investing?
- The challenge of getting beyond early adopters
- What makes a good and engaging pitch?
- The importance of a good team
- Challenge of start-up culture for people coming from a corporate environment
- Raising money in the pandemic?
- How has Eos been impacted GTM strategy - the key question to answer
- The importance of sales - turning interest into cash
Thanks to James for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro. an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance podcast.
In this week's episode, we were joined by David George.
David is CEO of Bikmo a specialist cycling insurance business that enables and protects the world's cycling enthusiasts. Bikmo is a values-led and mission-led business and whilst we wanted to talk all things insurance I wanted to discuss purpose and culture - it's not often you get to speak to a person who has taken a hobby and made it into a business - especially an insurance business.
In this conversation we discuss:
- Why cycling needed a specific insurance provider
- The bike geek hierarchy at Bikmo - is there bike bullying? (No - obviously)
- The impact of Covid on the growth of cycling Ebikes and the changing nature of cycling demographics
- Why not extend your home policy?
- How David followed his passion when he had a successful career as an engineer
- How Bikmo originally started as a comparison engine
- Focus on getting people back on the road vs indemnifying them
- Becoming a B-Corp - why do it? What does it entail?
- Values led - how it delivers ROI How to maintain values as you grow?
- We try and define "Insurtech" vs tech-enabled
- Utilizing tech shouldn't it always centre on the customer?
This is a conversation I have wanted to have for some time - values-led organizations especially set up around something that you love to do sounds to me like the goal all businesses should aim for.
Thank you to David for being a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space.
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond.
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where this week we were fortunate enough to be joined by Dror Katzav.
Dror is the CEO, Co-Founder of Atidot.
Atidot is an AI & Machine Learning solution for life insurers that provide real-time, actionable insights into customer behavior.
In this conversation we talked about:
- Developing his data skills in the army
- Why he focussed on Insurance as a business sector: Inefficiencies!
- Insurance is a rabbit warren of data opportunities Life insurance is data!
- Understanding the data is the secret recipe
- Running towards the biggest fire - the biggest challenge often means the least competition
- Looking for inspiration outside of insurance - who looks after and understand the customer
- If insurance doesn't create more touchpoints how can it differentiate itself?
- Creating effective partnerships in business
- Does better data mean the rule of large numbers ceases to apply?
- Better analytics allows us to create long-term value in the customer base
- Is there much focus on acquiring customers vs keeping them?
- Who controls data and who should? (Dror catches me out thinking old school?
- How the actuarial skill set is changing Narrative over facts - talk in stories, not statistics!
- How to be the "fly to the elephant! working with big companies as a small business
- Data ethics and regulated industries - unique challenges to overcome
Thank you so much to Dror for being a great guest - really great fun and super interesting.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
In this week's episode, we were joined by Jonathan Shapiro
Jonathan is Co-Founder and Director of Optalitix.
Optalitix is an artificial intelligence and data company that works across several verticals of which Insurance is just one so this was an excellent opportunity to talk about AI in a broader context - how are we in the world of Insurance shaping up against other sectors?
We had a great conversation and covered many topics to include:
- Being in AI in the 90s
- Life of a serial entrepreneur and his winding road to insurance
- Tolerating “actuaries”
- It's not just insurance that still is obsessed with spreadsheets
- How data if not communicated is worthless: Data needs to be operational.
- Do we take tech innovation for granted?
- Which industries are coping better with data?
- The benefits of lab and incubator setups for introducing new to the industry
- The scope of the value chain – where are the most data wins?
- The impact of how a business structures its staff that work in data dictates the impact
- Can data teams become blockers rather than enablers?
- Start-ups vs Incumbent Insurers: where are there the biggest data wins?
- How "doing" is sometimes more important than planning: Fast fail culture
- The importance of data-savvy leaders
- What can you do to best embrace change in data management and use?
- The importance of being able to communicate the WHY? of your data strategy at a leadership level
- Are the leaders we elect in traditional insurance businesses fit for the future? Can an Insurance professional lead a business in a digital/data world?
- How new ideas are crucial to business growth
Thanks to Jonathan for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
In this week's episode, we were lucky to be joined by Emilios Markou
Emilios is Executive Director and Co-Founder of Hellas Direct a non-life, full-stack insurer founded in 2010.
In this episode we talk about:
- The Fintech scene in Greece
- Being an Insurtech before Insurtechs
- Why and how the team went straight to the full-stack model first
- The geographic focus of Hellas direct, seeking valuable markets
- Building true value from the fundamentals not jumping on trends
- Finding the right - long-term investor for a traditional insurer model
- The distribution model - blending digital with traditional
- Being Distribution agnostic as a competitive advantage
- Can we be guilty of pushing tech where customers do not want it?
- True innovation meets the customer needs
- How innovation for Hellas means owning more of the value chain
- Customers dictate how you need to distribute - listen to your market
- How does an insurer engage with their customer - claims and renewal are the only touchpoints
- Fintech growth in Hellas direct market - disruption would be welcomed!
- Growing fast but sustainably - where does Hellas see value?
Thank you so much to Emilios for being such a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of The Leadership in Insurance Podcast where we were lucky to be joined by Dr Avi Baruch.
Avi is the Co-Founder and COO of Previsico an early warning flood forecasting company that was borne out of Loughborough University. Although not exclusively an Insurance focused business Previsico were recent Lloyd's Lab participants so we wanted to find out about the Previsico story and its experience of working with the insurance sector.
In this episode we talked about:
- How Previsico was borne out of a university research project
- How to move an academic project to a business venture
- Avi's unlimited travel budget for "research"
- The university business dynamic - the difference with the US system
- Benefits of product creation from an academic standpoint vs profit-driven enterprise
- How the business has changed and the new talent required whilst moving from an academic endeavor to a business
- The benefits of external advisors
- How close ties to university helps attract talent
- The Lloyd's lab experience - applying too early! and the incredible co-creation
- The breadth of application for Proviscos early warning system
- Risk prevention rather than indemnification
- What Avi learned from the insurance industry
- Previsicos work with NGOs and governments
- Parametrics and identifying the right trigger on an evolving improving model
- Collaboration with other Insurtechs
Thank you to Avi for being a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast where we were fortunate to be joined by Joel Pridmore
Joel is MD and Co-Founder of Frontier Global Underwriting a UK-based MGA operated out of London and Australia that focuses on the D&O market.
We have wanted to get an MGA entrepreneur on for some time and having only started Frontier in 2020 we were keen to hear about Joel's experience of launching a traditional MGA mid pandemic!
In this episode we talk about:
- The good foundations of working at a global corporate
- Why now is time for an MGA?
- Unique distribution and unique products - the MGA golden rules
- Knowing your niche - the value of an MGA
- How intrusive can we be to truly assess D&O risk?
- Utilizing AI tools to better understand the risk
- The MGA platform- the opportunities and limitations for you and your capacity providers
- Why did Joel decide to raise investment vs plug into an existing MGA platform?
- Build vs buy - why did Joel decide to build?
- Configuration as a hindrance? can you have too much choice? soft market vs hard market perceptions of the MGA model
- Does criticism of MGA ultimately fall back on capacity providers? are they complicit?
- Is the capacity relationship inefficient? Should there be longer-term deals?
- Why does Frontier only have one capacity provider?
- The state of the D&O market in 2021
- The importance of giving people opportunities into the insurance market
- The benefits of joining a small company as a grad - you see the whole business
- Syndicate in a box
- Should insurance ever be a competition on price?
- Volume vs Value
- Can we do better in attracting talent to the insurance market?
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the leadership in insurance podcast.
In this week's episode, we were lucky enough to be joined by James York
James is the founder and CEO of Worry + Peace which is a review-led marketplace for the insurance market
In this episode we talk about:
- Why are worry and peace not a comparison site?
- Why would it not want to be
- Why insurance should be brought and not sold
- The inherent danger of comparison sites
- Why reviews aren’t buyer-centric and how Worry + Peace changes this
- It's as important to know why you don’t choose a provider as to why you did
- The quandary of how we judge insurance vs how we evaluate which cover to buy
- The social good of insurance Is the price worth the promise?
- How do we give reviews context? What does a 5-star review actually mean?
- The importance of being mission-led in a start-up
- Failure – the MBA of entrepreneurship!
- Transparency in the new insurance model – the key to success?
- The benefit in networking and operating as an industry to evolve change
- Purpose – why is it important?
- Achieving innovation in insurance means we need to think bigger than insurance
- The need for a generational change in leadership to embrace innovation
- Can you be too profitable to innovate?
- What James has learned from being involved in Insurtech UK?
Thanks to James for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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In this episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast we were joined by Ron Glozman
Ron is the CEO and founder of Chisel AI a purpose-built AI-led solution for the Insurance market
In today's episode we talked about:
- How creating an app for students to study more efficiently led him to the insurance market
- How the evolution of NLP created the opportunities in insurance
- How AI and machine learning can create better jobs for people in the insurance
- The talent gap in the insurance market – more people retiring than joining.
- We discuss how the cost-saving of Ai will be utilized? Better products? Cheaper products or shareholder value? Is there a moral imperative?
- Does insurance do a poor job of attracting new entrants to the insurance market?
- Should we focus on the change and innovation of insurance to get more people interested in joining the insurance industry?
- Not all AI is created equal? How so – Ron explains to the layman….. me!
- Off the shelf vs bespoke – both have uses but we need to understand the limitations.
- Where is insurance on the automation spectrum? And where will we be in 5 years!
- How machine learning can aid knowledge transfer Insurance stage of evolution vs banking
- The macro challenge of education for new businesses
- Is the speed of change hindered by human resistance – could you let go of the wheel in an autonomous vehicle?
- Thanks to Ron for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
In today's episode, we were lucky enough to be joined by Amrit Santhirasenan. Amrit is Co-Founder and CEO of hyperexponential or HX as it's affectionately known.
HX is the company you get when you take 2 actuaries with computer science degrees and they find the software landscape lacking! HX provides software solutions for insurance companies with their flagship, next-generation modeling platform, Renew.
In this episode we talked about:
- Creativity in actuarial science
- Why open-sourced solutions are by nature better – many minds make light work
- Googling solutions is a good strategy!
- Knowing where to look is as good as knowing.
- Good documentation is a competitive advantage
- How the tech stack of old insurers hinders their tech teams
- HX started because Amrit kept waiting for someone to solve his tech problems – they didn’t so he had to do it
- The parallels of starting a business and starting a family – plug for Amrit's excellent podcast “start-up dads”
- The gritty reality of start-ups – you HAVE to want to do it. But it can be fun
- As co-founders how do you decide who has what role?
- We discuss my “less than average” leadership skills
- The value of every component of the business – a business as a system and striking binmen!
- Why take investment?
- The huge importance of trade backing and referrals for a new business
- Bootstrapping – is it useful?
- How the CEO works for the team, not the other way round!
- Sales teams – when to hire one? Do you need one if the product is strong enough?
- How the new digital insurers have a huge leveraged advantage – new tech – no legacy
- CTO roles at legacy insurers are not incentivized to change
- Culture drives change and insurance suffers from Fiefdoms
- How it's legitimate for profitable insurers to resist change – it's working why change it!
Thanks to Amrit for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the leadership in insurance podcast where we joined by Sasha Gainullin.
Sasha is the CEO and Founder of battleface a tech-enabled travel insurance and services business offering truly international, customized travel cover.
In this episode we talk about:
- Where the "battleface" comes from and why it's not more "travel friendly"
- How travel has changed and hence the insurance cover must change with it
- The unique demands on the travel claims process
- Why he secretly buys travel insurance for his mum!
- How the affinity insurance model of distribution can have a dangerous impact on cover
- The opportunities and challenges of Covid19 impact on travel insurance
- The fundamental challenge of how travel products are rated and marketed
- We shouldn't be afraid of price-sensitive markets - consumers will pay for quality
- Culture of mistrust between consumers and travel insurers - the impact of the "admin fee"
- Why we must empower client-facing staff to make decisions
- How can innovation come from C-Suite if they are the mots removed from customers?
- Funding an Insurtech - and the impact of the Pandemic
- Working with the right partners - "marriage should be easy" a lesson from Sashas Aunt!
- How the virtual Xmas party went down - why he got asked to "shut up"
- The importance of being Human!
Thank you to Sasha for being a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
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Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
In today's episode, I was joined by the CEO of Retechnica, Marco Iannone
Retechnica is a business that extracts meaning from Data using artificial intelligence offering both a technology solution and consultancy services to a wide range of clients.
We originally reached out to Marco because of his participation in Lloyd's lab. Marco had not previously applied the Ingenia service to the insurance market so I wanted to talk with him about his experience in applying AI to not just the Insurance market but other industries that may be more advanced than Insurance with respect to AI and learn about the best practice and its application to insurance.
In today's episode we talked about:
- Being invited to Lloyd's lab and how it compares to other lab environments
- How AI has progressed infancy to wide adoption
- Product creation leading to service creation
- What is Co-creation in respect of AI consultancy?
- Marco has a great example of how AI can supplement team members
- Augmentation vs automation
- AI can lead to greater work-life balance and fulfillment
- The complexity of insurance suggests a greater use case for augmentation
- Many opportunities for AI in insurance: which has the most ROI?
- Are insurance participants ready to engage with an external partner in AI?
- Challenge of large companies to automate - not just technical Embracing technological change "a muscle" that can be trained
- Importance of talent and the movement of talent to helping an industry embrace change
- The embracing of change to automation is "grittier" than expected - resilience is required
- It's key to define what success looks like!
- Automation shouldn't just be on cost reduction it can lead to new products or a premium product
- Getting the right people to champion automation/modernization is key to success
- Top-down support is required to achieve automation
- Beware SNAKEOIL in AI efforts - plenty being sold!
Thank you to Marco for being a great guest.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast. In this episode, I was lucky enough to be joined by Peter Clarke.
Peter is CEO and Founder of Insurecore. Insurercore is a professional networking site exclusively for Insurance practitioners helping improve the market's inefficiencies and encourage networking in a more professional context.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Micro-social media networking sites and why Linkedin isn't fit for purpose.
- How a social networking site doesn't replace face to face meetings but enhances the relationship
- How the pandemic and increased working from home has enhanced the need for social media
- Why Insurercore couldn't have been built by someone from outside the market
- The nuances of the market and the knowledge aren't being shared - a network is a way of doing that
- Peter selling his house to launch a start-up when he had just been promoted!
- The challenge of launching a platform - chicken and egg
- Your assumptions aren't always correct - the audience dictates how they like to use it
- The democratization of opportunity - the importance of enhanced networking within that
- Better networks mean more business
- Culture biggest prohibitor of change in Insurance
- The cost base of Lloyd's shows how resistant to change the market is - it hasn't changed for 50 years
- Technology should enhance the best parts of insurance Innovation is challenging everything you do - even your scanning!
- By the time you "earn the right" to have your say you are often indoctrinated into the insurance market - this inhibits change
- Fail fast isn't useful unless you are learning and find out why you fail!
- Getting feedback from clients is key to success BUT... they are not always right!
- The secret to successful change - keep trying new things
- Training on systems - shouldn't they be intuitive enough?
- Using platforms vs fully utilizing platforms
- The importance of non-execs - filling the gaps in your knowledge
Thanks so much to Peter for being a great guest
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond.
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In today's episode, we are joined by the brilliant Dickie Whitaker
Dickie has a portfolio of businesses and ventures he is involved with but in this episode, we focussed on his work with Oasis Loss Modelling Framework
In this episode we talk about:
- The reason to start a business - find a problem large enough to solve that people will pay for it
- Why "we have always done it this way" is the very reason to change "that way"
- How important diversity - in all forms, create brilliant teams
- How startup teams are not created equal - and how that's good.
- Why team structures should be fluid European vs US start-up psychology (Huge sweeping generalization warning!)
- What does innovation mean?
- We hear why Dickie is uncomfortable about Innovation teams in companies
- Why culture is everything and why we can be so bad at articulating it within Insurance
- Why "work hard, play hard" needs to be replaced with "work smart, play......how you like!"
- The pandemic has shone a light on the "last person in the office" culture of office work
- The importance of collaboration in the industry to innovation Collaboration starts with trust
- The role of insurance in society and its unique position to impact society
- Collaboration can't just is volunteers it needs rigour and structure and the best talent!
- The best people don't always or don't often volunteer! (Open goal for a recruitment professional!)
- The benefit of blissful ignorance in building anything
- The importance of looking forward as opposed to looking back
Thanks to Dickie for being a great guest - a really enjoyable discussion.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In this week's episode, I was joined by Frank Perkins who is CEO of INARI.IO
INARI.IO is an Instech operating out of Barcelona. They offer a next-generation insurance platform, they digitize and virtualize the different things that happen in the life cycle of risk.
In this episode we discuss
- Startups are not for everyone - creativity is as important as hard work
- How the people that join at inception may not be the people to necessarily take you to completion
- "Is the juice worth the squeeze" Insurance is big enough to have many problems to solve but is it a big enough issue
- Insurers cannot tackle small problems - Instechs can
- Innovation can be any change that creates value
- The insurance culture of the fast follower can inhibit innovation
- Fresh eyes to insurance are important but regulation requires insider knowledge
- We should always be asking how change or innovation impacts the customers
- We need to tackle each point of innovation to make things better in the aggregate for the commercial customer
- Restrictions of regulated businesses and the MVP tech model
- Insurance isn't broken
- Connected technology is key to the future success of insurance
- How connectivity between technologies is key to progress and also how consumers will judge tech
- Buy vs make - the shift of mindset over time - integrate vs make job roles in insurers
- Cost vs Risk with buying or making tech
- Teams are built on skill, luck, and serendipity
- The best definition of Innovation so far - "slightly rounder wheels"
Thanks to Frank for being a great guest - I mention the Star Wars background - you can see this on the YouTube channel so go check it out.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond. Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In the latest episode of the leadership in Insurance Podcast, we were lucky to be joined by Antonin de Benoist
Antonin is the COO and Co-Founder of Allphins a SaaS analytics and exposure management tool for the insurance industry
In this episode we talked about:
- Antonin's entry into the insurance world from the world of finance
- How do Co-founders decide who takes what role? COO or CEO?
- Station F Paris incubator campus set up
- How important start-up "campus" ecosystems are for new businesses for visibility
- Bootstrapping vs external capital raising - why do it?
- Benefits of running lean How working on Oil and Gas projects gave visibility of how insurers were underutilizing their data
- The importance of Insurance companies knowing what they don't know Impact of theLloyd's lab - the importance of being able to ask the stupid question
- Culture of insurance and how positive it is towards a new start-up
- The importance of natural language processing to enabling AI in insurance
- How AI isn't replacing underwriting its enabling better decisions
- The Lloyd's lab experience and how it isn't your typical incubator - it's much more practical
- What was surprising about Lloyd's as a market to someone who was from outside the market
- The sales cycle challenge for start-ups: long, slow does not help with cash flow
- What they learned in the energy sector and how it might apply to other insurance lines
- Impact of awards on the visibility to investment capital
- The drain on resources of a small when trying to raise investment
- Impact of the pandemic on Allphins growth and development
- The technological debt built by the pandemic and the opportunity for Instech businesses
Thank you so much to Antonin for being a great guest and spending time with me in a very busy year.
Congratulations to Allphins on their success to date and we look forward to seeing what they achieve in 2021.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In the latest episode of the Leadership in Insurance podcast
I was lucky to be joined by Paul Prendergast. Paul is the CEO and founder of Blink Parametric.
Blink is a delivery platform that allows insurance industry partners to create parametric solutions.
In this wide-reaching conversation we talked about:
- Why Blink runs towards the "fires" solving solutions
- How parametric solutions reduce the unit cost of insurance
- Embracing technology to give greater visibility of risk
- How starting with the end customer can be the wrong approach - blink start with the underwriter
- Insurance as a social good - we sometimes forget that
- Why the MVP (minimum viable product) cant work in the insurance space
- All businesses as technology companies
- Despite frustration with the speed of change, there is a huge passion, intellectual capacity, and scale in the insurance industry
- The secret sauce in startups - complimentary teams - Tech is key but it must have sales
- Why sales is such a dirty word in the technology space
- How attitudes of successful Instech startups in 2021 are different to 5 years ago - less adversarial Impact of social media on insurance
- Insurance is cool - Insuring Elon Musks' rocket!
- New entrants to insurance don't grow the market unless they solve a new problem or offer a different solution Innovation is about culture, not projects and process
- How the size of the team impacts innovation
- What's to stop insurers from being the AWS of insurance platforms
- Technology first - how incumbents are held back by required regulatory technology changes
- Innovation in insurance comes from unexpected places
and so much more.
Thanks to Paul for being a great guest - I probably had 4 people tell me I had to Paul on the podcast as he is a true innovator and forward-thinking tech and insurance entrepreneur and he didn't disappoint.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Welcome to the latest edition of the leadership in Insurance podcast with Nik Suhr
Nik is the CEO and founder of Kasko
Kasko is a business that provides Insurtech as a service. Kasko principally works with Insurance and digital businesses to help them create digital insurance products or services.
In this episode we talked about:
- Insurtech as a service
- What is an Insurance "product"
- The technical debt in the insurance space created by COVID19
- How innovation can be an excuse for action
- How innovation must have a measurable ROI Insurance is a fast follower business
- How Intrapreneurship is better than innovation as it implies responsibility
- Why make or buy is a meaningless argument
- How legacy needs to be taken off the backs of innovation efforts to make those efforts successful
- Why most innovation labs have failed against expectation
- Acknowledging that consulting is easier than doing
- Working out which data points to listen to Innovation can be toxic if not validated
- Value means someone wants to pay for it!
- Insurance: is it a capacity play vs technology play
- Insurtech cant get away from underwriting discipline
- How it may look when Amazon enters the insurance market
and much more - this was a really enjoyable podcast and Nik was great fun, not afraid to tackle some issues that often get missed.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
In the first podcast of the year, we get stuck into all things AI and all things claims by speaking to the team from Tautona AI in South Africa
I have a bit of a soft spot for claims as it is where I joined the insurance industry many moons ago.
This was a fun conversation with the first guest pairing as I was joined by both: Philip Cooper and John Holdsworth
We covered lots of ground and also had the first guest screen share (well played John)
We talked about:
- How natural language processing was the evolutionary step required to make AI in claims possible
- How AI is a tool for claim professional, not a replacement
- Artificial intelligence in claims is a route to fairness for both insured and the insurer
- AI as not just a cost but an offering of better service in claims Claims as a differentiator
- The different challenges faced in different geographic insurance markets to the claims process
- The value of Lloyd's lab experience and the power of the "alumni" badge to open doors
- Why focus on claims when applying AI techniques
- Why claims professionals get frustrated and how AI may help them be happier in their work
- The under-representation of claims professionals in the board room
- How new entrants are making claims the corner-stone of their offering
- The Psychology of insurance buyers How we set the rules - do one-click purchases mean we should offer one-click claims?
- Faux-mation and the dangers of applying this to claims
and obviously much more in-between including the first (unbelievably) postman interruption during the recording!
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Welcome to episode 10 of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
In this episode, we are joined by Bob Frady of Hazard Hub
Hazard Hub is a 3rd party data supplier that boasts the most comprehensive property data ever assembled for the insurance industry and works with the industry and helps them to better understand their risk
Bob is a really interesting and engaging guy it was a pleasure to spend some time talking to him, we met through his involvement in Lloyd's lab.
In this conversation we talk about:
- Data quality and data skill within the insurance industry
- The difficulty of obtaining and accessing the right data Data efficiency and using data to distribute labour
- How ideas are free but that's the easy part
- The importance of end-user feedback early on and the benefits of MVP
- How VC money can be easier to get with an idea than actual revenue
- The importance of sharing ideas and not being too protective
- The slow sales cycle of the insurance market - you need the money or the stomach for the long haul
- Use of data analysis after the fact - the lunacy of that process!
- What the data says about rate rises - it isn't enough!
- The social dilemma around tailored pricing - people can be priced out
- The importance of asking the right questions
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Welcome to the latest edition of The Leadership in Insurance Podcast in this episode we were lucky enough to be joined by John McClelland of MiBroker
MiBroker is an on-demand insurance product for the solopreneur market place utilising technology to buy insurance as you need it.
In this conversation we talk cover a range of topics to include:
Learning new skills outside of insurance led to opportunities within Insurance
- The rise in on-demand insurance
- Customer demand being the "right way" to build insurance businesses
- How consumer journey in any industry is viewed via personal buying experiences and how commercial experiences don't seem to catch up
- Why we won't see true disruption in insurance
- How innovation should bring in new business to the insurance market not simply carve profit from existing markets
- The short term view of insurers and how it can sometimes contradict the willingness to innovation
- Value of Lloyd's Lab and collaboration with experts in digital insurance
- The start-up scene in Canada and virtual meeting burn out
- The benefits of virtual meeting and the one to one environment - how it drives efficiency
- The informal nature of face to face meeting and how we lose opportunities in virtual rooms
- Businesses growing in the "new normal" by adapting and evolving their service
Thanks once again to John for being part of the LiiP podcast and we look forward to watching his journey
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast (The LiiP).
In this episode, we were joined by the brilliant Michael Crawford
Michael is the CEO and Co-Founder of Describe Data which uses AI and unique data sets to help insurance businesses make better sense of data and write more profitable portfolios.
In this conversation we talk about:
- The Lloyd’s Lab experience – how it evolved and how Describe Data might not now get in
- The importance of mentors
- How to productize an idea
- How feedback refines and defines the product
- The cultural shift in Insurance needed to adopt a product mindset
- How business mistakes become your real-world MBA
- Bootstrapping a good business lesson?
- Importance of speed in product development
- The gap in the market vs Market in the gap
- Smart money vs any money
- Timing of investment
- How you need to “give” as much as you take from your networking community
- Importance of having defined roles in the start-up team
- Healthy debate and its importance to C-founder relationships
- How Describe Data came out stronger from lockdown
- AI and its application to insurance
- Does Insurance need ML?
- Over expectation of technology from the incumbent industry
- Scaling technology solutions? Are the wins big enough?
- Is long term innovation possible in publicly traded businesses?
- Do we have the right leaders for innovation?
- Maturing ideas in Instech
So we covered a LOT of ground. This was great fun to record, Michael is a great guy and a good guest.
This is a fantastic podcast for people interested in tech/insurance and entrepreneurship.
This podcast was brought to you by FinPro an executive recruitment business that works in the Insurance and Instech space
Our host is FinPro Director, Alex Bond
Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed this podcast
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast (The LiiP).
This is a brilliant chat with David Hughes https://www.linkedin.com/in/dapahughes/
David is CEO and Founder of Mulberry Risk which is an Analytics and Actuarial Consultancy to the MGA space https://www.mulberryrisk.com/
David was very open and honest as a guest - even sharing us the secret of what he was hiding in the background of his recording!
In this we talk about:
- His professional rugby career - ditching this for life as a pensions actuary
- Getting early inspiration from working with legendary Insurance entrepreneur John Charman
- How simple it should be to keep people happy
- How the alumni of some successful businesses have an oversized impact on the insurance business
- Importance of stepping back to go forward
- People as catalysts in your career
- How important speed is to innovation
- The appeal of the MGA market in its entrepreneurial
- Risk of a rate rise to the MGA model
- The reputation of the MGA in the mind of underwriters
- Importance of making your capital fungible for a capacity provider
- MGA vs MGU - American carrier relationships vs UK carrier relationships
- Flexibility in MGA model thrived in a lockdown environment
- What makes a successful Insurtech?
- Simplicity the key to successful insurance solutions
- How great businesses come out of the customer journey and customer focus
- Is your niche big enough for the investment?
And much more in between.
This I a really interesting chat with an engaging founder with a great business concept.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondf...
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website
https://www.wearefinpro.com/ Look out for more episodes coming soon and please like and subscribe it really helps the channel out!
Hello and welcome to the Leadership in Insurance Podcast - Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Mike Minnett
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeminett/
Mike is founder and CEO of Portabl an Insurance solution for the gig economy workforce.
https://www.portabl.co/
Mike is a serial entrepreneur and great fun. We met "stalking each other" on Linkedin (Mikes words not mine). This is a far-reaching chat and in it we cover:
- What is an ideas guy?
- Impact of Covid19 on the gig economy
- How the gig economy is much more than Uber and Deliveroo drivers
- Elevator pitches
- How the workforce dynamic has changed
- What you don't know about starting a business.....until you do
- The experience of growing and selling a start-up in the health and benefits space
- The challenges of fitting a small, nimble startup into large corporate business
- How Mike could have been YouTube before YouTube and it still hurts that he isn't!
- Are we in a bubble behind ideas at the moment in Insurance?
- Who is right for a start-up? The people that take you the first 3 years are they the right people for the next 3 years?
- Building a team in a start-up
- The importance of start-up incubators for networking
- The importance of storytelling in recruitment
- Teams by design
- Direct value versus indirect value in networking
- Does Networking have a negative connotation?
And much more in between.
This I a really interesting chat with an engaging founder with a great business concept.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondf...
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website
https://www.wearefinpro.com/
Look out for more episodes coming soon and please like and subscribe it really helps the channel out!
In today's episode of The Leadership in Insurance Podcast (The LiiP) I was lucky enough to be joined by Dr Marcus Schmalbach
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-marcus-schmalbach-02667746/
Marcus is the CEO and Founder of the Instech Ryskex.
Ryskex is an exchange model that utilises blockchain technology to offer parametric cover for hard to place and complex risks.
https://ryskex.com/
Marcus and I first engaged over some content online and have always had lively discussions about the Insurance market.
Marcus is a great guest and didnt disappoint with some interest viewpoints and commentary on the insurance market today.
In this episode we cover:
- Marcus's journey into insurance
- Salespeople as a feedback loop - their most important role
- The caution of solving problems that don't exist
- How the customer isn't always right
- Why go into academia?
- Where did Ryskex come from as an idea?
- How blockchain fits into insurance
- Parametrics and blockchain
- Fizzy and what we can learn as a use case https://www.axa.com/en/magazine/axa-goes-blockchain-with-fizzy
- How to "tokenise risk" to share the risk of an exchange
- How to set Veritas and triggers for a parametric solution
- The law of large numbers and where insurance fails
- The Challenge of reputation risk and what it means to associated risks and cost
- How financial markets are often better placed to provide bespoke, large solutions
- Alternative solutions do not exclude insurance market
- How the Lloyd's market will inevitably change and why it needs to
- Why change will be dictated by leaders we don't even know yet
- How change is driven by customers and technology
- Simplicity is the solution
And much more in between.
This I a really interesting chat with an engaging founder with a great business concept.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondf...
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website
https://www.wearefinpro.com/ Look out for more episodes coming soon and please like and subscribe it really helps the channel out!
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast.
This week I was lucky enough to be joined by Marco Del Carlo https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcodelc...
Marco is CEO and Founder of Capacity Place. https://capacityplace.com/
Capacity place is a marketplace that brings together interested parties seeking capacity with businesses looking to provide capacity. It's a brilliantly simple solution to a problem that in my role as a headhunter I have personally experienced.
This was a great conversation that covered a wide range of topics:
- Marcos path into insurance from management consultancy
- The inefficiency of Lloyd's market and therefore opportunities ( I miss the suitcases)
- The evolution of the banking and hedge fund market and whats it means to the insurance market
- Algorithmic trading
- Setting up an MGA
- Choosing the right partners for starting a business and having clear objectives
- Setting the right criteria for growth
- Building networks
- Finding you are a salesman when you don't think you are
- Discovering "The Idea" and knowing when to commit to it full time
- The different objectives of carriers: distribution vs margin
- How simple ideas are the best
- Transparent market places and building robust, secure marketplaces
- How to grow a business with multiple customer segments
- Timing in an acquisition is everything
And much more in between.
This is a really interesting chat with an engaging founder with a great business concept.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondf...
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website https://www.wearefinpro.com/
Look out for more episodes coming soon and please like and subscribe as it would be greatly appreciated
Hello and welcome to The Leadership in Insurance Podcast. Affectionately know as the LiiP.
This week we were lucky enough to be joined by Amit Patel https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitpatel911/
Amit is Founder and CEO of Hlthie https://www.hlthie.com/
Hlthie is an Insurtech operating in the Health Insurance segment offering a marketplace affordable solution to health insurance.
I was lucky enough to come across Amit at an Instech London ( https://www.instech.london/) event when we could meet face to face and all such exciting things.
In this Podcast we talk about:
- Amit's unusual journey into insurance via qualifying as a Surgeon!
- The transition in culture from medicine to management consulting
- The reaction of friends and family to a career change
- Taking steps back to go forward
- Do you need "insurance" people to build a modern insurance business
- The challenge of financial security vs entrepreneurship
- The importance of confidence to start-up success
- Leading in the Tech space without being a "Techie"
- Domain knowledge vs Getting stuff done
- The inefficiency of late businesses
- Cost of health care as we all live longer, need for alternatives
- Bootstrapping and Investment
- The optimal time to take investment? Can you take too much investment? or take investment too early?
- Building a data and technology product - not an insurance product
- Simplicity of service as a selling point
- Choosing the right accelerator for you
And much more in between.
This I a really interesting chat with an engaging founder with a great business concept.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondf...
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website https://www.wearefinpro.com/
Look out for more episodes coming soon.
Welcome to the second episode of the Leadership in Insurance Podcast "The LiiP" In this episode, I am very lucky to be joined by FJ Smith of Clearview with FJ
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fjsmith1/
FJ has a long history with the Insurance market and was previously head of Recruitment for Lloyd's of London before retraining and making a career for herself as an Executive coach and latterly as an Empowerment coach (this was a new term to me too)
FJ is someone I have known a very long time, she is funny, engaging and very direct which is a huge part of her appeal as a coach!
In this episode, I wanted to tackle what an Executive coach is, what they do and who should have one? We covered much more than that.
We talked about:
- FJ's first-hand experience of getting a coach whilst at Lloyd's of London
- What FJ felt she gained from having a coach that inspired her to retrain as a coach
- How to find the right coach
- The stigma attached to coaching
- Why everyone should have a coach and how we should now view coaching as something just for senior executives
- When is the right time to get a coach? (JFDI - you will learn about this acronym by watching)
- The 5 Gremlins everyone has that coaches work on Graduate experience of insurance
- Who is coaching for and who it isn't for
- What makes a good recruitment process
- The most common flaws in internal recruitment function
- The importance of empowerment and much, much more.
This was a great podcast and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm sure you will too.
To find out more about FJ please contact her on Linkedin.
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondfinpro/
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website https://www.wearefinpro.com/ Look out for more episodes coming soon.
Hello and welcome to the Leadership in Insurance podcast, otherwise known as the Liip.
On today's episode, we talk to Naby Mariyam, CEO and Founder of Coverhero.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabymariyam
Coverhero is an Australian based Insurtech platform that this year launched its first product, Hustle cover, aimed at the rapidly growing gig economy workforce
https://www.hustlecover.com/
Naby was one of the first people I wanted on the show when I thought of the idea.
A host of her own podcast #Hustlechat, she is an experienced and insightful guest - not your typical insurance professional.
https://www.hustlecover.com/events
Naby was incredibly honest, open and direct in this podcast.
We cover such topics as:
- Her unusual route into Insurance and entrepreneurship (Academia - Filmmaker - Entrepreneur - Insurance?)
- The challenges and opportunities of Innovation labs Pitching for funds
- The true cost of entrepreneurship - money and family and the sacrifices required
- Embracing serendipity to get moving
- Building teams in startups
- Effective communication
- Being "Human" in business
- Mental Health
- What's next for Coverhero
I really enjoyed this podcast. Naby was a great guest - I look forward to seeing what she achieves next!
If you want to find out more about me: Alex Bond you can check me out on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbondfinpro
FinPro is a talent consultancy to the Insurance, Reinsurance and Insuretech markets on a global basis, for more information visit our website https://www.wearefinpro.com/
Look out for more episodes coming soon.