Asia InsurTech Podcast: Recent Episodes
Asia InsurTech Podcast
The only podcast dedicated to InsurTech in Asia and how technology is reshaping the insurance industry.
Embedded health is transforming the traditional role of insurers from passive claim-payers to active partners in their customers’ health journeys. By integrating health services—like wellness tools, virtual care, and personalized health content—directly into existing insurance apps and digital platforms, insurers can offer continuous value beyond claims.
This shift not only enhances customer satisfaction and engagement but also drives tangible business outcomes, such as improved retention, increased acquisition, and reduced operational costs. The key is embedding these services where customers already are—whether in insurance apps, distribution channels, or even lifestyle and retail platforms.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Shane Di and Sebastien Gaudin of The CareVoice dive into the rapidly evolving world of embedded health within the insurance sector.
They discuss how integrating health services directly into the digital lives of their customers create seamless experiences that go beyond policy management. Through a user-first approach, they’ve built a platform that not only engages customers but also foster long-term relationships. The key to their success? Speed, flexibility, and personalization that speak directly to the end user.
Building flexible, scalable platforms that can be deployed quickly and adapted easily is essential to stay competitive for insurers. As digital health becomes central to the insurance value chain, the future lies in systems that are fast to launch, simple to manage, and built to evolve—always with the end user at the core.
The post EP 245 – Can Insurers Move From Claims to Care With Embedded Health? – Shane Di and Sebastien Gaudin – The CareVoice appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Insurance policies are designed to be comprehensive and legally sound, but their complexity often leaves both customers and professionals overwhelmed and uncertain. Bridging the gap between regulatory necessity and user understanding requires more than just simplifying language — it demands a new approach to structuring and accessing information. By distilling complex documents into clear, intuitive insights, it becomes possible to empower brokers, underwriters, and claims managers to make faster, more confident decisions, while restoring trust with customers who deserve transparency.
In this episode, we spoke with Jasmin Flori-Hess, the Founder and CEO of Raindrop, about her mission to bring trust, clarity, and transparency to insurance. What began as a personal frustration — spending 15 hours reading through insurance policies before a family camping trip — led Jasmin to create a solution that transforms complex policy documents into simple, actionable insights.
Driven by a customer-first mindset and an outsider’s fresh perspective, Jasmin built Raindrop not just for consumers, but also for brokers, carriers, and claims managers who struggle to navigate the growing complexity of insurance products. Raindrop’s platform uses a specialized AI model, trained only on policy documents, to ensure accurate, explainable answers without bias — offering a new standard of trust in an industry that needs it more than ever.
The post EP 244 – Why Transparent Policy Communication Matters More Than Ever – Jasmin Flori-Hess – Founder and CEO at Raindrop appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
While banking and investment platforms rapidly moved to mobile apps over a decade ago, the insurance industry’s transition has been slower. This delay has made it more difficult for the industry to adapt to newer technologies like AI and seamless digital integration. The result is a significant gap—especially visible in areas like personal insurance for high-value items—where consumers are left without quick, flexible, options.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, we talk to Stephan Kaiser, the CEO and Founder of KoverNow, about why the insurance industry has fallen behind in the digital race
This delay has made it difficult for the industry to adapt to newer technologies like AI and seamless digital integration. The result is a significant gap—especially visible in areas like personal insurance for high-value items—where consumers are left without quick, flexible, or transparent options.
At the same time, luxury goods markets are booming and increasingly shifting online, with younger, digital-native consumers leading the charge. These consumers expect instant, app-based experiences—including when it comes to insuring their expensive purchases. Traditional insurance, designed for static home contents, doesn’t match these expectations.
A new approach is needed—one that blends mobile-first tech, standardized pricing for branded goods, and embedded insurance offered at the point of sale. The path forward also depends on updated regulatory frameworks and greater willingness from insurers to rethink distribution and customer engagement in the digital age.
The post EP 243 – Can Luxury Goods Insurance Go Completely Digital? – Stephan Kaiser – Founder and CEO of KoverNow appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Artificial intelligence is starting to play a powerful role in transforming the insurance industry, especially in how companies operate behind the scenes and connect with clients. While many insurers are still catching up to other parts of financial services, they are beginning to use AI to improve productivity, speed up processes, and support employees—particularly in areas like underwriting, customer service, and agent training.
However, deeply rooted legacy systems and a cautious approach to change continue to slow the pace of progress. The real challenge lies in reimagining old processes, not just automating them, and doing so in a way that builds trust and value for clients. At the same time, AI is opening new doors to rethink client engagement in a traditionally low-touch industry.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, we explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the insurance industry through a thoughtful conversation with Aneesh Chaudhry, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Sun Life Asia. Aneesh shares how the industry is embracing AI, not just to improve internal operations like underwriting and policy processing, but also to enhance client experiences.
He explains that while insurance may not have the daily customer touchpoints of banking, AI is helping bridge that gap by enabling smarter, faster, and more personalized services—from using GenAI to train rookie advisors to gamifying financial literacy for young customers.
The post EP 242 – How Can AI Help You Get Better Insurance? – Aneesh Chaudhry – Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Sun Life Asia appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The insurance industry is at a turning point, driven by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and digital technology. Traditional models of risk assessment and product creation can be slow and often fail to address the unique needs of individuals and businesses.
Generative AI is changing this by enabling insurers to develop products faster, target micro-segments more effectively, and create policies that better match specific risks. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can refine underwriting processes, personalize offerings, and reduce the cost of serving customers. This shift not only enhances efficiency but also makes insurance more accessible and relevant to a wider range of consumers.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Amit Boni, CEO of Ensuredit breaks down precisely how generative AI is transforming insurance product creation, making it faster and more precise through micro-segmentation. He challenges the industry’s existing approach, arguing that AI can unlock hyper-personalized policies and better risk assessment, ultimately reducing costs and improving accessibility.
From AI-powered customer interactions to embedded insurance that adapts to real-time events—like offering event cancellation coverage when booking flights to a concert—Amit reveals how technology is reshaping the insurance landscape.
The post EP 241 – How Does AI Help Create the Best Insurance Policy for You? – Amit Boni – CEO of Ensuredit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Peter Tilocca, Head of Underwriting at NobleOak Insurance, dives into the transformative innovations reshaping the underwriting landscape. From digital tools becoming the baseline to the vast potential of wearable data, Peter highlights how technology and data are streamlining risk assessment and enhancing customer experiences.
He emphasizes the need for ethical AI usage and smarter risk segmentation, moving away from outdated practices like mandatory medical exams. Wearables, gamification, and non-traditional data sources such as socio-economic factors are proving to be game-changers in improving affordability and personalization in life insurance.
Peter also discusses the importance of balancing innovation with stable risk management. With climate impacts and real-time data shaping the industry, he advocates for collaboration with InsurTech startups to address life insurance challenges. Drawing on his work with InsurTech Australia, Peter shares how flexible roadmaps, AI ethics committees, and a customer-focused mindset can help insurers embrace new opportunities while maintaining responsibility.
The post EP 240 – Is Life Insurance in Australia Ready to Embrace the Future? – Peter Tilocca – NobleOak appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast recently welcomed back Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, co-founder of Turtlemint, to discuss the transformative journey of his company and the InsurTech industry at large.
We spoke about how the evolution of InsurTech is reshaping the way insurance and financial services are accessed and delivered, particularly in underserved markets. Technology has become a key driver of innovation, enabling companies to address gaps in distribution, personalization, and engagement.
By leveraging artificial intelligence and embedded insurance models, businesses are creating frictionless experiences that reach consumers in tier-three and tier-four markets. Small-ticket insurance products are becoming entry points for financial inclusion, allowing first-time buyers to build trust and graduate to more comprehensive coverage and services. This approach not only improves access but also enhances consumer awareness about risk management and financial planning.
Content and data-driven strategies are at the heart of this transformation. Hyper-localized, multi-lingual content ensures relevance for diverse audiences, while AI-powered tools streamline operations, reduce costs, and enable highly personalized customer interactions. The integration of additional financial products, such as mutual funds and loans, complements insurance offerings, creating a holistic ecosystem for consumers.
As regulatory frameworks evolve, the challenge lies in balancing compliance with innovation to unlock the full potential of these technologies, making financial services more inclusive and efficient for all.
The post EP 239 – Is Generative AI Revolutionizing Insurance for Underserved Communities in India? – Dhirendra Mahyavanshi – Turtlemint appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The insurance industry is on the brink of a technological revolution, and Satishwar Balakrishnan, Managing Director and CEO of Bandhan Life Insurance, is at the forefront of this transformation. In this episode, Satishwar shares how generative AI is reshaping life insurance by enabling hyper-personalized customer experiences and supercharging advisor productivity. By acting as a co-pilot, AI allows advisors to provide tailored solutions, anticipate customer needs, and even calculate policy adjustments in real time—all while maintaining the human touch.
This isn’t just about better service; it’s about breaking barriers, particularly for India’s vast self-employed population, a segment traditionally underserved due to underwriting challenges. Through data-driven innovation, Bandhan Life is rewriting the rules of insurance, catering to a growing class of freelancers and entrepreneurs who are redefining work itself.
But it’s not just about customers; AI is revolutionizing the workplace, too. From assisting internal collaboration to streamlining complex tasks, AI is proving to be a powerful ally, not a replacement. Satishwar debunks the myth that technology eliminates jobs, emphasizing instead how it amplifies human potential, enabling organizations to scale like never before. As India embraces a startup boom and self-employment rises, Bandhan Life is using AI to meet the evolving needs of its customers while making insurance more accessible, efficient, and inclusive.
The post EP 238 – How Is Generative AI Making Life Insurance More Accessible? – Satishwar Balakrishnan – Bandhan Life Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Australia’s InsurTech scene is a hotbed for innovation. Simone Dossetor, CEO of InsurTech Australia, sheds light on why the country’s collaborative culture and global outlook make it an ideal place for InsurTech startups to thrive. With a single national regulatory framework, InsurTechs can efficiently scale and test new ideas in a manageable environment before expanding globally. Add to this Australia’s diversity—fueled by international talent from its renowned universities—and the result is a dynamic ecosystem that fosters creativity and cross-border collaborations.
While Australia serves as a perfect launchpad for innovative solutions, the road to scaling globally demands a strong commercial lens and strategic partnerships. With InsurTech Australia acting as a connector between startups and industry giants, the ecosystem not only accelerates innovation but also addresses challenges like integrating emerging technologies and expanding into untapped sectors like climate tech and health tech.
The future of Australia’a InsurTech ecosystem lies in its ability to expand into adjacent sectors like climate tech, property tech, and health tech, leveraging innovation to meet evolving challenges. With a growing focus on efficiency and value chain improvements, Australia’s streamlined regulatory framework, diverse talent pool, and robust infrastructure make it an ideal testing ground for new products and ideas, which can then be scaled and adapted for global markets.
The post EP 237 – Is Australia Building the Future of Global Insurance? – Simone Dossetor – CEO of InsurTech Australia appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, we explore how embedded insurance is transforming the insurance industry with Nigel Fellowes-Freeman, the CEO of Kanopi. Embedded insurance simplifies the buying process by offering tailored coverage directly within products or services consumers already use, eliminating the confusion of traditional insurance purchases.
Nigel highlights how businesses can benefit from embedding insurance by boosting customer engagement, generating new revenue streams, and offering personalized, relevant coverage in real time. Though the technical challenges are significant, the convenience and value this model offers to both consumers and companies are undeniable.
Nigel also delves into the future of the insurance landscape, where embedded insurance could help close the growing global protection gap. As more services adopt embedded insurance, more consumers will gain access to coverage, especially in underserved markets. While brokers won’t be replaced, their role will evolve from selling transactional policies to providing expert advice on complex insurance needs.
With embedded insurance, the shift toward more integrated, data-driven solutions is reshaping how insurance is delivered, opening up new opportunities for both businesses and consumers alike.
The post EP 236 – Will Embedded Insurance Change How We Buy Protection Forever? – Nigel Fellowes-Freeman – Kanopi appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, we dive deep into the entrepreneurial journey of Tetiana George, co-founder and CEO of Curium. Tetiana opens up about the challenges of fundraising and why she chose to walk away from investors who offered terms she found restrictive. Instead of being held back by “handcuffs” that limited […]
The post EP 235 – Pivoting Under Pressure Could Be the Secret to Startup Success – Tetiana George – Curium appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we dive into the challenges and opportunities facing the insurance industry with Julien Condamines, co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Novo AI. Julien believes there is an urgent need for change, and he highlights the growing gap between claims payments and premiums, driven by inefficiencies and many other factors. He also believes […]
The post EP 234 – How Generative AI Is Reshaping the Insurance Industry – Julien Condamines – Novo AI appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Ronak Shah, CEO of QBE Singapore, shares his 20+ years of experience in the insurance industry, shedding light on its significant impact on people’s lives. He emphasizes how insurance provides a critical safety net, protecting individuals and families during life’s most challenging moments. Ronak’s personal story of […]
The post EP 233 – How Insurance Provides a Critical Safety Net for Families and Businesses – Ronak Shah – CEO QBE Singapore appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Jeffrey Heine, Chief Revenue Officer of Novidea, shared insights from his extensive career in the insurance industry. Heine emphasized the importance of firsthand experience in claims, which gave him a deeper understanding of the industry’s core mission to support customers during difficult times. He highlighted the unique challenges and opportunities in Asia, noting the region’s advanced state of digital transformation and strong focus on customer engagement. Heine underscored the necessity of proactive customer interactions and the potential of using data to improve service delivery and risk management.
Heine also discussed the significant benefits of operational efficiencies and data connectivity within insurance companies, which can enhance internal relationships and customer service. He pointed to the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in handling mundane tasks and providing real-time insights. Additionally, Heine envisioned a future where insurance ecosystems integrate with various platforms, such as e-commerce and ride-hailing services, to offer personalized solutions based on customers’ life events. This interconnected approach aims to improve the overall customer experience and ensure that the industry fulfills its promise of protection and support.
The post EP 232 – Navigating Unique Challenges and Opportunities in the Asian Insurance Market – Jeff Heine – Chief Revenue Officer, Novidea appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, we sat down with Yamini Bhat, co-founder and CEO of Vymo, to discuss the intricacies of global expansion and the strategic insights she has gained from growing Vymo. Yamini highlighted the critical importance of localizing business strategies to fit different markets, from Japan’s preference for small, highly compliant behavioral changes to the U.S.’s flexible approach that offers a variety of options for sellers. She shared how Vymo leverages data to coach and enable salespeople, tailoring the platform to meet the diverse regulatory and cultural needs of markets across Southeast Asia, Japan, and the U.S.
Yamini also discussed the operational strategies that have propelled Vymo’s growth, emphasizing the balance between maintaining a global brand and adapting to local markets. By building a global yet local team, Vymo ensures responsiveness to customer needs while leveraging centralized expertise. She underscored the importance of adapting to macroeconomic trends and integrating AI technologies to enhance the platform’s capabilities. Yamini’s insights provide a valuable blueprint for any company looking to scale internationally, highlighting the necessity of being globally ambitious and locally adept.
The post EP 231 – Global Expansion: Data-Driven Local Strategies for Sales Excellence – Yamini Bhat – co-Founder and the CEO of Vymo appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
“I feel like there’s a convergence going on. And that’s, that’s with InsurTech and FinTech. And what’s being left behind in the world of InsurTech is increasingly, in my view, core systems, a new generation of core systems. But everything else, like when you talk about embedded insurance, it’s becoming part of embedded finance. And it’s this whole kind of movement to make insurance invisible.” – Anthony Lee
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was joined by Anthony Lee, a co-founder and CEO of Lydia.ai in which we delved into the transformative intersection of InsurTech and FinTech. Anthony explained how these sectors are converging, with embedded insurance becoming a seamless part of financial transactions, aiming to make insurance coverage as effortless as possible. Lydia.ai leverages health data from universal healthcare systems to create risk scores that automate the underwriting process, enabling insurers to offer simplified insurance products without medical exams. This approach not only streamlines the insurance buying process but also integrates insurance into everyday financial activities, making it practically invisible to the consumer.
Anthony also highlighted the role of personalized health recommendations derived from AI and data analysis. Lydia.ai’s platform analyzes activity data from smartphones and wearables to provide tailored health advice, leading to better insurance offers. By embedding health risk scores into digital banking and e-commerce platforms, Lydia.ai is making insurance more accessible and integrated into daily life. This innovative approach reflects a significant shift towards a more customer-centric insurance model, driven by the advancements in AI and the strategic use of health data.
The post EP 230 – The Convergence of InsurTech and FinTech: Making Insurance Invisible – Anthony Lee – co-Founder and CEO of LydiaAI appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
“So we’re getting great conversion rates on eligible items. And we’re just in that period. Now. We’re moving to convert those customers to paid customers. So I’ll keep you posted on what that looks like. But really, I mean, honestly, you know, when you launch something, you go, this is going to be crickets. I am prepared for silence. I agree. We’re very prepared for the champagne moment, the launch and then nothing. So the fact that customers are even clicking or understanding what we’re offering us, or seeing it there, online is a huge win for us.” – Katherine Clayton
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was joined by Katherine Clayton during which she shared her extensive experience in transforming legacy industries and the unique challenges she has navigated in launching her latest venture in the insurance sector. Coming from a background in organizational and business transformation across various traditional industries such as oil, gas, and mining, Katherine has leveraged her expertise to innovate within the insurance space. She emphasized the importance of keeping businesses relevant in the face of rapidly evolving technology and consumer preferences, drawing examples from successful transformations like Netflix, and failures like Blockbuster.
Katherine also discussed the strategic approach behind Peachii’s product design and market engagement. Recognizing the gap in traditional insurance offerings for younger consumers, Peachii innovates by providing insurance for individual high-value items directly at the point of sale, simplifying the insurance process and making it more accessible. This model not only appeals to a demographic with evolving asset ownership patterns but also embeds insurance into everyday shopping experiences through partnerships with trusted retailers. These efforts are underpinned by a commitment to build consumer trust and educate new markets about the value of insurance.
The post EP 229 – From Legacy to Leading Edge: Transparent, Affordable and Flexible Item-by-Item Insurance – Katherine Clayton – co-Founder and CEO of Peachii Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In a compelling episode of the “InsurTech Amplified” podcast, Yuval Shafrir, co-founder and CEO of Urbanico, shared invaluable insights into the unique interplay of resilience and innovation that characterizes the Israeli tech ecosystem, often hailed as the “Startup Nation.” Drawing from his unconventional journey from studying physics and chemistry to embracing entrepreneurship, Yuval underscored the importance of diverse experiences in fostering innovation, particularly in the InsurTech space. His narrative illustrated how various career phases equipped him with a distinctive blend of skills, crucial for navigating the complex landscape of technology and strategic business development.
Yuval also delved into the inherent resilience embedded within Israeli culture, emphasizing its critical role in shaping entrepreneurial ventures capable of thriving amidst uncertainty. This resilience, as Yuval illustrated, is vital not only for individual startups like Urbanico, which operates in the challenging milieu of Israel’s geopolitical climate, but also for the broader ecosystem that supports collective growth and adaptability.
Moreover, he highlighted how Urbanico leverages advanced large language models to transform disparate, unstructured data from local governments into actionable insights for the insurance industry, thus bridging significant data gaps and enhancing risk assessment. Yuval’s reflections provide a deep dive into the strategic thinking and adaptive strategies that are essential for startups aiming to leverage technology for scalable and sustainable solutions.
The post EP 32 – From Physics to FinTech: Building an Urban Intelligence Platform for Insurers – Yuval Shafrir – co-Founder and CEO of Urbanico appeared first on InsurTech Amplified.
“Health is not a sprint. Health is a marathon. We spent seven years only creating the health score. 400 million man years of clinical data. So it was an enormous undertaking to create that health score.” – Peter Ohnemus
In this episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Peter Ohnemus, President & CEO of dacadoo, discusses the development of its Health Score & AI-based Lifestyle Navigation Platform that integrates clinical data to evaluate individual health comprehensively. Peter notes that dacadoo spent seven years analyzing 400 million man-years of data to create this scoring system. This effort aims to make health status understandable and actionable for consumers, thus fostering better personal health management.
Throughout the discussion, Peter emphasizes the transformative potential of technology in health and insurance sectors. He explains how traditional methods in these industries are being overhauled by innovations that offer personalized insights and proactive health management. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of such technologies, including their ability to drive down insurance costs and improve overall societal health by promoting healthier lifestyles through data-driven insights and individualized health metrics.
The post EP 228 – Building Meaningful Health Scores: Understanding Health in the Digital Age – Peter Ohnemus – President and CEO of dacadoo appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
“When you talk to customers, I would say both we have to make sure that insurers are willing to embark on the journey with us and that it addresses their needs. But ultimately, the end user is super important, if solutions are not compelling for the end users, you know, it doesn’t work.” – Sebastien Gaudin
The Asia InsurTech Podcast welcomed back Sebastien Gaudin, the Founder & CEO of The CareVoice, after his last appearance on the show in 2021! Clearly, a lot has changed since then, and this episode dives into those changes, especially focusing on the company’s product evolution and geographic expansion.
Sebastien discusses the shift from a standalone app to a platform that allows seamless integration of digital health services into the interfaces of various insurers. This platform is now operational in 15 countries across all continents, marking significant progress in their global expansion. Sebastien also highlights the importance of engagement management in their services, explaining how it increases user activity and satisfaction. Additionally, Sebastien shares insights from their recent Series B funding round, emphasizing how it will help scale their operations and invest in product and commercial development.
The post EP 227 – Revolutionizing Health Insurance: Embedded Health Solutions and Driving Customer Engagement – Sebastien Gaudin – Founder and CEO of The CareVoice appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
“Asia, of course, is a construct of many, many geographies. And each geography is very different…I see a real opportunity to leapfrog and not go through all the stages… Here in Asia, you can make markets, you can create markets.” – Bernhard Kotanko
In this second episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast featuring Bernhard Kotanko, a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, we do a deep dive into the future of Property and Casualty (P&C) Insurance in Asia. Amidst a backdrop of rapid technological advancements and evolving societal needs, Bernhard explores the untapped potential within the region’s P&C insurance sector, examining the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
As emerging markets in Asia show significantly lower insurance penetration compared to their GDP growth, Bernhard sheds light on the need for innovative solutions to bridge this gap. From the rise of digital and embedded insurance to the integration of AI for better risk management, this episode navigates the complex landscape of insurance in Asia, discussing how technology continues to reshape the industry.
Bernhard addresses distribution, insurance literacy, and the impact of new risks like cyber threats and climate change on the sector. This conversation balances the technical with the transformative and explores how the P&C Insurance market in Asia is poised for a leap into the future, driven by innovation and a deeper understanding of customer needs.
McKinsey & Company’s “Global Insurance Report: The Future of Asia P&C Insurance” can be downloaded here.
The post EP 226 – Bernhard Kotanko – McKinsey & Company – Overcoming Obstacles and Seizing Value in Asia’s P&C Insurance Market appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Amidst a backdrop of slowed growth rates in Life Insurance, both developed and developing markets in Asia are facing critical junctures. In an insightful episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Bernhard Kotanko, a Senior Partner and Asia-Pacific Insurance Practice leader at McKinsey & Company delves into the transformative shifts within Asia’s Life Insurance sector. Bernhard emphasizes the importance of adopting customer-centric strategies to bridge the gap between consumer expectations and insurance offerings. Despite the rise in digitalization efforts, the penetration of purely digital insurance sales remains minimal, indicating significant room for improvement and innovation.
A crucial part of navigating these shifts involves making bold decisions in the realms of talent and technology. Bernhard suggests that the future of the industry depends on attracting diverse skill sets and leveraging technologies such as generative AI to enhance customer interactions and operational efficiencies. Moreover, he advocates for a reinvigoration of the insurance sector’s purpose, highlighting its unique position as a “triple win” industry that aligns the interests of customers, shareholders, and employees alike.
McKinsey & Company’s “Global Insurance Report: A Paradigm Shift in Asia Life Insurance” can be downloaded here.
The post EP 225 – Bernhard Kotanko – McKinsey & Company – A Paradigm Shift – Navigating APAC’s Dynamic Life Insurance Landscape appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In a truly fascinating episode of the Asia InsurTech Podcast, Damola Oloko and Victoria Olorunmola dive deep into the transformative potential of InsurTech across the African continent. Highlighting the critical importance of tailoring insurance technology solutions to local cultures and consumer behaviors, they discuss how understanding regional nuances can drive the adoption of insurance products. From the success of funeral insurance in Ghana, rooted in deep cultural traditions, to leveraging Africa’s youthful, digital-first demographic, the conversation underscores the unique opportunities and challenges that shape the InsurTech landscape in Africa.
The dialogue also sheds light on the power of storytelling and community building in enhancing insurance literacy and fostering a collaborative ecosystem for innovation. As professionals who transitioned from communications to the forefront of InsurTech, Victoria and Damola exemplify the impact of bringing diverse perspectives to the sector. Their journey underscores the significance of adaptability, continuous learning, and the collaborative spirit in driving the future of insurance, offering valuable lessons not just for Africa, but for global markets navigating the complexities of InsurTech.
The post EP 224 – Adedamola Oloko and Victoria Olorunmola – AXA Mansard – A Deep Dive into Africa’s InsurTech Evolution appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was joined by Gourab Mukherjee, CEO and co-founder of Aktivo Labs, to discuss the transformative power of technology in the health and insurance sectors. Gourab highlighted the significant advancements in health monitoring and management through the integration of real-time data, personalization, and digital health ecosystems. Utilizing smartphone data, wearables, and sophisticated algorithms, Aktivo Labs aims to empower individuals with actionable insights for healthier living. The conversation also touched on the accuracy and evolving capabilities of health-related technologies, underscoring their potential to revolutionize personal health and wellness practices.
Gourab shared insights into Aktivo Labs’ global expansion strategy, emphasizing the importance of understanding and adapting to local markets, as demonstrated by their ventures into the United States and Japan. Through strategic partnerships and a keen awareness of macroeconomic tailwinds, Aktivo Labs tailors its approach to meet the unique needs of diverse demographics, from aging populations in Japan to younger ones in Africa.
Looking ahead, he envisions a future where health and technology are seamlessly integrated, enabling individuals to make informed decisions about their health and lifestyle. This future promises a more engaged, healthier global population, driven by innovations that bridge the gap between health, technology, and everyday life.
The post EP 223 – Gourab Mukherjee – CEO of Aktivo Labs – It’s Going to Be a $7 Trillion Health Care Bill appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The world of InsurTech continues to rapidly evolve, driven by technological advancements, innovative products, and a push to expand insurance penetration in emerging markets. The podcast was joined by Jack Xia, the Chief Actuary at Igloo, who shed light on several critical insights into the InsurTech landscape, particularly in Southeast Asia.
Jack explored how Igloo leverages AI to transform insurance offerings, from automating policies to introducing microinsurance products that cater to the unmet needs of emerging markets.
Jack also sheds light on the challenges and successes of introducing novel products like weather index insurance for farmers in Vietnam, highlighting the importance of adapting and educating the market.
By embracing technology, focusing on education, and continuously innovating, InsurTechs are not only redefining the role of insurance in people’s lives but are also paving the way for a more inclusive and accessible insurance ecosystem globally.
The post EP 222 – Jack Xia – Chief Actuary at Igloo – Using Math and Statistics to Predict and Manage Financial Risk appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Welcome back to the AIP News RoundUp co-hosted by Michael Waitze and Theresa Blissing. This episode focuses on key developments in the InsurTech sector for January 2024, highlighting significant trends and strategic movements within Asia’s insurance industry.
Theresa and Michael discuss the notable acquisition of Singlife by Sumitomo Life, marking a significant move in mergers and acquisitions in the region. We also examine OneDegree’s expansion into the UAE, offering cyber policies for cryptocurrency exchanges, and PhonePe’s innovative approach to insurance distribution in India, which has led to a substantial increase in digital two-wheeler insurance.
Furthermore, we explore the transition of companies like Roojai.com from niche markets to full-stack insurers, reflecting the growing maturity of the InsurTech space. Lastly, we look into PolicyStreet’s foray into Takaful insurance in Malaysia, underscoring the sector’s responsiveness to regulatory and market needs.
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 65 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Mergers, Consolidation, and Strategic Market Expansion appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast recently spoke with Dr. Avi Baruch, a co-Founder and COO of Previsico. Avi shared his insights on the important global issue of flooding, emphasizing its far-reaching impacts beyond just financial loss. He described how his journey from academia to entrepreneurship led to the development of innovative flood forecasting technology at Previsico. This technology, born from his team’s research at Loughborough University, aims to minimize the impact of flooding worldwide by providing early warnings and enabling preventative actions.
Avi also discussed how Previsico’s works with the insurance industry. He explained how Previsico’s approach complements traditional insurance by reducing the severity of flood impacts through strategic partnerships with insurers. This integration enhances insurers’ offerings, shifting their role from underwriting risks to actively helping clients mitigate them. Moreover, Avi highlighted the importance of real-time data from sensors in understanding and adapting to site-specific flood challenges, marking a significant step towards more effective flood risk management and a future where insurance transcends financial coverage to encompass active risk reduction.
The post EP 221 – Avinoam Baruch – COO at Previsico – To Be Flooded Is a Devastating Experience appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Shaun Quincey, co-founder and CEO of Simfuni, is a self-proclaimed “payments geek” who has dedicated his career to building elegant payment experiences. His initial experience in payments led him to start a successful buy now, pay later business, which was later sold to Latitude in 2019.
Driven by a desire to continue to innovate in the payment space, Quincey co-founded Simfuni, aiming to revolutionize the payment experience in the insurance industry. Simfuni’s goal is to digitize payment processes, making them more efficient and user-friendly for both consumers and internal stakeholders. This involves understanding customers’ payment preferences, offering flexible payment options, and integrating payment systems with industry-specific software to improve the overall experience.
Simfuni’s vision extends beyond mere transaction processing. Simfuni views payment systems as crucial enablers of service consumption, striving for frictionless and elegant experiences. Simfuni aims to transform the insurance payment experience, making it intuitive and satisfying for the modern consumer, while also serving as a channel for insurance sellers to engage with customers, enhancing their understanding of policies and payment options.
The post EP 220 – Shaun Quincey – Simfuni – Capitalizing on the Payment Interactions to Enable More Experiences appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
When we wrapped 2022, we did a list of the pod’s top ten episodes. This year was a bit different.
AIP split into two shows and birthed a brand new podcast we called InsurTech Amplified to give us the opportunity to cover all of the excitement in the Insurance and InsurTech spaces outside of Asia. This allowed us to broaden our guest list to the entire globe. This also means that we rotate weekly between InsurTech Amplified and Asia InsurTech Podcast.
This year we covered our top 5 AIP episodes, our top 9 countries and the top ten topics we covered all year. All in all, 2023 was an amazing year for the podcast and we expecting even bigger things for 2024.
Here are 2023’s top 5:
-
Jeffrey Khoo – Vice Chairman APAC at Arbol – Why Am I So in Love With Parametric Insurance – https://bit.ly/3H41JPT
-
Tom Gerritsen – AIA – This is the iPhone Moment of AI – https://bit.ly/3NKwbSI
-
Amit Patel – co-Founder and CEO at Peachy – It’s Time to Rewrite the Proposition – https://bit.ly/41Eeb22
-
Raunak Mehta – co-Founder and CEO at Igloo – People Want to Be Protected – https://bit.ly/3GZSMXF
-
Jonathan Rake – Swiss Re Corporate Solutions – Working Off the same Single Source of Truth – https://bit.ly/3S0y68i
Happy New Year to everyone and thank you for your continuing support!
The post Year End Special 2023 appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast hosted Fred Hegner, an expert in life and health insurance claims. Fred’s deep passion for the insurance industry, particularly in the realm of claims, makes for a compelling dialogue. Drawing inspiration from his father’s legacy in the field, Fred shares his unique perspective on the evolution of insurance claims, emphasizing the […]
The post EP 219 – Fred Hegner – Insurance Industry Expert – The Fundamental of the Claim Is the Promise to the Customer appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was joined by Divyajot Singh, the Principal Product Strategist at Neutrinos. He dove into the topic of democratizing insurance through the use of technology and low-code platforms. Neutrinos is a platform that helps insurers and carriers overcome the complexities and backlogs in their IT departments, enabling them to move faster in […]
The post EP 218 – Divyajot Singh – Neutrinos – The Introduction of Technology in Abundance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast had the pleasure of speaking with Theresa Blissing, the Founder of AIP and the best-selling author of the book “The Future of Insurance Volume IV, Asia Rising”. Theresa grew up in a household with parents who owned an insurance agency, she was constantly surrounded by conversations about the challenges and developments […]
The post EP 217 – Theresa Blissing – co-Founder AIP – The Future of Insurance, Volume IV – Asia Rising appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Michail Chopra, CEO of Mayfair Group, and unveiled an in-depth exploration of the shifting terrains of the insurance industry, particularly through the lens of technology and empathetic cultural practices. Michail and his team leveraged technological advancements, transforming traditionally cumbersome insurance processes into a seamless, user-friendly digital experience. The journey […]
The post EP 216 – Michail Chopra – Mayfair Group – A 30 Year Journey of Insurance Innovation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Terence Ho, Chief Commercial Officer at Nanoinsure, and delves into the evolution of the insurance industry in Hong Kong, especially its digital transformation. A significant highlight was the development of a self-configuration platform by a bootstrapped company, leading to significant growth in their revenue. This platform enabled the creation […]
The post EP 215 – Terence Ho – Chief Commercial Officer at Nanoinsure – We Just Love Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mark Simmons, the CEO of bolttech for Europe and Asia, and delved into the changing landscape of insurance and insurtech, focusing on emerging trends in Asia and Europe. Highlighting the concept of “life of the asset,” Mark explains how building services around an asset, be it a car, mobile […]
The post EP 214 – Mark Simmons – CEO Europe and Asia at bolttech – I See It as a Way to Supercharge Customer Experience appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Marco Mirabella, the founder and CEO of Ensuro to discuss trends in the insurance industry, parametric insurance, and how blockchain can revolutionize this sector. Ensuro, a blockchain-based reinsurance company, uses cryptocurrency as solvency capital for its parametric insurance products. The company’s blockchain component significantly reduces the cost and time […]
The post EP 213 – Marco Mirabella – Ensuro – Certainty of Payment and a Simple Claims Process appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Carolina Dreifuss, Co-founder and CEO at SyncTechnologies, discusses the company’s mission to create a digital twin solution for the construction industry. She explains how the construction industry faces challenges with coordinating information among multiple players working with different systems, resulting in inefficiencies and delays. SyncTechnologies aims to address these […]
The post EP 212 – Carolina Dreifuss – SyncTechnologies – There Is Always a Family or a Business Behind the Claim appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Japhire Gopi Kannan, the founder and CEO of Jaguar Transit, an insurtech that addresses the challenges faced by the trillion-dollar cash, gold, and valuables in-transit industry. Combining on-demand insurance, high-security bags, and a risk intelligence technology platform, it offers an innovative approach to in-transit insurance. Japhire shares the unique […]
The post EP 211 – Japhire Gopi Kannan – Jaguar Transit – Technology Became an Empowering Tool For Us appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast had an in-depth conversation with Jonathan Rake, CEO of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. Key Topics Discussed: Insurance Trends Jonathan mentions generative AI and partnership ecosystems as strong emerging trends in insurance and insure tech in Asia and globally. They discuss the changing customer perspectives, moving from a singular view on insurance […]
The post EP 210 – Jonathan Rake – Swiss Re Corporate Solutions – Working Off the Same Single Source of Truth appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Tom Gerritsen, Head of Group Data Analytics at AIA, about the impact and implications of AI in the insurance industry. Tom highlights AI as the most significant emerging trend in insurance and insurtech with transformative capabilities for customer engagement and business operations. Tom perceives the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT […]
The post EP 209 – Tom Gerritsen – AIA – This Is the iPhone Moment of AI appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In partnership with ITC Asia, the Asia Insurtech Podcast discussed ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing in the context of insurance and insurtechs with the panelists Lapman Lee, Professor of Practice ESG FinTech and Climate Tech, and Alex Taylor, Global Head of Emerging Technology at QBE Ventures.
The panel emphasized the importance of understanding and managing risks associated with climate change, both in the present and the future. This involves helping companies assess and mitigate their exposure to climate events, as well as encouraging sustainable practices. The panelists highlight the need for insurers to go beyond traditional risk assessment and consider long-term impacts and resilience.
The conversation touches on various topics, including the use of technology such as IoT and machine learning to gather data, assess risks, and incentivize behavior change. Examples are given of how analyzing rooftop data prior to hurricanes can lead to proactive repairs, reducing carbon emissions and minimizing business disruptions. The potential of parametric insurance and IoT devices to improve risk assessment and response to climate events is explored.
The discussion also covers the concept of carbon intensity in portfolios, where companies evaluate their carbon impact and transition risks. The panel emphasize the importance of quantifying and addressing these risks, considering different scenarios, and making informed decisions to contribute to a sustainable future.
Find our best effort transcript below.
Michael Waitze 00:05
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome to a very special edition of the Asia inshore tech podcast in partnership with ITC Asia 2023. We are going to discuss ESG environmental, social and governance investing in the context of insurance and insurtechs today. ITC Asia kicks off tomorrow, May 30. And today will be your last day and your last chance to get tickets use the discount code AIP 200 to get $200 off the current ticket price. Now, let me quickly introduce our panelists for today’s conversation. Lapman Lee, Professor of Practice ESG FinTech and climate tech and Willers Towers Watson APAC climate and ESG insurance leader and Alex Taylor, Global Head of emerging technology, QBE ventures at QBE insurance. I just want to say thank you to both of you for coming back on the show. We’ve had both of you on multiple times. Actually, it’s great to have you here. How are you doing today?
Lapman Lee 01:02
Now I’m great. Thanks for having us here. And Michael could not love to talk about my my, my dream topics of ESG, FinTech and governance.
Michael Waitze 01:14
So let’s do this. Let’s just jump right into this right. And let me know, I want to start with you. Can you give us a definition of climate risk? And I’m particularly interested in this fiscal and transition climate risk as well. And then maybe the follow on both of you can talk about some ways emerging ways to measure this transition risk. Please go ahead.
Lapman Lee 01:31
No, no, it sounds sounds good. I mean, maybe for the audience very good to get started with most of the listed companies are required to follow the recommendations of the SoCal tcfd task force for climate related financial disclosures. And one of their one of their four pillars of reporting relates to risk management. I think if you look at climate risk, there are really three parts to it, there is departs called fiscal climate risk, which is basically you have acute and you have chronic climate fiscal climate was chronic meaning your did your rising temperatures, sea level rises, how does it impact your assets and liabilities, and you also have your acute your natural catastrophes due to extreme weather events, floods, typhoons, wildfires. So fiscal was really about direct damage to your assets or your property. If we then move on to transition risk, it is that is more related to the financial risks that your are, as a company are exposed to due to social, economical, political, technological risk from moving to a low carbon economy. So could for example, if you have, I’m going to talk with an insurer and the investor tomorrow anyway. What are your assets and liabilities today, for example, you invest in oral companies, what is that worth? After regulation, of course, is a big question mark, how that will develop. And then lastly, what tcfd also stipulates is something called liability risk, which is basically potential of stakeholder litigation or regulatory enforcement of not meeting regulatory requirements. So physical risk, transmission risk and liability risk, are the three main pillars of climate risk. Got it? Alex, maybe
Michael Waitze 03:20
you want to talk about emerging ways to measure this risk and some of the data categories around this as well?
Alex Taylor 03:26
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, just leading on from what Lachman said there, it’s it’s interesting to reflect on the interconnectedness of all of the components that he’s just mentioned. So when you look at the the acute risk and the cost of a major natural catastrophes, and also both the the opportunity cost of both participating in transition components, particularly around limiting carbon emissions and other emissions from organizations, but, but also the cost or our economy of migrating away from those things. So you know, it all acts in concert. But to your point, the challenge that we’re seeing at the moment is that measurement piece, and there’s some really interesting things that are starting to pop up in this space, particularly around the challenge when we’ve got many millions of organizations globally, and all of them are reporting in different ways that they’re not structured into any defined format. You know, the use of technology, like large language models, for example, is a key example of this where we can start to look at reading entire company reports almost instantaneously and extracting standardized structured information around carbon emissions, methane emissions, and so on. So this is an area that’s pushing forward very rapidly. But, you know, frankly, I think it’s one the world’s going to have to get a lot better at because it’s very difficult to actually understand where you’re going unless you understand where you are. Now, how important
Michael Waitze 04:51
is this reporting standardization or you might you do make a really good point you can take an LLM. You can read through these company reports, but they’re all written and structured in a complete The different way, how important is it to standardize this? And maybe both of you can talk about this a little bit as well, because then you can compare apples to apples as opposed to apples to fish, right?
Alex Taylor 05:10
Yeah, look incredibly important. And I mean, obviously, Lachman, you can jump in here. But this is a big area of your study. But the one challenge I think we’ve got globally is not just the standardization of reporting, but also the fact that there’s not really an incentive in some cases to report clearly, it depends on the economy and the climate, but making sure that we are comparing apples to apples is a fundamental component of transmission risk itself.
Lapman Lee 05:37
Sure. So I think if tcfd disaster for climate related financial disclosures is very often used as a basis for reporting requirements. For example, the Hong Kong exchange is work requiring companies to report against tcfd. And what does it mean tcfd As the pillar around governance, basically, they want to, they want an organization to disclose what is your governance and risks around climate, not just risk, actually, also risk and opportunities that you’re getting? Through climate change? They look at strategy, what’s your strategy to address that to take advantage of these opportunities or address a risk? There’s a risk management part where you talk about physical climate risk, transmission risk and liability. And then I think the last part, which is probably useful is metrics and stat and targets that you’re setting. And in that respect, there are a number of studies out there that talk about what are metrics that companies need to, by default, as a standards provide? Maybe I want to introduce a new concept here as well, please, in sustainability reporting, there is this concept of double materiality? And what does double materiality mean is, it’s on the one hand, what’s the impact of climate change on your firm that so outside in but also inside out? What’s the impact of your firm on climate change itself? So obviously, if you look at the impact of climate change on your firm, you need to look at those transition with fiscal risks, liability risk measures, there could be for example, I don’t want to sum all of them up could be what’s your exposure to carbon related assets, by by sector? What’s your impacts from technologies, there are a number of measures out there to stick a little bit with this point of impact of climate change on a firm, there are measures that look at climate Value at Risk that mingle physical and transition risk, which is sometimes maybe a little bit difficult, not too much marketing, my role at Willis Towers Watson, but they do have a measure called Climate transition value at risk, which only looks at climate transition value risk on your bones and your equities, goes without saying I can see it in your minds as well. There are lots is a lot of judgment call, by sector by industry, because we don’t know exactly the path how regulation, how technology will evolve, as well. So the last part moving to depart on the impact that the firm can have on climate change itself. It could be look at your investment portfolio. How do you decarbonize it? How do you mobilize transition finance? How do you currently finance emission? What do you do in the future? So does double materiality and tcfd. Looking at four pillars is a is a good start in my mind to read these reports.
Michael Waitze 08:36
Alex, can I ask you to comment in the context of your investments in your investment theses, where this fits in in the insurance and the inshore tech world? And in particular? I mean, I know that this CT var thing is particular to Willis towers, Watson but the VAR itself Value at Risk is something that markets have been using forever. Right? So as a concept, it’s actually super important. Can you talk about that as well?
Alex Taylor 08:58
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that we’ve been trying to do a lot of at QB II, as you know, citizens within the insurance industry, is to help the companies that we insure understand their risk, not just today, but in a longitudinal fashion as well. And if you look at some of our recent investments in companies like Jupiter intelligence intensified, and in geo site, a lot of the time the discussions that we find ourselves having is as much about not just the risk, they represented the way that we price a policy now, but what that might look like in 20 years and 25 years, or what happens when the next hurricane or tornado or flooding event hits. We’re even starting to have discussions with some organizations now looking at the decisions that they might make. Should I build a new corporate site at this location? What is my forest fire explosion here? You know, should or should I be doing something fundamentally different? And more importantly, perhaps what’s happened to other customers that I can learn from? And broadly and this is actually the subject of my talk at at ITC. Asia, how can we encourage our industry to be more resilient, so that from a VAR perspective, we drive down the cost of major events because of their exposure to major climate events, and also make better decisions to help decarbonize the economy as well. And to my point before, all of these things are fundamentally interconnected. But the key to all of this is knowing and understanding statistically measurably the impact that we as an industry as an insurance company, as an insurance industry, and our customers and the carbon economy participation that they represent, collectively adds together to make sure that we can actually make sensible decisions together. And fundamentally, this is the thing that things like the NZTA, the net zero insurance Alliance recognize it’s that there will be certain activities and certain locations that fundamentally become uninsurable, our collective responsibility is to make sure that that’s not disruptive, and then everybody’s acting on the same information.
Michael Waitze 11:03
There are so many things to unpack here. Can we talk a little bit more about this connectivity for me? What exactly can an insurance company do to incentivize the companies and the the assets that they’re insuring to become close to this net zero, that the NCI is trying to encourage people to do? Do you know what I mean? In other words, sure, if they don’t insure something, then the hope is that that activity, if it’s not, if it’s bad for the environment, if it’s bad for climate, that they won’t do it, but what other types of things can insurance companies do so that they can still insure things but still encourage people to behave properly?
Alex Taylor 11:37
I think that’s a really important thing that sort of the other way around there. And it’s about the things that could be insured or that in some cases aren’t being at the moment, okay, that act as carbon positive inputs into the economy. So the classic example is the challenge that a lot of renewable energy projects have in attaining insurance, particularly things like offshore wind, large solar panel installations and solar farms, lithium battery projects, a lot of the challenge with any new risk in an insurance context is that from an actuarial perspective, it takes time to evolve decision around what the risk actually is, and how to price for that. The challenge we’re seeing now with a lot of these things are moving so quickly that understanding the particular risk of a particular lithium battery chemistry or the resilience of a particular type of glass and solar panels, or what types of weather effects are going to damage offshore wind turbines, it’s a real challenge. But the cost of not doing these things to our collective economy is actually higher. So what we need to create as an industry, what we are creating as an industry is a way to engage in these projects to make sure that it’s fundamentally practical, but as well as that, that we can incentivize the creation of things that contribute to the NZTA goals.
Michael Waitze 12:50
Alex, do you think this is a place where parametric insurance right so where it’s not being indemnified, but where there’s an automatic payout, particularly for offshore wind and for other climate related in whether related stuff? Is that is that a role that parametric insurance can help play where it offsets a little bit of it at first, and then you worry about sort of the indemnity part later. And
Alex Taylor 13:09
that’s the great thing about parametric, of course, is the way you do have a risk that’s difficult to quantize, where there’s this challenge on exposure, that you can understand in advance what your limits might be, and lets you offer an insurance like product in a fundamentally challenging market? And the answer is absolutely yes. And I think we’re starting to see some really interesting parametric projects out there that are doing some very meaningful work or ether risk is a great example of this. And in crop insurance in in weather related impacts on the eastern seaboard of the United States, where we’re starting to see things like this pop up, where there’s an identified gap in the market that some of the traditional players aren’t filling. And as a result, you know, in pure capitalistic tendencies where there’s an opportunity or product appears, which is one of the wonderful things about this space.
Michael Waitze 13:59
And I mean, maybe you can comment on this as well, right? Like, what are some of these initiatives that the insurers even in particular in Hong Kong are taking to encourage this kind of behavior?
Lapman Lee 14:08
Of course, so I think bigger picture definitely, I think the insurance industry is a very important industry, we ride probably more than 6 trillion in premium volume globally. That’s the insurance part, insurers are also investors produce 46 trillion in assets. So think I really like Alex’s part around resilience. So I think as long only institutional investors, insurers definitely have a lot of incentive to divert their capital to climate resilient enterprises. And just also tie back to the part when we spoke about physical and transition risks. Many companies are looking at what is the carbon intensity of their portfolios, but if you think about it, it’s very possible that portfolios that have high transmission risk, no necessarily have a high or low or carbon intensity. So I think people need probably to move beyond only carbon intensity but focus also more on them transition was because it does hurt your wallet at the end of the day. But to go back to your question Waitze avec in Hong Kong that insurers are engaged in companies as part of TDI, I’m also helping out to interview Hong Kong based insurance CEOs, the lifestyle of the AIA, AXA and HSBC. And if you look, in all those interview, one thing that comes back is that they say, Okay, we don’t want to just talk about us as an insurer, we’re an insurer or investor. We are also a responsible, well, employer as well. So they show typically initiative under each of those pillars. And I think the pillar that they didn’t mention is the part where they influence other companies, as Alex was saying, to incentivize new innovation, as well, if I think about debts, these insurance can help to foster climate tech. And climate tech is to me different things, by different industries. And I would probably look at the industries that are emitting a lot transport, agriculture, energy. And I think there are probably classification under each of those sectors. So you have different technologies that can play a role and different companies. So that’s probably by industry. And then the other layer would be around companies that help with ESG reporting. How do that do you do that data, especially if you’re a smaller listed company? How can you make the cost of being compliant or a good citizen easier to think it’s more than to stimulate invest, like QB is doing investing themselves into ventures to show that it is working? I think that that’s well put your money where your mouth walked to talk where your mouth is? Basically, that makes perfect sense.
Michael Waitze 16:53
Alex, did you want to add something?
Alex Taylor 16:56
Yeah, absolutely. And look, I mean, LePen just touched on it, the the big thing that’s being, I suppose, not ignored, but there’s less focus on is the reporting challenge with smaller entities as well. I mean, we have to remember that the significant percentage that small companies globally represent in terms of total carbon output. The big challenge we have is there a standards in place for listed companies for for major industries like banking and insurance. But when it comes to to local agricultural concerns and production, there’s so little information out there, that the cost of obtaining particularly emissions reporting often outstrips from an insurance context, the value of the premium that you get in the door. So coming up with easier ways for companies to report on emissions, to even discover their own emissions is key. And this is something that I love. I mean, there’s a great company, I think they UK based called geo financial, we have no association with them. But they’re a very interesting company that do space based methane reporting. So for a company being able to understand methane emissions, and of course, methane is actually a much worse climate gas than than co2, that does break down to the atmosphere relatively quickly. But it’s not fantastic. But in many cases, when you show a company that methane emissions, they’re genuinely surprised. And in many cases, it can actually lead to an improvement in efficiency and operations by capturing that and doing something with it, rather than just laying it off gas. So there are these great interconnected moments, again, where you get a net positive because of a discovery of something related to your emissions, but it also benefits your operations directly and your bottom line. And that, you know, frankly, I can’t think of a better example of something where, by looking at admissions and reporting, we can actually drive forward things not just from a capitalist sense, but also from a transition risk perspective to
Michael Waitze 18:46
how do we make this easier for SMEs? I mean, both of you did mention this idea of large companies, right. And they do have the resources to do both the measuring the reporting, and also they have, they do have transition risk, which I want to get back to in a second, because I think it’s kind of important. But how do SMEs handle this? Right? Because they’re hard to it’s hard enough for them just to stay in business. And to keep up, they may not even be aware of how to measure and how to do this. Is there a big opportunity? Do you think for an InsurTech to come in and just say, we’re going to build the full stack for SMEs to be able to then participate in this net zero, right, whether it’s methane or carbon or anything, but just to lower their impact on the on the environment?
Lapman Lee 19:25
Yeah, no, no, definitely. If I may say, I think if there are a number of InsurTech out there that do exactly that they provide, for example, if if I’m SME ABC, they basically ask you, what industry are you in? You can take for example, do I want to comply with Hong Kong changed, or I want to apply with other regulators? They then show you what requirements they ask you what are your material risk and opportunity? And de dem basically provide a template that’s linked to a workflow where you can say, Oh, my risk officer look after this strategy, look out for that. That’s a relatively inexpensive way to way to go about these requirements instead of having a expensive consulting firm look through everything and makes it more standardized as was I think there are definitely solutions out there for SMEs. At the same time. I think there are, I think governments or regulators are also looking at providing more guidance and standardized templates to companies themselves. And when I say that, I’m thinking about climate scenario analysis and stress testing very often people like, what does it mean, for example, the UK, I spoke with the UK inaugural ESG director, Sasha Saddam, he told me that they’re also providing more guidance around how does your transition plan look like? What What are your risk? What are your opportunities? How do you put it together, which makes it easier for the investor as well, if there’s that standardization, again, back to to Apples versus pears idea. So he is one and governments regulators providing more guidance templates, and insurtechs. Helping? Well, companies SMEs, to start to have a start
Alex Taylor 21:05
a practical example, if I could. And this is an area that’s been particularly fascinating to me in recent months, is looking at hurricane Aiden. In Florida as a case study, we’ve been doing some really interesting work with geo site looking at rooftop analytics, particularly where we can using machine learning models identify damage to rooftops prior to them being destroyed in a hurricane. And there’s a really fascinating picture of that, that I showed a customer recently, where there are two properties next to each other one that has a galvanized tin roof. The other one next to it has a classic bitumen tile roof, the title, the bitumen tile roof was completely destroyed in the hurricane, the tin roof has all been fine. And you imagine that when you’ve got hundreds of 1000s of roofs that you’re repairing in Florida are replacing entirely the the net output of carbon emissions as a result of all of that construction work, and the negative effect on the economy. To your point, Michael, the existential threat that organizations face, you know, if the roof is torn off the building, and we had a customer like this, where, you know, they they went out of business as a result of of a leak in a roof that that was, you know, covered to a point but you know, it couldn’t cover their stock and certain other things. So, you know, the impact of making sensible decisions prior to a major event, particularly where you’re exposed to those things, we’re starting to look at the behavioral analytics pieces of this. So if you have a discussion with a customer, and say, Look, you know, your roof is damaged, we can see this already. And here’s someone that could fix this. And this is what might not happen as a result of the next major hurricane, if you replicate that 100,000 200,000 times. And not only are you saving probably millions of tons of carbon from being emitted in the atmosphere as a result of remediation and rectification work. But there are businesses that will be in business that might not have been previously. So everybody benefits from this awareness and the information. But ultimately, it’s up to the individual up to the company to make decisions as to what they might choose to do, frankly, watching them do it is an insight in itself.
Michael Waitze 23:08
Yeah, can I get your can I get both of your opinions on this idea that I’ve heard. And that is, I was having a conversation a couple of days ago with one of the founders of wind, right, so they installed IoT devices into buildings, new buildings and existing buildings to measure the normal and the abnormal behavior of water, with the idea that water is actually more dangerous than fire, right. And if you can measure all that stuff, then the follow on to the insurance industry is you gather all this data, and then maybe you can write better policies, but you can also encourage better behavior. You just talked about roofs and having 100,000 roofs and hurricane in. And I wonder if there’s a way to distribute the cost, right, in the same way that we talked about with the water and IoT sensors, by installing sensors, you know, opt in on everybody’s roof buildings, homes, you know, commercials and residences and stuff like that, to gather weather data on a regular basis in a distributed fashion. And for people that put that stuff on the top of their building, or inside the building, however you want to do it, you can lower their insurance premiums as a trade off for getting the data, is there a way to do that as well, which then helps on both the parametric and the indemnity side for Netcat events, right, that are directly related to climate change. Does that make sense?
Alex Taylor 24:21
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it’s, it’s fascinating when you look at a lot of these endeavors. And look, I love IoT. I’m a technologist and an engineer by heart. The challenge on commercial terms as always, the cost of such an endeavor versus the reward. Yeah, I mean, water leak, classic example. I mean, expensive shutoff valves don’t look that expensive in the individual. But when you look at deploying them to an entire portfolio, you can be talking hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Having said that, there are recent nascent technology changes that makes certain of these things that weren’t previously possible, suddenly possible. There’s a great example in this so I don’t think a lot of people know this, but you In the iPhone that a lot of people have these days, in fact, in most Android phones, you’ve actually got a pressure sensor, it can very accurately detect the pressure in the air to the point where you move it a couple of feet upwards and downwards. And it can see that it can also see, when the pressure Drummond, the air pressure dramatically drops as a result of a, you know, an upcoming Stormfront. One thing that’s been quite fascinating,
Michael Waitze 25:22
there’s a barometer. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, go ahead.
Alex Taylor 25:25
Absolutely. It’s actually use the reason it’s there is not just for fun. So that in combination with the pedometer, you can actually see people moving upstairs, and you can see that water with pattern. But using the same technology, and some insurers have embedded using this feature in their app, they can tell their customers, when a hailstorm is coming they can tell them to shut their windows or to to cover their cars or whatever it happens to be, or in some cases get themselves out of personal danger like in you know an oncoming hurricane or tornado, which which translates to fairly rapid drops. But that’s the classic example where the economy itself has incentivized the deployment of a mass IoT fleet that most people don’t even realize is there, the net cost of taking advantage of it is essentially zero. So this is the kind of innovation that I really love, where you get these 10 Gentle effects of decisions that are made by companies like Apple and Google that have real knock on effects to citizen weather gathering, for example.
Michael Waitze 26:23
I love this as an idea. Let me Can we talk a little bit about his carbon intensity in the portfolio as well, unless you wanted to add on to what Alex was just saying, because I want to understand what it is better? Go ahead.
Lapman Lee 26:32
Sure. Now, I do want to add some of that is actually a great opportunity for the insurance industry to to improve its image even further. Because there’s a certain image that the insurance industry has in Hong Kong, for example, agents selling insurance, I think people are more and more are realizing also fruit to health and wellness to wearables that insurers can provide advice. If you give them some info, they are willing to provide your rebate in or a discount in insurance. I think this is a good opportunity to provide tools, advice to rebrands, the insurance sector, I mean, a lot of my students, they don’t consider the insurance industry. But but when they understand that, well, one, the money being paid at the top levels of insurance, or what it really is about that a lot of technology, a lot of the latest innovation is actually happening in insurance. I think this is an opportunity to make insurance exciting as well. Climate tech, using IoT, etc. It’s fun. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 27:34
Yeah. I mean, I was just gonna say that was the whole idea that I was talking about earlier. If you believe that a Fitbit and an Apple Watch is going to help you on the insurance side? Well, I was just thinking that the IoT on the roof is just a Fitbit for your house or a Fitbit for your building. And of course, you have to do it at scale. But it’s just the same idea.
Alex Taylor 27:51
It absolutely is. I mean, one place that we’ve seen this particularly strong is in larger commercial building management. So there’s an Australian company called sim CITM. So what they do essentially, is deploy a piece of infrastructure that connects to a thing called BACnet. And BACnet, is essentially the infrastructure control system. That’s almost an industry standard across every major commercial building, it connects to H back and to elevators, and to lighting, and so on and so forth. So this is the system and through platforms like sim you can understand your energy usage. Is it the elevators? Is it the lights? Is it something else that contributing to my emissions to my power use, but also predictive failure? You know, our event in the the elevator going to fail? Is something gonna go wrong with a track? What can I do that might prevent this from happening to do predictive maintenance and predictive failure? But I think we’re going to start seeing a slow migration of this technology into to smaller buildings into homes, that covers not just the electrical components, but other components as well. What do I need to do now, that can prevent some kind of negative outcome in the future? And from the studies that we’ve done, there’s a direct correlation between customers that are willing to engage with the nature of their risk and loss ratio. So that’s quite a profound concept when you think about it, that customers that understand risk, generally have better outcomes and risk. And that’s the whole concept behind resilience.
Michael Waitze 29:16
Let them Did you want to add something because I do want I want to go back to this idea of the carbon intensity in the portfolio just for people that may not understand what that means, what it actually means, and then how you measure that as well. Yeah,
Lapman Lee 29:26
I think you’d be like, look at climate transition value at risk in your portfolio. What do you do that say you have five steps to look at your portfolio? First of all, you look at what look at different scenarios that are out there, whether it is a 1.5 degree limit of temperature rise or different scenarios that are pretty standard that you can look at applying those scenarios into models, look at what is the impact and then then that’s the part where you need to do a lot of judgment calls around how will that impact your demands? Say for example, it differs obviously if you’re an oil company for his word or your electric vehicles manufacturer, how does it impact your demand, not just your, your product itself, but also your raw materials. It could be that right now, it might be very carbon intensive to get to cobalt, nickel, etc. But in the longer term, if you use those in electric vehicle you might save. So you have to look at both short, medium and longer term to see the impact. And the first step of climate transition values at risk. How do you quantify that? How do you quantify those risk on your assets and for insurance also on your liabilities? And then fourthly, And fifthly? Look at your overall portfolio, are you exposed to certain risks? Are you concentrated? Should I be too exposed? In certain industries, areas or technologies? Even? Am I betting too much on one or the other? I mean, if you look at Asia, I think it’s, it’s an interesting region as well, for everyone, home to 60% of the world’s population, obviously a significant contributor to the world’s greenhouse gases. But at the same time, you know, you we it needs to be a just, and fair and inclusive transition given the West Europe, US probably have gone through emitting a lot developing economies, whereas some of the Asian economies are still growing. So I think it can be a cookie cutter approach as well. So I think Asia is key in, in this fight against global climate change. So I think there are different steps to look at your portfolio, though it’s not all, how to say fully transparent, fully standardized, I do recommend companies to look at it at least you know, what you don’t know. And you can start taking informed decisions, which is what your boards are needing, otherwise, you will get the depart around liability risk you get. Yeah, you get litigated? I guess. So, Alex? Yeah, look,
Alex Taylor 32:04
I think that’s a really important point there on the maturity of an economy versus the impact on transition risk. And, you know, obviously, a lot of Western economies have had not just a very long time to consider these things, but have a lot of historic wealth, that can be used as part of that transition to perhaps do things a little bit more cleanly a bit sooner. The the challenge we have here is that, you know, Asia is actually the powerhouse of the world that you know, her tremendous percentage of complete global economic output comes from the Asian economy, and is consumed in large part by the West. And we have to understand the relationship between mature economies that can transition particularly into clean energy, and the products they consume and where they’re from, and the impact that this transition is going to have on those economies. So again, that theme of interconnectedness, but very easy to forget, if we don’t consider it in this specific
Michael Waitze 32:57
level. And you brought this up twice, actually, companies and automobile companies. I’m not an f1 fan. But it’s a big business. And one of the biggest sponsors of f1 is Aramco and Aramco, Saudi Aramco is obviously one of the biggest oil companies, if not the biggest oil company in the world. But they’re also doing some interesting work on working with the f1 group to transition all of the engines from, you know, oil based engines to electric. And I’m curious, and that’s at scale, right? It’s a gigantic company that everybody knows. So it’s very public as well. Is this the type of transition that you’re talking about? Because it’s an oil company that could just keep going and die as an oil company? Or move into becoming a technology company and electrical field, be vehicle related company and then own that space on top of it? Is this the type of transition you’re talking about?
Lapman Lee 33:46
Yeah, it is. I mean, also, if you look at one thing that I always tell the regulators as well is, yes, there are green bonds, you can invest in products that are already doing good, but what you need to do to make to transition to a netzero economy is to help industries that are not so green now, but want to get there. So they’re the transition finance part is very important. So yes, definitely it is. If I were an investor, I will look as for example, in this case study, Aramco. How will they How will a a stock a share in them change in the next five or 10 years? I look, I try to look beyond statements PR, what is really happening or I think one good part that a number of exchange are looking at is also don’t just mention qualitative statements, how much money are you going to spend our invest? I think that is probably a good litmus test or a good demonstration of what our company is actually doing. And that will impact our transition. Obviously, the the path to technology innovation, and what technologies differs by industry, oil and gas is a different one. But at some point, you will see different industries probably competing are diverging. It’s a very complex system. But I think we do need to get that started. It’s a complex transition. Otherwise, we will have cops every here, cop 2728. But you will only get statements. But if we don’t move the needle will still end up nowhere. And again, I think insurers have a paramount role to play to foster invest, ensure de risk this journey to a low carbon economy. Alex, I’ll
Michael Waitze 35:30
give you the last word.
Alex Taylor 35:32
Yeah, look, I think that’s a really interesting point you brought up in the investment in industries that might look wasteful. And look, I mean, Formula One might from the outside look quite wasteful. But if you consider the research and innovation that’s gone into reducing drag coefficients for the electric vehicle and the benefits from even the kinetic energy recovery system and Formula One, you know, we can lead to the dynamos that are connected to the wheels and electric vehicles that allow kinetic energy to be recovered from going down hills. This is a great example of the way that traditional industries that might have been quite energy intensive emissions intensive historically, are allowing us to drive forward the world as we go through this carbon transition. And I’d like to say so much more of that. I think there are a lot of very good examples of exactly that. And the places we need to be looking.
Michael Waitze 36:21
Okay, Lapman Lee, Professor of Practice ESG FinTech, climate tech and Willis Towers Watson APAC climate and ESG insurance leader Alex Taylor, Global Head of emerging technology, QBE ventures, QBE insurance. You guys are awesome. Thank you both again very much for joining us.
Lapman Lee 36:38
Great to be here and thanks for being such a great host
Alex Taylor 36:41
pleasure as always
The post EP 208 – Alex Taylor and Lapman Lee – ITC Asia 2023 ESG Panel – All of These Things Are Fundamentally Interconnected appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast genuinely enjoyed speaking with Amit Patel, a Founder at Peachy.
Some of the topics Amit covered in detail include:
- Technology paradigm shifts
- Controlled cannibalization and being brave
- Data-enabled product personalization
- Insurance as a Service
- Splitting Peachy into regulated and unregulated entities
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- Juggling Many Things
- Tech Enablement and Digital Transformation
- They’re Looking for Piece of Mind
- Some of the Patterns Are Still the Same
- Change Costs Money
Please read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:00
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Amit Patel. Founder at Peachy. Amit, it’s great to have you on the show. Busy day. Like how are you?
Amit Patel 0:15
I’m good. Lovely to lovely to be on. Thank you so much. Yeah, I’m busy days always juggling many things.
Michael Waitze 0:23
Like as an entrepreneur, people forget, like you don’t leave your home for the most part and go to an office and do things and separate yourself from like your regular life, it really kind of gets intertwined. You know what I mean? Like when you hang up a sales call? You could be like feeding the dog like nobody knows. Right? And you would never do that if you went to an office anyway, I think it keeps us busy at a different level, I think then going to a regular job. Anyway, let’s jump right into this thing. What do you think is the biggest trend from your perspective? In insurance? And InsurTech? Let’s just say globally from your perch? Yeah.
Amit Patel 0:59
Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting question. I think for a while, as you know, tech enablement and digital transformation of an industry that’s been quite dinosaur like, has been going on sort of passively, I guess. And the inshore tech space has now started to really proliferate. And you’ve seen some bigger sized companies gain traction with incumbents and enterprise clients with their technology solutions or data solutions. And, you know, I’m bothered by the fact that the insurance industry has not managed to adopt technology, where it’s businesses all about risk management, and data models and analytics and so forth, to become more efficient. And, you know, we’re seeing that sort of play out more and more as time goes by. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 1:56
So why do you think and a lot of people talk about regulation, right. And I kind of want to move away from that unless you think this is the key here. But why do you think it’s taking longer in the insurance industry longer than let’s say where I was working like in a trading industry, which is also heavily regulated? To do the things you just talked about to have technology solutions to have data solutions? What was the stopping point?
Amit Patel 2:19
Yeah, I think it’s multifactorial, and it changes by line of insurance as well. And by market, frankly, but, you know, firstly, insurance by its sort of mere nature is something that it’s a risk management exercise, and therefore, you know, the default position is to be risk averse, I guess, in general. And I think that, you know, sort of embeds in the hearts and minds of many people and the culture of, you know, staff teams working in these types of companies, I think that sort of kicks it off. I also think, you know, it’s a regulated industry. So there’s quite a moat, you can’t just get into it without some degree of expertise, right. And so, you know, I’ll say this in the nicest of ways, insurance companies are in a privileged but lazy position in that, you know, competition from the outside until over the last, I would say, five to seven years hasn’t really caused them a problem, because they’ve just got such entrenched positions and defensible kind of regulatory status and balance sheets and so forth. I think also the kind of capability required to instigate this type of change, understanding of technology, data, particularly trends in the spaces that are emerging, and having those people as change agents, and giving them the autonomy and organizations, I don’t think that’s really the the kind of modus operandi of the general kind of teams that you find in these insurance companies. But think that’s another issue. And, and, of course, you know, sort of tied with the laziness point. Change costs money. It has a massive overhead when it comes to technology, because, you know, I think these businesses are so encumbered by legacy tech. And it takes time. And that time, I think people are starting to realize that actually, it takes a lot longer than one would think, and therefore, going slow or not doing it at all is sort of like a interesting alternative or an option.
Michael Waitze 4:36
When I walked into Morgan Stanley on my first day, and frankly, when I walked into Goldman Sachs on my first day, if you had seen the state of the technology that was there, particularly at Goldman, I think you would have been appalled. And it did take I would consider myself at the time like the next generations with the next generation of people to come in and say we could do way more with way less if we just had better technology. And it took a little bit of rabble rousing, actually, internally to say, Oh my God, why am I getting in at 530 in the morning when I could be getting in at seven o’clock in the morning, because the tech is just so upside down and backwards. And it took at least in Tokyo alone at Goldman, it took like four or five years to get things up to speed. And that’s with everybody being on board. But boy, if there had been people there who saying no, we can’t do this, it could have taken 10 years or more. Do you think that there’s a generational change taking place as well?
Amit Patel 5:31
Yeah, I think, you know, market needs, customer dynamics, all of these things are changing almost their global base, you know, on a daily basis, hour to hour, minute to minute, second second. And that pace, that the kind of delta between what companies are offering and what market needs and once are, is just getting bigger. And I just, you know, I’m quite bullish about the fact that you can’t, in most instances, trying to transform out of, you know, the sorts of situations digitally, is very, very difficult for many insurance companies. I’m not saying it applies to all sectors, and not in all insurance companies. But it’s a gross generalization. And actually, it’s sort of time to rewrite the proposition and build a new technology stack almost, which resets, you know, the way that the insurance company or industry starts to operate. Because I just think it’ll take too long to like, change it any other way.
Michael Waitze 6:34
So what does that reset look like to you? And again, I want to give you my perspective on this, when we came, when I moved to Goldman Sachs, we changed a lot of the front end systems made them a lot faster, made our interactions with the trading market much better. It was the back end systems that we had were all the data set where we were like, should we even touch that? Because if we do, if we get anything wrong, we call that that was our position management system. But it’s not really different than the policy management system at an insurance company. If you get that wrong, it could be fatal. Right? So the front end can get changed the interactions you have with clients that you know, all that digital transformation is great. But how do you do this transformation that you’re talking about the reset with all these back end legacy systems as well, which is where a lot of the risk stands? No.
Amit Patel 7:21
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think, you know, there’s, there’s kind of different philosophical approaches to this. But what I’ve found is trying to, like move components of technology in the back end, to kind of upgrade them, if you like, yeah, it has not really worked in C optimizes a piece of that backend. But then the other parts that sit around it remain legacy if you like, and so the value that you’re trying to derive doesn’t really work because another part sort of fails you whether it’s from a performance perspective, or data synchronization perspective, or whatever it might be, and obviously takes time, I guess we’ve just had loads of paradigm shifts haven’t been technology like cloud native, you know, infrastructure relative to on prem, massive paradigm shift, the advent of serverless. So dynamically Elastic Compute, on demand, right? massive paradigm shift, the development of AI, and kind of machine learning and other exponential technologies like distributed ledger, yet another paradigm shift. And I think these sorts of shifts, that they they just don’t allow you to kind of change bit by bit, I think you have to do it in a wholesale way. But what I would say is, when you do it in a wholesale way, you create a new baby, if you like, this is a new platform, a new way of operating, it’s got a different, ideally, a more simplified process. It’s not just a digital incarnation of the thing that you used to do before, right? It can I think it’s about it can be Yeah, it can’t be. But the way to de risk that in my view, is to onboard customers are start to operate that new baby, if you like that new technology platform, that new proposition in a low risk way by having only some of the processes or customers or whatever, sort of migrate to that operating model. And an almost is like you have a startup you you get confidence in that operating model, and therefore migrate more of your customers or your processes or whatever over to that new way of operating. And the original platform or systems will start to atrophy in my view. But it’s quite important not to create undue legacy incumbrance and integrations into an old technology stack.
Michael Waitze 9:59
It’s a real Good point. And I like to make analogies for this right? I used to say again, when I was at Goldman it was like taking an engine out of a Formula One car and putting it into a fair, a Ford. Fairmont, it was like, yeah, the engine is great. But the legacy of the terrible tires, a terrible exhaust, the terrible steering in the Ford Fairmont was going to make that engine useless. And this is kind of what you’re saying, If you build these whiz bang systems, and then attach them to legacy, which is just like a shoulder shrug of like, why do we care? In a way? It doesn’t matter? Right?
Amit Patel 10:29
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think that’s absolutely right. And I to extend that analogy, I think of this as, I mean, it could be a Tesla, but it also could be a resto mod. You know, it could be like a Camaro 69. But with a brand new chassis with ABS, you know, whether a fuel injected LS seven, you know, all the mod cons that you could imagine, but still with the classic styling of that, that car from a body perspective. Yeah. And
Michael Waitze 10:58
that’s okay. Right. I mean, you’re right, it’s actually a great extension of that analogy, because the point that I was trying to make was that the internals in the Ford family and connecting it to a fast engine were useless. But you could then take all the internals, which is what you’re suggesting, just going junk them all. But this looks beautiful. And I’d love to be seen in a 69 Camaro, or a 64 in a 64 Corvette, but with all the updated stuff, so I can have my iPod in there and listen to my fancy music, right? So I get it completely. And it’s an interesting concept to write, you could build a brand new system and take none of your legacy clients. But like everybody over 18 signs, a new insurance policy just goes onto the new system and bit by bit by bit, that just becomes the system. Right. But to do that, does it mean you have to go to more Greenfield markets? Or can you do it in a mature market, like in the United States, like in Europe? Or do you have to come to Asia to do that?
Amit Patel 11:54
Well, that’s a very interesting question. I think, where in markets where there is limited infrastructure, and legacy systems, it’s sort of easier to do a greenfield build, if you like, I think in more mature markets, the issue is one of being brave. And and the other issue is one of, I think, controlled cannibalization. So, you know, insurance companies don’t want to create yet another innovative Wizzy division. Yeah, yeah, it’s likely to threaten their current entrenched position, but it’s better that they do it. And they can control the cannibalization from one platform more proposition to another, then someone else come and do it and just eat their, you know, their lunch. And I think that, you know, that should not be a reason not to do it. But it’s certainly easier in in front of Southeast Asia, I think, and and other markets such as that, like Africa, for example.
Michael Waitze 13:03
Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about this as well, right? Obviously, I live in I’ve lived in Asia for the past 30 something years, I’ve lived in Southeast Asia for the past 11 years. And my interest in emerging developing markets called whatever you want is super high. I look at what’s happened in Southeast Asia in the 11 years that I’ve lived here. And I kind of look over and see what’s happening in Africa as well. And I just think I know what’s going to happen. I don’t know the shape it’s going to take, but I kind of understand the pathway. Talk to me about what you think that looks like both in Southeast Asia, and in Africa as well, because I think that’s where the future is, but I’m curious what you think.
Amit Patel 13:42
Yeah, I think, you know, in this a generalization, but in these markets, the infrastructure is not as well developed. There hasn’t been as much investment in the past. And what and obviously, these markets are big, some of them China, India, in various other places, you know, the global population is sort of concentrated in these markets. If you if you think about sheer volume of people, yeah, in at the same time, whilst, you know, there hasn’t been that much kind of investment in infrastructure, yet technology, you know, God rest his soul. Mr. Moore, you know, Moore’s Law has has driven technology to, you know, new heights, dizzy heights, exponential growth, if you like. And so now, you know, you find yourself were in a place where, you know, even people in these economies where the GDP per capita is much lower than the western economies can afford technology such as laptops, mobile phones, smartphones, you know, all these these sorts of things, the types of things that are required to enable the type of futuristic propositions that we’re talking about and technology stacks from a customer customer interaction perspective. And therefore I find these markets you know, super sexy, and I’ve got to Like anecdotes, I guess, you know, a long time ago, I followed em Pacer. And it in Africa, you know, allowing movement of money via mobile phone. And, you know, also in India, fishermen near Goa that used to do, or still do go out fishing, you know, they figure out between each other through mobile communication where the best fishing places along the shoreline, and then to understand where market price along the shoreline is best for them, so that they go sell there because there’s demand. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, as fishermen to be able to leverage technology in such a way. And I know, it’s very simple example. I think that’s great. And, and the adoption curve of the sorts of solutions where you’ve got nothing is really spectacular, I think, relative to, you know, sort of Western more developed nations if you’d like.
Michael Waitze 16:05
Yeah. And you’ve actually just made me think about this in a different way, right. So if we go back 25 years, or 30 years into the Western world and think What did it cost to buy a desktop computer and who could really afford to get one, this may actually help explain why some of these legacy systems still exist. Because for people to interact digitally back then, obviously wasn’t happening on a phone. But computers were expensive for regular people. And while you could have bought an Amiga or a Commodore, once you put a keyboard and and a display with it, it was still expensive. But today, you can literally get like a throwaway smartphone. And you’re right. Even some not the poorest people in the world. But some people with like very low resource is can still get a phone. And it means I can go out fishing with the GPS, and they can communicate with other people in a way that they couldn’t do before. So it means that the things you can build have much bigger impact, but also have to be digital, where 30 years ago, they could have been, but in a way, it wouldn’t have mattered because even people in the middle class or upper middle class couldn’t afford the tools that would have made that possible. And that’s a really interesting thing, particularly in Southeast Asia. And M PESA. has been in Africa for a decade now. Is that right? I can’t I don’t know. But for a while. And that combined with we didn’t talk about this Yep. But UPI in India this ability to move money around frictionlessly means now that those types of products, whether they’re FinTech InsurTech, but anything having to do with money, and investment, and risk management is now available, possibly to anybody that has connectivity. And that’s just different.
Amit Patel 17:42
Yeah, absolutely. It’s fundamentally different. And it’s the volume of people. I mean, it’s yeah, it’s astounding, you know, mobile penetration in India. It’s astounding, you know, it’s it’s It dwarfs, you know, the UK, for example.
Michael Waitze 18:00
Yeah, it dwarfs the United States as well as towards Japan, it towards everywhere, really. And when I look at what’s happening there, and I think about sort of, let’s just say like the amount of data that’s getting accumulated, that was almost impossible to accumulate before, do you look at this as well, because you talked before about these products need to be not just newer and digitally native, but also need to be simpler. Do you think that the access to this mass amount of people that wasn’t possible before, plus all the data that they’re generating, makes it easier to both personalize but also simplify the products as well?
Amit Patel 18:38
Yeah, I think it should do definitely personalization, simplification. You know, that’s an interesting one. Yeah. Whether the data enables you to simplify or not, is a good question, I think, to be honest data, you know, allow, if the data is good quality, got provenance, then it allows you to draw insights. And those insights can help you to drive better customer experience of outcomes. And, and one of those areas is, you know, ask anyone, would you like simple products or complicated products? Everyone before? It’s that simple, right, right. And so I think the data can be weaponized in a way that enables simplicity to be drawn out of it, so you can cut through the noise.
Michael Waitze 19:25
Yeah, look, I was having this conversation this morning, as well with somebody in the insurance industry. I hesitated myself to buy health insurance for a bunch of years. And well, because in a way, right, it didn’t make sense to me. How to buy it because I’ve been given it my whole life. Right. And this is a weird concept. I mean, I worked at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, it doesn’t matter. But I just walked in and on day one, they’re like, sign these forms. You have insurance. Your family has insurance. I didn’t know what it cost. I didn’t care. I didn’t have to. So I didn’t understand the complex. it. But once I had to get insurance myself, it took me a while. And to be fair to the person that actually sold it to me the best was the person that just made it the easiest. She was just like, here are the things you need. Here’s your age, just do this thing. And I was like I’m signing fine. And the price was right. Right. But but it wasn’t the price wasn’t that different from everything else. But it was just so easy for me to understand what she was offering that I just said, done. Right. Does that make sense as well?
Amit Patel 20:28
Yeah, I think it does. And so making the purchase decision more frictionless. Yeah. And enabling checkout faster, if you like. Yeah. And and also almost like a SaaS product, to be able to leave it. If it doesn’t work for you. For whatever reason that might be. It’s almost like a promise from the provider to say, Don’t worry, I’ve got your back. Because if you don’t, if you don’t get what you want from it, you can come out of it. I think that’s those are sort of interesting ways. People think about products these days.
Michael Waitze 21:10
Can we talk about insurance as a service? If you don’t mind? It, you said SAS, right. So software is a service, but we can call it I don’t know how you would pronounce IAS s and I don’t really care. But if insurance, if you can do it as a service, in the same way that I pay for Microsoft Excel monthly, or that I pay for Adobe Creative Suite monthly, should we be making insurance easy enough so that it can be just a monthly payment, right where I don’t have to pay $10,000 up for let’s just say $12,000 up front at the beginning of the year, but I can pay $1,000 A month or $500 a month, whatever it is, and still have the same coverage I have with the expectation that I’ve signed a year long contract or a two year long contracts that I will pay all that money, but that will pay it in pieces. Does that make sense as well?
Amit Patel 21:55
I think it does. I mean, you know, an interesting example, I guess, you see in many markets see here in the UK, income protection, critical illness, life, health insurance, pet insurance. For me, these are all sort of a constellation of protection products, either for you know, my pet, or, or me and my loved ones, yet they’re sold as individual products. And and they have similar question sets for underwriting if you like, but not the same, exactly the same. Yeah. And, and yet, you know, to try and buy these things, it’s a complete nightmare to do it individually. Whereas if someone just said, like, you know, instead of me giving you health insurance, like I’m gonna give you a protection product, right, and they have certain interplays, right, so if you’re off work, and you can’t, you know, walk for whatever reason, income protection kicks in, you get health insurance to be able to get you back to work. So the income protection comes off, you know, if you’re critically ill, and you can’t work, you know, we’ll pay you a lump sum of money or you go back to work at a reduced level, like, some of these things have overlaps as well. So it’s, so I see this move in the future, although you’ve got to get customers used to it brokers used to etc, of sort of just having a protection product, if you like, rather than multiple different products that you buy to cover different eventualities in your life related to protection.
Michael Waitze 23:25
So are you building those products at PG? Because that sounds like a product that I would want? Right? In other words, when I buy health insurance, why is it separate? And it’s a rhetorical question, right? But why is it separate from your right income protection insurance, where if I have a health problem, it’s likely that I can’t go to work, and that I won’t be able to afford my health insurance. But if I have income protection, then that kicks in when I can’t go to work anymore? As long as it’s legitimate, right, which can also then fund my health insurance. And when I go back to work, I don’t need the income protection anymore. This is a product I think that everybody would want. And are you building that and how hard is it to build that type of product, just the product itself? And then you can talk about how hard it is to market and sell their product as well, because it’s different. Yeah.
Amit Patel 24:08
So we’re not building that product at the moment. It’s hard enough to build a a single product? Well, I would say, but, you know, our ambitions and we’re quite we’re an early stage company, our ambitions, you know, there’s a number of avenues to explore in terms of strategic growth for us. And one of those dimensions is to look at how as we’ve just discussed health insurance intertwines with these various other products that are available into the in the market and whether there’s a possibility to create a consolidated protection product with a single premium, if you like, and it’s got some clear benefits in the different scenarios that one might find themselves in. I think that would make it a lot easier, like for companies for example, to cover their employees or individuals, you know, I think there’s there’s a point around individual circumstances, risk selection and individuals wanting to kind of tailor those products a lot more. But for companies, and particularly large ones that may often provide many of these products, albeit there silo products in various guises anywhere, and I just think it would make it much simpler to have them bundled and sold as a as a whole, if you like. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 25:28
I mean, one of the things that I wrote down was, Is this a b2b product, or is it a b2c product? Right? Because if I’m a company, and I have a cohort of employees, that can’t work, but I still need to pay them their salary. If I were insured for that, why would I care? I mean, I would care. Obviously, you don’t I mean, it would make my life a lot easier financially. And I had done that risk mitigation that we talked about at the beginning and the risk management so that that’s okay. And when they come back to work, you’re right, that single premium stops paying for this and starts again paying for their health insurance. But this brings up a bigger question as well. Do you see this merging or intertwining of health, fitness and financial fitness as well, where those two things are just becoming the same thing or they’re so closely related? Now?
Amit Patel 26:15
I think in in certain instances from if you put a customer lens to it, not not everyone jumps immediately to the conclusion that if I’m unwell, then I’m not going to be able to work. And so, you know, I need for ducks that will support me that that kind of articulation, although it’s implied, and you know, it’s quite obvious when someone states it, it’s not the first thing I don’t think customers necessarily just sort of think about what they’re looking for peace of mind that comes in various guises and ways. And I think that that sort of peace of mind should be the way forward, but I think hearts and minds still need to change a bit. Historically, people are used to buying these products in particular ways. And they are seeing, you know, as you say, these kind of sectors are sort of blending a little bit more. But I haven’t seen a killer product yet that that, you know, converges and all of those things together yet,
Michael Waitze 27:14
neither have I. But I do think that again, back to the comment you were making before, we there were so many products that we couldn’t create on the trading desk because of the legacy systems that we had, because there was no way to connect the things that we knew we wanted to connect but couldn’t. But once we started building new systems, we thought to ourselves, hey, wait a second, we can connect that thing to this thing. Well, that alone is a brand new product. So as you go through this digital transformation, right, and you move systems, from the old legacy systems onto brand new kind of Greenfield systems, my guesses, and again, tell me where I’m wrong here is that even just through serendipity, you’ll think I didn’t realize we could connect that thing to this thing. Here’s a brand new product that everyone’s gonna want. Are you thinking about this as well?
Amit Patel 27:58
Yeah, I think you know that that’s very interesting. The interoperability of systems and data flows, starts to unlock new worlds, that you can’t necessarily predict right now. Things are moving so fast that you don’t
Michael Waitze 28:15
know can we have? Can we end this conversation without talking about Chuck GPT. And the artificial intelligence stuff, I don’t like to talk about trendy stuff. But I feel like we’re at the beginning of it, like you said, this a paradigm shift. When I look at all the work that’s getting done in all, frankly, all of the work that we used to do back on the trading desk, using artificial intelligence, using machine learning to look at historically what had traded and how it was going to trade in the future. I see this now seeping into everything, particularly with all the noise around chat TPT, how is all this stuff around artificial intelligence, all these conversations, all this explosion of information, impacting what you’re building or thinking about building?
Amit Patel 28:55
So we like you don’t actually talk about any of that. And the reason why we don’t talk about any of that is our technology stack is AI and machine learning enabled? I think everyone’s is frankly, the reality of life. Any new stack is the reality of life is none of that, that important and good technology can be deployed if you don’t have good quality, high volume data. Yeah, this is the the facts of life. And so where we are at our stage of our company, you know, we don’t have the scale of data that makes deployment of machine learning and you know, AI models meaningful. But our data modeling and data architecture and the technology suite that we use, enables us to be able to deploy those sorts of technologies when we get that scale of data.
Michael Waitze 29:51
It’s such a great answer. You know, most people would give some gobbledygook answer about how everything is artificially intelligence and all this other stuff, but you’re right and again, And I was having this conversation this morning with somebody. To me, it’s just another tool like Linux. So it would be like asking you 15 or 20 years ago, do you use Linux? And going? Oh, we haven’t thought about it yet. But the reality is that everybody’s using it. It’s just there. And it’s just another tool. Talk to me as well about what it’s like being you’re in London. Yeah. Um, yeah, looking at markets outside of that region, as engines for potential growth.
Amit Patel 30:27
Yes. So, as part of our journey with our business, we recently optimized our corporate structure as I would call it. So we created underneath our group entity, we already had a regulated, managing general agent mga business, and what we’ve done is extracted the technology out of that and created a tech subsidiary. And, you know, the reason to do that, you know, there are a few reasons but one, you know, to segregate regulated and unregulated activities, to to preserve the solvency of the regulated entity, because we’re spending, you know, a lot of money on development, and so forth. And three, really, to be able to take that the technology that’s being built in that TEPCO out to others. And what I mean by others is other health insurance that we could effectively deliver them a new digital business, with a digital, by default, if you like operating model, and then I’ll say digital is actually bionic, because not everything is fully digital, there is human in the loop in areas that we can’t digitalize right now, and that some of that is because of scale of data. Others is because we’re just not mature enough yet in our technology evolution to manage and digitize those some of those processes. But I think is a really interesting opportunity to kind of say, you know, we’ve got this digital platform, right, we have a reference installation of that platform in the UK running as an mga already. And that platform could be leveraged to basically re platform existing products that you might have, or a version of those existing products on a new operating model, or to go and do what some of these guys have or and girls have always wanted to do, which is create new products with pace. But the sole difference being relative to other inshore tech platforms is we’ve built this with a domain driven design, specifically around health insurance. So of course, there are a lot of reusable components in there for other types of lines of business. But we understand this business, because this is the sort of business you know, myself and my co founders have been in for many, many years. And we are running an operating on the platform already.
Michael Waitze 32:58
So this is interesting to me, because you know that you know what already works, right? Because you’re using yourself for your own MGA. Right. So if you offer it to somebody else, it’s not like, it’s not like, like, again, a greenfield installation for you. Because you know, the tech already works. Yeah, we talked about Asia, we talked about India as well. You know, every market out here has its own little different market microstructure has its own different regulations, and its own idiosyncrasies. To me, that was always exciting. You know, again, if I had to do a trade in New Zealand, it was definitely different than doing a trade in Greece or doing a trade in India, and I loved the different market. microstructures. Is this interesting and exciting for you as well, you know what I mean, because Indonesia is not Vietnam.
Amit Patel 33:38
Yeah, incredibly, so. I, you know, obviously Lea with the healthy economies, the intertwining between public and private health systems, and penetration of health insurance and the type of products, provider networks, they’re all different around the world, and I think, coined the phrase variety is the spice of life. Right? It keeps it interesting, it does. But some of the patterns, you know, if you just map out a customer journey, some of the patterns are still the same. You know, someone will go look for these types of products, they need a place to discover them and learn about them, right? They need to find a way of modulating the price and picking benefits, if that’s the way the product works. They’ll need a payment gateway, they need a rate, we’d need to have a rate engine built. They need a way to manage the policy when it’s in flight. Whether it’s changes or access providers or access, make a claim those sorts of scenarios. So, in my view, the patterns of there are certain patterns commonality and front end customer experience, which has particular implications for reusable components at the back end. Yeah. And then there are things which you know, will vary dramatically pricing product structure The number of providers and the way they wish to operate with, you know, the insurance company and their tech platform. Those things change.
Michael Waitze 35:10
So before I let you go, just one more thing. I like to say that no one succeeds alone. Right, particularly if you’re entering new markets. And I believe this really strongly I do it for my own business as well. I’m always looking for strong partners, when you expand outside of your own region. And you look to Southeast Asia, you look to Africa to expand, are you also looking for partners that to expand with as well?
Amit Patel 35:32
Absolutely. So we’re looking for, you know, insurers that are already playing in the health vertical, or want to get into the health vertical, who want to be able to have a digital first platform and operating model to service their customers. And this is where we want to, you know, find new partners, create new opportunities for ourselves and our platform to be able to kind of license it out and build the infrastructure, you know, in a particular geography, or multiple geographies.
Michael Waitze 36:09
To be fair, right. Okay. Thank you so much for doing this. Amit Patel, Founder of Peachy. I really appreciate your time today.
Amit Patel 36:17
Thanks a lot, Michael. Really, really good talking.
The post EP 207 – Amit Patel – a co-Founder and CEO at Peachy – It’s Time to Rewrite the Proposition appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was impressed by Jeffrey Khoo’s energy level and his love of parametric insurance. Jeffrey is the Vice Chairman in APAC for Arbol, the future of climate risk management.
Some of the topics that Jeffrey covered:
- Climate change and its impact on the agriculture sector and the overall economy as well
- Data decentralization and blockchain
- dClimate and the creation of a decentralized marketplace for weather data
- Artificial Intelligence and the role it plays in the InsurTech stack
- Parametric Insurance!
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- Credibility of Data Is Very Important
- Not All Data is Good Data
- The Risk Experience Must Fit the Solution
- Doing A Lot of Good for Climate Change
- You Summed It Up Quite Nicely
Please read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:03
And now we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech. Podcast. Today we have Jeffrey Khoo, the Vice Chairman in APAC at Arbol. Did I say Arbol right?
Jeffrey Khoo 0:16
Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. Right.
Michael Waitze 0:19
Jeffrey, it’s great to have you on the show. Let’s just jump right into this. What do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trend of insurance and InsurTech in Southeast Asia? And why do you think that’s the case?
Jeffrey Khoo 0:32
I think, you know, with climate change is a story that will be repeating over and over again, over the new and old, all kinds of chat groups, I think that has driven a lot of what we call the green economy in this part of the world, right. So a lot of governments are getting used to it. And as a result of which, technologies like AI and blockchain have come to the forefront, because a lot of these can be utilized for mitigating climate change or spreading out the risk for climate change in a way. So in terms of the technology is at the forefront. Now. The discussions the forefront now will be aI about decentralization of data, and of course, Blockchain. So these are the few things that are upfront now in effect.
Michael Waitze 1:11
Got it? Okay. And can we also back up a little bit and just get some of your background? And then I’d want to talk about how you got from where you were into what you’re doing now.
Jeffrey Khoo 1:22
Okay, so this is a long story, because I’m of a certain certain vintage sort of thing is that? I mean,
Michael Waitze 1:30
What does that mean?
Jeffrey Khoo 1:33
Ah, certainly, this means they have a certain age, you know, I heard it from someone that that’s a better way to describe it, instead of saying you’re old.
Michael Waitze 1:40
You’re definitely not. So go ahead.
Jeffrey Khoo 1:44
So, okay, where do I start off? Right? So my interest in this space, I would say, started off in botany, or some people may call it agriculture. And for a small country like Singapore, this is a little bit of an oddity, right? I mean, we don’t have much space for any agriculture here. So I did a degree in botany, Honours Degree in it, and I did pretty well in school, got myself on the Dean’s List, etc, etc. And when I came out, it was pretty difficult to find a job that’s related to it at that point of time, right? It was 1994 1995. Right. So I ended up, you know, getting involved with stuff like manufacturing, or cosmetics and all that because I biochemistry background, but that’s for a short period of time. And after that, I went to fertilizer distribution, fertilizer manufacturing. At a certain point later, I became general manager of a listed company that was involved in forestry involved in tissue culture. And from there, I sort of evolved into doing agriculture investments. So I went around in APAC, looking for good investments, where you can pretty much good returns, I would say, in terms of, let’s say, plantations, livestock farms, and so on. Right. So I did a lot of that. And then insurance came knocking, right? So I ended up joining sushri.
Michael Waitze 2:59
Before we get to insurance, can I ask you this? So you, us, you study botany? You have to understand science and chemistry. You go out into the work world, right? And you start doing stuff in the agricultural space, also in the in the chemistry in the chemical space, right. But while you’re going through and doing this, are you thinking there’s something missing? Or you’re just going through and doing it trying to make a living and stuff like that? And then later on, you realized, Oh, I get it, we need something? Do you know what I mean? Like, when did this absolutely.
Jeffrey Khoo 3:26
Okay, this change, I would say that my passion for this triggered when I was the general manager of that listed company in Singapore, and I spent a lot of time in China, and a lot of time in Malaysia. And they are also actually exposed to weather problems, you know, when I had ran a banana plantation, and one day, coincidentally, I wasn’t there, the entire partition was basically devastated. Right. And so it’s sort of a little typhoon or heavy wind event going through, and then I lost all my trees. So they remind me very clearly, despite of all the efforts you do to grow that thing, right, keeping pests away using the right kinds of fertilizers getting the right guys to come in and work on it. Well, it was all gone in one fell swoop, you know, literally in two hours. Finished, right? Yeah. So months of work has gone. So I’ve realized that actually, weather played a very instrumental part in agriculture. So that that was a point when it hit me.
Michael Waitze 4:22
Okay, so then you said you joined Swiss Re, and what took you into the insurance industry? Because it’s a completely different thing at some level? No.
Jeffrey Khoo 4:32
Yep. I think it was just the right timing. At that point of time, we’re looking for somebody who was mixed between agriculture and understood a little bit about weather, right. So maybe I take a step back before I entered two, three, I was actually at a private equity firm called cortex Asia. Okay. And at that point of time, I was running around looking for investment opportunities in the agri space. And in particular, because when I looked at I faced the same problems right when I talk To invest in in rice farms, you wanted to know whether there was say, drought prone area, or whether they were impacted by various issues like disease and all that. So all these things came into play. So when when they started to talk to me and say, Hey, we want to do something for Asia Pacific, is this something you want to do? So yeah, by all means this again, affecting me, and if it can be insured, and it’s something that I can sort of market and it’s useful to farmers, I’ll do it. So I ended up mystery street.
Michael Waitze 5:28
What was the learning curve like though, right? Because as as, as a person who’s external to the insurance industry, you can go look at it and think, Okay, I have my own insurance policy of life insurance, maybe I’ve got a whole life policy, I have health insurance, maybe I have a family. So I’ve got health insurance for them as well. But you kind of don’t know anything about it. At least I know, I didn’t, until I started really getting involved in it. So what was the learning curve? Like when you got it? And you were like, I want to solve all these problems in the agriculture space. But oh, boy, this is a lot different than I thought it was.
Jeffrey Khoo 6:00
Very good question. And this is why I’m more or less in love with parametric insurance, which is the thing I talk about every single day, right? Because their learning curve wasn’t really, I will say much of a curve for me, in a sense is because at that point, when I joined to three, this was still rather in its infancy stage. So when nobody that was in let’s do 2015, okay, around 2015 Yeah, 2015. I was there. And then, you know, we did I mean, it was it’s a new, there’s a new setup necess that not many deals will close. And they weren’t close in effect. So when I came in, I started closing deals. Now maybe to answer that question as to you know, what was the learning curve was a little bit of difficulty, because insurance is a pretty complicated business and regulated right. But the beauty behind it, and I would say quite clearly, it is easier for someone who has Zippo experience in insurance to learn about parametric insurance than somebody who is sort of embedded with all the history behind it. And all the wonderful terminology behind it.
Michael Waitze 7:01
It’s such a good point, though, right? Because you come in and someone says, okay, parametric insurance, you take these parameters in real time, or close to real time, and then we do these calculations, then we can make some payouts based on some pre agreed payouts based on this thing. And you go, that sounds like it makes sense. Whereas if you’d been in the insurance industry for 25 years, you would have said, Wait a second, oh, how does that affect this system? And non-system and these other things, then how about that thing? And then what’s the risk? And what are the underwriters say? And how about the, you know, all these things, but for you, it was easier, just like, Okay, I get it parametric? Makes sense? Yeah.
Jeffrey Khoo 7:31
Yeah. It’s, it’s easy, and in the sense to understand and then the applications are, I would say, almost limitless, you know, to wherever they go ahead. Exactly. It’s a wonderful thing to be working with to be promoting and all that, right. It’s at the center. Of course, it’s difficult, because, you know, to change mindsets, is it’s not something that’s that simple. But the key if you want to work through brokers, and they say, Hey, you know, what’s the, you know, what claims procedure, for example, because there’s no claims procedure and things, things of that nature? Or can we layer it up, there’s no layering up, you know, it’s just a trigger, and it hits any piece. So sometimes because of its simplicity, it becomes difficult to understand for certain individuals. Let’s put it that way. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 8:17
Yeah. Because you’re just not used to it. When you when you first started doing this, and you first got interested in introduced to parametric insurance, then you went back to your connections in the agriculture industry. And you said to them, would you consider doing this right, because there’s a big difference actually in I don’t want to say claims but in the payouts that are associated with parametric and indemnity insurance, right. So an indemnity insurance could be a much larger payout potentially, whereas parametric is it happened, the trigger got hit, here’s a million bucks, even if there was $10 million of damage, and I’m just making up numbers, right? Yeah. What was the response from because before it existed, nobody kind of knew about it. When you went back to your ag tech connections, what was their response to this?
Jeffrey Khoo 9:02
Well, you know, because selling fertilizers for a long period of time and spoke to many different agriculture firms, of course, I went back to them and told them this. There are now doing this, you know, I’m going to sell this to you. Now. I depended on the client, right? So there’s a reality behind it. Let’s say rice farmers, rice, farmers barely make 1% net profit out of whatever they produce. So they don’t have enough money to even use parametric as a sort of insurance tool. Right. But if you look at larger firms, multinationals, that’s what we’re interested, right, because they had a budget to do these things. I mean, it’s not free, it’s parametric is not free. And cost is so simple in this way of paying out. But it also sort of affects the cost law. It’s not you will not be you know, that cheap per se. No indemnity insurance. There’s the ability to argue maybe there’s ability to claw back a certain amount, you know, so insurance companies might depending on the structure, the solution gives you a very attractive premium offer. But it comes with a lot of, you know, exclusions, what if, etc, and it’s all there. And so the insurance company has a possibility of maybe throwing back a certain amount like say, Hey, I can’t pay you this amount because of this. But in parametric insurance, where the policy wording is barely 1015 pages right? Now, insurance company has no choice but to pay. It triggers pay less, there’s no, there’s no what if, what if whatever, then I don’t pay right doesn’t exist, right. So as a result, sometimes depending on the structure, not always, the pricing can be more of a challenging, so it sort of fits certain clients.
Michael Waitze 10:37
So how do we make it so that the farmers that are most at risk, right? So I don’t want to necessarily just say smallholder farmers, but smaller farms, right, that aren’t industrial farms, and aren’t corporate farms, where if they miss a planting season, or if they miss a harvest season, like that really could go bankrupt, they could go out of business, where the insurance in this case could come in really handy, right, like a storm, you said, destroys your entire Banana Farm, your banana plantation. Yeah. Now how am I going to eat? Because I can’t even eat the bananas? Do you know what I mean? If worse comes to worse? Absolutely. How do you democratize it down so that it’s reasonably priced enough so that smallholder farmers can do it? And not just big corporate farms? Yeah. Yep.
Jeffrey Khoo 11:18
That’s a very good question. I work a lot with NGOs. I work with, you know, donors, that would be willing to actually pay up the premium for the farmers or even governments actually willing to pay out the premiums for the farmers are a majority, larger portion of the premiums on behalf of the farmers, get them on their feet. Yeah. So So you know, instead of, let’s say, a certain foundation donating billions after the event has happened, probably donate a little bit before the event has happened. And then then we can cover them for these, you know, major, I would say weather events, I mean, severe events, right?
Michael Waitze 11:52
So you were at Swiss Re but now you’re the vice chairman at Arbol what is Arbol? How do you get involved here? And then how do you just like, dig deeply into this?
Jeffrey Khoo 12:06
Okay, I was at Swiss Re for about five years odd. And after that, I moved on to a company called Donna. And they also had what we call them, mga as they call it, basically the right to write insurance deals for forestry. And I did a bit of parametric there. But there was during the COVID periods, so things are all, you know, difficult to do anything. So when I came out of COVID, I joined our board, the founder, the company gentleman called Syd Jha. So he connected up with me. In fact, he connected up, essentially, we knew each other. And while I mean, he did a wonderful job, the company just just grew exponentially. And he said, Why don’t you come and join us? Since you love to do this thing? And you’re the noisiest guy in APEC, always talking about this come in, come come on board. And here’s what I did. Right? I think I’m doing more or less the same thing, in terms of promoting parametric insurance. But what I really love about this company, is that, unlike when I was in surgery, and you know, that kind of ground, I also had the opportunity to look at new technology. What does that mean? Okay, so maybe let me let me explain a little bit about the technology, because Apple is not purely what we call an insurance company right? Now, when I was still in Swift, three, St. John, the founder of Apple approached me, we had friends, mutual friends. And so I shared with him what I was doing its history, right. And a couple of years later, to my big surprise, and joy, in fact, that he actually grew such a large company, and it’s grown exponentially. I think it’s one of the fastest growing tech firms around. And so he called me up about last year, and they said, Hey, why don’t you join us? Right now, you’re very familiar AIPAC. You know, you’re someone who is speaking very loudly about advocating about it. So and, you know, a lot of people in this place, right, and I speak a couple of Asian languages, so just as well. So I thought that was a great opportunity. But But what really attracted me wasn’t really this because, you know, I could have gone back to history come back to Munich reorder larger companies. The thing is that Apple had InsurTech. Now, it’s a common word to use. But the thing is that these guys really know what they’re doing. They have blockchain AI, and all the very nifty stuff. And they use AI to actually work out the premiums at times, right, and also to work out the, you know, there’s a lot of data that’s involved, you know, in weather, right. So, AI will come in to do the calculation, you give it, give it, give it some parameters, and then come up with the pricing is amazing. You know, they can do this, and of course, blockchain and everything else, so they were driven into that space. There was a company called D climate, which actually spun out of our board. And that’s the world’s first decentralized marketplace for weather data. They have a lot of data stored and all kinds of people contributing to it. So the climate was also invested by this famous US investor called Mark Cuban. So he put in some money to this, believing that it will grow big. And so far, they’ve come up with pretty good products at a very fast rate. So that’s one of the reasons and I think the main reason why I actually ended up in our board, right?
Michael Waitze 15:26
So when I was on a sales trading desk, right, when I sat on a portfolio trading desk, we would take a lot of back tested stock data, right? So we’d get a lot of stock trading information data, we would clean that data up to make sure that it was all right and valid. And then we would use that to build trading models. We didn’t call it artificial intelligence. But we did write algorithms that tried to understand what the patterns were, and then predict what the pattern would be today and also the next day and stuff like that. And we would build algos to then do trading for us. Are you suggesting that they are also gathering all of this climate data feeding that climate data that’s historic into our bowls, kind of actuarial information, whether they give it to actuaries or not is a different story, but into the artificial intelligence and then coming up with pricing for parametric insurance based on historical weather data, and maybe predictions about future data as well.
Jeffrey Khoo 16:23
Yep, you summed it up quite correctly. Yep. I see that you’re already part of this company. Yeah, I think, you know, let’s put it this way, where the data, generally speaking, is plentiful in mature economies, like the US mature economies like Australia, but no places, you know, far flung, you know, some places in Vietnam, some locations, even in India, you don’t really have good data, right? Okay, you need a workstation to do that. And all that. So data is something that the camera keeps on collecting. I mean, it’s all across the globe, it doesn’t also mean that all satellite data, it can be to ground sensors, IoT, so on so forth, but all this data can be, you know, used to structure products, as you said correctly earlier. And we do that, right. And of course, being parametric, you need that data to pay out or go to you got to ensure that the data is third party, which is one reason why, you know, in the sense that our boy and D climate are more or less separate companies in a way. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 17:25
Yeah. I mean, in a way, look, if you go look at Sid’s background, and I’d love to have him on the show as well. He comes out of an applied mathematics background. So taking a very different take on what that data means. Right, if you go back to the way indemnity insurance is built through actuarial mathematics, which again, is very sophisticated and complex, but actuarial tables as well, it’s different than taking applied mathematics, taking the real time data, and then being able to project forward about what this is going to be in a parametric way. The other interesting question for me as well, as you said, like even in countries like India, and Vietnam and stuff like that, because there haven’t historically been weather stations, is there a possibility that you go out and build your own weather stations to get this proprietary data that feeds into D climate? Because I presume you that company was was spun out so that everybody can have access to that data, of course, on a paid basis, but that anybody else that wants to do it, then can white label that data into their own analyses and create their own products? Yeah.
Jeffrey Khoo 18:26
Yep. Yep. I think the advantage of it being decentralized, so encourage more people to contribute data to it, you know, because they’re really far flung places to set up all these sensors. Yeah. And so there’s a commercial challenge there, right to make it profitable to mean to sort of companies and all that currently, I don’t think that’s in the, in the plan yet. But we do get a lot of disparate data from very far flung places on the globe, that, that we can sort of use and collect and analyze within within d climate.
Michael Waitze 18:57
Yeah, it’s just so interesting to think about what that business itself is going to look like,
Jeffrey Khoo 19:02
ah, that business, I will say, You got to be careful with it. You know, I’ve done this kind of, it’s not right for me to say which country and all that. I mean, you’ve got weather data coming from certain weather stations that, you know, when there’s a thunderstorm went through a typhoon has went through, and then the data reads nothing. So So I mean, the credibility of data is very important. Yeah. So I mean, I don’t know whether the guidance meaning the police are sleeping easy. So these are things that that’s the job of parametric insurance. Not all data is good data. So you know, I’ve done certain deals in Southeast Asian country for yield data. Right. And it’s amazing, same thing, that a drop down there, but the harvest was, what is, I mean, it’s not possible, right. Keylogger, right. So I mean, and you expect me to use that data as a trigger point to pay out? Wow, that’s going to be very difficult, right? Yeah. So the one part about the parametric design is to make sure your data is genuine. And to make sure that the way you collected the data has been similar in the entire time span, I mean, if you collected it differently 20 years ago, and you collect it now. So I mean, I wouldn’t consider the data I can use to price it, right?
Michael Waitze 20:14
Is there a tokenization aspect of this business as well, right to encourage people to contribute really clean data to it, they get tokens, and then maybe that they can use those as, like a source to be able to buy some parametric insurance, if that makes sense.
Jeffrey Khoo 20:32
Yeah, that sounds I think for for this part of the world, when it comes to tokenization. And all that is still still something they read on the news, they haven’t done it yet. So at least from my side of the fence, in the Asia Pacific is difficult because and to be very frank, right, in terms of just normal insurance, penetration within Southeast Asia and all these very low, yeah, so me tokenization they’re far from it, they got to get insurance. And they gotta understand the value of insurance. Let’s, before we get there.
Michael Waitze 21:02
So we’ve talked a lot about the benefits of parametric insurance. Are there any challenges or any downsides to this? And then how did those get resolved as well?
Jeffrey Khoo 21:10
Okay, let me let me tell you the challenges and the downside, maybe all at one go. I think that the challenge is we know, acceptance, right. And sometimes the cost, and sometimes even the understanding, so these are the issues that the challenges that we face, right? And data will also be a challenge to make sure the right kind of data, and not all solutions that you know, I mean, you cannot, cannot just come to find and say, Look, you know, let’s find out the x amount of rainfall you need, or X amount of temperature you need. All that is not really precise, a lot of work needs to be done to structure in such a way that is more precise, right? Because this isn’t as simple as if the more rains, I pay you tomorrow doesn’t rain, I don’t pay you. First of all, they may not be that sophisticated, but sophisticated enough to know that he may not pay out so so or even they think he’s gambling, right. So we have to avoid that. That’s the biggest challenge. Right? In, in terms of avoiding that. Now, in terms of, you know, another portion of that challenge, I would say is what we call patients risk, which sort of adds on to what I said earlier on your your your this solution that you create for them. I give an example the best way to wrap up an example. So for example, the client says you know, Jeffrey, I want to buy a category three typhoon cover, if a category typhoon, three, three typhoon hits my location, or near my location, I want to pay up. Now here’s the problem, a category one type of disease location and everything is wiped out. And I don’t pay him anything because it doesn’t get category three, right? So this is more or less what we call basis risk, right? The risk experience must fit this solution. If it doesn’t fit the solution what’s going to happen is going to walk away very very unhappy clients and to breach that is the problem. Now one thing to breach there’s a problem in certain places in this world not to mention which part of APEC category track three Typhoons are a norm every single year yeah. Now to ensure that it’s not a matter of insurance anymore it’s a guaranteed will happen kind of thing like the Philippines Hong Kong, we can insure those. Yeah, exactly. It’s gonna hit Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I know insurance, right mind will say okay, what, gotta do it, right. I mean, everybody we dumping their money in buying premium, but because the shopI out. So these are things that parametric insurance cannot do, it cannot insure something that is truly uninsurable, when you know, a certain as a sunrise that you hit then is no longer considered insurance, right, you got to find some other ways to mitigate that risk. So parametric insurance when talking about business risk, that is the part where you request skill, you need time to actually talk to the client to understand more, get the proper data, and then do the right analysis behind it. Right. So something interesting, I learned about parametric insurance and about pricing can give to two different underwriters using the same data in the same company, and you get two different prices. Sure. Yeah. So so so there’s a little bit of art involved in this thing, right? A little bit of business sense involved in this thing to actually get it right. So it is exciting in a sense, because sometimes you come up with a deal doesn’t well go back to the drawing board and try to to get to make sense and then bringing it back to the client. So there’s a lot of back and forth here. But through it all, the client learns a little bit more about a race and we also learn a bit more about how we should price deals for them. What’s the
Michael Waitze 24:23
right balance for a para indemnity insurance, right in the sense that you do want to have parametric insurance you can get that immediate payout but like we said, if the immediate payout is not large enough to cover all of your losses, you can also combine this with an generally accepted I mean indemnity insurance and say, you may actually get a larger claim in this case, it is a claim if it’s indemnity insurance, right. How do you package those two things together?
Jeffrey Khoo 24:50
Okay, well, it’s strange that you said this word right? Because this word I remember the rest is history. This one afternoon, and I was just fooling around with words and say Have you know how about this? We just call this paradigm Lila. And you know, strangely enough, put it on a LinkedIn and add a few people call me up, you know, because I’ve got a pretty large LinkedIn following and all that. But safe to say I don’t think that word has been going around much. But it comes out this way. It’s more like something to do with a mix between parametric indemnity. Yeah. Okay. The way it works, is this right? I think it’s a mixture, when it comes to the payout, a certain portion, actually would meet Vasa just to be involved. And it says a portion is immediate trigger. So for example, you’re talking about category three type of dating, right? Well, maybe the entirety of $1 million. You say, look, I tell you what, in this case, we pay a half a million first because your image needs to settle. And the rest will be using, you know, normal ways of people going down loss of justice and checking and everything else. So it can be a mixture of that. In that case, you can sort of control the cost, if you would, this way, by having other portions of it as parametric, instead of portions of it going to the normal claims adjusters and so on.
Michael Waitze 26:00
What are the biggest markets in Southeast Asia for Arbol right now? And do you get the sense that countries like Indonesia, I’m gonna leave China separate? Because I feel like it’s its own sort of domestic market? But if you feel like countries like Indonesia, with very large farming populations, but also India as well, I mean, look, to be fair, there’s also Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, right? Where those countries alone have almost 2 billion people in them combined. Are those going to be big markets for these types of products as well? And I know you said before, and I don’t disagree with you on this, that penetration for traditional insurance is still low, you have to get kind of past that hurdle. But these things are I think you’re gonna happen in unison, but you look at those big countries as the biggest opportunities as well.
Speaker 2 26:45
Yeah, they all do. I think that that opportunities, definitely, they’re different pockets. And I would, I would venture to say not only for agriculture, right permission can be used for so many things along the value chain. So if you’re just at the front end, where the farmers are, and all that, that sort of limits you. So you know, you know, simple, not simple, I would say things like factories, need to operate anywhere heavy rainfall, and you’re in an area that’s easily flooded, then, you know, you buy parametric insurance to for events, large scale football matches, concerts, and so on, so forth. And they could be badly affected if you suddenly have a huge thunderstorm in the area. And parametric issues can also be used in those cases. So we will not be limiting ourselves to just weather for agriculture, but also weather for industries, businesses, and all kinds of weather related kinds of research. So it’s not related or purely for agriculture. Yeah, so in that sense, we are sort of spread out. I mean, let’s put it this way. If there’s a heavy thunderstorm planes can fly off. Now, somebody’s got to pay that too, right. So we can come in and do something. But having said that, having said that, let me share with you something that I’ve learned in Japan, you know, I tried to sell some of this in Japan. And interestingly, I spoke to a broker. And interestingly, I experienced it myself. He said, what happens to Thai food business will be affected people cannot go to the shops can go to restaurants. I really understood that wasn’t correct. Because I was there for when they there was a typhoon category tree that hit in Tokyo about probably about four or five years ago, I was there in the middle of Tokyo in a hotel. And guess what, the next day, I read the news, I heard it on the news, two people passed away. And I was staying in the train station itself, you know, just text, the train station in the train station. And jolly well, next day, everybody was lining up to still go to work. So you know, it’s also partly due to the resilience of the people. So I’ve also realized that it works, you know, unless, of course, it’s much more severe. So, but resilience of people also means that, hey, they wouldn’t bother you still go to the restaurant? whatever it’s worth, right. So so it’s a cultural thing. And it depends on which country right, so for the Japanese kudos to you guys. Because, wow, I mean, even the toughest stuff, you still go and as a five, we’ll just carry on as normal.
Michael Waitze 29:01
Interestingly enough, I am going to publish an episode today. For the for this show. That is titled Japan is built for long term resilience. So I completely agree with you. The last thing I’ll ask you, before I let you go is this is that once you’ve built all these systems, right, they can handle parametric insurance. And once you understand the mathematics around it, right, so and you’ve gathered all this weather data, does Arbol look at other places where they can potentially use the same infrastructure, but not just for weather? Like maybe for connectivity, or for gig workers that can’t go to their job? Because they don’t they’re not connected to the Internet or because the weather is bothering them. Like are there other places where you can use us that aren’t weather related?
Jeffrey Khoo 29:50
Very good question. In fact, that’s one area we’re working on and you know, you know, the carbon markets, carbon credits and all the lingo for that. We’ve been doing a lot of work in areas it’s very exciting. The rate of climate change, everybody is going for this carbon credits, offsets, so on so forth. Now Apple is working very intently, we do have product now that we’re going to sort of promote. And that’s basically ability of using satellite data to look at basically the amount of carbon in certain forestry and plantations. You know, it’s amazing, right? Instead of having to go down there and say, how much how much carbon they have sitting here, right? And it’s almost real time, you know, because this satellites go around probably every day or two, and then you’ll be able to actually capture the information, right? So the biggest problem the carbon market is now is that people resell the same piece of forestry again and again and again sometime. Yeah, exactly. So it ends up hurting the planet instead, right doesn’t solve the climate change problem. In fact, it makes it worse. So this adds a lot of clarity. So the technology, Blockchain AI, is all utilized in this kind of solution. And we are slowly promoting it of this new stuff that we need to improve and tighten and make it a lot better. But that’s the direction that we are taking very seriously. And I say that it excites me because I think that this helps future generations, because we get it when it comes to analyzing carbon credits and making sure that there’s totally transparent and no double counting. I think they’ll do a lot of good for climate change. So I think Apple plays a very important role there
Michael Waitze 31:27
and love it. Okay, I’m gonna let you go. You are a great supporter of parametric insurance. Jeffrey Khoo…
Jeffrey Khoo 31:33
I love the business.
Michael Waitze 31:35
I know I can feel it. Jeffrey Khoo, the Vice Chairman in APAC at Arbol. Thank you so much for doing this today. I really appreciate your time.
Jeffrey Khoo 31:42
Thank you.
The post EP 206 – Jeffrey Khoo – Vice Chairman APAC at Arbol – Why Am I So in Love With Parametric Insurance? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The conversation with Samantha Ghiotti, a co-founder and the CEO of Habitto, both started and ended with a smile. It also included a ton of interesting insights from Sam, who frankly surprised me with her knowledge of the nuances of the Japanese market and the culture into which it is deeply embedded (pun intended).
Some of the topics that Sam covered:
- Some of the challenges of being a female AND foreign founder in Japan
- Building a business in Japan with few cultural references and limited language skills
- The enormity of the Japanese market and how Habitto is addressing it differently
- The fascinating psychology the Japanese have about money and risk-taking
- Building a new brand and making it relatable
A few other titles we considered for this episode:
- There Is Only One and You Are Speaking to Her
- Start from the Premise of Being Different
- Simple, Practical Choices
- Listen, Empathize, Sell
- Changing Money Habits
The post EP 205 – Samantha Ghiotti – co-Founder and CEO at Habitto – Japan Is Built for Resilience and Long-Term Stability appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast had a great back-and-forth conversation with Raunak Mehta, a co-founder and the CEO of Igloo.
Some of the topics Raunak discussed:
- The intertwining of health and economic well-being
- How outlier events can set back families financially for years
- Customer centricity as a core principle for building a business
- Expanding the customer segment by reaching out to mid-income households
- Artificial Intelligence across the value chain
- Star Wars
Some other titles we also considered:
- You Have to Go to the Most Fundamental Aspect of a Problem
- Big Companies Survive on Sustainable Disruption
- Trying to Make Insurance More Contextual
Please read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:00
That’s, let’s go. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Raunak Mehta, the r and the CEO at Igloo, I always want people to hear the conversation we have before we start recording so they can know why I’m laughing when I’m just saying, Yeah, but anyway, Ruanak, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Raunak Mehta 0:25
I’m great.
Michael Waitze 0:28
Yeah, thank you for joining us. And thanks for all the shenanigans around airpods and stuff like that. It’s not our problem. Anyway, before we get into the main thing, what do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trends in insurance and InsurTech in Asia, and I would say, by extension, the rest of the world.
Raunak Mehta 0:46
I think what we’re seeing in Asia, especially post pandemic is, people getting a bit more concerned about the personal well being, especially when it comes to health, savings, etc. So quite a lot of products, or other product categories that were having average growth before pandemic now seem to be having above average growth. So the usual events, health related, income related, the regulators also have seen to a certain extent, a slight shift in the consumer behavior and have now responded in terms of focusing a lot on digital intermediaries, which tend to reach out to a larger section of the population. So that’s, that’s, I would say these are, what do you call as the umbrella trends that you’re seeing? And if somebody wants to double click, I would say across the world, I mean, you know, what has happened? Right? In the last two, three years, a lot of businesses, a lot of retail, consumers have moved digital. And when you move on from offline to online at such a fast pace, of course, the infrastructure isn’t there to support from security standpoint and all. So there’s a lot of emphasis now on cybersecurity, for small and medium size enterprises, and also for retail customers.
Michael Waitze 2:10
There are so many things there. You know, you said health and income related. And I think maybe before COVID, if we had put those two things together and conflated them, somebody would have said, maybe not we were crazy, but that we were stretching. But do you feel like that’s really changed now? Where people look at their health, in the context of their economic health as well, not just their physical health?
Raunak Mehta 2:34
I mean, I would look at it from various dimensions, right. Gohan, as you mentioned, physical health. So you saw right, a lot of insurance and insurer tech companies are focusing on ensuring that their policyholders are in the best of health. Yeah, because they were in the best of health claims will be lesser, they will be able to pass on cost savings to their consumers. And it’s a virtuous cycle. Now, come COVID, you had a larger section of the population that you could say to a certain extent paranoia to a certain extent, they really got impacted their life savings and all got impacted because they ended up in the hospitals or in the quarantine centers. And all as a result of this, this thing really blew up. So people across the spectrum, I would say from I mean, the class, you could say the income class, that that has a very high penetration of insurance to the low to mid income class. Now you are finding that people some way or the other want to be protected with a certain health product, right? It doesn’t always has to be a full blown inpatient outpatient sort of thing. People are fine in getting a very, how should I say away infectious disease centered one away income protections and one but they need some sort of is just good industry, which is the industry because it drives penetration on its own, especially in a region like Southeast Asia.
Michael Waitze 4:02
Did you just say drives penetration on its own? Yeah, yeah, it does. Right. Look, one of the things that was said to me on one of the other shows that I do, I do a show called India Game Changer where we talk specifically about how technology is changing the game in India. This gentleman puce Jain, who runs this thing called Impact Guru said that, you know, India’s middle class and I would posit ages middle class is just kind of one hospital bill away from poverty, right. So, yeah, it can get really, really expensive. And then I had an operation. It’s almost two years ago now. And yeah, it was really expensive to do. I mean, I think thankfully, I could pay for it. But this idea of the mixing of your health and your financial health, your physical health and your financial threat, Franklin, your mental health is something that I think is super important, particularly out here, right? If you look in the Western world, it’s a little bit different. But frankly, those things are emerging as well, I think. Yeah.
Raunak Mehta 4:55
I agree. And I think one of the things that you mentioned right that you are one hospital visit away from going into poverty that actually happens that. And if you talk about the segment of the population, a good 70 1970 In some countries, then 75 to 80% of the population is in the low to mid income household. Yeah, right. In that segment when you are hit with certain outlier events, right, and when I say outlier events, it could be a fire, or let’s say, you having an accident and landing up in the hospital, what do you generally do, you tap into your single or multiple income sources that you’ve had, and whatever savings you had out of that, or you would end up taking a sort of a friendly loan from your family, wider family or friends. That’s, that’s the only way they can possibly be in a position to pay hospital bills. And then what happens? It sets you back by a good 345 years. Yeah, right. Your whole especially high? No, I mean, it sets you back three to five years. And on an average, and not just that, I mean, you’re talking about now you’ve entered a high inflation, sort of a macro environment, right. Yeah. Which makes it even more difficult for you to be able to service your whatever unstructured unsecured debts that you have taken over a period of time. So yeah, I mean, you get caught into what I call as a vicious cycle, which can ultimately be sort of a debt spiral for a lot of a lot of families.
Michael Waitze 6:33
Yeah, it can get really, really hard, right? And you’re right, because inflationary expectations mean that people expect prices to be higher in the future, which means that you’re paying back today’s bill with money that has less value in the future, in a rising interest rate, and what we can talk about macro until you’re blue in the face as well, right? Because I used to trade bonds. So I understand this, too. But yeah, it’s just a really hard situation. I’m just gonna keep making you laugh. Like, that’s my goal for the rest of this podcast.
Raunak Mehta 6:59
I actually wanted to hear somebody say that they have been trading bonds. And I want you to see how they feel. Especially, because if you have been trading long term, I mean, the long, long treasury bonds or any kind of such bonds, I mean, I totally get your pain, then.
Michael Waitze 7:19
Well, yeah. Because, look, I mean, we can spend a lot of time talking about the macro environment, and what the impact is of rising short term rates or overnight rates from the Federal Reserve on the federal we call the Fed path, right in the bond curve, the yield curve. And the idea that a yield curve is inverted, right? It’s different than an upward sloping, which is a normal type of environment yield curve. But in that situation, you should not be buying long term bonds to mitigate short term risks. Anyway, it’s a completely different conversation. But when I think that both of us understand it, happy to have that conversation whenever you want, I want to go back a little bit. You’ve been in the startup world for a long time. And you’ve actually been really, I used to use the word lucky. But I’m not going to say that because I think people make their own luck. But I’m very fortunate to work at some pretty cool places. When you go back and look at like the end of your experience that I don’t know, Flipkart, which was feels like yesterday, but it’s a long time ago. Now. What do you think are some of the biggest changes in building venture funded businesses between back then? And today?
Raunak Mehta 8:24
I have looked at things from that perspective, right. When I was at Flipkart, and this this goes back easily. 12 years.
Michael Waitze 8:30
Yeah. At the beginning, for sure. Yeah.
Raunak Mehta 8:33
Yeah. I mean, that is the Genesis, right? I mean, if you wish to think of, of startups in India, Flipkart was Genesis block. And in a way, I would say, the biggest difference between then and now is, at that point of time, you really needed the first principles approach. Because there were some, I mean, Flipkart was part of organized retail, organized, retail was largely offline, there are certain assumptions that were there. But those assumptions could not be in a way teleported from offline to online, which meant that you really have to go to the most fundamental aspect of a problem. Question it and it needs to have a binary answer. I mean, that’s, that’s how much you have to dig, to go to that fundamental aspect of the problem. If you rule for over 10 years now, there is quite a base of, let’s say, assumptions, of how things work in a, in a startup environment to which you can latch on to and be able to find those answers a lot quicker. You don’t really have to
Michael Waitze 9:46
say what are those things right, you’re right. 13 years ago, when Flipkart first started. AWS probably wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. So you probably had to build a lot of your own server environment. Right, exactly. It’s just time consuming and very expensive and you needed a different cut tie. above tech team, we can fast forward today and say that people that are on AWS can also use some of their artificial intelligence stuff as well. And those tools weren’t weren’t there either. But you mentioned the word first principles, right? And it’s kind of this axiomatic feeling of what are just the core things we know to be true. And then can we build on those things with other assumptions, right. But what are those things today? Because they’re very different than they were like you said, 13 years ago, when you were at Flipkart. What are those first principles today?
Raunak Mehta 10:30
First, first and foremost, I think across the 12 years, one thing that has stood out and has not, I think that has stood the test of time is customer centricity. Right? No matter what kind of business you are doing, if you are able to go back to the root cause of every problem, and try to solve it, using the lens or the dimension of customer centricity more often than not, you build something that that provides value to you with respect to serving your customers. Fair enough. So I would say, I would say that part has been there. The second part, one of the things that you mentioned, right? How much has technology in a way? And you’re right, 1020 years back from an enterprise perspective, a lot of things were being built in house. Yeah. Today. Today, Amazon using its AWS, Microsoft Yugen, as your and all provides you a ready made set of tools. And I will say feature set that you can potentially use. Right, right. And as you’ve seen coding itself has undergone such a massive change, right? I mean, now, I’ve got my engineering folks working on Gaulin, we are living in a zero code sort of an environment coding has become a lot more easier. Yeah. I would want to believe it. They may have different opinion. But I definitely I definitely think that a large part of, of what you try to do on your code base is now available as of some libraries, right.
Michael Waitze 12:01
How do you how do you navigate this? This idea that you’ve just said kind of offhandedly? Like, coding has just become so much easier. But the dev team may not think so maybe they do. But maybe they’re worried, right? Like how do you navigate this idea that you can kind of outsource I like to say abstraction, right? In other words, you said a lot of stuff was done in house. But what’s happening now is whether it’s the human resources function, and insurance function, or any function, big companies are looking and saying, How can we abstract that out, and then give it to somebody else to do and then they do it at scale, which means instead of paying $2,000 a month, on average, for x, we’ll pay $20 for it. So we can be 10 times more efficient by letting somebody abstract it out. And do it for the whole industry as opposed to just for us. But coding is this really kind of tricky thing where, you know, the salaries for people to write code have been going up exponentially for the past 10 years. And I choose the word exponentially on purpose. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s really just in factors. But now we’re getting to a point where, like, all of human knowledge seems to be available through an API, and that includes the code writing, how does that change the way you build stuff then?
Raunak Mehta 13:14
So they’re doing looking at it, right? The way I look at it is 10 years, 11 years back, a large part of this was not available outside your company, right? Because you were building it, it was considered as core. Of course, you had systems of if I remember, customer service related systems, you could get from a vendor marketing analytics, or for instance, recommendation engine with just coming through. They were they were not there and they’re about all the warehousing management systems and order management systems are completely built in house right. Now, a large part of it could be available, as you already said, through an API call, and everything. But so that in a way, I think, oversimplifying the situation right now, what I see is that the pace at which coding changes and the pace at which your expectation from your engineering team, the delta, actually has a much steeper slope, because every I mean, let me give you an idea. 2017 2018 If you go back to the history of artificial intelligence, and all, it was around 2015 2016, that, that things really started getting heated up, right when, you know, Facebook, Baidu, and Google started having their own teams and Google I think, by that time, had acquired DeepMind in London, and they were coming up with their own sort of models and and Google came up with this TPU the tensor flow from the artificial intelligence side of it. 2018 igloo was one One of the companies that was using it for, for for something that today sounds like really trivial, right, which was object identification, how to focus on an object in a particular image once you have got it, how do you find whether that image is intact or not? Or whether it has been in a way tampered with? And all sounded very cool back then, right? Five years now everybody’s doing it. Right, right. And now, of course, the bandwagon has moved on to charge GPD, three, four, and multiple other mean, GPT sort of software. So I think now the change in technology is a lot higher, whereas things at your disposal also are there. But now the expectation is a lot more so smaller engineering teams, I would say, as I mean, if, if I had to look at it 10 years ago, for what is happening now, I would have to be required a team that was two and a half times bigger. Well, this, probably may have costed me a little less, but considering inflation and everything, I would say, I mean, when you have a lot of information at your disposal, you tend to move fast, right? So that is what is happening. And not just for the engineering team or the product team you need. Now if you’re a start that that uses technology as an enabler, you need to be very impressed with it, I would say.
Michael Waitze 16:23
So one of the things that we did when I was at Goldman Sachs was we implemented algorithmic trading for regular clients through a business that we purchase called Hole trading, rebranded to Goldman Sachs, algorithmic trading, GE said, we could see years before, as we were building out this automated trading technology, the algorithms right that we were going to be out of a job, we literally were building a business that was going to make us not necessary. We did it on purpose. And frankly, we didn’t care. As I got closer and closer to the end of my career, I was happy to automate myself. So that was fine. But what it did was it gave us scale, one of the things that we learned really early on was that the more technology we employ, the more productive we can become. And the more we could go from trading $100 million a day to $4 billion a day without missing a beat. And that’s the that’s the genesis really of a venture scaled business, right, is that if you, if you’re gonna get venture funding, you have to be able to scale it’s at size, right? And does all this artificial intelligence in the context of the coding, make it easier to do that as well?
Raunak Mehta 17:29
I’m glad you brought up that algorithmic trading example, right? And the way you looked at it that while you were building it, you thought that it’s going to take you out of the job, but it really made the humans more productive. Let’s put it this way. I think I have, I have always looked at technology. And I think even at its most emerging frontiers, I’ve always looked at technology as a way that adds productivity to us. I don’t think I mean, I’m saying it with a pinch of salt, that it’s not going to massively replace a large part of the human working population, there is going to be some amount of substitution. But it’s not going to be that it helps us upskill it helps us become better species is what really substitutes. manpower is, is globalization, which is a completely different topic, right? Where what is happening in one country gets starts getting done by someone in some other country attributable cost of better efficiency, that I think has resulted in more upheavals in, in the I would say, The job outlook in a particular country than technology.
Michael Waitze 18:43
I agree with you. And I’ve been saying this for years, I think technology is this enabler, it’s it creates a hybrid world. And I said, I was happy to beat myself out of a job, I was very specific with the terminology that I use, but it’s not gonna automate everybody who did what I did. And to be fair, the guys and gals that were great at the role that I had, were super powered. And I say this all the time, by the algorithms, because it allowed them to do 17 things at once, as opposed to seven things at once. And they got so much better at their jobs. And the service from a customer centric standpoint, became so much better. Because the mundane the mundaneness of the tasks, that stuff got automated, but the thinking part of it, the how can we take this piece of information that I just got through an automated system, and this piece and say, I need to tell Lisa about this because she was the one who was asked me about it two days ago, and there’s no way that the AI would know that. So I agree with you completely. The second thing, though, is almost as important, if not more important, is that globalization has moved tasks from high wage countries to low wage countries. But here’s the key question for you. Right, because India has been a low wage country, historically. But that’s also radically changing right as India starts to build not for the rest of the world on We but for India itself, and as it does that it starts to innovate, right. And what that means is that those salaries are going to start to normalize. So this idea of globalization being an equalizer for labor is happening. But this idea of outsourcing to a cheaper place like those places are disappearing unless we find people on Mars or on Saturn that are going to do low cost jobs. Is that fair?
Raunak Mehta 20:23
No, that actually, that’s a very thick, because I think you would also believe that everything has a start date and an end date, right? I think and it goes through crests and troughs, the kind of world we live in today, it is fair to say that countries are becoming a bit more protectionist, it happens, I mean, you go through some stages, and in I would say evolution and all. And I think that has had an adverse adverse impact on globalization. And of course, some low income countries like India, that used to be the playground of, of outsourcing and all their itself, there has been a humongous, I would say, move in terms of knowledge capital that people were holding, and thereby, I mean, India is one of those countries, you know, which, if you look at it purely from a financial standpoint, could be a completely self sufficient unit in itself. Yeah, whatever you produce in terms of products and services can be completely consumed within the country and play food. And they, exactly, and thereby, thereby, people across the skill spectrum, right, from the best engineers all the way down to somebody working in the Customer Service domain, can can find a job that that’s there. So but yes, I mean, we have a text center in India. And I can tell you that I not consider it in any ways that, hey, I’m outsourcing the job there. Because it’s largely from a skill perspective, I would say, because, again, going back to the startup discussion that we were having, because now after 12 years, or rather, I would say 1516 years of startups in India, now you’ve got a ready made base of employees who can actually come on board and hit the ground running rather than understanding the startup 101 principles there.
Michael Waitze 22:19
Exactly. And you’re also seeing this, what’s the right way to say this? I think part of the tipping point is when very well educated people from a certain country go overseas, whether it’s going to Australia or going to the UK, which is a popular place or going to work in Silicon Valley, or in Boston or Chicago, where they get there, they work there, and they look back and they’re like, Oh my God, that’s a much bigger opportunity. Again, whether it’s in India, in Southeast Asia, or just in Singapore, they’re like, I need to be there. instead. That’s the tipping point, you feel like, it’s not outsourcing anymore. We are in the midst of an AI and knowledge economy boom. And it’s happening in this region. And I think that’s what makes it so exciting for me, which is why I love these conversations with you. And with people like you because I can feel the difference. Like if you asked me, What’s the difference between today on the Asian short tech podcast, and 2019? I would say three things. One is all the conversations before used to start with insurance is not sexy. Nobody says this anymore. It couldn’t be sexier to is they would talk about like how they were outsourcing to low cost countries like Vietnam and India, and maybe even Thailand. Right. And the third was they were building for somebody else as opposed to building for themselves. And now all three of those things are reversed. People want to be here because there are more people, again, within a four hour flight of me and you then are outside of that flight path. And that’s awesome. Yeah.
Raunak Mehta 23:55
And there’s one more thing, right. And I think this is where I talk about destruction, a large part of outsourcing or if you speak of the 90s, or the first decade of the 21st century, right? Certain countries that were outsourcing hotbeds were largely adding incremental value to a value chain. Right. COMM startups, startups by theory, were looked upon, as you could say, platforms or channels of, of destruction and disruption in the proper sense that Clayton Christensen spoke about right, where you are actually identifying a completely new market, right? Or you are bringing a completely new product or you are starting at the at the lowest end of the market, and then slowly and steadily. You’re weighing out the incumbents and all right. So I think that disruption has happened quite a bit and people who have been, I won’t won’t even say it’s not about With the CEOs and the founders who who have been the champions of this kind of disruption, people who have been throughout this journey, have their learning curve has been exponential as compared to people who are doing that’s a very incremental sort of value add. And I mean, I think I guess people do incremental value add, because big companies survive on something I call sustainable disruption. I serve as this customer base, and I will keep serving this customer base better, I will keep adding more products, more services, thereby extracting more margins from this customer is I don’t think they have any incentive, nor are they pushed by their shareholders to be going out after a completely new market segment. Because going there may erode their financial, you could say performance, so yeah, I mean, I mean, that’s how that’s how it has always been.
Michael Waitze 25:49
And where does the igloo fit into this scenario? From your perspective?
Raunak Mehta 25:54
Oh, I might make sure about this. I think thankfully, I think igloo and I can again, draw comparison, right? You would agree that a lot of this column tech vendors, big, multibillion dollar tech vendors that you had coming out of India, and of course, from other parts of the world, were largely doing very customized development for the financial services segment, right. So yeah, digitizing the value chain, and so on. They were in creating a new consumer segment for you, they weren’t creating new products for you, their job was zero to one has happened, let me take you from one to two or from 50 to 51. I think igloo over the last four or five years, I would want to believe that we have really expanded the customer segment. Why because the customer segment we reached, we reach out to the low to mid income housing segment is where there is massive under insurance and uninsurance. I mean, you have people who have never been exposed to insurance, or you have people who have had some basic insurance policies against their name, I think we are reaching out to that segment of the population, and thereby really expanding the overall market size of, of the industry. So I would want to believe and I may have some bias towards it, that we are truly disrupting the market. However, not disrupting the market at the expense of the incumbents, we work hand in hand with the incumbents. Because at the end of the day, it’s a regulated industry, right? And you need and you need in the right, you need to have the right concoction of, of the incumbents or the traditional players and technology at play to be able to better serve your beneficiaries
Michael Waitze 27:45
gets a really good point, right? I think, again, if we had done this conversation in 2019, we would have talked a lot more about disruption and a lot less about cooperation. And I think that somewhere in the middle now, right? Where whether it’s an InsurTech of FinTech, neobank, or whatever it is, is that you’re looking at the incumbents, not you. But one is looking at the incumbents now and saying they’re slow moving, it’s harder for them to innovate. But they have a balance sheet that has like $15 billion on it. And we can help them, we can help them use that balance sheet in a way that they’ve never had access to before by building these other things on the other side to get access to a client base that they haven’t had access to before. And that’s awesome, right? Because that’s I think the way it should be. I’m curious as well about how the conversation has changed with these underserved and under insured households. Literally five years ago, if you’d walked in knocked on their door, they just would have been like, Who are you guys? What are you doing? Why are you talking to us? But now a lot of them are coming on board. Right? You can see the penetration numbers changing slowly, but surely, they are changing, not just you know, not just in Southeast Asia, but all over Asia. Bit by bit. People are thinking and maybe COVID Did part of this too. But people are thinking, I have a little bit of disposable income. And I want to protect the things that I’ve built. And then I’ve worked so hard for over the past four or five years. And insurance feels like the right way to do that. Are you seeing the sales conversations change over time, particularly as you go to the next uninsured household and say, like, can all your neighbors are doing this? You really should think about it. Are those conversations changing as well? Yeah. Again, it
Raunak Mehta 29:23
depends on the reference, right? What is your frame of reference? If we are growing at 3x year on year, of course, when you look at the GDP growth in countries, it doesn’t matter. Right. So the change is coming. I personally believe that change is coming and there are a lot of I would say both quite a lot of factors, right? Part of them are fairly micro in nature. Remember when the interest rates were low, people, people were not parking their money in banks or let’s say treasuries and all, which were the safest way of putting money, right. So thereby they were looking at, and money had become cheap. So they were looking at various ways where they can get a better bang for the buck. Right. And, and this, this, of course, would spill over to insurance that always tends to be very closely related to banking. And All right, so I think that definitely legs some upswing, at the end of the day, when you look at a country level, what you need is that the GWP growth is higher than the GDP growth, if that is happening, that means penetration is moving in the right direction. But when you double click on it, you know, I generally I don’t like average as a very good measure of central tendency, I think it’s abused a lot because of wide extremes, very similar to when when you do for a country, GDP per capita, its meaning doesn’t make any sense.
Michael Waitze 30:58
It’s meaningless. Because let’s be fair, just as just as an aside, in the country where I live, that GDP per capita in Bangkok is like the GDP per capita in in in Boston, exactly what the GDP per capita income can or in a smaller city is not like the GDP per capita in Charlottesville. It’s just completely different. So I agree with you please go ahead.
Raunak Mehta 31:19
Yeah. If you break down that GWP per capita, right, from the top to the bottom, I mean, in the in the bottom half, in the last two quartiles? It it’s like, absent. That’s the best way to define it. It’s just not there. Yeah, right. I mean, to give you an idea, Malaysia and Thailand, if I’m not wrong, the GWP per capita is in excess of, let’s say, 400 to 500. US dollars, right. But if you were to bring it to the below 50% population, that that will probably go down to $5 or $6. Now you have to ask yourself, yeah, maybe yeah, that is also a very, I would say aggressive that. Now you have to ask yourself $5 to $6. At a yearly level, is that good enough to cover you for all the exigencies that that you can come across. So. So I think that is where that is a segment we are target. What helps us target that segment is because again, as I said, for an incumbent who’s already having fairly steady balance sheet, if they have not written COVID products, if they are having fairly steady balance sheets, they would not want to go after this segment, for multitude of reasons, right? General, the general assumptions that you hear, Oh, this is a, this is a very high risk segment, right? distribution costs will be very high. And remember, insurance has always been a push industry. Right? Right? You first. So how insurance used to work is, here’s a product, we first make the product and then you push it right. And if you’re lucky, some people will buy if you’re not lucky, you will make some incremental changes, it’s never done the other way, like in a lot of industries, where you do a lot of market research and you come up with what is the latent need in the market. So the product market fit is is is not there. So that is what I think players like us are trying to resolve trying to make insurance more contextual. And as a result of which we are definitely seeing quite a lot of green shoots coming up in the gig economy segment in the MSME segment. I would say these two are the standout ones. Yes, we have done projects with respect to the climate change and all performing community in Vietnam and all. But that is still I would say in its between its infancy and growth stage. But it is actually the MSME segment and the UK economy segment where we are seeing massive uptake.
Michael Waitze 33:49
You’ve just made me think about something in a different way. And I want to make sure that I’m thinking about this in the right way. I did an entire what’s the right word event a couple of days ago about third party logistics, distribution, that type of thing. And it’s been my contention that big players like DHL Federal Express, pick whoever you want, right? We’re really, really good at taking a big pallet and a big box from let’s say, Taiwan, getting into LA on a ship in a very efficient and cost effective way. And then getting it from the port to some big department store or some distribution center. But the piece that they missed was and that was easy and efficient. And they made a ton of money doing that they never considered the E commerce side of this, which is everything that’s in that box if there are 600 things in here now get needs to get broken down into. Let’s just say 401 pieces, because 200 still goes to the store. Right? But 400 of them now need to go to individual people they never solved for that. And it kind of seems like what you’re doing in the insurance industry is the same thing is that big companies could give big insurance and big insurance policies to big groups of people, but that the fragmented groups of people, which is the commerce and put it in quotes side, that distribution died because it was so hard to do. And it required new companies in Asia like Lala move or E commerce or Ninja van to come up with models and technology to be able to do that. And I presume that’s what you’re doing in the insurance space. Do I have that? Right? Yeah, I
Raunak Mehta 35:24
actually got the analogy back on because I actually started my career with Flipkart logistics, right? This was exactly the problem, what you’re speaking about at that point of time Logistics was bulk movement, right. And we used to call it the problem of one item pick up one item delivery, that was virtually non existent, right, exactly like this, right. Today, you talk about an insurance industry, which for all things have been done has a very fixed way of bringing products to the market and serving a certain consumer base. Now, if you really want to reach out to data segment, right, you have to have the capability to be able to distribute a very short version of that product, which which is which is meant to serve a core need of the consumer, because, again, you have a look at it this way that in the financial services industry, one of the best ways of bringing down the entry barrier is pricing. Education comes later, no matter how you if the entry barrier, if if entry barrier has a very high index of pricing, no matter how much you educate people are not going to be able to pass on pass over that hurdle. So when you are able to chop the product into addressing a certain core problem that the consumer wants to be solved, you bring down the pricing and thereby more people get acquainted with the product, education becomes a lot more easier because it’s, it’s very direct. in that form. It doesn’t have a lot of you could say razzmatazz around it to be able to push through.
Michael Waitze 37:04
I mean, this is something we learn through Procter and Gamble, right? With sachet shampoos, sachet marketing, right. It’s in a way, it’s kind of the same thing. But just going from off the offline world to the online world. How can we make it small enough, but effective enough at the right price, so that people can afford to buy it, but they can they still want to buy like a full bottle of shampoo, but they can’t pay for it all at once. So let’s give them a week’s worth. And as they as their economic life improves, they’ll say I’ve been buying Pearl shampoo my whole life. Just in sachets. Now I’m just going to buy it and bigger in bulk in the same way that you should you would do that with insurance. I’ll cover myself for September because that’s my biggest Work Month. I have money left over. Let’s do October two. I made more money. Let’s do it for the whole year is kind of the way you’re talking right? Yep. Interesting. I love when there are these equivalencies from offline to online, but also when you can go back 25 or 30, or actually Procter and Gamble’s 4040 years ago. Wow. And just make those things effective today. Talk to me about Star Wars. Who are you? Obi Wan Kenobi like, where are you? Where do you fit in the Star Wars universe? You’re not Oh, good. But you’re not old enough to receive the original Star Wars in the theater? That’s got to be a fact. No. Yeah, you’re right, because I did.
Raunak Mehta 38:24
I’m not I’m not that old. Sorry. I mean, if you have seen it in the theater, I have immense respect. I mean, and I mean, I’m just a Star Wars fan, like diehard fan of Star Wars. I don’t think I don’t think I don’t think in our lifetime. We going to see a franchisee that that’s been there for like five decades now. I’m not wrong.
Michael Waitze 38:48
1970 something? Yeah. Because I was 11 years old when I came out. Yeah.
Raunak Mehta 38:52
Five decades and has so much of underlying wisdom has so much of how we are in reality. So I mean, if you were to ask, it’s very difficult to answer because there is there is that the dark side and the light side, right. I think I would be a mix of let me take the light side as I don’t know if you know this character called Ezra Bridger. I mean, he was an inhabitant of Lothal was trained by one of the last surviving Jedi is an all and he’s a very important character. I mean, he’s going to come into he was part of the Star Wars rebel, animated series, and he’s going to come again. And I would say on the dark side, that model.
Michael Waitze 39:45
But isn’t this true for everybody? Exactly. I think if you look at everybody you’ve ever met, there’s a good side and a bad side. There’s a light side and a dark side and it’s just what you do with them. That matters, right? I mean, this was the big conflict between Luke Skywalker and his father, Darth Vader. It’s like, can’t be all bad, can you? But then the flipside was, I have information you don’t have access to. Yeah, right. So you don’t know why I do what I do all you know is you don’t approve of it. Yeah. But don’t but don’t you think that there’s, but isn’t there part of, and I didn’t want to bring this back. But don’t you think this part of being a CEO that’s like that, you have this firehose of information seriously, that’s coming at you. And it comes just at you, whether it’s through your proxies, or through your assistance, whatever comes right to you. And sometimes there’s not enough time to socialize it and then give a response. Sometimes you just have to respond. And everybody else is looking going, that makes no sense at all. And they’re chit chatting in private about, why did we do that. But again, they don’t have access to the information you have, they don’t know that some competitors trying to shoot you kind of thing. And you just have to act on something. And I think in that sentence, you almost have to have the dark side to be able to succeed at some level, because you have to be Machiavellian to get through certain points of management. Is that fair?
Raunak Mehta 41:05
No, absolutely. I think the cost of the cost of taking a decision with whatever limited information you have on hand is always lesser than the cost of not taking a decision and waiting for that incremental information to come through. Right. That’s absolutely there. And I think that is why on my table, you will find a replica of Darth Vader’s helmet, the real helmet, actually, to which I get the inspiration and through which I think that that is why a company meets all the targets.
Michael Waitze 41:37
That’s why the company meets because people walk into your office see that help and just think the dude’s got a lightsaber somewhere. I feel scared, I’m gonna go out and meet my KPIs. My OKRs.
Raunak Mehta 41:48
Maybe, I don’t know. I mean, but yeah,
Michael Waitze 41:51
I like it a lot. Are there these kinds of latent discussions now that weren’t present three, even just three or four months ago about chat GPT and open open AI, inside the company where you hear people unsolicited, right and unprompted, asking, how is this going to impact what we do? And I guess the follow on to that is, are they all also coming up with things that maybe you hadn’t considered, but some great ideas for? You know, we’ve been working on this process. And if we attack it with AI, maybe we can do this more efficiently? Is that happening as well?
Raunak Mehta 42:24
100%. And I like the term you use unsolicited? Right? Yeah. So. So a lot of it, a lot of IT people across various departments are are looking at charge GPT as, as something that’s going to solve all problems for us. Good discussions, I would say discussion, because as you can understand, I mean, artificial general, intelligence is something that that can really help the insurance industry. I mean, you got a policy document, how do you generalize? How do you make it very general, for the consumer on the other side? I think that is where we are working towards? And I think you may see some prototype from us coming fairly soon in the, in the future, but I mean, I’ve got my HR team, talking about chargeability. Which, which, which I really find good. I mean, they’re, they’re saying that it helps them write better job descriptions that are JTC tells them exactly. I mean, you know, exactly the point that we were discussing, if it helps you become more productive. And it’s good, right, which gives you that much time to be able to reach out to better candidates, and with a better narrative of what’s really needed. I mean, I have nothing against it. I mean, the marketing department is looking at it in a completely different way. So, yes, as a company, we’ve always pushed at the edges of the frontiers of technologies, and I don’t think we’ll be left behind on the charges inside of you will probably see something coming out from igloo fairly soon.
Michael Waitze 44:08
Can not wait to see it, I want to thank you. I want to thank Raunak Mehta, a co founder and CEO of Igloo. This was awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Let’s do more. Let’s do more. Thank you again.
Raunak Mehta 44:21
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Michael. Thanks a lot.
The post EP 204 – Raunak Mehta – co-Founder and CEO at Igloo – People Want to Be Protected appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast team got together again to go over some of the biggest stories from the region in March 2023.
We started off with the news that Grab has partnered with Dhipaya Insurance to create Thailand’s first-ever pay-as-you-go insurance for ride-hailing drivers and their passengers.
We transitioned to a discussion of the nuances of both Roojai and Qoala’s funding announcements…with Roojai raising a significant USD $42MM and Qoala topping up their Series B with another USD $7.5MM.
India’s PhonePe announced an additional contribution of USD $200MM from Walmart, while Malaysia’s Lexasure noted it was going the SPAC route to list on the public markets.
Finally, we spoke about PolicyStreet’s new Australian license and why this matters.
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 64 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Insurance for Public Passenger Vehicles via Electronic Systems appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast welcomed Anjana Rao, the Chief Strategy Officer of IndiaFirst Life. IndiaFirst Life’s new-age intuitiveness drives its value through state-of-the-art digitalization initiatives across its value chain.
Some of the topics Anjana covered:
- How the entire ecosystem surrounding insurance is transforming
- The necessity to keep pace with rapidly evolving customer expectations and tastes
- How to find a place within a potential customer’s preferred ecosystem
- Generational differences and the fundamentals of change management
- The places in the insurance value chain where AI is already being employed
- How technology has and will continue to change distribution
Other titles we momentarily considered for this episode:
- It Comes from a Place of Passion
- How Can the Experience Be Redefined?
- The Customer Has a Preferred Ecosystem in Place
Please read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:08
Okay, let’s start. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Anjana Rao, the Chief Strategy Officer of IndiaFirst Life. That’s the greatest reaction ever. Anjana, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you doing today?
Anjana Rao 0:29
I’m doing good. Michael, thank you for having me here. I feel privileged to be a part of this podcast.
Michael Waitze 0:36
The pleasure is all mine. And you know that. Look, before we get into the main part of the conversation, we like to ask our guests what they think one of the biggest trends is, or some of the biggest trends are emerging trends are in insurance and InsurTech. Because you’re in India, we’ll ask you about India, but by extension for the rest of the world, where do you think we’re going? What’s the biggest trend?
Anjana Rao 0:56
The whole, I would say the entire, the entire ecosystem in which an insurance company operates is transforming. It’s transforming at a pace you know, because not just the companies are transforming even the customers are transforming the other way they are interacting or experiencing the evolution of 5g 6g. Now we are talking about and they are all open ly embracing and adopting the technology at a rate faster than the enterprise’s skins. So the whole attempt is to match up with the customer expectation. And that is driving this transformation, where it’s forcing the carrier’s not just to get everybody to move on and match up with the catch up with the customers experiences customers evolving taste, because of digital adoption, and how the experience can be redefined. You know, that’s the whole. That’s the whole mantra. That’s what I feel. And that’s where we all are working as to how do we, how do we beat innovation in products, be the innovation in outreach, be the innovation in the way we service be the innovation in the touchpoints, everything is seeing evolution. That’s like going back to your, you know, drawing board and rewriting the story.
Michael Waitze 2:20
There’s so much to uncover here. And before we do that, too, can we get a little bit of your background so we can understand how you got to here. And then I want to go back and address a couple of things you talked about, about the transforming customers and all that other stuff, too, because it’s fascinating to me. Go ahead, please.
Anjana Rao 2:34
Sure. So I have spent more than 20, 21 years now, with insurance. So I have seen all the facets of insurances what I can say, I have been a part of, I started my career as an end user, IT manager for insurance companies, then I got into setting up the it, you know, applications and infrastructure for startup insurance companies. And then I moved into transformation consulting. And now I’m here. Yeah. So this has been my evolution. So I’ve seen I’ve seen I’ve been with the insurance carriers. I’ve been with the consulting firms. I have been life and non life. You know, in India, we have, you know, a different setup and slightly different licenses that work. So, yes, I think I’m pretty bold.
Michael Waitze 3:25
When I first started at Morgan Stanley, and I’m going to date myself here deeply in 1987, we had a department that we called management information systems actually called it MIS. And it was not a cool place to be. But then we changed it in the middle of my career. So ended up being we called it so information technology, it still wasn’t super cool. But I would say this in the past 10 years, I feel like that’s completely flipped. And that now if you’re involved in like the development, the implementation, the application, the innovation around technology, like that’s the cool kids table now, do you know thing? I feel like it’s changed a lot. Do you feel the same way? Of course,
Anjana Rao 4:02
yes. And you’ll feel less privileged if you don’t have these tags associated with right.
Michael Waitze 4:07
Whereas like, if you’re the person over there who like doesn’t understand technology, now you’re the person on the outs, whereas before you were the person, like if you did understand, you’re like, oh, I don’t want to talk to those people, because I don’t know what they’re talking about. And now they’re the cool people, which is what you are Yeah. Is that fair?
Anjana Rao 4:26
Thank you. But now again, I’m an I would say now, it is not just limited to the realms of an IP Correct. Departments are all common. everybody here, everybody upskilling everybody trying to understand how do I layer intelligence to the existing operations that already so that my customer experience can be revamped?
Michael Waitze 4:51
Yeah, I feel like we could have a whole conversation on how I don’t even want to use the pandemic as a cut off point. But sometime around five years ago, people say If I’m not involved in the digital transformation and the digitalization of my company in any industry, then I’m gonna get left behind. And I want to talk about this idea that you’ve raised because no one said it actually, to me in the same way that you have, that enterprises are rushing, not rushing, but are speeding up their innovation, to try to keep up with their own customers who are coming to them and saying something and maybe something like, I can do it in an E commerce space, how come? I can’t do it here? Can you talk a little bit about this feeling of inside of an institutional business saying, how do we keep up with the demands of our clients, and now that they have passed us in this digital transformation journey, we need to catch up to them? You talk about that a little bit, please.
Anjana Rao 5:44
So essentially, pandemic was one of the primary reasons, I would say for digital acceleration within the enterprises, because the customers had caught up a bit earlier. So now, the question the question with the insurance, let me let me talk about the insurances. You know, okay, fine. When there is, there is a customer who has a preferred Ecosystm already in place, he transacts, you know, at least one or two RC spends, you know, in a day or in a week or in a month, couple of hours are being spent in that ecosystem, which is a digital ecosystem, which the customer has already built for all the day to day activities, which he or she carries out. Now, how are you going to find a place within that Ecosystm has gone are the days, this is what I feel, Michael, I feel I’m in no longer, you know, you can tell the customer look, I have a website www, you know, you go to my website, you know, and what I have self service options for you. Or you see, I have a bot, but you have to come to my site and access that bot, you know, no, the customer would prefer to be, you know, to have all those options available where he is. So in an ecosystem where he or she is participating in the challenge for the insurers or, you know, is okay, how do I make myself available where my customer
Michael Waitze 7:10
is, right? So but this is key, right? Because you use the word Ecosystm. And you’re right, I don’t want to go to www.my favorite insurance company.com. I just don’t want to go there, because I’m already interacting in an ecosystem. But here’s where it gets really complicated. And I’m curious about your view on this. Not every customer is in the same ecosystem, mine could be completely different from yours, even if I’m your brother. So how do you manage around that complexity? And then maybe first talk about that complexity, but then how do you manage around it and get yourself to be part of not all but most of the ecosystems where your customers are already interacting? Yeah.
Anjana Rao 7:46
Yeah. So I will say, you know, let’s look at you know, something as simple as WhatsApp. Okay. Okay. So everybody had a chat bot before the pandemic, post pandemic, everybody has, you know, all their policy servicing options on WhatsApp? Sure, you know, document submission. So everybody wanted a contactless process, right? So be document acceptance, customer submitting the documents, everything started happening through WhatsApp, and WhatsApp was there since ever? Right? Right. Right. It was there for Alaska? Well, you know, the, we saw a big shift happening, because that’s when a customer is. So I mean, these are the popular mediums, which one needs to identify and enable, you know, the options to the customer even to buy, even to, you know, to serve servicing, even to you know, acquire more information.
Michael Waitze 8:40
Can I ask you this, though, because I run into this as well. And let’s just use tick tock as an example, because I don’t interact with it. But I can’t deny that it’s there that it’s growing and that it’s significant. But I feel like every three to five years, there’s a new platform. And again, I want to differentiate between platforms and ecosystems, because an ecosystem is something that I myself build around me, I use this and this and this in conjunction, and I want you to be able to give me access to your things where I am, I don’t want to have to go to you. You know, because in three years from now, Tik Tok might be nothing. Facebook is going away, let’s say, Sure, everybody’s on WhatsApp, but like, how do you keep up with just what the thing is you have to build for next? You know what I mean? Because you’re I feel like it’s an unending race in a way.
Anjana Rao 9:26
So so the way I look at it, see, tick tock is already kind of nine if I’m not wrong in India. Yeah. So now, but yes, it’s a very powerful platform. So bytedance Tick tock, these other mediums, which so many companies are using, not just for entertainment, but to influence to influence folks. I mean, there are so many, they’re being used as a content platform, right. So I’m sure you know, there’s going to be an evolution in the content platform in some form or the other for sure. Now, how are you going to tap which one is the right one? You Look at your your existing customer base and you look at the new customers, the young Gen, which is evolving, they know all their influences, they know the top 10 influencers, it knows, top 100 influencers and those influencers have their own platforms, you know, every prominent platform has an influence so so that is how you so you need to unlearn and try to figure out where these this young Gen, you know, you call it alpha equals millennials, you call it whatever, whatever they were even even for even something as basic as Roblox. There are kids who are spending two and a half hours daily over there, you know, so does that become a medium for us to focus upon? I really don’t know. But yeah,
Michael Waitze 10:46
yeah, I mean, Roblox is a really interesting thing. And I would bet I would bet at some level. Because, you know, Roblox is like, it’s not part of my father’s insurance company, as we used to say, right, and it’s probably not part of your parent’s insurance company, either. But the point is like, it’s there. And it’s a massive platform as well. I mean, Discord could be a distribution mechanism for insurance, right? In the old days used to it didn’t. You had way more time to react? I feel like everything that was kind of instantaneous. It’s like, what’s your Twitch strategy? What’s your Roblox strategy? What’s your Metaverse strategy? But all these things? Are you constantly thinking about this too? Do you know what I mean?
Anjana Rao 11:24
Yes, my dad was strategy is something which is a distant dream. But yes, I’m and we’re trying to figure. So this is again, very personal. So what are the use cases which are relevant? As an insurer? What are the relevant use cases? So something which is like very one can scratch the surface is how can I in this world, which is a hybrid world where folks don’t even come to the, you know, they don’t come to know what an enterprise which organization they have joined? You know, typically the the physical framework, so can they get an immersive experience?
Michael Waitze 12:00
Yeah, this is so key. Sorry, this is key to me. Go ahead.
Anjana Rao 12:04
Yeah. So I mean, can we can we render them the immersive experience, every time we are inducting? Somebody, every time we are? You know, every time we are doing some leadership connect with the employees, which happens, you know, it could be it could be those conversations with the performers. It could be you know, any of the any of the leadership connects, you know, can we provide an immersive experience using these evolving technologies for the employees, that is my immediate use use case, which I can think of, and you asked me about metaphors, that it will evolve. And maybe there will be journeys for metaphors that will be journeys, you know, Customer Self Service journeys, which may come up for Metaverse, there will be you know, so I mean, I’m not getting into that space. But yes, it’s a very exciting place to be right now, if I think of, but it will, it has to wait for it to evolve. The regulations also need to evolve, you know, like in India, you need clarity as to how do you transact with because, you know, if you have to be there, then how are you going to transact in that particular universe is something you need to have lots of clarity on?
Michael Waitze 13:14
So you mentioned something as well, that’s very important. As the business evolves, right, and you mentioned, employees, how do you take new employees, incorporate them with the more traditional employees, and get everybody on board internally to understand that this new digital world is fast paced and moving and try to eliminate any kind of tension that may exist between, as you said, the younger generation and existing generation to understand how important this digital transformation is?
Anjana Rao 13:47
Because obviously, you’re touching the fundamentals of change management, right? So you have to coexist with a generation, which has certain biases towards change. And then there is a generation who who would like to challenge every new thing that you accept them, right. So and that also becomes a very important ingredient when you are rolling out an initiative, whether that initiative is going to fetch you the value further back, you know, unless it’s not accepted and adopted. So the way we plan our rollouts also involves making sure that these guys, everybody, everybody who’s there in the value chain, understand why so the end purpose, the end, why if we understand that this is the end objective, which we are going to meet, and this is going to be the impact on everyone’s life, right? So if we start with that, why and the impact it is going to create on each one, you know, and that is how at least we have a framework where we start off and this is how this initiative is going to impact a particular end user. And this is going to be the x y See benefit in the life of that individual? Now, when we roll it out, we start measuring. So there is a baseline which happens, and now you start measuring. Okay, fine. If there isn’t an adoption, is that adoption really leading to an impact on the matrices which we had identified? will get impacted because of this change? If yes, you know, then the numbers then the monster that look, you know, but yeah, it’s not easy. It’s not easy. It requires lots of planning, you don’t plan just for rolling out an initiative, you plan, how to make an adoption, the adoption strategy gets laid out. And then keeping in mind, the stakeholders, you know, what kind of levers do you need to press? Yeah, I mean, so there’s lots of, there’s lots of deliberation, which happens when we are rolling it out so that we understand that each and every individual who’s involved in the value chain adopts to the new thing.
Michael Waitze 15:56
I want to get back to this Ecosystm Because I just remembered something right. And Ecosystm itself is, is made up of multiple players and also multiple participants. Yep. And do you use any of them, whether it’s an E commerce company, a payments company, whatever it is, as a reference point, it’s a moving target for sure. But to use those experiences, reference points for things that you’re trying to build, or that the insurance industry itself is trying to build as well, to ensure that your new your existing customers or your new customers are familiar enough with what they need to do, because it looks like something that they’re already using at scale. Does that make sense?
Anjana Rao 16:31
Yes, yes, because there’s a there’s every time you every time a customer is using an ecosystem, as you rightly said, like if it if you talk of a health system, there are, again, multiple providers within that ecosystem, and they are all working, you know, towards a desired goal. And what is happening in this process is the customer now knows a better way to interact a better way to you know, his reputation is on the TAT, his experience expectations or is on the delivery, now, he is going to expect the same stuff for insurance, he wouldn’t want an insurance cover, which is so complicated and so comprehensive, that he has to leave the Ecosystm to be somewhere, fill that entire form. So he would prefer this something like a continuous underwriting, he would prefer something which is small, simple. And that’s where I see the change and the demand changing for insurance to have small sachet products, easy to underwrite or do continuous underwriting because he’s a part of the health ecosystem and healthy ecosystem, he is there for an objective, the objective is to improvise and reach the end state which is of fit and fine human being. And for that, if he is sweating, why can’t my why can’t my premium rates vary based on my health vitals, so I joined it gives baseline at a certain so there are I would say there are experiments happening in the industry where we are trying to link it with the health vitals of an individual. So that continuous underwriting can say enabled with IoT is is something which the industry is steering towards us what I feel
Michael Waitze 18:14
Can you take a little bit deeper into this idea of continuous underwriting for people that may not understand it because it’s a very interesting concept. Yeah.
Anjana Rao 18:22
So again, okay, let me let me as an individual who is trying too hard to talk or losing weight, you know, I’m like, Okay, I baseline myself like, this is where you are, this is these are your vitals. Now if you improvise, you engage into let’s say, you subscribe for a healthy for me or whatever, some health plan, you’re working on a daily basis and if if my insurance carrier tells me like, you know, until you reach this level, and you know, the rate of which I have given to without charged you will become half of it, you reach this level, and the rate at which are charged for you becomes zero, if you are at that level for at least some continuous period. And that’s a wow for me, but how do you track it right you track it grows IoT devices, there are so many choices available, you know, which So, which which are providing the proxies, which are providing the inputs to the insurers, which can provide inputs to the insurers, if they are keen to you know, take these as an input, apply them to the underwriting and keep telling Anna, you’re improvising basis, your improvement on this Ecosystm This is your rate revives rate. If
Michael Waitze 19:35
I want this so badly, I want to be able to wear an aura ring or a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. And I want to feed that information. I don’t care right about the privacy. I’m willing to give that up to my insurance company, because there’s a 57 year old who runs four times a week and who lifts weights and weighs what I weighed when I was in high school. And who’s lost like almost 30 pounds in the last year. I 15 kilos Yeah. 50 kinkiness I want to be compensated for that. It’s hard work, but I want to be compensated for that. Because my heart’s in better shape. I’m not the normal risk for a 57 year old person. So if that’s what continuous underwriting is, I want to be involved. And frankly, I’ll share a story with you. When my dad was in his 40s, he was smoking like two packs of cigarettes a day. And this is a true story. And there was a bet in his office. Okay, we’re all stopping smoking today. And whoever starts smoking first, almost, let’s say like, $1,000, I can’t remember the exact number. My dad didn’t have a granny couldn’t afford to lose. He hasn’t smoked since. Now, the bet ended a long time ago. Right? But the point is that, like, if I’m wearing that aura ring, and I’m thinking my premiums gonna go up, but even more importantly, I just want to maintain my health, and this is helping me do it, I should get some kind of benefit from the insurance company cuz my risk profile goes down, right?
Anjana Rao 20:53
Precisely. So be relevant, be relevant to the customer. You know, so this is going to ask. So this is a very challenging time, again, for the insurer, because this is going to push the insurers to think differently. Yeah, the way they’ve been designing products, the way they have been writing the risk, the way, the way we have been conducting a personal
Michael Waitze 21:13
study. I agree. And look, this IoT, what’s the right word? The ubiquity of these devices, though, hasn’t been around really until the last few years, let’s say, right, because even an Apple Watch, or a Fitbit didn’t have like the necessary granularity to be able to feed data into an insurance company that was new. So how we can’t expect insurance companies or any company to react instantaneously to this. But there’s other technology out there as well. Right? So once you get all this information, and look, there’s been so much noise, I don’t know if it’s the right term around artificial intelligence for the past 50 years, frankly, in my life. But now I feel like we’re kind of at a tipping point and tell me if I’m wrong there. But how do you incorporate that type of processing power and intelligence into the IoT devices? And then back into the insurance companies using artificial intelligence? How does that work?
Anjana Rao 22:04
Interesting, I mean, see quite a few, quite a few folks already are doing it right. When you see the lots of examples around us, where we, we see for all claims processing, okay, the drones, the drones doing, you know, the gauging the predicting the the gauging the site, the claim site, and they providing inputs to the claims to the claim settler, the claim settler, then doing instantaneous settlement of claims, you know, this is one area where there’s quite a lot of ingestion of data happening, processing of data happening real time with the IoT. And then, you know, there’s another, there’s a change of hand happening between claim settler and the insurance carrier and the claim being settled similarly, so for claims settlement, you see lots of lots of examples around you know, but when it comes to a new customer acquisition, or when it comes to life insurance, even for motor there are devices, which are now inbuilt, which tracks the driver behavior and, you know, accordingly, you can have different rates for, you know, so it induces a desired behavior as to how well you’re driving directly correlates to your premium right. Now, when it comes to life insurance, or health insurance, that’s where these IoT scan, you know, transform the way things are being done the way the insurance products are being conceived and conceptualized. And that’s where lots of play of sandbox will come into picture, there’s lots of play off, you know, what we talked spoke about variables ation, of premium linked to the health vitals will come into picture. Imagine there are good set of customers, I mean, I think it will also enable us to cover lots of customers, who we don’t who are attached, maybe they have some critical illness, maybe somebody as simple as diabetes, you know, either there’s a rate up or straight away, you know, they are rejected. So IoT is going to help us enable, you know, writing prior devising products for, you know, these entities as well,
Michael Waitze 24:08
because I have a background in processing real time data when I sat on a trading desk, right, I think of, and this is something that would change the way we traded, if we could take real time data off of feed, put it into our analysis tools, we could make decisions faster. And then we could react in the market much faster. And the same thing is happening. I feel like in the IoT space, particularly when it comes to health, but imagine a health goal of let’s say, losing 10 kilos, like that was part of my goal. And if I can maintain that, because, you know, if I step on a scale because I was at one and a half kilos, and I’m 66 and a half, but if I stepped on at 71 and a half, so I hit my goal just for one day, well, I don’t really I don’t really deserve like some kind of reward. But if I maintain that for three months, is there a way to then feed that data in real time into my insurer and then get maybe even just like a parametric it’s not even a claim but a payout it says You did it, you maintained it, we’re lowering your premium and here’s the first like rebate or credit back to you for doing that, do you envision a world where that happens as well?
Anjana Rao 25:09
Yes, I think that is closer to reality, because I know some players are already into it. And I know that a couple of players who are wanting a sandbox, you know, experiment to be done. So that this particular concept, which is a concept can be you know, then because the the ability of the devices, see where the concerns, comments, you know, how accurate is information, right? Because it’s all game of Risk riding right. So, how accurate is the information and the actuaries or underwriters also want to gauge you know, I mean, like, what is the range of risks, you know, which I, so, there is a learning curve, which is, which is involved, but yes, decision making will get, will, will, will be the decision making will happen based on the data, which you see, and then maybe underwriter initially will say, Okay, fine, I’ll go with the decision or I override this decision, but eventually it will be displaced, the decision making will be by the board, if I can call it a board. And that’s how it will be. Yeah. And we again, it will also have a window for the individual to interact with the board, then in there as to why I have got this rating. Right. And he or she will get an explanation. Yeah, can find
Michael Waitze 26:28
out actually, why what is the biggest challenge you think to distribution? In a market? I mean, even in Southeast Asia, this is true, where the where the penetration of insurance is still relatively low, and how does technology help you solve that problem?
Anjana Rao 26:45
That’s a lovely topic. So, essentially, the main theme change has happened, Michael, how I look at it, five years back, not even five to six years back, we were trying to do away with the paper based processes and equip all our sales folks with a tablet which has, which has an electronic form, then it moves to a smart electronic form, and then it moves to something which is as far as you it has all the validations So, you don’t need a layer of branch underwriters because because that form and that tablet together that entire, so, I think that form has now evolved into something like a enterprise sales system, yeah, which is so smart, you know, it has acier it has OCR, it has that OCR is coupled with AI, it can capture documents, you know, it can read documents, capture information, compare it with whatever is being written in the form and then tell you whether the date of birth matches it doesn’t match you know, whether there is an accuracy of the record, so, that all the work with a branch underwriter, erstwhile used to do is now already relegated to the Smart Form or to this enterprise app, which is working just on a mere tablet right. So, and this tablet now, you know, so, sounds cliche, but it is serving like a branch forever relatively new, you know, insurer or a new insurer who sets up a business in India, he or she may not require as many branches as you know, someone who opened up the offices or the business early 2000s You know, one can do with 2025 branches and all the all the feet on street access your branch, because you can serve as a customer to this to this smart device, you can acquire customers, you can build the intelligence of hyper personalization within these devices those were so, you know, our like depending upon the profile of the customer, what is it that needs to be paid to this customer and as what should be the content, everything is there you providing us an air cover to the feet on Street Challenge was a few years back was also connectivity. So, in India, you will see most of the most of these devices would have online and offline feature we Indians will say like whether it works in an offline mode, because that was an imperative for us, but now, I think we have overcome that challenge with the outreach of the of the mobile network in India and the way we are using you know, the mobile penetration is there. It is humongous and hence now the dependency and offline mode is gone away. I would say I mean instant instant issuance or instant processing of data is what folks are working upon. Because you have you have the data with you the customer data, you can you have enough and more intelligence applied at the point of sale for life insurance. You know point of sale issuance has always been a challenge. But now that could be a possibility with with technology is what I feel. And that is where instant issuance is not limited just for non life or health. Even life insurers now can attempt for instant issuance of policies at the point of sale. And that’s what technology has equipped or provided the insurance but
Michael Waitze 30:27
I’m gonna end with that I love it’s an honor for me to be able to talk to someone like you just so thoughtful about not just the not just the business itself, but how the technology fits in there. I love this idea of the feet on the ground functioning as the branch and being enabled with this technology before was online and offline. Now it’s mostly online because the offline issues have been solved. So interesting to talk to you. Anjana Rao, the Chief Strategy Officer, IndiaFirst Life. That was awesome. Thank you so much for doing that today. I really appreciate your time.
Anjana Rao 30:59
Thank you, Michael. Thank you. Pleasure.
The post EP 203 – Anjana Rao – Chief Strategy Officer at IndiaFirst Life – How Do I Make Myself Available Where My Customer Is? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Arvind Swami, a director of Financial Services APAC at Red Hat, about the importance of data and the many opportunities advanced data analytics unlock. While data analytics is not a new topic, especially for the insurance industry, the way leading organizations are using it has shifted to enable hyper personalization in response to a dramatic change in customer expectation over the past years.
Arvind talks through how organizations can use data to identify the customer DNA and create hyper-personalized products and services. He covers the challenges involved including compliance, regulation, data privacy and security and explains how to handle the data so it can be used to generate true insights. Arvind believes the large amounts of data traditional insurers have collected over the years gives them a strong competitive advantage over newly launched InsurTechs. The question is, how do you use the data?
If you would like to learn more about Red Hat, visit https://www.redhat.com/ or get in touch with their team here.
Make sure to check out Red Hat’s Analyst Papers which provide more insights on data analytics as well as cloud computing.
The post EP 202 – Arvind Swami – Director at Red Hat – From Siloed Data to Hyper-Personalization appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The biggest news in InsurTech in February?
The Asia InsurTech Podcast published its 200th episode! A lot has changed since Michael Waitze and Theresa Blissing started the Asia InsurTech Podcast in May 2019.
The InsurTech landscape has matured and many Asian InsurTechs have become global players. InsurTech funding, however, has declined by 50% in 2022 according to a report from CB Insights.
The AIP News Roundup team invited David Gritz, a co-founder of InsurTech NY, to discuss the current state of InsurTech funding and its impact on the insurance industry in the US and globally. What are some of the reasons for the decline in InsurTech funding and what can we expect for 2023?
If you are in New York in March, make sure to join the 4th annual InsurTech Spring Conference held on March 29-30, 2023. Find out more here.
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 63 – Theresa Blissing, David Gritz and Michael Waitze – The Tourists in InsurTech Are Gone appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast enjoyed having Evan Tanotogono, a co-Founder and the CEO of Rey back on the show.
Some of the topics Evan covered included:
- The integration of curative and preventive health care with its financing
- Changing people’s habits and starting with hydration
- Behavioral economics and the power of rewards
- Optimizing clinical pathways
- The importance of primary care and where tele-health fits in
- Member centricity versus policy centricity
Please read the best efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:10
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Evan Tanotogono, a co founder and the CEO at Rey. Evan was one of our earliest guests on the Asia InsurTech podcast. And actually the last time you were on the show was in November 2021, it was a completely different world, then. It’s great to have you back on the show. How are you doing, by the way?
Evan Tanotogono 0:34
I’m doing great. So yeah, I’ve been on the show for a couple of times. And last time, I promised to come back to you again, you know, back then I started re as new breed of InsurTech. And then we just launched seven months ago, in July 2022, for the individual memberships, and for the group, which we call array for pieces, which are slash one month old. So yeah, a lot of learnings that I’m happy to share today to you, and to all the listeners.
Michael Waitze 1:04
So awesome. Let’s catch up a little bit. I mean, tell me where do you want to start? Where do you want to start?
Evan Tanotogono 1:08
One One exciting thing that I want to share to you today, Mike is, you know, I started looking at again, you know, how, and you know, what problems to be solved in Indonesia? And, and I think, you know, when when I look into our health and life protection, in general, it’s way larger than just the pain point of insurance. You know, it’s it’s, you know, covering the major health problems that we have in Indonesia, because at the end of the day, what we want is healthier Indonesians, right and productive Indonesian. So I started looking at at this facts and you know, we have three top issues, right, and it’s all correlated, we want to know the right. First is that, I see that Indonesians have very high health risks. And you know, the the healthcare spending per capita is really high right now. And it’s moving very, very fast. If I’m not mistaken, it’s like 10 to 12% CAGR. So it’s really, really a frightening rate of increasing healthcare spending. And mostly is driven by, you know, people are being distant with their health care to health care advocacy is pretty low, people have high profile leads to chronic disease as well. So that’s the first one, right, so people have very high health care risks to, you know, when they are having this health risk, they are financially impacted as well, they are financially vulnerable. Because, again, this goes into the penetration of health life insurance, where people are not protected. And again, I said as well that 100 100 20 million people in Indonesia don’t have access to an optimal protections. And lastly, which is very interesting, for me, combining the two facts together, people have very high health risks, and they’re financially vulnerable. The third one is, even though they are being protected their peers today, you know, talking about both insurers and public insurance scheme as well. They are not running sustainably, right. So this is really, really frightening for me, because again, like, we know that there are some risks, and people are being impacted financially, and they’re trying to get some protections, but even the parties that are protecting them is not running sustainable, and are struggling to make profit.
Michael Waitze 3:24
So can we can we break this down into those three components? And just dig a little bit deeper? What is it about, like, what’s changed? Or what’s developing over time? That’s make that’s giving Indonesian? So Thai health risks, right?
Evan Tanotogono 3:36
Yeah, I can name a couple of points. Right. The first one is that, you know, people are being distant or far with their healthcare. And there are a couple of reasons for that, right. One is on the habit itself, in which basically, when when people are are sick, they’re trying to, you know, access their health care, not not in a good way, right. So sometimes they just hear what the friend say, or just, you know, like doing something or I just take this take that I buy medicine on our own and, you know, basically, all these things that’s not making the efficacy of healthcare really high, right? And then sometimes when they are sick already, or they go to the doctor’s, they got antibiotics, for example, right? And then their adherence to take the medication is actually low. And then the next time they are sick again, if there is different illness, etc, then they feel they already know Oh, yeah, it’s antibiotics. You know, I just take antibiotics on my own, I just purchase it and done right. So that’s the first factor that I’m seeing, you know, healthcare efficacy is is is not really there. And then too, we also see that Indonesians as usual, have not very high awareness towards this chronic disease right and wellness. So as a result, you know, you see that the stats, you know, diabetics, hypertension people are are increasing in Indonesia is access
Michael Waitze 4:57
to health care driven a little bit by Just the structure of Indonesia as a country itself, right multiple model, even multiple 18,017 and a half 1000 islands? Does it get harder to get health care? As you get out of the main cities? And is there anything that you can learn? Like, is there a telehealth issue that needs to get solved? Or is it just that you need to have representatives in all these places to be able to give people better access to health care? And also better information for it as well? Yeah.
Evan Tanotogono 5:25
Yeah, I feel, you know, it’s a combination of all of the issues, right, because again, like, geographies is one of the big factor there, like people are living far, far away. While telemedicine will help, telehealth will help people in getting their Euro consultation getting their medications. And, you know, having the right offline setup is also quite important. And, you know, how do we connect both is also also quite important. So you know, like, people don’t need to go and walk to the to the offline facilities, they can go to the telemedicine company, get having some access there. And then whenever needed, can be triaged to an offline facilities get their treatments there. And also the connection with the financing as well. So I think that’s, that’s one of the things that Ray starts from, and we really want to make this integration between, you know, the payer financing facilities that that people will have with their health care,
Michael Waitze 6:26
right? Because there’s a little bit of a, what’s the right word? There’s a little bit of a vicious circle here, right? In other words, if I’m a little bit concerned about access to health care, but even if I’m not feeling well, if I feel like I’m going to be financially vulnerable, as well, but also if the payers you said, whether it’s the insurers or the public, public providers of insurance as well, aren’t making a profit or aren’t profitable, their incentive as well to provide the proper insurance coverage for these people that are that are unhealthy. Isn’t there either? So how do you solve that problem on the flip side of the profitability of the insurers or the payers, to then be able to provide the proper health care to the people that are at risk?
Evan Tanotogono 7:06
Right, so yeah, that’s a good point, right. And this is where actually we we kind of going together. And in Ray, we we start having, you know, we expand our approach, not only just coming as a health insurer tech on its own, and we have all this emphasis, but it’s all about the integration. So, you know, basically, what we have in race is actually three pillars, right? to healthcare, first one curative health care in which bringing people to their health condition in the most efficient way possible, in the most efficient clinical pathways, and etc. And then we have the second pillar, which is the preventive health care. So if you’re not sick, then obviously we don’t want you to be sick. And there are some features that you can use. If you’re not sick, right. And then there’s the third pillar, which is the financing now insurance is the backbone of it, to make it you know, predictable to make it more certain in terms of how much membership fees unit to unit to pay. But there are other things inside of the of the financings as well. So you know, by combining these three pillars, and they’re working together, not just bundled, but integrating, right, so what it means is that, we tell you that a mike there is this membership, that covers all you need in your life, in terms of your health protection, right, there are features, if you’re getting sick, there’s somebody to take care of you, there are features to you know, give you unlimited access to the primary care give you medications, if you need to go to offline, then it’s very, very seamless, it’s very convenient, you just go there, somebody takes care of the payment already, don’t worry. And if you are not sick, right, there are features that you can use the you know, like the nutrition, diet, plan, the activities, etc. And again, everything is financed. But again, you know, all of the things that curative and preventive are, they’re working in unison to optimize the risk covered by the financing part. So that’s the that’s the integration that I’m talking about. And I believe that when we create something like this, it’s not only bringing, you know, the convenience for the people, but also, you know, it’s bringing efficacy on the health care, because you can give personalized care wherever they are, you can optimize the long term risks as well. And then you know, the payer here is also involved in one platform. So we built this since day one and giving benefits for everyone.
Michael Waitze 9:37
At the at the end of last year, is that true? Not the beginning of 2022. I kind of gave in and I bought myself this thing. Yeah, because I really wanted to track my heart rate, my sleep and other sort of health related data. And I’m indifferent to whether it’s a Fitbit and ordering an Apple Watch. Like I really don’t care. But everybody doesn’t I have access to this. But I do feel like if I do go to get medical care, and I have some of this data, even if it’s just like a constant tracking of my heart rate that there’s some interesting information here. How do you get these 120 million people? Which is almost half of the population in Indonesia, right? Maybe a little bit less. But how do you get enough data for them personally, because it all starts with prevent preventive, right? In other words, insurance costs gonna be way lower if everybody’s just healthier. And that starts with preventive better diet, you said better exercise, all this type of stuff. And I feel like having this data with me, just me personally, helps me do things. I’m like, oh, no, why did that happen? Oh, I get it because I ate that thing, or because I didn’t do that exercise, because I didn’t sleep enough. But how do we get enough data for everybody else that maybe doesn’t have access to that type of technology, so that they can get the preventive health care at the beginning, before they need to get to curative and then actually need to actually access to health care so that they can use the insurance?
Evan Tanotogono 10:59
Right? So I have an interesting story to share with you on that. Right. So yeah, in Ray writer, we realized that not everyone will have wearables, even though we can connect with any brand of wearables of your choice. And you know, we start realizing that Okay, what if this guy’s ad, by the way, our members going from very easy to very rest of Indonesia, and we understand, okay, some people might not have this verbal. So we have also a feature called diary. So dire is basically something that, you know, we just want to change the mindset and the habit of people, right, so the first day I read that we created is the hydration diary, in which basically, you go there, and then you set a reminder for your drinks, because that’s also one of the biggest factors of driving someone’s health, right? Other than walking and activities, you know, drinking is something that that’s gonna make an impact. So that we have those features. And it’s based on your honesty, right? You go there and then set the reminder and you drink water, you click on a nice glass of water, and then you get points. And then you exchanged we had something. One day, my friend talked to me and said, Okay, are you sure you’re gonna make this features because people will abuse it? Right? It’s based on people honesty, and then there are rewards, etc. So I’ll try to abuse it. So I said to him,
Michael Waitze 12:22
hold your thought. You know, my grandfather once said to me, when you’re when you’re lying to other people, you’re not actually lying to them, you’re lying to yourself. And it’s so obvious when you go because you used to, I used to go to the doctor when I worked at Goldman Sachs, right. And unfortunately, when you work in the financial services industry, like Goldman or Morgan, every night, you’re out drinking with your clients. And I’m talking like, almost every night, right? It’s bad for you, and no one should be proud of us. But you go to the doctor for your annual checkup, and the doctor would say, how much would you say you drink every week and you just be like, one or two glasses of wine, and the doctor would look at you and just be like, That’s a complete lie. And it’s obvious from your like, physical physicality. That it can’t be true. Your eyes are bloodshot, you know what I mean? Like you don’t look well. So it comes out anyway. So how can you encourage people because it’s a good finish your story but then just ended with like, how can you encourage people not to lie to themselves and to not to lie to their physical care people? Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Right.
Evan Tanotogono 13:20
Yeah, so the funny story about this, I think, in sync with what you what you told us is, you know, like this guy, my friend tried to abuse the system, right? So I said, Okay, go try it. Right. So so he downloaded he becomes a member. He starts paying at okay, let me do this feature. You know, like first day, he told me it’s easy, I’m just gonna click it nine times in a day and then I gotta get the coins. I said, Okay, sure. So he tried and then you know, like the third or the fourth or fifth class he forgot to click it and he was like, oh, no, I forgot Okay, tomorrow I’ll try again right and then like the next day he try again and then and then he forget about it again. His kid maybe in like one or two weeks maybe he he just you know successful for one time. Yeah, and then and then along the way what happened was this guy he said that Okay, wait, wait, did I do this right? Might as well I drink waters while waiting so
Michael Waitze 14:19
it’s so stupid right? Like yeah, instead of clicking the thing want to do the thing?
Evan Tanotogono 14:25
Yeah, like the real thing right so that what happens is that okay, you in order for for this guy to remember he take water and an actual sugar drink and so then he come to me and I say, oh, yeah, I ended up drinking waters now every day so I was like, see? So that’s how the you know this habit can actually you know, build the book and and we can we can give incentive to people Yes, maybe people would be a little bit corrupt in the beginning Oh, there’s rewards out as a store but where people try it chips a habit and when it becomes a habit like you wash your hands with hands sanitizer right now wear masks, it’s very hard for you to get rid of right. So I think that’s really something that we start getting traction as well. And a lot of people ask me, will, will actually use this because we see some insurers having, you know, an app with all this activity is nobody use it. But you know, what, what we have in Ray was, was amazing. So I think like, we are seven months old, after, after we launch, we got, I think 70 plus million steps, we got, I think, like, how many 1000s of liters of water that people locked in, and we start seeing impact as well. If I might to go, you know, into the impact side, right, we are seeing impact because people who are engaged with this, you know, wellness activities, they are twice as, as persisting as as those who don’t. So, you know, definitely something that that’s better for the payer side as well. Because, you know, when people engage with us wellness activities, they are more aware of their health, they’re actually, you know, improving their health and lifestyle, but at the same time, you know, they’re, they’re more likely to pay more and more in the platform.
Michael Waitze 16:09
So one of the things you said, and you kind of pass over it really quickly was if they do this activity, or if they even pretend the activity, they get the coins, what does that mean? Get the coins?
Evan Tanotogono 16:20
So we give a reward, right? It’s, it’s behavioral economics. So when you do something that, that I want you to do, we give you a reward. Right? And, you know, like, I had some debates with some colleagues back then, um, you know, because some people feel that, okay, this needs to be intrinsically coming from you, and you want to be healthy. But you know, Indonesia, you know, the market is, okay, maybe I need to give a little bit of push, right. And, again, because some some of the solutions or startups or software out there, they become really, really pure and being really intrinsic is because, you know, you just get that feature on its own right for us. Because it’s an integration, again, with all the healthcare and the payer side. Together. We know what economics we want to try, right? So that we feel that okay, we can share some economics to this people. They got some incentive, and from that coins they can, they can use for anything that they want, they can exchange with electricity bills, they can get iPhone, if you walk long enough, right? You can’t get an iPhone. To be honest,
Michael Waitze 17:28
I would walk from Bangkok to Jakarta to get an iPhone, I’m sure, I’d like to get a new one. But do you do you also find that when people start getting rewards, but also when people start getting healthier, that they start encouraging not just their family members, but their friends to also become healthier? Right? Is there a community aspect to this to where it’s like, I don’t have to proselytize other people, but they see me getting healthier and just think I could do that too.
Evan Tanotogono 17:54
Hypothetically, yes. I think now, it’s very early for us to say so. But that’s definitely the direction that we want to go together. Especially, you know, because I think, you know, again, there’s some community factor as well, in that, you know, if you stop doing so, for example, if you go to gym with some of your friends, and you stop doing it, right, and your friends will push you out, like, come on, like, let’s go, we did this together and cetera.
Michael Waitze 18:22
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, the only reason why I joined a gym 20 something years ago, it’s at 330 something years ago, because all my buddies were doing it before we went out to dinner, they’re like, let’s go to the gym first. And I started going to the gym when I was 24, almost 25 years old. And now I just go all the time. You also said something else. You know, it’s true that everybody can’t have access to a wearable. But the and we can talk about that in a moment. But let’s say you do have access to it. You said you meaning Ray itself as a platform connects to all the wearables. So how does that work? Like does it if I have an Apple Watch, how do I connect it to the platform? And then what is the what’s the feedback loop that happens there?
Evan Tanotogono 19:01
So first in array, for instance, right? So for example, right? You have, you have a device, and then you connect to the Google Fit. So we work with Google Fit today. So that you, you can give authority to Google Fit to share the data to rate. So that’s how it works. And then yeah, and then we got your data from from Google feet. What we utilize right now is taps and water but we are expanding it towards distress sleep and etc. And then we have this module to actually calculate how much healthier you versus onto pupil right? And that converts into the economies of the coin.
Michael Waitze 19:40
I would love to see a situation where insurers and even public insurers, and I’m just picking a random device right or giving everybody like an aura ring. I know it gets a little bit expensive, but at $329 or whatever it is for the cheapest one it just feels like that could be a great investment for companies to give out. I know people who’ve tried this before there was this big fight of like giving up Fitbit. Or like, you know, if you worked at a fancy company that maybe they gave you an Apple Watch, if you read some incentives, is there any reason to do that? Or is there any data on whether that actually works? You can say no, like, I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m just curious.
Evan Tanotogono 20:16
Yeah, I think right now, like $300, for four ring are wearables still probably too expensive, right? Especially because like race is making a product for middle class, middle and upper class. So lower fluid class. So basically, we are still talking about, in average, 150 to $200 per year. So I think, like $300, for a wearable still too expensive.
Michael Waitze 20:41
Look, you talked a lot about the health side of this and the data side of this, but what about the financial side of this, right? In other words, if we want to make insurers more profitable, or least profitable, right, meaning the loss ratios are low, or the claims ratio is a load, maybe you can explain the difference between a claim ratio, a loss ratio and a combined ratio. For people that may not know, most of our listeners probably will. But how do you affect that as well?
Evan Tanotogono 21:06
Right. So yeah, claim ratio is something that’s, you know, like, the lower Cape ratio, the more profitable the periods. Right? So you know, it’s, it’s still early in the game seven months old, but you may take a guess on how much claim ratio do I have right now, with right,
Michael Waitze 21:21
before we do that, is the claim ratio, the loss ratio? Is that just the number of the percentage of the claim that I get versus the the premium that I’m paying? Because that’s what the loss ratio is? Right?
Evan Tanotogono 21:32
Yeah. So So basically, it’s the, it’s the claim that that the payers need to pay versus the premium that the insurer state, and at that’s normalized, basically. So what should
Michael Waitze 21:43
it normally be 5060 70% is like a normal loss ratio, what should a claim ratio be?
Evan Tanotogono 21:50
Well, I think in Indonesia, you know, it could be as high as 8085 easily, right? And I mean, with free, we start off patient first strike. So outpatient became the first Euro forefront. And, you know, it’s it’s never been done before by insurance, because they feel that inpatient should be first right. Outpatient is more frequent. They don’t want to deal with that a lot of frauds and etc. Yeah, so they feel that, okay, Ray, like good luck. You’re doing outpatient first, you’re gonna be destroyed. Right. But yeah, I think that’s where we come differently. And, and, you know, I think differently, to be honest, right? Or outpatient is the most frequent, the most thing that people need is the most interaction. That’s the layer where you get most of the data, you kept most of the interaction, you see most of the behaviors. And I think they’re still there are things that we have to work on. Yes, like me, like healthcare, fraud detection, which we have, but you know, even we start with our patient first, right now, our claim ratio is below 20%.
Michael Waitze 22:52
What else up? How’s that even possible?
Evan Tanotogono 22:56
So there are two factors, right. One is the is the proper clinical pathways, so we optimize the clinical pathways, and two, is the fraud detector. Right? So I’ll go on, right. So clinical pathways is basically you know, when a member wants to pursue their health care, what was the most efficient way possible that balances between you getting healthy in the fastest way, convenient way possible, but at the same time, the causes is controlled. Right? Now in Indonesia, to be honest, there are a lot of cases where you know, people have limited knowledge on the health care and they you know, sometimes go to a specialist A, but meanwhile, you’re wrong, right? Then you need to go to specialist P. And then as a patient, you already spend like, three, four hours going to one doctor, and then it was not effective. And then you go to the second doctor for the payer, then definitely extra cost, right. So we re basically we we start with having a teleconsultation. But you know, this is where our teleconsultation is different. is, you know, we give it unlimited, right? So we have unlimited doctor from the platform, you can go check with your doctor, we don’t limit the session, 15 minutes or so, like the longest we had was people talking to our doctor for 13 hours. 13 hours, right? Because, outcast. Yeah, he just he just wants to understand, right? You know, like, can I eat this? Can I eat that and etc. But, you know, from my point of view, what we wanted to do is we want to build the habit of a unit to be close and you need to make friends with your doctor, doctors. And you know, when when people talk to their doctors, this is where you know, the process starts and the doctor sees right, okay, this is Evan, I know the history and I can make a personalized diagnosis. The doctor knows who I am, and giving me you know, recommendations to go to the right, doctors in the offline if needed, and some times is not needed. Most of the time, you know, the doctors can just give me prescription and take this pills for three days. And, and let’s see, right. And in most telehealth companies, it stops right there. But with us, you know, it’s a continuous care or, you know, the two days the doctor can reach out back to me and say, I give you this medication, how does it feel for you? And etc. So, you know, when when we have a proper primary care like that, that’s, that’s driving a lot of things, right. So that diverts people from going to the offline because they already feel convenient with all the process, even when they go into the offline, they go into the right doctors. And there is no you know, Miss medications and etc. So you know, all these things, right? I think people in the market, players start looking at the this integration between your telehealth and insurance, but I can tell you one thing, you know, why it’s not possible today. And while they are there, the claim ratio is a bit high still, is because, you know, the interest is not is not aligned, right. So we see that some insurance, okay, they have an app in the app, they have, you know, telehealth teleconsultations. But, you know, at the end of the day work, this help provide the company in this case, Valley how this is want to get as much as revenue from from the payers, right, so they charge the surfaces to the payers. And, you know, the payers have have no control of what it is right. So then what happens, we see some cases that, you know, the telephone consultation, not properly done not based on data, giving more prescription than it should because you know, to maximize the revenue, sometimes not giving triage properly to the offline because, you know, they will reduce revenue, if the guy’s going to the offline rather than finishing it with a lot of prescriptions. And at the end of the day, you know, the, the members are still not taking care of taken care of properly, and they go to offline still, right. So they say, Okay, I am not comfortable with this, even though is provided for free in my app, but it’s not personalized for me, I’m not happy with this, I will still go to the offline. So that is going to be double cost, right? So the profile chart, the healthcare charge to ensure that the member goes and then claim again to the insurance. And that’s why you’re in the market, we start seeing people asking, Okay, I’m, I’m using this telehealth services, I’m putting it in my app, but my claim ratio is not going down. It’s going up. That’s, that’s because that’s what happened.
Michael Waitze 27:26
So it sounds to me like there’s, there’s a big ecosystem play here, right? And let’s just, let’s just use three big categories and tell me where I’m wrong. It’s individuals or people that need health care, right? It’s the insurers and the health care providers. And they’re all kind of together, but they feel sort of misaligned to me. Right? How do you create this ecosystem where everybody’s interests are aligned, where the health care providers are getting paid enough? The insurers loss ratio, or the combined ratio where their claim ratio is low enough where they can be profitable enough. And people still remain both healthy and you remove their financial vulnerability. Like this is the big trick, right is how do you get all of these things aligned inside that ecosystem? Right, and you said something that’s super interesting, because you keep using this word over and over again. And I think it’s purposeful on your part. You keep saying members, yeah, right. So you haven’t said like customers, you haven’t said like users, you haven’t done that at all? You keep saying our members. So just explain this to me, these members pay a subscription, where it’s just every month they pay, I’m gonna use the thought 2000 3000 baht, whatever it is, or whatever the equivalent number is in Indonesia? Or are they still paying upfront? You know, every time they have to renew their insurance, they have to pay the whatever that number is? And is there some benefit for this subscription type model? So that part of that subscription can then go to enhance the revenue that each one of these Ecosystm members get and remove some of the financial vulnerability for the people that are members? How does that work?
Evan Tanotogono 29:12
Yeah, I think you summarized that correctly. Like, so why we call this members is because, you know, our philosophy, Unlike typical insurance, right? When you see the database of insurance, usually they are policy centric, or case centric, right? So you start seeing a unique ID like policy ID and then they start from there. For us, we are implementing 360 degrees member centric, right? So it’s individual centric, it’s Michael or it’s Evan. And, you know, this people might have different faiths in his or her lifetime right. So I can for example, first going, you know, as an employee, my company purchase rate for me, and then you know, and then later So on, I leave the company, and then I decided to purchase Ray for myself as an individual. And then I will get married, and then I will bring my my spouse into the membership, I will add more protections along the way. So this is, you know, the first philosophy of why we are different. And, you know, we start seeing that, you know, this creates a lot of impact by seeing this way. We haven’t talked about fraud detection yet. But this also relates with this, when you start seeing individual as who they are, you start seeing the medical patterns, you start seeing the electronic health records, you start seeing activities, and their personalized health risk towards the pool. So this is where we start from. Now, you’re right, that, you know, when when we create this into a subscription, we become like a new layer that you know, orchestrates between the peers, the healthcare and the members. And I think, you know, that’s, that’s why, you know, I spoke with you, probably 15 months ago, and we just launched several months ago. So those are the time where we actually create this system, right. So everybody needs to come to the same table, and get out of their comfort zone. And you know, people from the healthcare claims adjudication, the insurance, people from the broker side, and we are as a technology platform, and we start with a blank paper, how do we do this? Right. And I think that’s, that’s really the key, because, you know, we have the right team to understand pain points from each. And we also have the right partners, supporting us and committing with us to solve this problem together.
Michael Waitze 31:37
Yeah, I mean, it’s a great conversation to have. And the reason why I’m thinking about this is because I’m in the process of renewing my own insurance. Right? So this is a real thing that I’m thinking about. It’s like, do I pay boom, all that at once? Or should I just pay a little bit month to month, just like I would do for anything else that I subscribe to, right? So it’s so much easier for people. And I’m not, I’m not as financially challenged as the rest of the world. But even if I’m not, for me to be able to plan, do my financial planning, like a financial planner would say to me, don’t spend $100,000 In January, right, spend eight and a half $1,000 Every month, or whatever it is, right? So that’s what I would want to do. That’s what I would want to do for my insurance as well. And you’re right, if everybody’s aligned, it just becomes a lot easier that way. You said we haven’t spoken yet about fraud detection and fraud control and fraud protection. So talk to me a little bit about that, and, and how we’ve become so good at this.
Evan Tanotogono 32:32
Right. So again, this is where our philosophy is a bit different than typical insurance. And I feel that this philosophy alone contributes on your how we deal with fraud, etc. So we don’t believe in fraud. We believe in fraudsters, right? So no, there is no fraud on its own, it’s somebody bad making it right. So, yeah, so that’s why, you know, when we start looking from policy I see or, you know, claim case ID we start moving towards, you know, a member centric database and interaction we start seeing all that right, typically ensures, you know, when when they review a claim, they know, it’s a fraud by the time the case is submitted, or it’s post mortem, oh, we’ve just got fraud, right? For us, it’s pretty much different because again, we start with with the one that has most interaction, which is the outpatient, we give the primary care for free unlimited, which is something that you know, typically insurers will say oh, if I do that, it’s a cost for me and I need to think about the cost and blah, blah, but you know, like this is all the interactions we got the details, etc. So our philosophy is that okay, find the bad guys, how do we do that? You know, imagine you’re an airport right? And you have a series of X ray machines there but what actually catch people you know, from bringing bad stuff into the into the aircraft is not the X ray machine on its own right, right. It’s is basically you know, a lot of things happening and the guards there will start looking at how you interact with each of the steps if you’re innocent people you will just walk through very fast and if if you are bringing something that you start parsing you start sweating and that’s where the guy will say, Okay, come over here I’ll do random checks on you and most likely when they do random checks, they find something So believe it or not, you know, when you when you track all this interactions and behaviors, you know, we have everything working in unison from from the doctor chair, we have the you know, care team chats, we have the KYC and etc in in play, then you start seeing even something very, very simple like linguistics. That’s that’s something that we learn along the way is that okay, if people are trying to do fruits, the way they interact the first time to wait, they try to explore what benefits they have on the app, what they’re looking for in the app the way they try to explore the world. The polls, the way they try to talk and speak with the doctors is different than than the innocent people. So that’s what we are start, you know, looking at. And again, because there are some costs that we are taking in and we reshape it into one membership, etc. The interests and appears don’t need to worry about this, right, they just see the end results. This is the protection that I’m giving as as the backbone of this membership, and I’m getting, you know, of free of fraud. Right. So that’s, that’s what we do we identify that people from the good people. And the idea is we do a personalized surface as well, on the clips. If you’re with insurance today, insurance, most likely will think of everybody as as bad guys. Right? But they scrutinize all your claims, where the documents etc. But for us, if we know that you’re a good, innocent guy, then why should we make your life difficult? We just spent 510 minutes on you and you know, everything is done. But if you are your potential fraudsters with very bad scores, then then we know who to scrutinize. And, you know, we had some cases, right when I think like couple months back when we having like 1500 members or so I can pinpoint in that these, these two people did this guy, they will fraud us, right? So it’s pretty important. So I know that if this guy will look fraud us I don’t know when I don’t know how but cable. And that happened, right? So they go into the hospitals. And we we test our hypothesis, we start doing the checks, and we find out that something’s something were fishy. And then we were you know, we were happy, not because we we have a fraudster. But but we can identify before it happens.
Michael Waitze 36:41
So I want to I want to be a supporter of behavioral science, I really do. And that’s kind of what you’re saying. It’s behavioral science at scale. It’s gathering all this data and watching the way people behave. And you’re right. The guy or the gal at the airport is kind of looking around, and I’m exaggerating, right to make a point. But the guy and gals looking around trying to see if anybody’s watching them, checking their pockets or doing kind of shifty things, is probably going to try to sneak a knife onto the plane. Right? And even if the even if the radar, whatever it is, doesn’t catch it. Right? The X rays doesn’t catch it. Okay, fair enough. That’s not the only interdiction point. And I’m saying this because it’s so close to home to me, not only was I not only was Am I trying to renew my insurance, which is a separate context. But somebody tried to scam me this year. And I think for the first time in my life, not on the insurance side and something else. I’m very concerned about my fitness, right. So this gets back to why I have the watch. And while I’m thinking about the aura ring and stuff like that, so somebody has this thing where they watch people on LinkedIn or on YouTube that are watching things that are related to fitness, I want to be fit. And actually in the last year between January 6 2022, and today, I’ve lost about 15 kilos. Well, yeah, and that gets me just wrapped back down to my regular weight, the pandemic ate too much drink too much. That’s why I’m thinking about all this stuff anyway, but that’s a side issue. But somebody saw that it was like, Okay, I’m gonna try to scam this guy for fitness. And the more the he spoke, the more obvious it became that this was not legit. Right? And it would there were certain behavioral patterns that I saw. And again, I’m not a computer, I don’t have a big data set and all this stuff, but you could kind of feel it. But I’m a real believer in this behavioral science. Because the more went on, the longer went on the more obvious it was this is a scam. And again, you can you can feel it when it happens. And sure there are edge conditions where people that have behaved this way may just be like super enthusiastic about something. And yeah, you may be wrong. And that’s okay, because that can get fixed. But I’d rather fix that than have way too many frauds and then try to fix that after it happens. does. Does that make sense?
Evan Tanotogono 38:47
Yep. Yep. I hope you you’re still seeing how the integration, you know, comes into play, right? Because you know, when the payer is integrating with the healthcare and the healthcare has a lot of interactions, we shouldn’t think just, you know, typically, people think that, Oh, that’s a cost. That’s a cost. That’s a cost, right? There’s a lot more richness to the interactions, and we start seeing more behavior, start seeing more data, we start seeing more patterns and long time. You know, risk can be feasible as well, you know, it’s still early in the game. But I think that’s that’s where we are going towards as well.
Michael Waitze 39:22
Yeah. And I think you made a really good point. You’re not trying to you’re just trying to catch the fraudsters, right. And if you can identify those individuals that are trying to do it, you actually benefit everybody else, because my premium should go down if if the fraud gets removed, right, or at least it gets a minimum. I want to do this. If there’s anything else you want to talk about today. That’s great. You’ve launched seven months ago. So that’s good. There’s some data there. But now instead of coming back 15 months later, I’m going to leave it to you to remind me six months from now to find out how member growth is going how your fraud protection is going. Is your claim ratio still saying stable or maybe rising a little bit as you get more members coming? then, and then what’s changed? And what new stuff is getting built over time? Is there anything else you want to bring up? Or should we just wait until the next time we chat up to you?
Evan Tanotogono 40:07
Well, yeah, I think I think for today, I’ve shared enough. But yeah, I would like to use your platform and thank you so much. I really appreciate her doing the Isha InsurTech podcast. But yeah, I would love to, you know, use this platform as a learning for the industry as well. And for people who are who are trying to change the world, right? Because I realized it’s, you know, it’s a big problem. It takes more than array and, you know, it’s it should inform everybody in the healthcare side, in the AI machine learning insurance side, the way they see risk, you know, I think people should be able to refresh their minds some belief might not be relevant today. So yeah, I would love to update you and all the listeners as well, how we learn certainly can make a better world together.
Michael Waitze 40:54
Yeah, let’s do that. I mean, we talked about ecosystems before, we want to be an integral part of that ecosystem so we can help people share knowledge and share new ideas. Evan Tanotogono, a co founder and the CEO of Ray, thank you again, so much for doing this today.
Evan Tanotogono 41:05
Thanks for having me.
The post EP 201 – Evan Tanotogono – co-Founder and CEO at Rey – We Want Healthier Indonesians appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast is celebrating its 200th episode!
We took the opportunity to check in with some of our industry friends to understand how InsurTech in Asia has developed over the years and what new trends are emerging.
We spoke with Alvin Kwock, co-founder of OneDegree in Hong Kong, Cindy Kua, co-founder and CEO of Sunday in Thailand, Harshet Lunani, the founder of Qoala in Indonesia, Kazy Hata, the founder and CEO of Justincase Group in Japan, Rob Schimek, the CEO of bolttech in Singapore, Skye Theodorou, the co-founder and CEO of Upcover in Australia and Roopa Malhotra, the Head of Customer and Digital at Zurich Asia Pacific.
We would like to thank our supporters over the years and are looking forward to the next 200 episodes on how technology is reshaping the insurance industry in Asia.
The post AIP 200th Anniversary Episode appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast caught up with Harprem Doowa to talk about the growth of his new(ish) venture, Eazy Digital, and the importance of having a great tech partner. We also spoke about generating profits while bootstrapping, understanding the necessity to stay relevant and making the (difficult) choice to stay the course even when other […]
The post EP 199 – Harprem Doowa – Founder of Eazy Digital – Committing to an Idea Is a Whole Different Story appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast enjoyed speaking with Satishwar Balakrishnan, a Managing Director and the CEO of Aegon Life Insurance. We talked about the liberalization of India’s insurance market and how having alternatives and options always makes sense. Mr. Balakrishnan also walked us through the rationale behind Aegon’s decision to go fully digital in 2018 and the risks associated with that decision.
Read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:01
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Satishwar Balakrishnan, a Managing Director and CEO at Aegon Life in India, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 0:18
I’m doing well, man. Thank you very much.
Michael Waitze 0:20
It is awesome to have you. It’s always great to have guests that sound great. Anyway, before we jump into the main part of this, what do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trend in insurance and InsurTech? In India? And by extension, the rest of the rest of Asia? Yeah.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 0:37
Let me actually start with what’s happening in India, we are all aware of the various tech aspects which is happening in India, India, to a great extent is also the digital provided to the world, I can see that yes, of various technologies, and especially the engineering team that we have in India. But from that perspective, at an earlier stage, we were actually building it for the other geographies, it’s now that we are actually started doing it for the country itself. And you will see a lot of success happening specifically on the digitalization of the insurance segment, that is areas most which is happening. So in fact, you will see that as an industry that has for the digital means, has actually been kind of started, people have started using it immensely. So there is no physical paper anywhere. So that that anyways has been improved. But I still believe there is a long way to go in terms of how digital can enable that old process. And that’s where I believe InsurTech comes in. So if you’re a techie, and if you love to create new things, and actually disrupt the conventional ways of doing things, especially if you have some background on the industry, or even if you don’t even understand the customer pretty well, I think India is the place to be. So because it’s not just companies which are driving it, it’s also the regulator who is driving it. For instance, me as an insurance company, have some specific advantages, in terms of the various regulatory requirements as far as, say expenses of management, right? Where in case if I actually work with an insurance or an insurer Tech, I get some specific advantages, which is kind of trying to promote the Insure tech space and the benefits of digitization and data, which it can bring along across the whole ecosystem in the insurance space. So India is the place to be if you like tech, if you like to disrupt eggs, if you actually can bring in a lot of use cases, using data, India is the place to be. And that translates into the rest of the world. Naturally,
Michael Waitze 2:37
I could not agree with you more look, let’s back up again for a second to get some of your background too, because I want to try to pull on the strings of where you’ve come and where you are now to get back to this idea of India used to build for the rest of the world. Right, but I want to get your background first, I want to come back to that later. Let’s let’s get you first.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 2:56
Again, so I’m pretty sure as is as you enjoy your time the MD and CEO of Aegon life insurance. But just if I can go back a little so I by qualification of a chartered accountant, and have been into the insurance space since the time it opened up in the country. So if you notice all the way till year 2000, we had one Life Insurance Company, which is a public sector company, which used to manage the life insurance piece in India, in 2000, is when it was opened up for privatization. And I was part of life insurance company, they’re the first to start in India in that time, I say Prudential was with them for quite a long, safe, good seven years, that’s a time we actually learned a lot of us right all the way from the MD and CEO, to an entry level employee like me, we were all learning insurance at that point in time, right. And people from the Life Insurance Corporation of India, which was the public sector enterprise at that point in time, where the people were actually training us. So they had joined a few of them had moved from that organization to us. And they were the gods for us in terms of making us understand what life insurance is, and various other aspects continued with that moved into multiple organizations have been a founder member in at least three of them. And Aegon life is where joined in 2019. But it’s more than drive off in terms of transformation that we’re trying to do. So gone live decided to move into a fully digital only Life Insurance Company in 2018. And it’s me along with a set of people who joined in 2019 Trying to make taking this mantle and this as the objective. It’s rarely went into a huge transformation. To an extent that and thanks to our shareholders, we actually took a call to kind of pause the business for a while, focus on getting this infrastructure getting this foundation laid and make a very conscious move of using data and digital estate strategy. So that’s that’s in a nutshell of what we have been doing.
Michael Waitze 4:58
I love this I have to back up again for Second, do you remember like what changed? Or what was the impetus or the catalyst back in 2000? That said to the country and to the regulator as a whole, you know, what having one insurance provider or just having minimal insurance providers isn’t enough? What caused the open up? And then what was the what was the initial reaction to it? And then what was the kind of the final reaction to it as well? Does that make sense?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 5:23
It absolutely makes sense. So one, it was seen, actually, for anything, right? alternatives and options always makes sense. It’s not just one from a customer perspective. But alternatives in terms of competition, also makes us think differently, alternatives makes us work towards pride basically helps you to start thinking, innovation perspective, from a customer perspective, because everybody wants to create a new USP. Right? Right. So that that kind of works. So it’s, it’s handling that competitive pressure, but it’s coming in, I think that’s what that whole thing drove and it naturally because you’re having that one, one huge organization, visa vie multiple creates a lot of balance coming in and innovation comes in. In fact, we would have seen that post 2000. Quite a few changes have, for example, gone live popularized the entire term product in India. Earlier, it was largely the dominant product, which was the mainstay, but popularizing the core life insurance product is a term product happened with a gun life, then they started their entire campaign and made it more affordable. So the it’s not really an expense. But people actually started seeing a lot of merits with the various marketing campaigns and the awareness campaigns, which the company did, we saw a huge transition in terms of actually people looking for a pure term life insurance. So it’s it’s getting across the board, even now, it’s relevant that you get more participants. So that there are challenges which comes in in terms of solutions to the challenges and new challenges, which forces us to pick so that you’re not complacent and what we are doing.
Michael Waitze 7:03
It’s so hard to say this, right. But Steve Jobs said like, in your career, if you get to have one like product defining moment, you’ve had an incredible career. And then he went through this whole litany of all these great things that Apple did. And I feel like you’ve had kind of the same thing. You were there in 2000, right? When the regulatory environment changed and said, Okay, let’s let more people participate in this. But I think if I remember correctly, in 2018, you said let’s stop 2019 And let’s just go fully digital. So, I have to ask you again, what was the catalyst there right, because now you’re in a well developed market, India is a big market, we can talk about penetration later, but what was the catalyst to say back in 2018 and 19 and say, okay, the paper is great, but we have to like move into the future now and do this thing, what was that?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 7:51
Like the The answer lies in the statement that you made, India is a huge market, right. And there has been the conventional brick and mortar model, which continues, right, so but you can still reach to a very limited set of people using that. Fair enough. India is also a huge market, in the term, the way the entire adult population is kind of bifurcated, and what I mean by bifurcated if we can categorize them into three broad buckets. So one is people who have a steady income in the form of salaries, okay, they are employed as salaried earning people, right, they get monthly income, that’s around 114 million people. And you have another 114 Total goes to one 20 million people who are kind of, it’s not steady income for them, but they’re still below the kind of they’re making their ends meet, right. So they don’t have residual money as of now, then we have this huge population, which is around 330 million people who are self employed, right, who make their own their their own businesses, either they also employ people or they are freelancers, they are gig workers to various such combinations who are on their own. And this is the population which is also can’t be catered through to the conventional processes, right. And this is the population with various pieces that has happened in the country over the last one decade or so, where these people have actually come into the digital framework. They have started using digital means for various activities. For instance, the one of the biggest moments that has happened in the country is the unified payment interface, UPI, right. So across the board, you will see that people have started using it and across segments. So, you will have even this estimate till till the time we arrange to meet people, they have also started using UPI, or for that matter, the mobile inroads mobile phone inroads, which has happened in huge, humongous every other individual has a mobile number with him. Right. And there was another piece which is also happened in the country or the last time A decade or so, people, we have a unique identifier, which is also digitally enabled. So that’s another huge plus. Right? So it’s a unique identity as a citizen of the country. But it is also digitally enabled. So that gives a lot of comfort and business, which you also opened up a lot of bank accounts. Right. So what do you see as the UPI success story, and a lot of these things together, one is the mobile usage, which went up to a huge number crazy, every every other adult in the country has a mobile phone, not every other other, every adult has a mobile phone, there is data consumption, which has again, gone up majorly, right. So because the whole piece of data became affordable in the country, and you will see a lot of users started using it, plus the unique identification in the form of other and then a bank account. Right. So this was the infrastructure which kind of was laid out for the UPI to succeed, because these are the three pieces on which it works. That happened, and even data consumption, right. So earlier, if you look at the country for say, if you just go back some five years back, consumption of data was purely for entertainment purposes. It made major inroads into the country because people saw the mobile phone and usage of that screen to watch a lot of videos. Okay. So that’s that that was one of the biggest reason for data consumption in India. But now, you will see that the data consumption is also for making transactions, which happened through UPI, a lot of adoption to e commerce facilities. So various other pieces that came together, which enabled this piece, so the infrastructure required, or the foundation required that came in and then came up with this idea, which was actually there for quite a while. But for it to became popular is all these things coming together, the Ecosystm fell in place. That’s how it’s assessed.
Michael Waitze 11:55
What a great story, I want to make a slight differentiation between what’s happening in sort of tier one cities, right cities that people have heard of Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, right big cities that people have heard of, to second and third tier cities, were just traditionally in any country, it just lags. And then what the impact of all of these things you’re talking about, whether it’s the UPI, the payments, the FinTech, and the access to mobile information, first through entertainment, then to information, right, and sort of Education has had on those second and third tier cities, where probably a lot of these 330 million people that you were talking about live, were probably the first 120 are living in those first tier cities. I’m just presuming. But tell me what the impact has been in those second and third tier cities as well.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 12:41
In fact, this isn’t the exact reason why I said the basically are so what is the transition? Or what is the moment that you realize to make a pause and moving into the entire digital and data strategy. And this is the exact piece, okay, you have to reach out to these population, because India, as you said, is a large country, and the population is scattered across, right. So tier two, tier three is where you will also see a major population of demand. And this is the population which is actually started using digital needs to take care of their needs, right? In fact, if you notice, okay, let’s let’s give me an example. Let me give you an example please how ecommerce works for example, right? So India, in India, marriage is a big event, right? And you kind of spend a lot of money on your marriages. So that that kind of happened. And for people to kind of and they dress up on the marriage occasion, especially the the bride, people wanted to get some unique designer clothes for them, which earlier for them, if they have to have their will have to necessarily go to the nearest city. Or, in fact, if you had kind of want to be very unique, you will naturally go to one of these to months, right now. But this thing is now actually available to people through the ecommerce platform, sitting at your home, even in your teeth, tier three city, right? So that’s, that’s the kind of that’s the choice, which has been made available. And that’s the realization, which has come to you in the tier three tier four cities that they are not lifting. They can also consume such things staying in their own city or on their village. Right. So that’s a big change. And you will actually see, for example, the various major designer labels. I don’t know that where you can get the exact data for it. But in one of the articles I read that the the consumption of high end designer gowns or dresses, is also coming from the tier three tier four cities in the country. Right? It was earlier not that they used to come to the Da Vinci to Dubai. But now it’s directly coming from there. It’s it’s opened up, it’s opened up a huge opportunity. So the customer segment itself has become huge. Yeah, this is the reason why we also felt that digital is the way digital is the means digital is the only route through which we can actually reach out to the interiors of the country. But, but still keeping the product very much affordable? Because that’s very critical.
Michael Waitze 15:11
Do you think? And I’m just surmising, right? I don’t know this is true. But do you think that there’s an entire cohort of people in tier two and tier three cities that are way wealthier than people believe. But I think there’s this mentality out there perception that just because you’re not living in, you know, New York City, or Tokyo or London or Berlin, or or Mumbai that somehow you’re poor. And yet, if you can get access to these people out there, whether it’s for E commerce or insurance, that actually there’s an underserved kind of wealthy pop, not that they’re the only population to serve, but that it actually does exist as well. And then that filters out into the rest of the community, that’s there, too. Does that make sense at all?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 15:52
Absolutely. In fact, if you notice, one of the things that the Indian economic system tracks from how the economy is working, go ahead is the consumption of certain items in the rural areas, go ahead, okay. Because we still have a huge amount of population, which is agriculture driven or various other rural sure aspects which come in. So for example, automobile consumption, in the rural area is a big indicator of how the economy is doing, right? Because the consumption happens there. Right? Or, for that matter, two wheeler consumption, these, this is just another, or the FMCG consumption in the rural area. So this is, again, a big indicator of how the economies work. Because we have a large population, staying in these places, right. So that that, of course, this what you said, is absolutely right, there are quite a few. It’s not that the wealthiest people are all available in tier one cities. But you have quite a few, quite a good sized chunk of population, which actually, is well to do quite well to do right and staying in tier two or tier three cities. Do you think
Michael Waitze 17:06
this is a microcosm, and you’ll see where this is going in a second, right? So you mentioned very early in our conversation that India used to build for the world, and now it’s building for itself? Right. So there, we used to say that in a developing country, and I would not categorize India as that in any sense of the word. But educated people are now starting to come home, right? They’re returning back and thinking, Wait, there’s a massive opportunity here that’s untapped? Do you also think the same thing is happening? And I’m guessing right in the tier two and tier three cities where people like go to Mumbai, go to Delhi go to Bangalore to get educated and think, you know what, I can actually take this all the way home, and learn a ton about what it’s like to serve this underserved population in the same way that the diaspora comes back to the country, that when you get back to the country, you go back to your hometown to start building there, and that that impacts the ability for digital insurance then to distribute to those people.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 18:00
Absolutely, as in fact, I would like to give our very own exam, please, this this realization also started happening post COVID in a much bigger way. Right. So the post COVID, we actually moved, and like every other organization, we moved into a work permit, kind of a scenario, right? So we also decided on the same but he also took that opportunity to decide that we will go we actually announced a permanent work from anywhere. So what I mean by that it’s so there was quite a few kind of doubt in people’s mind that the moment COVID kind of eases that would be a little, again, a montage to come to the office. But we are now asked to permanent work from anywhere. And now we are seeing that 40% of our workforce is actually not from Bombay, not from Mumbai. And they, it’s and it’s not necessarily that the 40% is from another tier one city. In fact, we are seeing people from tier two, tier three, a lot of people who actually went back to their hometowns, most of them have decided to stay back there. Some of them came back because the schooling was still in Mumbai. So they kind of continued the DAT right, but a lot of them decided to stay back in their hometowns. And we are now getting a lot of new recruits, new join is coming from those auditions. And the talent is
Michael Waitze 19:18
wonderful. So that’s what I was gonna ask you, right? Because now that you have an even want to use this room, but now they have a representative or someone that’s like an ambassador for the company in a place where maybe they weren’t before. And then people start asking them, you know, Hey, Bob know, what do you do for a living? And she says, Oh, I work for Aegon. What does what does that mean? And then they can start recruiting people there that you didn’t have access to before, which then must make it easier to serve people in these second tier and third tier communities. Because now you actually have people there that understand exactly what it’s like, does that make a difference?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 19:49
It absolutely makes a difference, but I would see differently. Go ahead. The reason why I’m saying differently is because this is the challenge that we are also specifically questioning so we don’t Need a physical presence? Fair enough to convince a customer? Right? So we are looking at this to attract more talent in those locations, rather than just looking at the customer customer? Of course, yes, it gives comfort to my near and dear ones, of course that I will do. But in terms of customer acquisition, that’s purely a partner driven model for us. So we’ll speak about that. Well, I would like to do that. But in this one is my employee strength, basically getting into various towns and cities, is helping me attract more talent at that specific location or a city. And it helps in both ways, right. It’s it’s basically one being still it’s it’s overcrowding of the tier one cities anyways, and making traveling a difficult piece, which kind of sucks is a wonderful, wonderful thing to do when you’re working from your home. But it also allows us to actually attract more talent from those spaces when they see that there are some people who are working from that CPN doing well, it helps to bring in botella. Perfect.
Michael Waitze 21:01
Do you want to talk about this partnership driven growth?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 21:05
Yeah, so. So when we when we moved into, so we normally end up saying that we are a digital only life insurance company. So but the core to our strategy, when we decided to go into this space with this was not just a pure Tech Tech play, right? It was a combination of three broad things. Three, or we call it as the three strategic pillars of our new strategy. One is, of course, Tech Tech in terms of the whole infrastructure so that it’s entirely an API driven model. It’s API first, right? The architecture is API first, so that you can integrate with multiple people. And this integration is naturally the integration is with what the integration is with partners. Right? Now, the partners can be of various partners can be coming in various forms. Now there are partners who helped me underwrite, there are partners who helped me distribute, there are partners who help me engage, right, so each of the activity, or each of the process that I have, there is a partner who’s ready to help me a partner who actually is a data sir source of data, right? So there are various pieces, which comes together. So this is that whole ecosystem that has to go together. And can I be the glue to bring them together. So what I’ve done is basically brought this whole thing together, and then give an experience to the customer. And also to an experience to the partner himself. This is the partner, if I can just segregate this partner further. So there are various partners who actually helped me underwrite the processes much better, through which I can actually visualize the sources of data, which allows me to move away from the conventional paper process to a process where you can actually just get some identification of the customer and process a lot of things on your own. But the other piece is the partner who actually interacts with the customer. So what I meant by partnership approach is for the customer interface, we still want to go with the part two, because normally 10 mentioned is the moment you say digital, people immediately assume it to be only direct or a D to C, right? That is we are a b2b company. And the distribution partnership is where the our engagement with the partner the distribution partner is through digital means. But he in turn, because the customer pretty well. So he’s actually representing the customer for me, he knows the customer pretty well. And that’s how personalization can come. So what we mean is because the customer knows him pretty well, or the distributor knows him pretty well. And I say knows him pretty well, that’s also the digital form the data form, right? That’s kind of available to us to make a proposition which is specifically tailored for the customer. And because of which I can actually have propositions which is very different from Michael than what it is for me. Or any of your reality. So if you if you actually because it’s pinpointed it is specific to you, you’re able to relate it much better, it’s not generic, exactly that. This is for me, this relates to me. And then the conversions and the, the conversations both can be much better. This helps us into a oneness, naturally, insurance is a push product, right? Because the proposition is much more personalized the push it becomes a little easier. Using the word pushing very consciously because insurance is still not something which I get up and basically say I need to have life insurance. Hope I reached that stage pretty quick. But currently, you still need somebody else to come and tell you to teach you need insurance. Okay? You have a family. You have a kid who who will graduated 10 years from now, right? That has to happen. That’s a certainty. Right? So have you have you kind of prepared yourself for it even in case if you’re not there. You still need to prefer somebody needs to tell me that because that’s doesn’t come in naturally. Anyways, the moment you talk about it, the realization happens and they are all aware of but you need somebody to make that realization that So that urgency has to come. That’s where the partnership piece helps. So in terms of going the customer getting him convinced, and once he is convinced, we are talking about this process, which in itself, prior to, or even additional now, it’s something like as if you’re actually taking a loan, it is that cumbersome, right? We, through this digital and data means we are making that process way to simpler, no documentation required at all, your unique identification, which again, doesn’t need to come in a paper form, right, then the rest of the process is digital data.
Michael Waitze 25:35
When you talk about the partnerships, let’s just use ecommerce as an example. How do you ensure that the experience that they’re getting right because this is key, right? The in a way products matter, but experience may matter more, right? If there’s a product that I love, but the experience of getting it’s hard. And now that you’re partnering with E commerce providers, and even payment providers and anybody else where there’s some kind of embedded moment to get the insurance? How do you ensure as well that that experience to them isn’t degraded? Do you know what I mean? Because that’s the experience that they want, right? That’s what they’re involved in. They want to they want to have a good time doing everything that they’re doing online? How do you work with your partners to ensure that experience is seamless and frictionless?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 26:20
Wonderful question. Let me categorize into three buckets, please. So one is the you spoke about a word called a safe bet? Yeah, there is one which is very clearly an embedded product. Remember it practice more or less seamless, right? It shouldn’t be so long that you’re buying the core product. And this comes along with. And that’s another big way that we feel that we can reach out to the major population because you’re embedded is not just insurance as a standalone product getting attached. But embedding for us means it’s specifically solving a specific purpose. Now, let me give you an example. For example, my my kiddo is in is in school right now. Right? There’s a tuition fees, which I BJP and I specify, and I do that’s a desire with every parent, that there should be no compromise on kiddos education, right? It’s education. And you need to kind of plan for those things. What happens if I have not? And this is where I’m talking about embedding life insurance to the school fee itself. So the moment you do that, if something happens to me, I am sure that my kiddos, education is not going to get compromised. Right? It’s kind of getting scholarship through this mechanism. Right? The insurance company comes in and takes care of the education till the stage of graduation. Or another example, Can
Michael Waitze 27:42
I just jump in for a second, because this is such an important don’t don’t lose your thought. But this is such an important point. I want the people that are listening to understand how many of you have heard a story of a guy or a gal or a kid that you know, who had to stop going to school because their mom died. And their primary source of income was eliminated or their dad died and their secondary source of income eliminated. And they had to go back and take care. Right. So this is not just like a maybe thing that might happen on the edge. This is a thing that happens all the time. And you’re right, that if it’s embedded in the product, in the school fee, then if something bad happens, you don’t have to stop going to school because your family can still survive, and you can still get educated and come home and either take care of that business, or start your own career. Yeah,
Satishwar Balakrishnan 28:30
absolutely. Something has actually happened very close to my family labor. I’ve seen that. So it’s it’s similar. It’s like, for example, can I actually embed an insurance product in every search will be an activity for example, rent, right? Can I embed the life insurance into the red because if something happens to be me, the family still needs a shelter. Right? And that continues, and you provide it for a specific period, right that the knee going out or me not being there, at least that that emotional pressure in itself is pretty huge, lets them at least not have financial, that’s the crux of life. Right. But in fact, other than having it as an individual one, this makes it much more contextual. So that’s the wedding side of which can become very seamless, that doesn’t compromise on the experiences they’re currently provide. Absolutely. The second one is a standard on Life Insurance Code. Which is this is where you need to have some amount of interaction because these are large values. And you also need to kind of get into some detail in between the customer and the insurance provider. But this is where we have two models. As I said there are three so one is embedded within the retail one there are two one is the partner has enough data for me to give me a lot of comfort. In terms of underwriting the customer that comes in I use that very same data again given experience which doesn’t need anything. So we just use that everything is redone. It’s kind of its pre approved. If you just pay the money and the insurance starts. So that’s again, an experience, which can be with the partner himself, this also knows the customer very well has enough data to kind of validate that piece. The third is where it’s new, a the partner, the customer himself is new to the party, right? In that case is where you have a lot of other processes that you do, which is a little more, what do you say? It’s still, in comparison to the conventional experience, what we do is they do better, right, but in comparison, the first two, it will be a little more, what do you say, detailing, but still, no paper required, you kind of come in, it’s done. We’re in an in an interface, which is more like transacting online. But we’ll have to naturally spend some more time that’s it. So that’s, that’s how we have factored in the experience using digital data as a means
Michael Waitze 30:50
I like it. One more thing I want to cover, and then maybe I’ll let you go. But who knows what you’re gonna bring up? Because it’s also interesting. When you come into a new organization, and you want to make a radical change, like being Digital First, what are the conversations like internally, where you where you either a need to understand the mindset that’s there and see if it’s see if it’s okay, determine if it’s okay to make that change, or be changed the mindset of the management that’s been around, and even some of the sort of middle level managers and say, here’s what we’re gonna do. There’s some risk involved. But we all have to do this together. What is that process? Like as well?
Satishwar Balakrishnan 31:26
It’s absolutely the later work because you need to have the mindsets ready for it. Right? And that’s a, that’s a difficult task, you actually asked me, right, because people have been used to doing things in a very specific way, right, and haven’t seen alternatives yet. And even if the alternatives are gone, they’re still not seeing those alternatives working, right, they don’t have a clear confidence in terms of this work. And these are huge risks on the table. So it’s more of a very conscious mindset. And one of the things which I had to do for this specific part is to kind of call it out and say, We don’t have any other option. Because with every other opportunity, things, were going back to a process, which basically, people were trying to move into a model saying, Okay, this is an option, let’s do that, which was, again, getting into the manual mode of doing it. To an extent we also moved, it’s, we call it as the zero top. But we also have a process called a zero ops. What I mean by that is we don’t have ops people, we don’t have an operational strength at all, what we have is a set of experts process guys who continuously watch out for what is failing in the digital process. And they come back with solutions to fix it again, to the digital needs, right? So we don’t, we consciously don’t, because the moment you have a good bench of ops guys, you will naturally end up building processes around right now that we don’t have it. It’s a compulsion. And it’s a huge cheat. It sounds much easier now. But while we were doing it, making people conscious, and then we were forced to think, thinking, Okay, we don’t have those resources, digital is the only way to do it. Data is the only way to underwrite. Right? That’s that’s and that change, in itself is better for people to get convinced, stick around build the processes is something which I’m proud that you are now in that phase, but it was a difficult one at that stage.
Michael Waitze 33:29
So you’ve reminded me of something. When I joined the portfolio trading desk at Goldman Sachs, there was this natural tension between what was happening in the front office and what was happening with the development team that was building the technology of supporting the technology to make that business better. And what happened was we what we tried to do really hard. And I think you’re doing this too, is we tried to make it a bit more of a partnership between the front office and the tech team so that as we were building out the automation of the processes that you were talking about, you know, we’re not perfect either. And we may have missed something, we want to create an environment where the tech team would say like, you know, we can make this operation way more efficient if you did this thing, too. Are you seeing that back and forth change as well internally, right, where before, it’s a little bit like we’ll just do whatever you say, and now the tech team is coming back and going, hey, you know what, we’ve analyzed this again. And if you do these three things, it’ll actually make it even more efficient.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 34:21
Absolutely, you’re doing the same thing, but I will give a different push to it. What we are saying is the the front office team is actually only showcasing what the and I’d hate to use the word back office or the middle office, it’s the front. It’s the the business development team is actually showcasing what all these enablers have been. Okay, we have constantly started calling every process every function as a name. Yeah, fair enough. Right. nibblers enablers words the business right? Each one of them has to this is not a support function, or this is not a control function. Each one of us is an enabler and the business development function is basically show showcasing what we have built. Since taking out the product that your build is taking out the process that you have built. It’s basically showcasing this capability that the entire support team for one of our I’m, again using the word support team, because that’s the common term they have built, right. But because the product has been built, or the process has been the underwriting, all those things, it’s the BDD, which is actually showcasing that. So it’s not a to and fro, but it’s because you’re doing something which is different from every other current processes. It’s more of showing those new pieces and how it is convenient to the partner to generate more the customer to kind of get convinced and transact in a much more efficient way. So all those things is getting shaken by the BDD. And this is the enablers we’re building. So that’s, that’s the that’s the change that we brought it.
Michael Waitze 36:00
I’m going to repeat this and I’m just gonna let you go each one of us as an enabler. I love it, Satishwar Balakrishnan, the Managing Director and CEO at Aegon Life Insurance in India. Thank you so much for doing that. That was super awesome.
Satishwar Balakrishnan 36:12
Thank you very much. Pleasure.
The post EP 198 – Satishwar Balakrishnan – CEO Aegon Life Insurance – Each One of Us Is an Enabler appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Welcome to 2023! The AIP News Roundup team is excited about the new year and new InsurTech developments. Will we see a new wave of M&A in a changed investment climate? A stronger focus on product innovation and less hype around record-breaking funding rounds?
Well, despite the predictions of an InsurTech winter, we are starting the year with funding news from Thai InsurTech Eazy Digital. The startup helps Southeast Asia’s small insurers digitize their operations. We had founder and serial entrepreneur Harprem Doowa on the show a couple of times. Listen to the episodes here.
Raising funding is not the only way to get new cash. Chinese Cheche Technology has been listed on the Nasdaq through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. In Singapore, AIA’s Amplify Health acquired machine learning firm Aida. Is this only the start of a new M&A wave of InsurTechs?
In Indonesia, startup Aigis has pivoted its focus to provide project management solutions after the company saw unsatisfactory growth in the InsurTech industry. On the other hand, PasarPolis has become Indonesia’s first official full-stack InsurTech ecosystem.
In the Philippines, Igloo is planning to bring the first blockchain-based Weather Index Insurance to the market. The Igloo brand was once known for smartphone protection but has expanded into new areas. We certainly see fierce competition in the device protection space. Bolttech has just secured a new partnership with Thai telco AIS after having worked with Thai DTAC for quite some time.
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 62 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Finally, Fewer Capital Raises and More Getting Stuff Done appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Fred Hegner, General Manager, Regional Health at Tune Protect Group. Fred shared his unique perspectives on the adoption of AI and how it may help insurers improve risk assessment, underwriting, claims, and fraud detection.
Read the best-effort transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:04
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Fred Hegner, General Manager Regional Health of Tune Protect Group. Fred, it’s awesome to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Fred J. Hegner 0:16
I’m doing great, Michael. It’s a pleasure to be here and wishing all our listeners a very Happy Chinese New Year.
Michael Waitze 0:23
Good stuff. Same here, same here. What do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trend and insurance and insure tech in Southeast Asia and by extension, the rest of the world to be fair?
Fred J. Hegner 0:33
Well, I think it’s the adoption of, of AI. It’s everywhere. We’ve seen it chat GPT, I’ve just started playing with it a little bit. It’s not available for the masses yet. But insurers need to get their hands around this because it’s going to bring big reductions and operational expense, it’s going to help them capture more customers can do a lot of things. They can’t do them independently so far yet, but I see Michael is like three or four things that are really going to disrupt insurance in Asia and globally. Go ahead. It’s around risk assessment, underwriting claims and fraud detection. And furthermore, I think it’s going to help a lot with just helping the distribution platforms sell. Their agents are going to be interested in this brokers, online direct to customer, there’s, there’s true applications. And we see this now kind of with the chatbots. But it’s going to get better over time, it’s also going to serve as a pass through. It’s not going to I don’t think customers are mentally ready yet. Even the most sophisticated insurance customers to buy something from a chatbot quote unquote, robot. Exactly, yeah. But it’s gonna happen soon.
Michael Waitze 1:52
So much, so much to unpack that I want to get back to these four things you talked about. But let’s back up a little bit even further and get a little bit of your background. How did you get to here?
Fred J. Hegner 2:00
Well, I’m a product of the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. I’ve been exposed to insurance globally, for more than 40 years, my father worked in the insurance industry, he travelled out to Asia, that’s where I fell in love with Asia and Thailand in particular. And I started off my career with in hospital administration, but I soon learned that insurance paid better than hospitals did. So I, I learned the ropes in health insurance, and claims claims administration. And over the last close to 30 years, I was working in mostly technical roles. And I’m really excited to be now in more of a commercial facing role with my current employer.
Michael Waitze 2:51
So where are you from? Originally, by the way?
Fred J. Hegner 2:55
Ah, that’s a good question. I’m a product of having grown up overseas. I, I basically, was born in Puerto Rico, but I feel like pretty much more at home in the state of Wisconsin. That’s what I call my home away from my current home here in Asia.
Michael Waitze 3:11
Fair enough. Do you think because I say this a lot about myself, right? And maybe you don’t know this, but I feel like a third culture adult. Do you know what I mean? Like my daughter’s mom is Japanese. So she by definition is like a third culture kid, we grew up she grew up in Japan, but like, I feel like I was kind of growing up with her there. I’ve been in Asia since I was 24 years old. I think the market knows I’m 57 now. So I’ve been here for well, more than half my life. And even when I was in the States, I didn’t like live in the same place my whole life. Right? So I’ve lived the longest I’ve ever lived in any one particular places in Tokyo. Do you feel like that part of you that third culture, and I’m just assigning that to you part of you, gives you a different view on like customer experiences and the differences between how different cultures in different countries and even different parts of countries react to different types of stimuli when it comes to insurance and even other things as well?
Fred J. Hegner 4:05
Absolutely. I connect with the TCK or Third Culture kid acronym, I learned about it when I was in high school. And to me it’s a it’s a real benefit, you get the best of both worlds you it can be frustrating at times, especially when you’re younger. But as you get older, you learn how to take the best of cultures assimilate those, you’re able to see things differently to react differently, to use those to your benefit and helping you whether it’s just to make friends or make customer or to win business or, or make customers happy or connect with customers. So all in all, I have that, that real association with that term. And it’s helped me a lot in my career.
Michael Waitze 4:54
Do you think people react to you differently when they find you went to ISB?
Fred J. Hegner 4:59
So Oh, it’s ISP, or for those listeners that don’t know that that’s International School, Bangkok? Yeah, sometimes they do. The school has changed a lot over the years. It’s moved. It’s moved, right, it’s moved its campus. I really enjoyed my time there and the teachers there and got some great experiences, just studying with Thai children. And, and then Americans because ISP at the time was 40% American, but the, but the other 60% was was Asian and European. I learned so much in an early age that I couldn’t have never done from, from the state of Wisconsin, or the US. And it helped me just with overall perspectives of just stepping back in my mind and saying, wait a sec, no, I understand why someone would think this way, or why it’s done this way. And we all have, you know, cultural, what I call a blinders. Yeah, but at the same time, yeah. But at the same time, we all have them. And we all realise that when you understand more of them, it really helps you overcome some of those hurdles and challenges that you encounter in your daily lives. And in your work lines.
Michael Waitze 6:17
I feel like self awareness is a sales tool. And I was having this conversation with a friend of mine about this a couple of days ago, like if you really think about it, I don’t even know if it’s a skill that can be taught. But the more self aware you are, I feel like the more you can be aware of to whom you’re selling. And if you can have that empathy to put yourself in their shoes, the sales process should be a lot easier. I don’t know if you’re involved at that level. But you know what I mean, I feel like if, if you’re self aware, you can be aware of others as well, to a certain extent No,
Fred J. Hegner 6:46
absolutely. Awareness is key to gain empathy. And we all know now empathy is something that’s such a key trait for leaders that leaders need now. And it’s hard to teach empathy. And it’s really hard. There’s no textbook definition of awareness or empathy. So the exposure that I got over here in Asia and and then through Latin America to and in parts of Europe really helped drive that that awareness and empathy.
Michael Waitze 7:18
Absolutely. Like, I want to jump back into the tech here, because I think this is super important. I feel like there’s been a triggering point for artificial intelligence through what Sam Altman and the team is doing at open AI, this release of chat GPT, three came out, you tested it, I tested it. I’ve seen some real uses for it. I’m curious if we dig a little bit deeper, though. Like, what does it really mean for you talked about customer acquisition, customer explanation, even people actually using it to go back and forth? They’ve been chatbots? Forever? What from your perspective has changed? And what do you think it’s going to change, like dig deeper into this idea of getting customers but also walking customers through this purchase? Journey?
Fred J. Hegner 8:02
I think it’s more of the access, Michael, to the data, scouring the wealth of data, open ly available data on the internet. Sometimes it’s trademarked or, and that’s where we run into some problems like with, with on the creative side with what is AI art and all that. But if we go back to insurance, that that data like, let’s say, morbidity, mortality, incidence data is available out there. But an actuary and underwriter sitting in an office in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore just doesn’t know how to get to that data quickly, it’s there. So I think it’s, it’s more than just the platform of reaching out to the customer, it’s the data running behind it that can then provide options to the customer. Of course, with no prior approval to the to the person that is or to the company that is providing those options. I don’t think you want like a chatbot right away to get into that you want it to be a pass through. You want to make sure there’s some human at the other end still that can validate the data, make sure that these are the right options for the customer. And the risk is being assessed properly.
Michael Waitze 9:17
So why is that? So important, though, for you? And I’ll get into my opinion if you’re if you’re really curious, but why is it so important for you that this is a pass through that it’s not sort of give it to the machine the machine spits something out the robot tells you what to do and then you’re done. Like why do humans need to be as my friend Eva GM? She got I can’t remember her last name would say why did the humans need to be in the loop?
Fred J. Hegner 9:39
Because insurance is still complex. I think we’re naive to think that a robot is ready to do that just yet. Not to say it’s not coming. But by its very nature, I’ll just take health and life insurance which I specialise in. It’s very complex. Now if we’re talking about travel, embedded insurance, and things that are very simple, yes. But when we’re talking about ensuring someone’s life, ensuring someone’s health, even ensuring someone’s behaviour per se, through, you know, automobile insurance or their driving behaviour or things that really involve more complex risk assessment, I still think the human is needed there, the data will help the Chatbot can help, or the chat JpT can help organise it in a way in a speed that no human can do. But then we need to sit back and make sure are we off, bring the right options to the customer. That makes sense, not just because the company doesn’t want to take a loss or something like that. But to make sure that we really understand this customer. And so much of it is is when it comes to health and life. It’s behavioural. So it’s not a simple binary proposition like travel. Okay, I’m going to travel on these days,
Michael Waitze 10:52
right? Can you talk about this a little bit for me as well, you know, you mentioned earlier this idea of, well, I put the word in your mouth bias, but I think it’s a decent word to talk about, particularly when we’re addressing artificial intelligence. At the end of the day, humans are building the systems and organising the data that will drive what that AI looks like, are we worried at all about this idea of who’s managing it, and then what those embedded biases are? And even if we are, how do we? What’s the right word? How do we adjust for them? How do we compensate for that? If that makes sense? Right? Because what you don’t want is one worldview, then determining the validity of a claim, right? Or even the validity of anything based on a bias that exists or some piece of information that is gets left out? Because it doesn’t seem relevant to you. But culturally, it’s relevant to somebody else. Does that make sense? I mean, that’s part of the complexity here, right?
Fred J. Hegner 11:48
Completely understand? And it’s, it’s a tough question, I’ll be honest, because we all have bias. I saw an interview the other night of asking someone that’s in charge of creating the artificial intelligence for art. And at the end of the day, they’re not sure what their role is ethically in the whole process. And ultimately, they have their own individual biases of what goes into the algorithms, right? So at the end of the day, they can only say, well, it may not be art to some people, but to some people it is and therefore it’s an opportunity. And some, some people will like it, some people will hate it, I guess. It’s ultimately based on whether those people share the same biases. And there’s some kind of connection. But to avoid the bias is really hard. I guess the only solution, I would say, is that, you know, the algorithms come down to are they getting a fair selection from from the sources across the internet? Or is it only coming from when you when you peek under the covers? Is it only coming from, you know, certain data sources that could lead to the bias?
Michael Waitze 13:02
Do you think that services like chat GPT, I’m gonna leave the number off, because that number is just going to keep going up? Right? And other services that are doing it? You see, Google has also announced that they’re coming out with their own thing, something they’ve been working on for years, but just haven’t released, which is weird for them? Because everything they do they put out in beta years before it’s even available. But do you think that some of this stuff is going to is going to get adjusted? Culturally, let’s say you put a query in or ask for some information related to Japan, and the way Japanese people look at the solution to a problem is very different than the way people in you know, Norway look at it. Do you think that those types of adjustments on a granular level can get made? Or is it just a big mishmash, you know?
Fred J. Hegner 13:43
Well, I would hope so because all culture has their inherent biases, but at the same time, it’s going to help drive sales, it’s going to make more sense to those customers locally. So I would hope that that is the evolution with the caveat that everyone knows their customer, it’s not up to the machine to know the customer. That’s where the human comes in. And as long as the company or the human is responsible for knowing their customer, and knowing what they do like and don’t like, I think that input of like, for lack of a better word bias is probably it’s important to ultimately get sales and the customer,
Michael Waitze 14:21
I want to make an equivalency to an experience that we had at Goldman, we built something this was actually the name of it at UBS, but same same type of thing was called Smart sales straighter. And what it did was it gave the sales traders people that were interfacing with clients real access to real time data and real time insights of customer data based on all this historical data that we could access pretty quickly back then. And what it did was it made a good sales trader like Intuit superpowered sales trader and made kind of a middling one. Have to find another job. Right? So it didn’t eliminate the guys and gals that were really great at this at all. It actually just made them amazing. Do you see the same thing happening in the insurance industry as well and how can you sort to allay some of the fears around, this technology isn’t going to replace you. It’s just going to enhance you.
Fred J. Hegner 15:05
I do see that happening, you know, you’re always going to hear stories of like, like the rogue trader, right? Right, that, you know, could have taken down the economy plenty. But in insurance, I guess it would be the could be the rogue actuary that makes a bet that could hurt badly a company. But ultimately, with the right oversight, the right leadership management, will, they’ll be able to hone the technology make sure that those highly skilled people in the organisation are using it to their benefit. And watch out to make sure they’re they’re not taking advantage of it in ways that I see could happen, where they’re not sharing information, or they could be using it kind of for, you know, come for competitive purposes or even hoarding it for trade secrets,
Michael Waitze 16:00
does this what’s the right word, even at the playing field, between small insurers, small claims, small underwriting and large, larger firms or incumbent firms as well, because they can all have access to the same data, particularly if we’re moving into an era of open insurance? Do you know what I mean?
Fred J. Hegner 16:16
Yes, I think it does, it’s going to the larger players are going to benefit from it most, because they have the capital to the instant immediate capital to to develop the systems that will then you know, hone the data. But I think the smaller players and will eventually catch up, they will be faster returns for smaller ones, they won’t need as much critical mass to deliver their products as before. So I think overall, it will even the playing field, but in at the start, you know, I think the bigger players are definitely gonna benefit. First, you know, those players creating huge tech divisions, as we see now insurance companies creating and reinsurance companies creating their tech division they’re already working on, on mining all this and honing it.
Michael Waitze 17:06
So here’s another really interesting thing for me. We had a guest on the show Mohan deep right, who writes technology for a bunch of different realms. One of them is for insurance companies. And his his assessment was in the next 10 years, all insurer Tech’s will die. I think he says it just to be a little bit controversial. But do you see that the way that insurance incumbents are moving into, like you said, building out these big tech teams and trying to understand how technology can be used to make them more efficient, that at some point, this idea of InsurTech is just going to disappear? Because it’s just going to be? What’s the right word endemic to the whole industry? Regardless?
Fred J. Hegner 17:40
Michael, I like that word endemic, I think that’s going to eventually happen. It’s the playing field is blurred a bit between insurer Tech’s what is an insurer tech, what’s an insurance company these days, insurer Tech’s can either be acquired by insurance companies, is we might even see insured picks that are the ones that can survive, because of the funding now is drying up, those that survive and really can succeed. They might even go after acquiring smaller insurers. So overall, I think that yeah, this this playing field is definitely blurred. And at the end of the day, insurtechs will become insurance companies or vice versa. Do
Michael Waitze 18:25
you think that the moat around the incumbents isn’t so much the technology but the balance sheet? Definitely, you know what I mean, I say
Fred J. Hegner 18:33
the moat widening Yeah, I. And it’s because the rate at which cash is burned is not sustainable anymore. Given? No, it never was. But it was exciting back then, when we didn’t have to talk about inflation kind
Michael Waitze 18:53
of hated it, but go ahead. No, because here’s the way I look at it. Yeah. When you were a kid, right? If your dad gave you $100, which would have been a miraculous thing for your dad to do either way, right? I mean, my dad didn’t have $100 to give me but if he had given it to me, and then I went out and not only just spent it on stuff that I didn’t need but overspending and came back and said sorry, but um $1,000 in debt would have been 10 times more than I had been given. Nobody like I would have been not slapped but you understand I would have been punished. And yet somehow in the public world where these big companies can raise a billion dollars and just like almost spend it in a willy nilly way and then come back and go, I think I need some more money because growth. Do you know what I mean? Like this was always insane. No.
Fred J. Hegner 19:37
Absolutely. I think that the excitement now has died down to the fact that it’s no longer new. Everyone knows who these insurance tech companies are. And really the I truly believe that. It takes I read this somewhere it takes like 40 Ideas 40 bad ideas before you get a good idea well back, just, you know, five, six years ago, when insurtechs are growing, you know, just it took two or three ideas and, you know, people were buying them. But now people are being much more careful, and a much more, let’s just say frugal and really watching because they’ve gotten burned already, even in good times, economic times, and now that the bad times just exacerbate that
Michael Waitze 20:28
completely. Look, one of the things you mentioned a lot, you’ve just kept using the word data, data analysis, access to data, right understanding the data, and I can’t get this out of my head, it must have been in the end of 2011, or the beginning of 2012. So a while ago now, right, I read a book called was it inside the Googleplex, I believe, was the book’s name. And it basically said that Google had such an edge on people with all this data that it was gathering, that there was no way that anybody was going to be able to catch them. And there was all this fear about them owning ecommerce and owning this other business vertical. And yet none of that seemed to happen. They don’t own anything except a gigantic ad business. And I’m known for saying this. But I want to ask you your opinion on this. So we go through another cycle now where people are afraid that big tech is going to own the insurance business. And yet at the end of the day, they just don’t have the DNA to do this.
Fred J. Hegner 21:17
Yes, I thought it was going to come to either Google and Apple, we’re going to be much further along in exploring their options with insurance. And I think with Google, yeah, you’re right, you had mentioned that you would have thought their bets on AI would have been a lot earlier, they would have gotten invested more we we just heard from Google recently with the layoffs. But they’re now completely focused on AI. And their position for that. And I thought that that would have been something that they had already been positioned for. So the rate at which data is being used by these companies outside of ads, it’s going to happen, but I’m seeing a few things, I’m seeing that it’s just a very slow process that may be because of legal and privacy issues. I know that some of it, I think Google’s been very safe to wade in waters by first opening up their platforms to developers with consent. And they’re going through the whole legal process. Now we all know, through Google Fit devices, things that people wear on their wrist, all the watches, the smart watches, they have access to huge amounts of what I call aggregated data that could be instantly used by a number of different sources, governments, both in the private and public sector. Why they’re not doing that now is they can ask for consent, they should, but they’re just going slowly working with third parties to do that. Maybe it’s because deep in their mind or thinking that, that the health applications, which I’m most excited about, they’re just not really ready to invest in that they see other areas where they can make a much faster buck than health. Health, let’s just be honest, it’s messy. It’s complex. And
Michael Waitze 23:09
it’s emotional to write. In other words, it is most people don’t love their cars. Many people do, but most people don’t. But people do love their mom. And if their mom is having a health problem, even if their mom’s car is having a problem, it’s annoying. But if your mom’s having a health problem, it can be life changing. Right? So this is it’s not just about the data and the facts. It’s very emotional as well.
Fred J. Hegner 23:29
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the data is there. It’s about now, you know, asking they, they could easily both Apple and Google can ask for consent and get all that data. They say it’s end to end encrypted. I read about that all the time. It’s, you know, the cloud can’t decipher it, their clouds can’t decipher it. It sits on our, on our and through our mobile devices and our watches, but with just one easy consent and opt in, they would have access to all that they could decrypt it and use it for ways that I think would help all of us. I wish they would, but because it’s messy, because it’s emotional. Maybe they’re just trying to stay away from that right now. I know, that’s where the third parties come in. And that’s where insurance companies are using a lot of third parties to get the data to use it to help them with with customers, as well as, you know, the AI applications in general with the chat GPT
Michael Waitze 24:24
Yeah, I mean, you saw me smile when you said end to end encryption. I mean, I love it, WhatsApp is end to end encrypted and so are you know, half of the other chat applications out there. At the end of the day, if the government wants to get access to it they can just unencrypted. But but here’s the thing for me, and we don’t even have to go to quantum either. But I mean, I’ve had experiences in my life where stuff where information was supposed to be protected. And then if somebody just came over to me and repeated verbatim what I said and that’s across corporate government and any other thing that’s out there, I just worry about it. Now. We We can have we can dig deep into quantum computing and what that’s going to do to encryption. But I feel like it’s a conversation for another time. Big organisations, particularly what’s happening in the Eurozone around GDPR. And data protection are super important and big companies are being sued for remember, they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t think that the fun wasn’t big enough to offset the gain, if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean? So I worry about the anonymization of data. It’s not has nothing to do with you or me. It’s just that it should get done to the extent that it’s gonna get done and it’s not going to get hacked? I don’t know. I just worry about it a little bit. Is that Is that fair at all?
Fred J. Hegner 25:37
Absolutely. I think we see it in the US with, with HCA. If we go back to health. That’s the, you know, the privacy and confidentiality laws for for consumer health. We see it in now Europe with GDPR. And it’s coming to Asia, more and more companies are taking that on. So we’ve got PDPA laws in Thailand and other countries in Asia, it’s it’s gonna, it’s spreading. And I think that’s overall good thing, I think it’s really, it creates that balance so that there are no road people out there, you know, assigning data to personal information. I’m all though for like, what I call this concept of aggregated or federated data, where you strip out all the personal information, and you can really see vital and important trends. And that’s something that as long as you take the privacy nature out of that, I think there’s real use for the insurance companies.
Michael Waitze 26:35
I agree. Can you talk to me about just from your from your vision, right? How artificial intelligence becomes an even bigger part of the health and I haven’t even said healthcare yet. landscape, but also the health care landscape, right? In other words, if something happens to me, can I self assess by just using the camera on my phone and feeding it into something that can look at it and understand and say, like, yeah, that’s not a big deal. Or feed it some data. And so you should see a doctor, because you could have these three things. Do you know what I mean? Like how deeply embedded does AI become part of the health and healthcare system?
Fred J. Hegner 27:06
Oh, it does. And I think the key is, is that, you know, it has to be tested properly to make sure there, there are no rogue, you know, diagnoses. Now, at the end of the day, every one that has something like a symptom checker, or Google has something where you can assess your skin, if you see a bad mole on your skin, it will tell you with a certain degree of accuracy if you need to go see a doctor, but I think the key is, is really no replacement for a doctor, we talked about health insurance being complex. Well, medicines more complex. I don’t see like the chat. GPT is replacing doctors, they’ll replace insurance companies before doctors,
Michael Waitze 27:51
I don’t think so they’ll tell you why. Like, I don’t even know what to replace the guy that I go to the pizza from because I want just like for extra pepper. Do you know what I mean? It’s so specific, like what people want. And when you talk about personalization, they say, I will just let the data decide. Yeah, but like, again, I go order a coffee. And the woman thinks she’s doing me a favour now because she remembers my last order. But that’s not what I want today. Does that make sense to you, I mean, I just want to double shot and on the triple shot, and she’s still giving me triple I can’t complain. Because that’s what I’ve asked her to do in the past kind of thing. And this, I think gets back to what you were talking about. You need to have that human in the loop as well. So that you can confirm the things that you think are actually true. Even if the data tells you that they are Yeah.
Fred J. Hegner 28:34
Yes, you need that, that pasture at the end of the day, I could see myself doing the same thing. I like the fact that my past orders are recognised. Yeah, I love a price. I can say that, because I like pepperoni. I might like this other Italian sausage. And that can be an option too. But the human there is going to really assess your your the expression of your face, your your emotions, how you’re talking that day, just to get a better sense of what you really want. And that personalization, we’re not there yet. The one thing though, that really interested me is I saw something where in these certain podcasts, there’s now AI four eyes so that when people are not looking at each other, they can focus straight at you. So this whole nature of like the human expression and trying to render and trying to assess how a person is looking on a camera or reacting. There are AI applications for that too. I think we just need to as humans, though, realise that those are not going to instantly improve our lives. If if we’re shy maybe we need to learn how to take courses to have more direct visual contact, right?
Michael Waitze 29:50
Yeah, but on the flip side, right, because I was looking at this till you’re talking about this thing that would would put my eyes actually directly into the camera and even if I looked away, it would still put my eyes looking, I think it’s so bizarre because sometimes I’m looking away to give you the notice that I’m thinking, does that make sense? I’m not ignoring you. And sometimes I will. I will say this exact phraseology. I’m not ignoring I’m just thinking. But this, I think has real expression. I’m doing it on purpose, you can see it. And I don’t want to correct into this because it’s just so bizarre and strange. No,
Fred J. Hegner 30:23
no, it’s creepy. I agree. And I think we’re over basically trying to compensate for this. It’s, it’s interesting nonetheless, just like everything that we’re seeing come out of AI. But there’s just some things where we just have to stop and say, Look, this is the normal way we think humans and either we don’t, you know, I just I’m not comfortable with a robot giving options to me. And I still want at the end of the day, I want to talk to another human so too,
Michael Waitze 30:49
and I don’t think it’s just me, I think I say this a lot to humans make visceral connections with other humans. They don’t make it with robots, and we’re just not there yet. I feel like at the beginning of 2022, and I know this because I was involved that like the metaverse joined the party. And I feel like I feel like it’s sort of towards the end of 2022. Artificial Intelligence, came to the party, grabbed a beer and then said to me to Metaverse pulled my VR because I got stuff to say as well. How do you see these two things like interacting with each other, if that makes sense?
Fred J. Hegner 31:20
Well, the metaverse great gaming applications, great Virtual Reality applications. I’ve seen on with insurance now. Okay, we’re going to create a virtual agency. So customers, maybe the younger ones, will put on their, you know, their Google lens or their their Oculus and buy insurance. I don’t see that happening right away. No way. I just don’t see that now. So it’s a bit of a gimmick there. What I do see though, is a real application. The Metaverse to me still is just has the gaming applications. And we all know if we have children or young friends that gaming is a big thing. And and maybe you know there are risks inherent in gaming, you can lose your your your credits, your tokens, whatever, in sharing that part is exciting. It’s an exciting concept to me, but buying something within the metaverse, I think we’re still while it’s being experimented with, I think we’re still far off from that.
Michael Waitze 32:24
I think it would have been great if you could have bought, like some kind of recovery or recovery insurance on your axes for xe infinity, because I think what it would have done, at least at some level would have been set would have said, Wait a second. an actuary has actually looked at this and said, those things are worthless or something like that. Because if you couldn’t insure it, then maybe you couldn’t actually earn anything from it. It’s just a little bit of an axe I have to grind. But you understand the point, right, is that if you can’t value what it is, then maybe there is no value to it at all, or the value is infinity and either way, it’s not good for anybody that’s involved in it. I don’t
Fred J. Hegner 33:03
know. I I see that too. But I just at the end of the day, I see how how my bank account is dwindling because of Roblox credits. So someone has someone has value there. Now, you know, so at the end of the day, I think that that value is just created by the user, the gamer. And if at the end of the day, though, that I guess the parents are buying the the insurance for for their children unless they’re big gamers too. But I think there’s a huge segment there of an educated customer that knows about insurance. It’s also a gamer. We do know that gamers the average age of gamers keeps going up each year. So as those gamers understand or need insurance for other things outside of the metaverse, they might start thinking inside the metaverse to now are we going to buy property insurance for our Metaverse properties? I wouldn’t go that far yet. But we know we see some crazy things where people are valuing things. And I think there’s going to be eventually some actuarial science around the value placed on some of these Metaverse items. It’ll take time, but I couldn’t see that come.
Michael Waitze 34:14
Yeah, I agree. I don’t think we’re there yet. But I do think we’re gonna get there. Okay, look, I’m gonna let you go. I really appreciate this. Fred Hegner, General Manager Regional Health at Tune Protect Group. Now that we’ve met you and had this conversation. We have to have you back again, just for a follow-up. Thank you so much for doing this today. I really appreciate it.
Fred J. Hegner 34:31
Thanks, Mike. It’ll be my pleasure to come back and have a great one.
The post EP 197 – Fred J. Hegner – General Manager, Regional Health at Tune Protect Group – Awareness Is Key to Gain Empathy appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari, about how insurers can innovate down to the core and the constraints the industry is facing.
Michael Waitze 0:03Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari and a non-executive director at InsurTech Australia. Daniel, it is super duper, to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Daniel Fogarty 0:20Thank you, Michael, thank you very much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I look forward to our conversation.
Michael Waitze 0:25So do I. Look, let’s just jump right into this. What do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trend given both right and insurance and InsurTech? Let’s start in Australia, and then by extension into the rest of the world? What do you see?
Daniel Fogarty 0:36I think for me, what I’m seeing is I’m seeing sort of a waking up to innovation, sort of a realisation. That, you know, the large insurers and all insurance businesses have to act, they can’t just do POCs anymore, or small projects, or they have to work out a way to get this innovation into the core part of what we do. And I would say within that there are a lot of constraints that the industry is is challenged with at the moment, which is stifling some of that. And some of those constraints are particularly if I speak from an Australian point of view, which I think are very similar elsewhere in the world. So in the environment of increasing compliance and environment of increasing natural catastrophe, challenges around affordability, challenges around finding skilled resources. And, you know, within within that environment, people are then push being pushing digital innovation to the background. But I think more and more people are realising that, wow, innovation is the way to solve all of these issues. And so there are these issues within the industry. And then some of your other people spoke about on your podcast, and there’s a host of other things coming in, like embedded insurance and elsewhere that are really pushing people, but I actually think it’s realisation is the mood of the moment that we need to move and change.
Michael Waitze 1:47Do you think something changed, like was it just COVID coming out of COVID, a lot of people were saying back in 21, and sort of the beginnings of 22, that, you know, the digital transformation of the insurance industry was heavily impacted by what happened during COVID. And that because people had a lot more time to just think about stuff and all the remote work. And the lack of human contact, that would normally would have taken five to seven years took like six months or eight months to do. But you’re just suggesting here that digital transformation is moving towards the back end of this and the people are more focused on what drove all this.
Daniel Fogarty 2:20Good thing that COVID did was help us work remotely. We wouldn’t be doing this podcast in the same way three years ago as we do it now. But now you’re there, we’re just used to being on a small screen and talking to people on the other side of the world, which is which I think is great. And so we’re seeing much more innovation shared across the world because of that. But as we’ve come out of other events and macroeconomic challenges that are facing the industry, and what I fear is that some of those are slowing people down. But I really think the ones who are going to win are the ones who they’re going, Wow, I need to actually move quicker, I was able to move quicker. While we’re all working from home, that can I move quicker now. Can I deal with my compliance issues? Can I deal with my environmental challenges? And I think it’s good resources. I think definitely you can do that with innovation. So I think there’s been a whole lot of new issues that have come out of the back of COVID. We sort of put put away for a while. And now the world’s come back and go Well, we actually did regress all these things and pressures is on.
Michael Waitze 3:22I want to start with the compliance side of this. Can we dig a little bit deeper into like, what’s changed in the regulatory environment or the compliance environment? That’s starting to push this back? Like, is this a GDPR thing? Is it a data privacy thing? Is it a fear of cyberattacks? Like what’s going on here that’s driving that?
Daniel Fogarty 3:38Yeah. So I’d say some of this has been individual country driven. Particularly in our country, there was a financial services review that uncovered some behaviour in the banks. That wasn’t what the public thought it should be. We always feel like insurance and be more changed on the insurance side than there has been on the banking side. But then GDPR, and data privacy cyber attacks, people are very worried about about compliance and shipping. So our customers getting the right products and things like that. But also, is their data being protected.
Michael Waitze 4:11Do you see compliance itself. I asked this a lot, right? Because I’m super curious about it. It feels like the regulators are like one of the last bastions of what’s the right word, non consolidation. In other words, you know, I wonder in the US is the perfect example this like 50 Different insurance Commission’s in every state or whoever many, you know, there are, but every country is also different as well. But insurance itself is fundamentally not that different, unless it’s takaful style insurance. Like do you think that there’s going to be with everything else being more connected? Do you think regulations normalise across jurisdictions and across geographies more so than they have up until today? Does that make sense? You don’t I mean?
Daniel Fogarty 4:51I think there are always going to be locally driven issues depending on what’s happening in a particular jurisdiction. That’s why there are 50 regulators in the US because As you know, what happens in California isn’t necessarily what happens in Florida. And, and there are Thailand based versus Singapore based versus Australia based. But I think regulators want, what they want to listen to business. You know, one of the things I do, Michael, that is I mean, mentioned in our debrief in our briefing, I sit on Australia’s it’s called ASIC, which is the one of the regulators here. So ASIC has a digital finance advisory panel. And I’m the advisor on that, right? Well, I’m the member on that from the insurance space. And at that meeting, which we have every quarter, there are eight different regulatory bodies in Australia and attend that. And I love the forum, because you know, the regulators are going well, we want to listen to business, we want to understand what’s happening, but they have a each different regulator has a fiduciary duty to do whatever they need to do like ASIC needs to make sure that the policyholders in Australia, they need to act in that way. But when you see this in other countries, as well, and you actually see the regulator’s talking to each other across the world. Yeah, you know, in which ITC, you probably know, a lot of the local commissioners go, I was fortunate to meet with a whole lot of the commissioners on one trip, and so that they’re wanting to see what’s happening in innovation, and they’re wanting to work out how they can modernise regulation, but the compliance will always follow innovations, there’s not gonna it’s not gonna, I don’t think it’s going to lead innovation, it’s going to help help create an environment where innovation can emerge and flourish, but it’s not going to necessarily lead compliance isn’t going to lead innovation.
Michael Waitze 6:31I’ve always thought that there’s a way to automate the compliance part of this as well, right that somebody should write an API. And again, tell me what you think about this, that somebody should write an API for every regulator in the world, and then feed those via API, those regulations into whatever other platform needs them. So that you don’t always have to wonder like, am I compliant with? Do you know what I mean? Like you can almost build like a real time monitor for that feed into what you’re doing. And you’d sell that as a service onto other insurance companies that don’t want to run gigantic compliance department because they don’t want to have to understand what all the regs are. I don’t know. It just seemed like an interesting thing to me. That part hasn’t been automated yet at all or has it?
Daniel Fogarty 7:12Avlot of people tackling that challenge. I mean, that the reg tech? I think there probably gets compliance wrong, you know, people running companies should do the right thing by their policyholders, because it’s the right thing to do, for sure. And then work out, you know, make sure that that’s compliant with the local rules, but it should be if you do it, well, then you leave with that, yeah, well, we are a compliant company, we have to be a compliant industry. So it’s like, it’s just a ticket to fly. That’s the way we have to operate. And so I agree that there is the opportunity for innovation to absolutely help and technology to help in this process. But so much of this comes down to what human behaviour and how humans interact with other humans. It’s a challenging area. But I really do think that it’s a great place for innovation with well structured innovation, you can deal with the compliance and the customer’s needs at the same time for sure.
Michael Waitze 8:04When did you found Evari?
Daniel Fogarty 8:05We started in June 2016?
Michael Waitze 8:07Oh, wow, that’s a while ago, right? What’s the impetus there? What takes somebody who I’m presuming has been in the insurance industry for their whole life and just say, nevermind, I’m gonna just gonna do this on my own.
Daniel Fogarty 8:20The role I had before I started a Evari. I was the CEO for Zurich, insurance for Australia, New Zealand. So I was the heart of the challenges that the industry faces. And we were fortunate at Zurich, we had some pretty good technology, but not meeting our customers need as much as they needed to. The very first thing that started me off on this journey, Michael was really about customer’s needs, when you’re a senior executive, the best time to go and say hello to customers is to go to a natural disaster, because you’ve got a lot of customers who are having claims at the same time where they’re desperate. Yeah, that’s when we’re really at the point of truth. Right? After a major flood, I was meeting with clients. And we had this one call was irate with our product that they had, and I was going with it at the time. So it was the only one that provided flood coverage standard to small businesses, what’s going wrong here. And as I looked into it, we sent our assessor out there, and the client was insured for half a million dollars worth of stock, right? And the assessor came back said, look, there’s at least $1.6 million where the stock has been destroyed. And you go, and this is a small business, and I don’t know what it’s like to run a small business. You know, that’s a million dollars is a lot of money. And it is real money. And you go, that number is sitting in their cloud accounting systems nowadays. So we said when we started the company, we go, how do we get the data out of the cloud accounting systems to drive the whole insurance process and make sure that people are covered all the time because that that’s the way it should work for customers is just like, my business goes up and my coverage goes up, my business goes down, my coverage goes down.
Michael Waitze 9:50So this is really interesting. And you just jog something in my memory. You have these companies right to do financing and you’ll hopefully you’ll see where this is going right? They do financing for E commerce Companies, right. So I’m an E commerce company, I’m growing, I got 20% 30% sales growth, but I’m on a 90 day payment schedule, which means I don’t get my money until 90 days after I make my sale, there are a whole bunch of different things here. And these companies just say, okay, look, we’ll fund out of your accounts receivable or just out of your revenue, which we know is coming, and then you’ll just pay us back. But the way they do this is by what you’re suggesting, is by connecting their analysis systems directly to the balance sheet, right, and the income statement and the bank accounts of the companies to which they’re presumed to be lending to. And actually, insurance companies could do this as well for their SME businesses, and even some of their bigger businesses, give them the right to have access to your data so that your coverage is not, as you said, $500,000, when you’ve got 1.6 million in stock, now you can make a decision to only insure a third of it, I’m rounding if that’s what you’d like. But you should at least know what your coverage is in relation to what your stock is. So that you know that whether you’re covered in order, to what extent you are I wrote this down, right, you keep talking about technology and serving customers better. Like that’s just one example of how installing the right technology in a way that’s compliant with the regulations, particularly on the data side, will really help not just the customer, but the insurance companies serve the customer better. Does that make sense?
Daniel Fogarty 11:21Yeah, that’s right. And that’s why we set up a Evari. So that we can bring data from other sources to the benefit of the customer. And in doing that, it’s to the benefit of the insurance companies, if the insurance company and the customer had a conversation, as you said about, you know, you’re only covered for half a million, you’ve actually got to make the numbers easy, $1.5 million worth of stock. And if you’ve made a decision as a customer to only insure a third of your stock, let’s find you know, when when when are the only two That’s right, went $200,000 with your stock is damaged, we will insure you know, $66,000, whether that or wherever the policy says so that you can have a much better conversation with your customer. And I think I’m passionate about him and he can add challenges the industry is we need to move all the underwriting and all that all that dialogue back to the point of sale. The customer knows what they’re buying, when they buy when you get to claim time, you don’t have an argument. So the customer knows they’re only going to be a third, you know, but how do you work it out? I mean, I’d like most people, I find it hard to hard to buy insurance. My son’s getting a couple of weeks, we were comparing, comparing snow sports and under travel insurance. And it’s actually complicated here. I’m a professional. And it’s quite complicated to cover paste or off pace doesn’t come easy if someone takes them if they rent. And you go, Well, you know you’re looking for and it took me a while to get through a few policies, how do we make that easy for the customer, you know, the customers should be able to go, this is what I’m going to do. And I want to know whether I’m right, I’m going to be covered for these things I’m gonna do.
Michael Waitze 13:00So this is my question to you. So what is Evari really doing to solve this problem? And is it serving the buyers of insurance by not convincing, but by enabling them to then share their data with the big either incumbent insurance companies or within short texts that are dealing with their data? Or are you working with the incumbent insurers to say you should really use this data on the actuarial side to bring that to the point of sale? Right? As opposed to putting it back? Like which side are you serving? Are you serving both?
Daniel Fogarty 13:35When we started in business, we started offering insurance Australian market to do that built the technology for the insurance stack ourselves. And now we’re no longer selling insurance. We’re in the technology business. And what we’ve done is we’ve made our platform flexible to me that’s the key word we’re flexible. So I can accept data from any way except unstructured data, you can use that data in real time, at the point of sale, or wherever in the process, that an insurer wants to use it. So we work with insurers who say, right, I know I’ve got some data I can get hold off, I want to I want to observe how my clients operating I want to be able to bring more things to the way they work. I want to I want to continually improve my process. So really, we’re our clients, our insurance mgas Mainly and increasingly brokers, people who are servicing customers, and making sure they provide a better experience but in doing so they also they get their own needs met as well.
Michael Waitze 14:32But how like, I’m always curious what the sales process is like, particularly for a guy like you who’s come out of like a CEO role at a big company like Zurich, right has tonnes of resources, great technology, all that stuff. But this gets back to this innovation you were talking about right before you would think not you but one always talked about this disrupting the whole business and now it feels to me more like Value Chain Innovation where along the value chain can I innovate, and then insert myself into the processes of either big inch or ers or big insurtechs? Then take that little piece of the value chain or big piece of the value chain, right? Is that the way you’re looking at this as well.
Daniel Fogarty 15:07We’ve really stepped back redevelop their technology in a way that enabled us to step back and say, what is what is the big problem we’re solving. And really, the big problem we’re solving is that technology is built to do a particular task in a particular way. And the challenge with that, is that the world quickly, and it is really hard to change the technology once it’s already. So how do you how do you and that and that is a really big, hairy, hairy, audacious goal, it’s a really wicked problem to solve. So that’s the problem we’ve gone after. And we’ve done that in, you know, in a technology way, where we’ve used a different sort of technology. So we’ve used the Venturi or what we, which is really how we bring data, you know, real time data, all the way across our platforms. And the second thing we’ve done is made our use of event streaming, event driven. Go ahead. Yep, mainstreaming technology. And a lot of people are using event streaming technology systems. They’re not using technology to create applications. And so we’ve used event streaming technology to create applications to make them fully flexible. And then on top of that, we’ve got a configuration layer that enables insurers, brokers, whoever’s using our system to be able to easily change the way that offerings from our pipe. So it’s really that flexibility of how do you bring all this data to bear? And then how do you make the process flexible, when still have fast technology you need for insurance?
Michael Waitze 16:41What is event driven technology is this parametric technology, just taking real, not just but like taking real time data, processing it constantly in real time, like what does that mean?
Daniel Fogarty 16:50So this is a bit of a bit of a techie word, but it’s it’s, it’s used, it’s really data streaming. And the reason why it’s called Event Stream, is because the data is from such an event, triggers data that is then able to flow and that might be holding on, there might be an IoT device, sending data in, and those sort of things. So if you’re not familiar with event streaming, it was made. It’s been around for decades, but it was made beloved by LinkedIn. And so LinkedIn, started event streaming. And then a lot of people think of Apache Kafka as event streaming. And there’s a company called float, which came out of the tech people at LinkedIn, and confluent, implement event streaming in organisations. And now there’s over 100,000 organisations in the world with events in the organisation. But generally, the use cases are the league system rather than create core applications.
Michael Waitze 17:49Got it? Look, I’ve just been through so many tech development cycles, right? Building multiple different trading systems when I was at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and you know, whether it was.net Or a whole bunch of you know, ex windows, viewers and stuff, like we used a tonne of different technology, but it always seemed like we had to change it, how do you future proof this stuff, right, using event streaming, and this configuration layer so that it remains, you maintain the flexibility, but you also maintain the usability as well going forward, right, so that somebody else can come along in seven years and just say, yeah, there’s something better and bigger.
Daniel Fogarty 18:23To do that for I mean, there’s no way we’re offering it isn’t SaaS product, because then the pressure is always on us to make sure that it’s updated. So if someone’s using these techniques, one of the one of the challenges that insurance companies have and you know, you’ve you’ve seen this challenge, so many insurance companies still haven’t gone out of the basement. So they’re still, you know, they, they need to get out of the basement into the cloud. And then they start with just be just the basement in the cloud, then in the in the second step from going from the cloud is is how do you go to SaaS, so you’re actually outsourcing your, your, your Sim to someone else. And that’s a much better approach, because then then the pressure moves from the insurance companies, to the tech providers to go where you have to keep us up to date. And, and then portability between Sass will be the next thing that happens, you know, so that you can go, how do I swap one Sass out for another? If they’re not me. So I think that this trend of event streaming has been so it’s been around for decades, but it’s just in the last couple of decades. I firmly believe that this is going to change the end from our point of view using event streaming rather than rather than the traditional way of doing it.
Michael Waitze 19:40What’s the again just to go back to the sales thing? What’s the response you get from both incumbent insurance companies but also smaller companies that are trying to use this product on both sides when you because event streaming sure has been around forever. And if you’re a technologist and understand like, what an event is, from a technology standpoint, you know, this has been around forever, but now incorporating this into the way you’re building your own tech stack? What is it? Like when you’re having that conversation? And you just ignore it and just say like, this stuff just works and work? Because you want to tell them you’re doing something differently? Right?
Daniel Fogarty 20:09Well it really depends on who we talked to in your organisation, you know, so we find that when we talk to the tech people, they just go, wow, you’ve done this. That’s great. How did you do this? Yeah. And then they can see the benefit of it, because I’ve seen the benefit of advanced training in their organisations already. And the view from or from Product Managers going, Look, I’ve got a problem. I’ve usually, you know, you’ve got an underwriter wants to use data in a certain way. But they can’t, that’s a great customer for us. Because you go, Well, you’ve got this data, but you can’t actually use it in a certain way, where you can’t be flexible enough in the way you’re going to do that, or you want to use real time data, using more and more real time data, we are definitely looking for the people who want to drive the change, because they’re going well, how do I do something different? And a different muscle? We don’t always use in the insurance industry. And when the insurance industry does move very slowly, unfortunately. And there’s a good reason for that. There’s two good reasons for that. One, we do actually want the executives insurance companies to be somewhat conservative, because we want them to conserve the capital tomorrow, the declines. And the second reason is that, you know, it’s we’re not like a payments business where you make payments every day, you know, people, people interact with their with their insurance only once or twice a year, so and then that’s the reason for the slower takeout. But what we’re finding is that people who want to drive change, then, you know, were looking for them, then for us, where do we find each other often offered it in short tech conferences, often listen to podcasts, you know, that’s what you want to see change are the ones listening to your podcast. So and we go, Well, this is a different way to do it. And you can you can do it yourself, you can do the configuration, you’re going to have more control. That’s the same control we have in other uses of technology.
Michael Waitze 22:03Do you miss being an mga in a way, right? Because it’s actually doing the mechanics of the real like buying and selling and actually doing the insurance business? And what was the impetus for just switching into being a tech company was that just like, oh, wait a second, we need to focus on this full time, because this is really going to be the game changer for the whole industry.
Daniel Fogarty 22:20When we said about this, we wanted to make a difference to as much of the industry as began, we were driven by how do we how do we get the right insurance in the hands of as many end customers as possible. And really, that’s that that’s what drove us at the start. Because if a customer has the right insurance, then the industry is very good at turning up and paying the client. The problem occurs where the customer has the wrong insurance. Because then it claims time, the policy doesn’t respond, because because they bought the wrong policy. So you know, our passion comes from that. How do we help as many customers as we can get the right insurance. And what happened in our journey is we decided when we set up in Australia first, we were going to set up in the UAE and but as we launched our first technology, we had Lloyd’s syndicate supporting us those syndicates and other people looking at our technology said, Oh, I like your technology, can we licence your technology. And really, that’s how we went down the sastra and was really driven by insurer demand. And we also realised we can have a much bigger impact. And the issues are different to when you’re running an insurance business. You know, the issues of running an insurance business are very different to the issues of running a technology business, even though you’re you’re sort of urgent, but the issues are quite different. So yeah, a big challenge for me who hasn’t? Who hasn’t run a technology company before, but fortunately, my co founders have more experienced together we’re running with?
Michael Waitze 23:46Boy, none of it’s easy, though, for sure. Talk to me a little bit about how all of these things you’re doing because in Australia, like insurance penetration is pretty high. How does this impact the affordability and accessibility particularly not just in Australia, but as you expand outside of that market into markets that are closer?
Daniel Fogarty 24:02This is where technology I think is going to take off in Asia more quickly than in some of the developed countries. Because there there is already a very set way to buy insurance, you know, somewhere like Australia, you know, we’ve we’ve, we’ve been a country, you know, out we’ve been our insurance has been direct bought for pretty much all my lifetime. But you know, we’ve been buying, you know, had a funny circumstance, you know, sort of 20 years ago, I’m I moved to the US I was living in California for a while. And I went there with my Australian experience to run a border collie with the witch and what number do I ring to buy my insurance? And they said no, you don’t see an agent is gonna say like, that’s what my parents did you know, or maybe maybe even their grandparents. We’ve been direct here in this country for a long time. But you look into into all the Asian countries is that they they’re going to they’re going to they’re going to skip some some of the some of the things Was that more developed countries? And as you know, the the take up rate of mobile phones is I mean, that’s the whole life of many people. How do we, you know, I feel the affordability issues are going to be so major, almost before the shift in the more developed countries, and then people are going to bring that understanding into the more developed countries, because how do we have smaller insurance? How do we? How do we give people cover for just parts of what they need? Because they can’t buy the whole thing? Because they can’t afford it, right? Or
Michael Waitze 25:31how do we make it monthly payments, as opposed to upfront payments? Like, all this kind of stuff is gonna change? I think, yeah,
Daniel Fogarty 25:36Technology is gonna help them in a big why, because it’s kind of, it just lowers the cost of delivery, it gives greater flexibility in the hands of the customer. And so sorry, market like ours, you know, affordability has become a big issue for those people in high risk. Because what’s happened is, data has Yeah, another thing that Australia was sort of one of the leading countries on was was risk address pricing, and they’re driven by natural catastrophe. So you know, the houses that are in the higher risk zones, get a higher price, so they’re just getting more and more unaffordable to insure, which is then how do we then go the next step and say, Are we Gosh, mitigation and insurance pricing? Again, you need that you need that, you know, technology to do that? So, so the next phase of things are going to be how do you understand what a what a retail customer does for mitigation in their own property? Have they cleared all the trees around their house? Before the fire season? Right? All the all the ads on TV at the moment? Number of the ads on TV, around around Christmas time dryer? Is the fire ready? Because, you know, the fire season starts about now. And you have you cleared the trees around your block? Have you cut the grass? You know, these are all mitigation things, you know, similarly for for flood, you know, you should house built on stilts, have you built in under your house? All these local real property mitigation things are things that I that really we built our platform to do that, how do you bring that data into what customers you know, what customers are doing, and then reward the ones who are good at mitigation. And you can do that, because you can get photos of provenance, for example, we know whether people are looking after their property because you can get you know, there’s a service here that takes a photograph of every property from three directions, every month. So you can get and you know, zeros ever work out how to use that data to go wow, who are the people looking after their properties? Have they clear the trees around their house? How have they got flood ready, and you got all those things you got to lead to better insurance outcomes for Well, for the for the insurance. But that definitely shouldn’t be
Michael Waitze 27:44Doesn’t mean that like the landscaping companies, the ones that are actually cleaning the trees and cutting your grass and maybe setting up your the way your flowers look should also be deliverers of insurance products, because they know the status of your property. And if they can somehow connect to the date of like when they clean up your property, this gets back to what you were talking about before, right? Making sure you have the right insurance, connecting that data then back to the insurance database that the actuaries can see that along with the other data that they’re seeing, could then help them price the policies better. This is how technology works in this way. No,
Daniel Fogarty 28:19Yeah, that’s right. Well, it does so but you don’t think about it from your point. You think about it from a customer point of view. Well, if an insurer I could identify that there are problems with your property, and they advise you on that, and then say, you know, if you want to get a lower price, do you put these mitigations in place? Yeah, we’ve detected that you have three trees over your property, depending on what you can do within local, local, local government laws, and all those sort of things about what you can move or what you can do. Right? Yeah. But you can see that people were the people set up for these things. And they’ve got a pool have they have they set it up? So they can be easily used? Do they have a generator on their block, ready to go when the power goes out, and they want to use water in the pool the fire?
Michael Waitze 29:02This is this is where we are. This is the way I was thinking about it. Like from an ecosystem standpoint, you mentioned that there was a company that takes pictures of your of your house from like three different angles. And all I could think of was, okay, that’s super cool. Somebody has the right to do that. So then they can also take that data, and then sell it to the landscaping company because they can go look this, this family never cleans up and then the landscaping company thinks well, if they’re not cleaning up, well, then it’s more of a fire hazard. And because it’s around Christmas, and it’s fire season, well then we should let the insurance company know and let that person know and hook everybody up so that they have the right insurance, that their property is properly being cleaned. And they have a generator on there. Like all this kind of stuff that you could do just because someone’s taking three photos of your property was what I was thinking yeah.
Daniel Fogarty 29:46Well and really wait where should insurance go or what should it should do in the next couple of decades what we should get to a point of helping, helping insurance mitigate because the better mitigation I mean, people don’t want to call I’m wondering, no, yeah, I don’t want to climb up. I don’t want to have an insurance event. I want to I want to have my insurance there’s a catastrophe happens then. Good, right? You know, but really what I want to do is I want to mitigate all my risk, I want to I want to drive better. So I want data on data data on my driving. So I know your data or by car, you know, is that a hassle? Or what data on my house so that, you know, I know whether I’m protecting things correct or flood zone or are the flood zone changing the sea levels and are higher and this is this is what’s happened here in my server, we had a fairly major flooding earlier in the year because the sealant receptacles have changed and changed. And, you know, and a whole lot of houses been planted that were like, Oh, my God, I didn’t realise, thank God, I looked at the flood maps before I bought my house.
Michael Waitze 30:47But not everybody does.
Daniel Fogarty 30:48Not everybody. Yeah, it’s an occupational hazard, isn’t it? So
Michael Waitze 30:53I just thought it was funny when you were telling the story earlier about your son buying insurance. And dad was just like, I don’t I don’t know what to do here. It’s just way too complicated. Like ruining your whole rap with your kid.
Daniel Fogarty 31:03It was actually he’s my son spending a year overseas. He’s in Canada, doing doing a year of university. That’s awesome. And he’s, he’s spending, he’s spending his Christmas in California. So he’s with some family, friends of ours. So he’s, we’re sort of also comparing well, like, what happens between the two countries? And what’s different here? And what’s different there? What is, what is the university? You know, it says it is a little bit complicated would be great. I was just looking, it would be great to have some device, I could just go in and say to the hates doing these things, and how do I make sure it’s protected? It’d be if he has a bad accident on a ski field. them has to be airlifted. But
Michael Waitze 31:43you shouldn’t be able to do that, right? Because you should if because this gets back to this idea of open insurance, right? In other words, if you have all these data points, even as a different insurer, right, but it’s all anonymized. And you can then go out and access that data, whether it’s through an API, whether it’s headless, like any way you want to do it. And then say, here’s a cohort of people that are doing exactly what my son is doing using technology, getting access to that open insurance data, and then pricing it up. Like you said, Sorry, at the point of sale, you would love that.
Daniel Fogarty 32:11You’d love that you put this information in and up comes all the things going be wary of this, you know, it Maitri is particularly for the for the uninitiated, we will get I mean, we we build technology that can do that. Right? Well, we’re just got to we’ve just got to the people who are dealing with the clients who could do that. And that’s our challenge is competitive, where’s the business? Find those right people? Which is why some products like embedded insurance are becoming more talked about because that’s customers doing another transaction. Right. And going in as insurance trends. Can you at the same time, right, but are they getting the right advice at that time that that that’s the thing that I would be questioning, you know, because if it’s just an add on, you know, the word discussion of insurance, I’m sure you had lots of those in the podcast. But it’s really just using data and being in the right place at the right time. But to make tomate about mitigation, and getting getting customers getting, making sure customers buy the right insurance there by then, unfortunately, we all know that for 234 5% of the population, things go wrong every year, right? And for for those people when the things go wrong, which is what we just want them to be financially in the same position they were before it happened. That’s what we do so well as the industry. We’ve got to help them mitigate and we’ve got to help make sure they get the right one. I’m passionate about what I’m doing. That’s why That’s why I left big business and I’ve been small business trying to go on to solve this problem and do it in multiple countries, which is a bit of a challenge.
Michael Waitze 33:41That that’s the perfect way to end Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari and a non-executive director at InsurTech Australia. We have to have you back. Thank you so much for doing this today.
The post EP 196 – Daniel Fogarty – Founder and CEO at Evari and a non-Executive Director at InsurTech Australia – Waking Up to Innovation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
What an amazing year for InsurTech in Asia and globally. Michael and Theresa review for the last time in 2022 the InsurTech news in Asia and make some predictions for 2023.
At the end of 2022, we see more InsurTech accelerators and funds launching. In Malaysia, FWD and Artem Ventures launched a RM45 million fund to invest in emerging Malaysian Insurtech and Islamic Fintech startups. In Singapore, Singlife with Aviva launched Singlife Connect, an accelerator programme to spur the growth of promising insurtech startups.
In Hong Kong, bolttech selected Sapiens for their P&C Core Transformation. A reminder that bolttech grew mostly through acquisition and therefore has a legacy to manage.
Another Hong Kong InsurTech made it into the news. Throughout the years, Yas InsurTech has always been very timely with their product launches. So it’s no surprise that they are launching a new travel insurance offering in time for Hong Kong to relax their Covid restrictions. Happy traveling Hong Kongers!
S&P Global has published the top Asian fundraisers in InsurTech. You can find the article here. Many familiar faces including PolicyBazaar, Turtlemint, Digit, Qoala and Coherent. What will 2023 bring for InsurTech in Asia? What is already certain, we will be here to follow the latest developments in Asia and globally.
Happy New Year everyone!
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 61 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – InsurTech Has Grown Up, in a Way appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We are wrapping up 2022, another record breaking year for the Asia InsurTech Podcast. We made it to the top 10% of the most followed podcast globally and published close to 2,000 minutes of content.
Michael and Theresa are revealing the top 10 most popular episodes in 2022. This is based on the total number of listeners in the first week after releasing an episode.
Our 2022 Top 10 episodes are:
-
Varun Mittal – Group Head of Digital & Ecosystems, Singlife with Aviva – Rapidly Switching Context Between Optimism and Realism → https://bit.ly/3R1J4aa
-
Mohandeep Singh – co-Founder and CEO of Agiliux Cloud Insurance – In the Next Ten Years, the InsurTechs Will Die → https://bit.ly/3zNvQbB
-
Harprem Doowa – Founder and CEO of Eazy Digital – I Know How to Sell → https://bit.ly/3CEtzRD
-
Alex Leung – OneDegree – In Hindsight, Everything Is Planned → https://bit.ly/3EISJMx
-
Sanjib Jha – CEO & Executive Director of Coverfox – Every Crisis Is an Opportunity → https://bit.ly/335MQMA
-
Sabir Samad – Affinity Partnerships and Alliances at Symbo – You Have to Believe in the Outcome → https://bit.ly/3RGpml4
-
Vipul Sud – Head of Insurance – Azentio Software – We Want Those Different Colors To Change into Mercury → https://bit.ly/3p1GLsa
-
Varun Dua – Founder and CEO at Acko – Before Malls Could Happen, There Was eCommerce → https://bit.ly/3r02LVz
-
Sorabh Bhandari – Founder of Riskcovry – Going Towards the Vertex → https://bit.ly/35YRZaz
-
Shanai Ghosh – CEO Edelweiss General Insurance – The FMCG of Financial Services → https://bit.ly/3L1HkMb
We are looking forward to 2023!
Happy New Year everyone!
The post Year End Special 2022 appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Nischal Tanna, the Group CEO of TransformHub about embedded insurance, his financial services background and the inspiration for founding TransformHub. He also discusses the importance of digital transformation and the need for insurance companies to adapt to the changing landscape and meet customer needs through technology.
Please see our best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:03
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we’re joined by Nischal Tanna, the Group CEO at TransformHub. It is great to have you on the show. How are you doing really early this morning?
Nischal Tanna 0:18
Thank you, Michael for having me are really doing great. It’s an awesome morning. Right. Oppose, you know, it’s, you know, it’s Friday. Right. So how better it can be looking for the weekend, because you know, December being it’s a bit late of the year, right. So everybody bring clients and employees, everybody’s chilling. So yeah, so good time, good time to talk. I think it’s a great month. So yeah, I
Michael Waitze 0:38
don’t disagree with you, almost the end of December, almost coming into 2023. A lot of stuff to catch up on as well. And before we jump in, we’d like to start by asking right away, what do you think the biggest trend is? or emerging trend in insurance? And InsurTech? You’re in India, let’s start there. But by extension, the rest of Asia and the rest of the world to be fair, yeah,
Nischal Tanna 0:57
not close, you know, yeah, but missed out, you know, but I just keep shuttling in Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries, what I can see is, you know, there is a one of the biggest trend, not as an insurance, but even in banking is embedded banking or embedded insurance, you know, that that means basically, customers today are not buying policies, particularly on on the you know, on the insurance company portal, they are actually buying from WhatsApp, from Facebook, from Instagram, they are even buying from, you know, telegrams of the woodwork. So what I see is, you know, again, if this is happening to every industry, whether it’s ecommerce or retail, you know, you go where the customers are, you don’t expect them to come to you. So that is one of the biggest trends, I’d see it in the next five years, you know, getting into every piece of work, which we do on a day to day life, just like the travel portal, right, you know, you don’t go to a specific insurance company, you buy insurance on the travel portal. So embedded insurance is going to be a big thing in next three to five years. That’s what I see. I want
Michael Waitze 2:01
to get back to that. I want to get back to embedded in a second, because I want to dig much deeper into this. But before we do that, can we get a little bit of your background for some context as well. So
Nischal Tanna 2:10
yeah, but you know, I have almost 20 years of experience, you know, I went into product into tech into leadership roles, right, from my, you know, it’s looked back in my schooling and all in I’ve started in an English school, you know, I got good education come from very humble background, you know, my, you know, my parents were, my, my mom was I was live and my dad was a government employee. So very humble background, you know, we have been very academic, I’ve been very academic, right from siloed. Now, what does it also mean is, you know, the kind of going into the details, and you know, that has been part of my life, right? From school life, school life. Yeah. Now, you know, fast forward to where I am today. So I’ve spent almost 10 to 15 years in BFA in banking and financial services industry in Singapore. So I was in Singapore for 10 plus years, and it was fantastic. It’s really, it is a really good ecosystem. That’s where I know that’s where I was, before we started transforming is something which has been, you know, out of my 10 to 15 years of frustration, as a consumer as a banking consumer. That is where transform started. So that’s sort of a little bit of my background.
Michael Waitze 3:20
Okay, where does the frustration come from, and what inspires you to move from because I come out of the BFSI, as well, right, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, I’ve worked at these companies for my entire career, what inspires you to then move go out on your own, cuz it’s a completely different life, right to live inside of a big organization, and then start something from scratch?
Nischal Tanna 3:39
I would say the very first aspect is craziness.
Michael Waitze 3:43
You’re insane. Yeah,
Nischal Tanna 3:44
definitely. You know, so, that is something which is, when I was working in corporate, you know, there was always this craziness, always going out of state, you know, out of the comfort zone, challenging the status quo. And so I think that is kind of a personality, human being has to have to do something as crazy as moving from a stable corporate job to an unchartered territory. So that is one aspect, the soft aspects, hardest aspect is, you know, there was a frustration in terms of, you know, following a, you know, if it comes to innovation, or it comes to a, you know, doing some different initiative, you have to go through a bureaucratic process, right? In big enterprises, there’s a process, you have to go through all those steps, you have to make certain people happy and whatnot, you have to fake it sometimes beat Frank. So those were the frustrations, you know, why don’t we just do for the sake of doing things, you know? So I think one of the reason is also I wanted to be my own boss, if I were to say that, you know, I can go as crazy I can and try to do things in a different perspective. So that was initially initially all these words that trails behind it right now from a from a challenge point of view, where I was into banking, and I was consuming, you know, I was doing technology part, as you know, everybody was A very, I would say they will just do what you say no, they were not challenging. They were not trying to give you a better way out, right? Like no later, Yes, Boss types. And that was also the thing, you know, when I wanted to go out and you know, be very frank and that was one of the inspiration I got from an Australian boss, who I had when I was in dBs, he was a great mentor, right? He created an impression, you know, do what is right, even though your take the toughest part. So that is what also, you know, led me to start transform to be the company, which is different, in its own way to ask
Michael Waitze 5:35
you this, because I went through this myself, right, when I worked at Goldman Sachs, I took for granted kind of all the resources that were there, if I wanted to get something done, yeah, there was a bureaucratic process. And for sure, I did have to fake it sometimes, which frankly, was uncomfortable for me in the same way it was for you. But I did take for granted all these resources. You know, you worked at dBs, you just mentioned that DBS is the Premier Bank in Singapore, it’s the market leader there. And when you’re there, you do have this access to all these resources, if you want to get something done Sure. It takes some time, maybe. But at the end of the day, the resources are there to get stuff done. When you’re building your own company. Like are you surprised, like just how hard it is to get everything organized? When there’s not a department that does this? Or a department that does that? And there’s no HR division? Do you know what I mean? Did that surprise you at all?
Nischal Tanna 6:27
I think you know, mentally I was prepared. You know, okay, I took the there was a lot of planning, there was six months of planning, whether it is the financial resources or you know, things what is going to come up right. And mentally, I was prepared that, you know, I’m going into a really big hole, right. And I was like, you know, let me give it a year, try it out. If nothing, you know, I will still learn out of it. Right. And I’ll become a better person. Yeah. So I think having an exit plan in mind, even an optimistic exit plan that yes, you know, whatever happens, you will still learn out of the way. So there was his optimism when I got into it. And to be very frank, you know, I actually found any crisis very manageable, interesting, because you’re you are in control, right? You are in the driver’s seat, whatever is happening, whether it is COVID, or whether it is a customer not coming up or not paying up or not signing, it is still you are in control. So I felt that was more liberating for me. Even though it was a challenge, there were challenges, but it was liberating, because you knew you are in control of it. Whereas in big organizations, a lot of you know something is going wrong, but you cannot easily call it out. Right? Yeah. Because then you have your hierarchy and your bosses, they are their own bosses and all that. So I would say yes, there were challenges, but it’s also liberating.
Michael Waitze 7:40
It’s a really interesting point, right? I will, it’s felt like when I was at Goldman Sachs, that I was a passenger, on a fighter jet. Do you know what I mean? That it was everything that I needed was there, but I couldn’t like can manage the controls. And even now, when I’m building a smaller company, I’m not on a fighter jet. But I am on a private plane in a way, right. And I do get to fly that plane. And sure, if I run into some turbulence, it’s scary, but no more scary than being on a plane that I’m not controlling, in a way, right, if that makes sense. And I’d rather be sitting at the controls and saying, I’m in charge of my own destiny. And I think that’s something that you’re saying as well, I want to get back to this embedded insurance, because we talk about it a lot. But I want people that maybe aren’t familiar with this concept to really get a deeper understanding of what this is, maybe you can make a distinction between insurance and embedded, and then give a couple examples of where you see this happening at scale.
Nischal Tanna 8:31
Yeah, if I just give a simple perspective on embedded insurance is like embed yourself as an insurance company in customers lives, you know, where to spend most of the time, so you have to just embed yourself as income as an insurance provider. Now, the biggest difference is, you know, let’s take an example. Right, you know, generally typically, insurance being you know, life insurance is just term plans and even you know, medical health plans and all that so yeah, this was there was a lot of planning and you know, there were advisors and whatnot, so that it was a conscious decision. But today if you see you know, whether you’re purchasing a costly phone like if you’re purchasing an iPhone on the E commerce you can buy a phone insurance, you can buy a transit insurance, that means it is transporting to you you know if there is a break and whatnot so all these are part of daily life now right? The you don’t make a conscious decision you just purchase insurance with a product rather than purchasing it in it in isolation, right? So there is no isolated purchase now. You know, you buy a vehicle, you just buy an insurance along with it, you don’t really choose an insurance company unless you are too fussy about it. So I think the customer behavior is such that, you know, I want a single window, you know, if I’m purchasing you know, a travel like a ticket to get me everything in the cloud Porter whether it is the hotel, whether it is cabs, whether the insurance so this is what I say it’s embedded purchase experience, and this is going to stay Now, right? You know, if you see the next generation, which is coming up our kids and you know, the teenagers today, they rarely come out of the Instragram. So the word right, so imagine you, they’re not going to go on specific purchase vehicles and buy insurance, you have to actually push it to them where they are. This is the biggest difference in environment, you
Michael Waitze 10:19
got it. So what is transfer transform hub trying to accomplish? Right? You said you had this frustration? Were you inside these big organizations? What are the things that you want to transform? And between 2019, I believe, when you founded the company, and today, what are some of the little successes that you think you’ve had? And what do you think is going to change going forward?
Nischal Tanna 10:38
What the frustration was the inertia, right? As we discussed, if you want to do something, if you want to achieve something in a big and it’s fair enough, you know, those are publicly listed companies, right? You won’t have that risk charter or their risk appetite, to do something innovative. Maybe, you know, for example, if you want to move an application to a cloud, you have to go through hundreds of approvals, including regulatory approval. So just fair enough, right? There are a lot of stakeholders. But there is a big difference in transform as a service code. Of course, you know, when we work with our customers, we also take those into notice, but at the same time, you know, there is not much, you know, roadblock you know, we can be as innovative as we can, we can propose the solutions, of course, you know, our customers love us for that impartial view, because it’s rarely like, you know, we like a Yes Boss type of partner, that is what is helping us, right, you know, being transparent, being genuine and being innovative. Now, in that journey, what it also means is generally, we get customers, which are themselves, you know, very innovative, they want to disrupt their industry, one of the early customers, which we got, they were really disruptive, you know, I think they were the first insurance company in 50 years, five, zero to get an insurance license in Singapore. So imagine, you know, 50 years before them, there were just traditional licensed product, these were the first digital only after 50 years. So you can imagine all the as crazy as it can get, right? Our customers were more President us, if I were to say, and I believe in that, right? Only the crazy can change the word you know, only the, you know, people who are very lateral or very disruptive thing that they change. So what is helping here is, our customers are far ahead than us, actually, in terms of innovation. And that is helping us because what we try to do with them is we try to be their partner incline if I have to say, in a pun intended way. So we are the partners, who are as radical as them as disruptive as them, but at the same time output is really great. And we have had a fair bit of success so far, and three plus years. What do you think
Michael Waitze 12:41
the balance is between innovating, right? Because there’s this sense that incumbent companies in frankly, in every industry, are slow to move, we talked a little bit about the inertia, right. But you did mention this idea of risk. And I remember when we were installing a new trading system at Goldman, like all the back end systems, the stuff that customers couldn’t see, it had all this legacy information, legacy data legacy processing that was associated with it. And if any of that stuff broke, it was fatal. I mean, really fatal, right? Because you’re managing billions of dollars. And in the same way that insurance companies have multibillion dollar balance sheets, our trading desk did as well. How do you balance this innovation and the speed that’s necessary to accomplish that with the risk management as well? Right,
Nischal Tanna 13:24
really, really interesting question you’re right doing is more tougher than saying it right. Thing is easier. Yeah, you know, be innovative. But you also coming from that background, me coming from a heavy BFSI background. And one of the things which I feel is your to show early success for executives to adopt. What I mean by that is you to pick up an area, which is probably pick up a pilot, you know, in devious that is what I learned, you know, they used to do a lot of good pilots, the pilots used to run like for one year, as big as dude. And one of the fascinating things they used to do in pilot is they always used to pick up one of the most complex pieces. So their approach was like, if you can successfully pilot, the complex piece, you can always, you know, get success in the easy ones, right? So they would pick up the trick every MD and they would say, you know, pick up one of your critical applications, but then the one which you can take risk in the sense, you know, you you still own the risk, right. So I think that that leadership, and that is what I learned in transfer as well, you know, pick up one of the complex pieces to pilot, very same point of time, you know, have a clear mandate, what are you trying to achieve? Whether it is a success or a failure? And there has to be a lot of planning, I believe in the saying, I don’t exactly remember what but there’s a saying Right, like if you’re cutting a tree, you’ll spend 95%, almost planning or sharpening the saw, you know, how will you cut it and then 5% is what you actually do the job. So I believe in a lot of planning, detailed planning, Plan A to Z. And then once you have that, my recommendation is pick up few applications, like if you’re moving some applications to cloud You know, pick a few applications, define your pilot charter, you know, be transparent learn from and that’s when you roll out into the enterprise. And again, you know, you have to run the bank or run the organization insurance company, while you’re changing it as well, right. So there are like a two speed model, two track model, I think it can be done, you know, innovation is something which can be done in a sandbox environment in a controlled environment, without disturbing the status quo. And then, of course, you replace the status quo. Once the, you know, the pilot is successful,
Michael Waitze 15:30
I read a book back in 2013, or 14 called Little Bets, and I can’t get it out of my mind. One of the things that had mentioned was outside of the insurance industry, outside of industry, to be fair, was this idea that even comedians go to small clubs to test out jokes, really small places where maybe people definitely know who they are, but it’s not a wide audience, you know, they tell people to turn off their cell phones, so they can just practice this stuff. And I feel like that’s a little bit what you’re calling for here, right? Is try these little things where you can get little successes, do you feel like there needs to be a mindset change as well, at senior management that then needs to get pushed down? Or can it be a mindset change that comes from the middle or the bottom that gets pushed up? How do you think that works?
Nischal Tanna 16:12
My, my experiences, the middle of management is very critical. In any organization, you know, I think the leadership, right, the management actually relies on the middle management, what data they provide what evidence so I think that middle tire is, a lot of times we say top down and bottom up, right, but somewhere that middle tire is, is underrated. And those are the guys if we get the good ones in the sense, you know, people who are positive, or optimistic and who are won’t always get on, happy about doing their job, I think that is something which even trained transformed, we are done, we got a very good middle management. And the beauty of that is, if that layer is really good, right, your working level is happy, because they are reporting into some very positive person and your management is happy, because now you’ve got somebody who is, you know, transparent and giving the right amount of data without crying crisis every day, right? We don’t want people you know, come to the top boss, and at the drop of a hat you don’t want. So I think that is something which every organization should focus on. Yes, leadership, top leadership is important. But I think the middle tire is more important to get things
Michael Waitze 17:19
done. I’ve always thought about this, do you think because you mentioned new insurance licenses, the first digital insurance license and 50 years in Singapore? Do you feel also like there are other businesses that are coming in and trying to not disrupt I don’t like this word at all, but trying to enter and join the insurance industry, and even the financial services industry at scale, that haven’t been involved in those businesses before. I’d like to ask, do you feel like if the insurers and some of the other financial services business can flip the bit a bit and enter other businesses, right? In other words, if grab, can launch grab financial, right? Because they have all these users, then can banks and insurance companies launch a ride hailing company kind of thing. It doesn’t have to be ride hailing, but you get the point. Right.
Nischal Tanna 18:05
Yeah, very interesting perspective as it relates to something which I read a few days back. I was reading an article where the Netflix CEO was saying, you know, their competition is not Amazon Prime, no, their competition is sleep, like the more that people sleep, the less they watch Netflix, then there was this, you know, Mercedes was in India, he quoted he said my competition is not other luxury cars, my competition is the mutual funds and surprising like how can mutual funds will impact a car. So, his rationale was you know, traditionally retail investors invest a portion every month into mutual funds right. So as they got a Systematic Investment Plan s IP, yeah. So every month, you are putting your hard earned money into mutual fund that is the corpus which ideally should be parked into the car, EMI, so very interesting perspective, which you rightly said, you know, you’re parallel. I would like to put one more interesting perspective on this parallel industry is you must have heard or heard about something called as UPI, right, it’s a phone to for p2p money transfer in India, an individual to individual how it impacted this small coffee, sorry, trophy trophy companies right you know, the chocolates, small chocolates. In India, there was a funny situation a few years back that if you want to give a change, like suppose if I give 100 rupee note and I need to get a change, the shopkeeper used to give you the chocolates if the he doesn’t have the coins, right. And now, since UPI is a direct, complete money transfers, even if it is a very odd number, you’re to transfer you directly to a p2p without any charges. And that has impacted the chocolate business. Can you imagine?
Michael Waitze 19:38
Yeah, so this is a really important thing to talk about. And I think we could spend hours talking about the unified payments interface in India because it’s one of the things that the government India has done that literally has transformed No pun intended. The financial services businesses in India, it’s interesting to me that other countries haven’t done the same but the UPI as a model is now trying to expand outside To end, I think this is a great idea because it removes the friction from moving money around, as you said, right? That’s the key thing here. It’s not the difference just between the chocolates and the money. It’s this idea that no matter how small or how large the payment is, everybody knows how to do it, and everybody can use it. And this to me, is real digital transformation, right? Because it means that not just the biggest companies in the industry, but any company on the side street can do this as well. That’s a big deal. Yeah. Very,
Nischal Tanna 20:29
very big. And go into your example. Yes, definitely, you know, can bank I think they can go into those, you know, different sectors. Having said that, you know, I think one of them, rather than they trying it, the partnerships are more common. So, a bank like DBS is partnering with Uber and Ola or a grab, I think the partnership is fast time turnaround time, right? Because building any business is going to take multiple years, that is going to also have his own fair share of struggle by doing good now, but again, you know, the we know, they’re they are their own struggle in terms of the profitability. So it takes multiple years. And that is where the partnerships are more common nowadays, rather than compete competition.
Michael Waitze 21:05
So when you look at this, right, and when you talk to your clients, like how do you tell them to build effective partnerships, right, because just combining is okay. But business partnerships are almost as difficult if not even more nuanced than just human to human marriage, right? Because at some point, you can get divorced for lack of a better term. But breaking a business partnerships is super hard. What do you look for in a great partnership?
Nischal Tanna 21:33
I always, you know, even when, that wasn’t city, you know, that’s what I learned, you know, I was into FinTech, which was like all about, you know, getting customers from alternate channels. That means not from city channels. So, so I never had access to internet banking and mobile banking of Citi. They were like, No, these are not your channels. You go and get customers from other channels, which is partnerships, right. So we used to partner with travel companies, even supermarkets, insurance companies, whatnot. So one of the things I think partnership, one of the key objective of any partnership should be and again, I’m talking from a BFSI point of view here is how do you get access to new set of customers? Right? customer acquisition is like, for example, a ride hailing company, they have what millions of customers, right? How do you provide a credit facility to them? How do you provide a co branded car or whatnot, a lot of opportunities? And the beauty of this is those are completely new? I would say, yes, they will be there will be some common customers between the ride hailing and the banking, for sure. But there will be a lot of customers, which are totally new to the banking, or at least to that relationship. I think that is what is the partnership key and the benefit, the ride hailing company gets it is able to take percentage of the lending, you know, lending interest and whatnot. So they have a great new income to be able to provide more, and not just be a ride hailing app. So I think it’s a win win, it’s a win win for both the entities. Most important is the organization has to be very clear in what they’re getting in for, like, are they going in for the new customers, or they’re going for new revenue or in a new geography whatnot, but there has to be a very big clarity right from the beginning. And that, and that is to to give you yours, you have to be patient with it.
Michael Waitze 23:17
It’s you’ve mentioned this word a lot, actually patience, it’s gonna take time, I really want your view on this, right? Because we both experienced this frustration right inside of big companies, like let’s do this faster. But I also have this philosophy that like, there’s no such thing as an overnight success. But all this stuff we hear about where like, it wasn’t there yesterday, it’s here today really just means we weren’t talking about it yesterday, but it was definitely there. Right? And again, how do you balance that, particularly in this region, where things like financial inclusion and financial literacy are also really important? How do you imbue that or embed that into the conversations you’re having with your partners and your customers?
Nischal Tanna 23:57
Beautiful thing said, right, patients is not visible, often not visible, right? Success is, I would like to quickly quote an anecdote here. So there is a big movie director who has been very successful in India. And he was asked once you know, here’s the first movie on us, right? It was a box office success, as they say, in Bollywood. So he was asked, you know, how does it feel like, you know, overnight success to have overnight success? He was like, Yeah, it feels great. It feels great. Feels great. It took me 10 years to get this overnight success. Right. That’s what I always
Michael Waitze 24:28
say. But it’s so funny, isn’t it? Because that’s my catchphrase. Everyone’s an overnight success. 10 years later.
Nischal Tanna 24:35
Right. Perfect. Yeah. So so that patients gain and I’m a firm believer of things, you know, all is well, I think, ultimately, the outcome is good, you know, yes. As you see, you know, in general COVID You know, be there was a lot of lives affected and all that but ultimately human race came out of it. Right. So, I’m a firm believer, you know, stick to your plans. Yes, you can pivot a bit here and there but, you know, don’t let crisis Second, you outright don’t let crisis, you know, too much change you, you have to be, of course, you also need to be flexible that you might have to pivot sinopharm In this case that all is well that ends well. And if it if it is not really well, that means it’s still not the end, right, you’d still have to continue, keep continue. I think that perseverance is something which, which I have firmly believed. And in hindsight, when you go back, like when fast fires when you MLB, next five years, when I’m, you know, after five years, where I’m actually when I look in hindsight, you know, great, you know, great that I did not drop off from this journey. And I want to reach that situation. I know of living on the top, talk to me
Michael Waitze 25:39
about this, because it’s really interesting when you started your company, and I want to give you an anecdotal example of my own, where I didn’t really understand this at the time, in 1997, right, so early on in my career, you know, I’d saved a little bit of money, and I had planned on buying an apartment in Manhattan. But then there was a financial crisis. And to be fair, the apartment wasn’t that expensive was a little bit out of my reach. But I thought if I buy this now, it’s going to be okay. But it’s the crisis kind of loomed, I thought, Okay, this is a bad time to buy. But in retrospect, and I wish somebody had told me this back, then it’s actually the best time to buy, because the more the deeper into a crisis that you are, the more likely is that you’re going to come out of it much stronger. What was it like for you building transform hub? In one of the worst crises, and definitely health crises of my lifetime? What was that? Like? What kind of what was the fear? Like, were you sure that we were gonna come on to this, like, run through that for me? Oh, yeah,
Nischal Tanna 26:34
it was a torpedo. Right? Imagine Oh, like, you know, coming out of Citibank as a senior vice president, you know, drawing that good, some paycheck trotting, starting your own three months into it, and you are now facing the worst crisis a human has faced, right. Trust me, you know, three months into it, and I was already getting offers from my old friends. No, do you want to join it back? Join back city? Are you over with your drama and know all that adventure as the you know, if I leave, as you rightly said, you know, Michael, you know, if you leave a crisis, unsold is going to haunt you forever. Right, you will never be able to do anything better. Anything, whether it’s personal or professional, if you drop a crisis midway, and that is what my approach has been, in COVID. I was like, you know, I have to survive this, not for just for the for the company, but for my confidence in life, whatever. And mine means the entire company, right? You know, everybody involved was worth till that one time, we have to survive this move to ensure that we get the, you know, mental character, right. So it was a challenge to survive. Because, you know, you imagine that you three months into company, if you shut it down, you’re never going to start another, right. It’s going to be very tough mentally, right? You’re never ever going to go back to that. So I was like, no, no, we have to survive this. Now. How did you survive is I think important thing is, again, we never knew it will last for two years, to be very frank, right? Nobody no one knew it would like, but good thing is at that point of time, everybody was thinking, you know, maybe next month, it will get over maybe next month. So I think, yeah, so I think that has helped us sail through you know, okay, next one will be better than this month. And that optimism has kept us going. And actually till we could realize we were pretty out of the crisis. So important thing is keeping your focus on and, you know, yes, you will be having a lot of stress. But stress doesn’t most of the times, I believe in saying I read it somewhere, that 80 to 90% of your hallucinations are actually hallucinations. They never become reality. Right? So I believe in that 90% of my stress. And he was it’s not going to happen, right? So why do I, you know, then then worry about it.
Michael Waitze 28:42
It’s such a great point, right? Like half the stuff half more of the stuff that you worry about, not you, but like, did all of us worry about later, you just like, Why did I care, it never happened, it wasn’t going to happen. The probability of it happening was low. And if I just not worried about it, but just like thought about how to fix it, or remediate it and just moved on, it would have been so much faster, so much less stressful. I want to ask you this, though, as well. You know, we started this conversation with you saying you come from humble beginnings. And part of this family connection of I come from a very humble family as well. And this idea of getting a great job at Citi Bank, or Citi Group getting a great job at DBS is not just good for you and your lifestyle and your family’s lifestyle. But there’s this family comfort as well. Your mom and dad, your cousins, your uncles, your grandparents look at you and say, okay, Michelle, it’s fine. It’s one of these things we don’t have to worry about. But then you quit and everyone thinks, oh my god, that dude’s completely insane. What is he doing? He didn’t work all this hard through academics or everything else to just throw it away. And then the crisis comes and your friends think, Okay, this insane dude really needs another job. Like how do you fight through that in a way that other entrepreneurs can learn from?
Nischal Tanna 29:54
First of all, every entrepreneur entrepreneur has to realize, you know, you don’t have to prove to anybody, right you’re not aren’t in a race to, you know, prove yourself every time
Michael Waitze 30:04
that you do, right?
Nischal Tanna 30:06
Is correct, more morally or psychologically it feels like but if you sometimes you know, you like a damn care attitude is also good in life, and you care for your people, your family and friends and all, but you don’t have to answer them or, you know, sometimes you are in crisis. You know, I remember, you know, my parents would ask me in our things, I would say, you know, how do we expect it? Right? Like, if it’s, you know, what’s the point in answering that question? You know, how are things right? How are things globally? So, so sometimes I think not getting into those conversations is better for the positive mindset, and you should avoid conversations, when you have to give bad news, I always believe and I always feel that if the news is not good news, you know, let’s not share with others or we don’t, because it’s not going to help. I love
Michael Waitze 30:54
to say to people like what were your expectations? Right, you knew it was going to be hard. So now that it’s hard, just move on, like, just try to figure out a way to solve it. If you expected it to be easy. That was your problem? I think at some level, no,
Nischal Tanna 31:06
yes. And everybody would have done it. Right. If it was easy. Yeah, exactly. I was just talking about, you know, I think when you take a leap as a as an individual, when you try to do something different, there is always going to be scrutiny from your friends and family and positive scrutiny, it won’t be like, you know, they’re not, they are hoping you to succeed. But as a scrutiny, they want to sit on the fence and observe, you know, whether you know, this guy is failing, or is going to succeed, I think that kind of pressure, you know, the societal pressure of looking up to you, that also adds to challenge and I personally love the challenge, you know, the thrill of, you know, being the underdog and trying to deliver I think I’m a bit dramatic. If I do say that aspect.
Michael Waitze 31:46
I like it. But do you feel like because I had this feeling right? So I was frustrated as well, in these big organizations, I don’t mean to keep going back to the same thing. And once you’re out and you try to build your own company, it’s very difficult. And once you push through and actually get a little bit of success, you feel like there’s a part of you that really believes that you’re now what’s the right word, like no longer employable by a big organization, because you see the impact that you can have, when you get to make decisions with the team that you’ve chosen for yourself.
Nischal Tanna 32:15
The great thing about today is economy is, you know, it is very startup friendly. Right. You know, doing your own is no more stigma, which was probably a decade back. Okay. Yeah, I think the perspective is different. You know, success is not really materialistic. Now, not only but realistic, that is a good thing. We are, we are in the in a great situation today. Our generation is very, I would say our next generation is very lucky that experiments are getting rewarded, or at least appreciated.
Michael Waitze 32:43
Yeah, I think you make a really great point, because I always say this. New companies, particularly in their earliest stages of development, are really just big experiments. And a lot of experiments as well, right? Because you don’t know what’s going to work and had bigger companies. It’s kind of like, how do we take this thing that we’ve done really well? And do more of it? Or do bigger it but smaller companies are like, I think this is gonna work. Let me try that. Let me try this. Let me try this. And then when you find something that works going deeper, no.
Nischal Tanna 33:13
Yes. Right. Let’s say it will be planned experiments. Right. I will say if seven out of 10 decisions work, you’re successful, oh
Michael Waitze 33:21
my god. I would say 51% of your decisions.
Nischal Tanna 33:25
Even you’re right, even even 50% is you’re already successful. Yeah. So I think it’s not being you know, making every decision work. But important thing is, you know, I believe that important thing is you need to reflect on any failure, or any success so that you you learn from it. Right, your mind has to actually absorb before you attend the next you know, work or next plan. I had that you don’t think so? There are a lot of times Michael when it I think reflection is so underrated. People don’t reflect. Right? Yeah, yes, I know, we can we can sense a lot of people spend time watching movies eating out, you know, going to a club, you know, or going doing their sports, which is great. I know, you know, you have to be healthy and all that. But I think I think few hours we should reserve on weekends to reflect on the week we just gone past by what I could have done better or what, you know, I could have avoided what not I think that is very underrated. I always tell to my team, you know, spend one hour on a weekend tea time, just reflect and go doc, just just look inside?
Michael Waitze 34:33
Do you feel more confident now than you did when you first started? And I guess the reason why I’m asking is because you’re right. You know, three months in the pandemic hits your friends call you which is super nice and say do you want to come back to work and you’re like, No, I’m not going to do this. And I feel like you do in a way. It’s not the giving up that matters, but it’s like you’ll never have another opportunity to go back and start again. And like I said before, if you go back and join another company, you’ll feel even more frustrated and more kind of left out, because you know that you don’t want to be doing that. But leaving again, it’s going to be so hard, structurally, emotionally. And just like reputationally. But do you feel more confident today now in building new things?
Nischal Tanna 35:13
Yes. You know, definitely, as you rightly said, I think most important is the mental character, which you need to have, because it’s not just the company, which I had formed. But it’s also if I would have left it midway, you know, as you said, the reputational damage, you know, the self confidence would have shattered, right, and I would have never attempted again, something in like next 10 years, I’m sure mentally, but sticking to it and being positive. I think today after coming out and today, we are already in 121 50 People size company now, right, we are growing every month, we are adding like five to 10 people, hopefully by the year end 2023 would be 202 50 plus. So I think now today, it gives us the luxury and the appetite to experiment, right? Whether it is an A monetary investment, or whether it is time, and as last but not the least lot of intrapreneur knowledge, which which I have learned in the three years today a lot more confident. And the risk of failure is pretty low. Right? Because see, ultimately, I think 80 90% of the job you do is all about science behind it. And 10% is the art and the luck factor. As they say if you cover most of the things, you know, the risk is low, right? Or failure.
Michael Waitze 36:25
Do you hire? I’m really curious about this. You’re growing, you said five people a month? Or hopefully I got that number, right. What drives your hiring? In other words, are you anticipating more clients more business and stuff like that? Or are you getting the business first and then hiring for that business as some kind of hybrid of that? How does that work?
Nischal Tanna 36:43
So one of the things about hybrid, right? Major aid is, see we try to decouple the acquisition, talent acquisition from the demand is you’re never going to catch up, right? It’s always going to be supply chain mismatch. So what we try to do, you know, there are some strategy skills, which we hire irrespective of the demand, and then there are some tactical skills, which is demand driven. And that way we have been able to, you know, bifurcate, and grow in our own pace.
Michael Waitze 37:10
Got it before I let you go, what are we going to think about transform hub? When you become an overnight success? Seven years from now, do you want to be like, where are you going to be? What do you see the future looking like? And what do you see the future of the insurance and insure tech space looking like seven years from now,
Nischal Tanna 37:25
I will say that when yours is too long, it’s very difficult to pass that kind of, yeah, it’s difficult, you know, the, I think next year we can or next two years, we can create one other thing which I would recommend to a lot of entrepreneurs is look at those prior two countries now type two and type three. Now look at Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, UAE and India for that sake, two developing countries, right, I think look at those countries, and you know, where there is a huge appetite for innovation, because they want to do a leap, right? They don’t want to go through the same painful journey, which Singapore or UK or US must have gone through, right, they want to directly lead to from zero to 10. So my advice, or my recommendation, even Vietnam, right, is coming up. So my recommendation to everybody is to you know, don’t try to be a small fish in a big ocean, right? Try to be a big fish in a lake or an opponent, I firmly believe that also will give you good confidence, go to those industries, those geographies where there is less competition, and there’s more appetite. And that is what people need to focus in next two, three years, you know, these countries, if you see the percentage growth, right, like, you know, the developed countries are growing single digit, right, the developing countries are growing two digit, right double digit, and that is where the entire world is focusing. So that I would say, next two, three years, these geographies are going to drive a big chunk of GDP of the globe. So better be a part of it.
Michael Waitze 38:54
Yeah, the last thing so I want to ask you one more thing before I let you go. How do you how do you and transform hub impact the democratization of financial services? Right, just getting more people to be involved in making sure that penetration? I mean, insurance is just so low in the region, except in Singapore. How do you drive that?
Nischal Tanna 39:13
Yes, so technology is a big enabler, right of democratization of you know, financial services. Most important the way we as a technology company do is we try to when we build something for our customers, we ensure that we build it in a very quick who has zoobi Right? It, it has to go. Like I was saying earlier, partnerships are the business model, or the new business model. So you have to build the technology which is capable to talk to each other interoperable, as they say, we try to do a lot of work around interoperability and that is our contribution. Because then when our customers are plugging their solutions into as you know, the ride hailing company or even a supermarket, it is very easy. It is very easy to plug and play, and the time to market is low. So that is our contribution as a tech partner. To ensure that whatever we build is built for the future.
Michael Waitze 40:03
I love it. And I love this idea that partnerships are the new business model. Maybe I’ll use that as the title of this episode. I want to thank you this was so great and Nischal Tanna, the Group CEO at TransformHub, thank you so much for coming and doing this today. That was awesome.
Nischal Tanna 40:15
Thank you Michael for spending the time and it was lovely catching up with you.
The post EP 195 – Nischal Tanna – Group CEO at TransformHub – Partnerships Are the New Business Model appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast enjoyed speaking with Susanne Møllegaard, a Partner and the CEO at Process Factory. Susanne thoughtfully enlightened us about the biggest trends in insurance and InsurTechs in the Nordic Region, where the Process Factory is based. Susanne noted that incumbent insurers in the region are becoming more like InsurTechs and that Open Insurance is also gaining momentum.
Check out the best efforts transcript of our conversation below:
Michael Waitze 0:03
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Susanne Møllegaard…You’re a good sport, by the way, a partner in the CEO of the Process Factory. Susanne, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you?
Susanne Møllegaard 0:24
Fine. Thank you, Michael. And thank you so much for inviting me to the podcast. I have been looking forward to it.
Michael Waitze 0:30
It is completely my pleasure. What do you think is the biggest trend in insurance and InsurTech in your region? And maybe tell people where you’re based as well?
Susanne Møllegaard 0:41
Yes, I can say that Process Factory is based in Copenhagen in Denmark. So our primary focus is the Nordic Region, working, you know, solely together with the insurance industry, and all the insurance companies, insurance vendors and so forth. And from my perspective, I think it’s also important to note that if you take the Nordic Region, it’s very digitalized. To my opinion, when I look at the industry, I see that InsurTech sort of has been adopted by the insurance industry, the incumbents. So, whereas some years ago, you would see all these clever insurer tech startups primarily it insurer Tech’s then today, I will say that, that I see that the insurers have become insurer Tech’s, and most of them, at least the ambitious ones, they have a very ambitious agenda will digital and twin products and so forth. So I think one of the trends is that the insurtechs InsurTech agenda has been adopted by the incumbents. So that’s one of the big trends. The other one I would mention is actually the open insurance agenda. That even though for many years, insurance, they have sort of kept that data to themselves, they are opening up also seeing that they have big benefits for the the end consumer opening up in the data.
Michael Waitze 2:22
So these two, these are two amazing points. By the way, I want to dig super deeply into that, can we get a little bit more of your personal background, just for some context, then I want to come back to the two things that you just brought up?
Susanne Møllegaard 2:34
Well, I can say that my personal background, I’m I’ve been in the insurance industry since 94, and also been part of some of the big insurance in Denmark, on the business side, among other things I’ve been on, on the claims management about in one of the big insurance. But besides that I’ve always had big interest in how your support business processes with it. And that’s actually I know, 934 is a long time ago, but still it was already there, prevalent that you were trying as an insurer to support the business processes will it not as brilliant as today, but and then in 2014, I left sort of the insurance company to become CEO of process factory. And we an IT company, I’d see local market, specialist competences where we actually assist insurance system then does the local market specialties. complexities, for instance, in integrations to third party systems.
Michael Waitze 3:44
So this comes back to what you were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, this idea that incumbents have adopted the InsurTech strategy, right, in a way they become InsurTech themself. I guess the key thing for me is you’ve watched all this happen in real time, particularly from your project process factory. What changed? Like, was it just having the bear poked? Do you know what I mean? All these InsurTechs are coming up saying we should fix this. There’s some value chain innovation to do here. There’s some process innovation to do here. Like what was the impetus thing for insurance companies to finally say, Okay, wait a second, we need to be more like that.
Susanne Møllegaard 4:23
Yeah, good question I got what I saw was that from the beginning, they were very scary, all the brilliant InsurTech companies because they came with the ideas of how to use technology to actually improve the business model or the insurance. And in the beginning, quite a few actually tried to sort of protect themselves against this wave of innovation. But slowly I think that I think actually based a lot on also the public discussion about InsurTech they started actually collaborate Writing will InsurTech and trying to understand how did they learn the work? What did they see of potential in the way you use technology to improve what you can offer the consumer. And then, of course, slowly, you start seeing organizational changes in the insurance companies, they start adopting the technology. And then I think the most important part is also understanding that it’s not so easy to disrupt insurance, and the young InsurTech, they might have a lot of knowledge about technology. But insurance is also very capital intensive, very, a lot of know how that you also need to add to the equation to actually make changes in the industry. And I think that there was a lot of self confidence to be gained from that. And the thing that is actually a collaboration, a competition,
Michael Waitze 6:02
when when I was sitting on a portfolio trading desk, right, which is highly technology intensive, we used to have to make this decision, like do we build it internally with all the resources that we have? And Goldman Sachs or Citigroup? Or do we buy it from a third party vendor? Right? In other words, do we build it or buy it, constant push and pull right in industries? If if, in fact, incumbents have decided now that they need to be more like insurtechs. In a way, this gets back to this idea that one of the gentlemen that I had on the show a few months ago had it was that in short, text will go away. But insurance companies will do it, but still rely on external developers to help them build the ideas that they have. In a way, this is great news for you kind of, but do you see that mindset changing internally at these big companies when they decide that they need to be shoretex? Or have that mindset that they still need to get some of this development done externally?
Susanne Møllegaard 6:59
Yeah, I think so. Cause the problem for big insurance is that they are struggling, will they the visions, they actually find the fly very fast. But they are struggling with a legacy and slow development internally, and I have seen good cases where insurance collaborate with some of the inputs x. And when they do that, and it’s money, it’s also important that they let them work independently on the big mesh of the big machine. Because you also see all cases where InsurTech support or make collaborations with insurance, but they die because of because they try to make them fit too much into the equation and the big insurance. But I believe that the SEC driven insure checks, they can, they can still assist because they are they’re still adding the different viewpoints, different angle and the supplement what you can do on the inside, but to make it work on a larger scale, and so forth, then the picture insurers have the machine to do it. But to prove the concept and to actually get something out to the end consumer, I think the smaller players, they are more agile in doing that.
Michael Waitze 8:23
Do you think that the big insurance actually may have an advantage when it comes to localization in the sense that they’ve kind of always let their independent businesses live under the same umbrella, but operate locally? And then if you’re gonna build software enhanced businesses, like maybe you can talk a little bit about how the nuances of every individual market are so different, that building one kind of monolithic piece of piece of software, it’s so hard, and that’s where localization really comes into play, where knowledge is super important. Yeah.
Susanne Møllegaard 8:55
Yeah, you’re very right about that. Michael, I totally agree on that. I think that when you go abroad countries, then I see a lot of system vendor actually, under estimating the need for localization and the cost of the localizer. And that makes for instance, implementing interpretation projects very, very expensive, because they miss understanding there. But for instance, travel insurance, which is very similar in some countries, then you will be able to move across borders, with less friction. But if you take the usual insurances like home, insurance, car insurance, every market is different. That’s how I experienced we can see if you take the countries that have huge differences between how you do localization between Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and it’s very important that you have local market specialists that understand the processes, the systems, the third party inspections, and so forth. And that’s actually where we impresses factory try to help them insure us whether they are local insurance or they have insurance that wants to answer the Danish market, that we can actually come with a local market knowledge and also offer an integration platform software service that makes it easier to actually infer the market and focus on in consumer benefits.
Michael Waitze 10:28
Can you talk about in a little bit more detail this second trend that you mentioned this concept of open insurance, just kind of what its status is in the markets in which you operate? Where you think it’s going? And really would like what you think the impact is going to be on the insurance market for this idea of open insurance? Yeah.
Susanne Møllegaard 10:47
Yeah. But I think is actually that if you take my home turf, Denmark, then you can see that the insurance industry is actually taking on responsibility regarding open insurance. They’re developing industry specific systems. For instance, if you want an injection, you can actually ask me as your new customer, to give access to all my information about my pension across all pension companies in Denmark, right. On top of that, we see that the companies offering pension, they can actually develop what they offer me as a customer, like I’ve put a lot of extra value to what they offer me. And that’s actually what I think is important. I believe that open insurance will help assist innovation in the industry, and more focused on what type of extra value that the insurance insurers want to offer to their consumers.
Michael Waitze 11:56
Do you think the underwriting process changes at all because of this? Or do you think this is more service based? In other words, if we all have access to the same information, pricing should look relatively similar, depending on how you measure risk, right? But the services that can get built on top of it is that end up being the differentiator, you think,
Susanne Møllegaard 12:13
Yeah, but I’m not sure that the prices will be exactly the same cause each insurer will have their own experience, will you and me as a consumer, but I think actually the data for the underwriting will be more fine grained. So there will be it will be able to imply will be more correct, because you will be able to go to the source to get the data. But I still think that when at the end of the day, when the insurers calculate the price, they will not be exactly the same.
Michael Waitze 12:44
Yeah, I mean, again, it just depends on what your risk model looks like, among other things, but I mean, obviously, there are a ton of factors associated with it. But in general, how are you looking at this risk? What do you expect? What are your expected outcomes? And then how do you price that risk? Right, is really what it comes down to at some level?
Susanne Møllegaard 12:58
Yeah, exactly.
Michael Waitze 13:00
Do you think that this type of open insurance approach will lead to even more personalization? In other words, if I understand your cohort at scale, then I can make a product specifically for you? Because I feel like I can also make it specifically for a bunch of other people that seem like you, do you think that that’s gonna happen as well?
Susanne Møllegaard 13:21
Yeah, I think that’s both one of the big benefits of open insurance, but of course, also a risk for the consumer, because it’s positive if you can get paid, you can feel that you will recognize that you need to put in less data to get a good, good proposal. But on the other hand, if you have had a lot of claims, and you are not a very attractive consumer, then you might end up at risk of being a very expensive insurance. Best case. So that’s actually one of the topics that the industry at such discuss in Denmark, for instance. And also, of course, in the EU concept, because insurance is a collective, it’s, we help each other right. And it’s not very good if we ended up excluding some groups of possible consumers.
Michael Waitze 14:19
Right. I mean, the reason for the question is to is to sort of reiterate the point, that insurance itself is a collective endeavor, right? Yes. In other words, it’s good if nothing bad happens to me if something bad happens to you, because then I help fund what’s what the bad thing is, it’s happening to you and at scale. Most people won’t have bad things happen to them. But if they are protected in the group that’s large enough, well, then they’re insured, right? I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s the way it’s meant to work. So where do you fit personalization into that? There’s got to be some connectivity right between the personalized service and product that I get, and the overall risk that the insurance companies are underwriting because that’s the only way it remains collective at some level No,
Susanne Møllegaard 15:02
that’s true. That’s true. For instance, take motor insurance. If you take, for instance, motor insurance, and you get more data about how I drive, you will also be able to support me helped me become a better driver, you will help me, for instance, will, if I’m a driver that travels a lot abroad, you know, you can see, you can, you can sort of personalize the add ons that you want to supply to me, because you know, my pattern of driving the pattern of claims I’ve had, and so forth, actually one of the big things also in relation to insurances claims prevention. Because if I get a lot of the same type of claims, maybe the insurance will be better able to help me prevent the claims in the future, given that they have a better data set forward.
Michael Waitze 16:00
Got it. So using it in reverse as well, for preventive reasons. That’s interesting, right? In other words, you know, all the stuff I’m doing wrong, helped me out both sides, right, because it helps you out a little bit as an insurer, because you have to make fewer payments. But by definition, if something bad is happening to me, I probably don’t want that to happen either. So fair enough. And if you have all the data, that would be super helpful, right? It’s not just a one way street. I like ask this right, because, like, I can make it through line for the stuff that I love to do. And I’m curious, like, you’ve been at this for a while now. Right? Do you remember like, what got you interested at the beginning in being in this industry? And then just what keeps you there on a day to day basis? What is the thing that that keeps you so so interested
Susanne Møllegaard 16:44
today? In insurance? Or? Yeah, yeah,
Michael Waitze 16:47
both? Both? Because you’re involved in a bunch of different ways, right?
Susanne Møllegaard 16:51
Yeah, exactly. It’s actually I’m actually my education is actually mastering business economy. So I started. And then actually, it was coincidence that I ended up in the insurance industry. So it’s not like that I you know, I’ve always wanted to be in the insurance industry, it was coincidence. But I somehow got really interested in because insurance is people helping people it everywhere you experience how you know, the customers, the end consumers, or people, the people helping them or people, everything is about, it’s a service somehow. And that that’s, I find this very, I like working with that. I also started on a bit technical side, because when I started in the industry, I was actually doing analysis with what was called SAS, which was, you know, an analysis tool that was used a lot in the insurance industry. And I made all kinds of extractions of data describing how is the business doing and so forth. And then I ended up in the, in actually being part of the business organization, but I brought this interest for the technical side with me. And I always been driven by the curiosity of what St can do for business processes. And you can say, well, let’s stop. But I remember that in Denmark when we started talk, and when I first heard about it, it was back in 83. It sounds like a long time ago. And I was in ninth grade in public school. And they offered programming as an extra curricular activity. And I volunteer for that. And we were very small group four or five students thinking this will be interesting. Yeah. And I was sitting there in the afternoon trying to understand what is programming? And if then else and whatever. And somehow that Curiosity has, I don’t know, if it’s some kind of creativity, it triggers in me, how can we make things better? Because I really would like to improve things everywhere.
Michael Waitze 19:08
I will say that it was not long after you had that experience. What did you say? 1983? Is that what you said? A long time? Well, let’s just say let’s just say I was well past ninth grade in 1983. But it wasn’t long after that, where I realized and the reason why I like asking you this right is because I think we lived in a really interesting time as well. I saw the impact that technology could have I when I worked at the computer center at my school, which didn’t have one before I got there, and just saw what it did to productivity, particularly for my own writing, but also in the math, spreadsheet thing and in the paper writing that the other students did and I was like, this is the future. I remember it specifically it I remember thinking it and when I also remember seeing a guy walking around with a Macintosh that he was carrying. And now I just saw that I swear that I’d seen the future but no also impacted everything that I did at work. So it’s not just a casual conversation for me, because when I finally got to Morgan Stanley, and I didn’t have a computer on my desk, I said to my boss, I need one of the things in the computer room on my desk, and I’ll show you why I’ll be 15,000 times more productive. And that was the beginning of a career doing what you did. How do I make a business a tech enabled business? And then how do I make that business more profitable, more fun? And that’s why I ask you, because that’s what kept me going for so long. Because it was so necessary where I was, go ahead
Susanne Møllegaard 20:32
and follow you totally and let my book because it’s difficult to understand exactly. Why why did you feel that? Why you see it? And why Why were you intrigued by it? But But I also see that you can do a lot of bad things with technology, of course, but in the end, what what is the motivator is how can you use it actually to make other people able to do what they do even better?
Michael Waitze 21:03
Yeah. Do you? Do you feel like the the way you can access technology today has caught up maybe to the vision that you’ve had for how easy technology should be able to use? Do you know what I mean? Like back in 1983. If I look even just like a word processor, there was a lot of stuff you had to do was still better than on a typewriter. But I had this vision of like, can we just like do this thing. And the other thing, and obviously technology caught up to where I can literally have my own media company, because the cost of everything came down. And the way all that stuff connected, match the vision that I had 25 years ago. So it must be the same for you at some level in the insurance industry. Yeah.
Susanne Møllegaard 21:43
Yeah, but that’s true. And, of course, visions develop. So it’s always like, and you’ll see new land that you want to conquer. But but if we go back in that space, then we are probably even past what we could imagine at that point. Because we develop our conception all the time. Also, I think what what we might not have understood back then is also the risk of where we are today. Because today we talk a lot about about security gdPI cyber risk, also the risk of being, you know, people can use the data in a bad way. I think I didn’t, I didn’t see that. I saw that nirvana. Well, now, I understand that you have to sort of make sure that things are also regulated in some way that that you will take care of the data, right? Because the data is they have great influence on people’s lives, how they are used,
Michael Waitze 22:51
how would you characterize the conversations you have with the corporate leadership and the company leadership with whom you interact at home? On their view, and their understanding of the technology risks, the cyber risks that you were just mentioning? Or do you have to do some kind of convincing with them as well, like, you know, just as actually a bigger threat than you think it is? Or most people just in line and they get it today?
Susanne Møllegaard 23:18
Yeah, I think now, we have had really bad stories about companies being attacked, data being misused in some ways. And also, eu is very aggressive on the agenda. And I see, for instance, sort of the third party, the chapter in the GDPR, is something that is spoiling the insurance a lot. And it’s sort of contradiction, airy, because at the same time, they are go to the cloud, with American vendors and so forth. And at the same time, there’s a big risk there that everybody is really afraid of, but also relying on EU to get some agreements with the American other countries. Leadership,
Michael Waitze 24:09
I was gonna say, What’s the big concern there, that if the data is stored outside of your own country, that you’ll lose access to that data due to some political or geopolitical reason and that the data should reside inside? Like, what’s the biggest concern here?
Susanne Møllegaard 24:24
No, it’s actually that NCAA, for instance, can get access that if we have a Danish citizen, and they have the possibility to get that data, and the insurance can say no, yeah,
Michael Waitze 24:38
okay. It’s a certain amount of stuff. But of course,
Susanne Møllegaard 24:40
also the cyber risk is also important, but specifically here it’s is the possibility that other states can get access to citizens data.
Michael Waitze 24:52
Got it, okay. And that’s important, right? Because you lose some of your sovereign control if you don’t have access over your own citizens data. So fair enough. again in your role, right? If there was one thing you could change about the interaction that you have with some, you know, just trying to get people to understand where the technology is going, what would that one thing be that you could change?
Susanne Møllegaard 25:14
I think that the trust in opening up, and that if you open up and if you could collaborate on the parts of your business that is not essential for getting a new customer or the competition, if you trust that, that will actually bring you to a better place. Because that opens up for a vast, vast possibility of new business opportunities. That’s actually the thing. Please relax, trust. We opening up will be bring you to a better place.
Michael Waitze 25:54
That is the perfect way to end Suzanne Bellegarde, a partner in the CEO of the process factory. That was really super, thank you so much for doing that today.
Susanne Møllegaard 26:03
And thank you, Michael. It has been a pleasure.
The post EP 194 – Susanne Møllegaard – Partner and CEO at Process Factory – Have Insurers Become InsurTechs? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gregor Arn, the CEO of Verso Finance about how Gregor’s career and his experience as a consultant led him to the founding of Verso Finance and Wallet Engine. Gregor discussed emerging trends in insurance and InsurTech, specifically the potential for parametric insurance with blockchain technology.
Check out the transcript of our conversation below:
Michael Waitze 0:04Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast today we are joined by Gregor Arn, did I get your last name correct? Did I pronounce it correctly? That is perfect. The CEO at Verso Finance. Gregor, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you doing today?
Gregor Arn 0:21I’m doing very well. Michael. Thank you. How about you?
Michael Waitze 0:23I am superduper. And just for me, where are you based? Right now?
Gregor Arn 0:27I’m in Indonesia right now, actually in Bali.
Michael Waitze 0:30
Oh, you’re killing me in Bali? Can I hang up?
Gregor Arn 0:33And it is raining or pouring down?
Michael Waitze 0:37I want to learn more about living in Bali. It just sounds so interesting. Okay, what do you think? This is an insurance and InsurTech show? Right? But what do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trends in insurance and InsurTech? In Asia, let’s say or in even in the world,
Gregor Arn 0:51I think generally. So maybe let’s take a little step back. Go ahead. Enjoy insurance is not cool, right? Like nobody wakes up in the morning to buy an insurance product.
Michael Waitze 1:01Wait a second, I’m gonna push back. And I’ll tell you why. Because a lot of people love to say this. But I don’t think so. Like I think if you’re an actuary in a way, the more I learn about this, the more an actuary feels, to me like a bond trader, right? Like some guy or gal that super cool that sits on Wall Street and is trading bonds, like it actually runs a book, they have a position, they take risk. They’re doing all this cool math. I think it’s super cool to be in insurance. And I think that we’re moving into an era. And I’m not arguing with you. But I think we’re moving into an era where people are like, wait a second, I didn’t even know how cool that was. But go ahead.
Gregor Arn 1:35I agree with you. It is cool to be in insurance. And that’s why we are in insurance. But it is not easy to sell insurance. Ultimately, you need to sell it to a consumer, right. And I think that’s where we see one of the biggest opportunities in insurance for the years to come, I wouldn’t necessarily say to make it cool and sexy again, but to make the whole purchase flow of an insurance product much more seamless and less complicated than it is today. So today, most insurance is sold by agents, via broker networks, etc. And everyone who has ever had a, you know, an insurance claim, you would know that it would take weeks, if not months until you have your money back for the damage that that you have incurred. And I think nowadays with the technologies we have, and specifically with opportunities coming from the blockchain space, there is a lot that we can automate in this entire process. And so what we envision, really, and that’s probably we get to this a little bit later, where the value of blockchain comes in reinvasion that, you know, a consumer buys a product as part of any other user journey. Let’s say you buy a flight or you buy vacation, or you go somewhere and you have an add on protection you purchase. And if data proofs and data is available that you encourage, you know, like additional cost or damage, a lot of loss or whatever it is bonds are in your wallet before you know it right. So you do not even have to make a claim. We call this parametric insurance. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 3:08we’ll get to that too. Parametric is something that’s super interesting. Before we do that, can we just back up a little bit and get some of your background? I just want to understand how you got to here and why you care. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t think anybody can be great at something unless they care about what they’re doing. And I want to understand why you care?
Gregor Arn 3:25Yeah, that’s a very good question. It was actually, my background naturally is not in insurance. So I’m not an insurance person. As a matter of fact, my background is in is in consulting. I did a lot of large scale system implementation projects for s&p 500 companies back in the days, but then I realized like, while I was traveling, that my real passion is in payments. And I was like actually back in 2013, like almost 10 years ago, and I started the company and social payments space back in the Philippines back then we were basically building wallets, embedded wallets. So that’s that’s where, where my passion lies. But what happened along the journey is we were approached by insurance companies and some older financial service companies as well. Because more and more insurance companies realize that in order to sell specifically micro insurance in emerging markets you need to connect to all wallets are an excellent launchpad for insurance companies to sell the products especially the ones that you buy at Oak on the go, and it’s called a disbursement headache.
Michael Waitze 4:32Why is this unique to this region? Other words, why did you notice this when you were traveling? Why do you notice this here? Why is the wallet so important for this process?
Gregor Arn 4:40Maybe let’s take a step back when I moved into this wallet space that was around 2013 20 1314. There was a time when you did not have that dominance of the super apps that you have today, like the Wii chats and the likes. That was early days. What you would notice at that time is that a large amount of young people in countries like Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, you name it. They’re spending hours on their phones every day, on apps, on social apps, on messengers to stay connected with friends and family, etc, etc. But at the same time, the payment infrastructure was extremely fragmented in this market. A lot of people did not even have bank accounts. You know, like less than 20% of people in the Philippines had even a credit slash debit card. So all that ecommerce standards that we have in our hand in Europe and North America, they are just not there in emerging markets. And that’s where I really got like, into this space, because I asked the simple question. I mean, if these people spent hours on to stay connected on the phones every day, why can’t they also use the same tools to send money to one another? Just $1? Yeah. And it is so extremely complicated, right? So essentially, wallets picked up that space digital wallets. At the beginning. Nobody really liked them. Because of wallets at that time, they were associated with like spending money. And it’s not something that was super exciting. And I think if much value add to people, it’s a lot of these societies were still cash based. Yeah. And you know, if you’re like, let’s say you’re an average person on the street in these emerging markets, it’s quite a hurdle to actually put your real cash into a digital form into an app that you don’t know. Right? Right. So there is like this big trust element that that you have to kind of overcome.
Michael Waitze 6:42Yes, I guess is the money still mine? Is it yours? Can I use it somewhere else? Can I take it back? Like, do we think and I hadn’t thought about this until we started this conversation. But do we think that the term wallet is maybe the wrong word for this? I don’t know.
Gregor Arn 6:57Yeah, it’s a good point. I think wallet is like you’ll ask 10 people and you’ll have like 10 different opinions I think so I some people some people look at wallets, that they’re just holding some loyalty cards. Others consider wallets like an ID element. And then others are considering wallets like stored value in with regulated fiat money, right? And now with crypto wallets, our self custody wallet, so depending on who you speak to, it may have a completely different definition. But I guess what’s important just to come back to the to your question on insurance, all of these wallets, they gradually played a more central role on people’s daily lives. Maybe you started off to use the wallet for purchases. Then the wallets enable you to receive money from your cousin or friend that lives abroad. And maybe nowadays, these wallets are actually a major income source for your small shop or your business. Who knows right? So a gradually became a central point in many people’s lives. And as such, you could almost see these wallets as the as the launch pad or as the springboard for additional financial products. Life insurance
Michael Waitze 8:11I want to give you I want to give you a personal example. And this was about two years ago, must be maybe even more, I can’t remember. I’m a tech guy. I’m a geek, we talked about it before we started recording, unapologetic about it. I’ve always loved technology. So it’s not like I’m afraid of new things at all. But I hadn’t been using digital and mobile banking. And I just signed up for it. I downloaded the app and did whatever. And then I was having lunch with a buddy of mine. And he was like, I’m just gonna pay with my credit card. I’m like, Ah, I don’t have any cash on me. Can I go get some cash? And I’ll give you the half for this bill. When we get the cash and he was like, just transfer it to me. Like, what does that mean? He goes, I’m gonna give you a QR code. Scan. You can give me the 1000 baht now. And I literally I remember just thinking like, Okay, if that’s possible, what’s not possible? What can I use this for? And you’re right. Once you have that epiphany once you feel like, okay, the money is mine. It’s there, I can use it, I can move it, I can receive it, I can send it I can do all this stuff with it. Now what else is possible that I can move in zeros and ones. And that was just an epiphany for me. Anyway, go ahead.
Gregor Arn 9:14Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I found in all those years now, that you know, it is not just a question of technology, or regulation. It is also a question of psychology. If you especially especially if it’s about money, right? If if you put your money in some box in a wallet or whatever you want to call it, and you don’t know what you can use it for. Or if you can take it back then it’s just a very difficult journey in terms of adoption. It’s kind of there. We’re kind of there. If you look at crypto today in so many ways. You know you have a lot of solutions now that are fairly simple, even for non crypto natives to purchase some crypto currency or crypto assets with a credit card, you can do that today, it’s fairly simple. But try to try to go the other way, right to convert it back to fiat money and take it back into your bank account. It is not straightforward. And if you are, specifically, if you’re new in this space, you first have to figure it out centralized exchanges, and then you have to, there is a lot of steps involved. And that’s not conducive to new users, right. So and we have to, we have seen this before, you know, when we, when we entered the wallet space back in the days, and that’s still true. Nowadays, in most cases, a lot of apps actually in the app stores, you know, they sell you those in app beams and points and coins and stars, and whatever it is. And Apple charges that nice 30% tax on it, of course. But even if you give them away within the app for the recipient, it is not possible, in most cases to convert that back into tangible value in the real world. It stays within this app ecosystem. And that is a major hurdle when it comes to all this more or less, or fiat money, or even crypto to some degree. Now.
Michael Waitze 11:19Yeah, I want to give a real world example of this idea that it’s all it’s about psychology as well, I love this idea of it’s a question of psychology. And here’s my example, I live in Thailand, I keep a certain amount of money in Thailand. But I also have an account in Japan and I don’t have access to it on a regular basis, just because I haven’t said what’s the right word, my digital access to it, right? I can get somebody who’s in Japan to send me money to here and every now and then I asked them to do that for me, just so I feel like I have that money. Does that make sense? Even though it’s mine, and it’s there, but you understand what I mean? I can’t see the numbers there. And I just want to have it so I can feel like okay, that’s my thing. And I think it’s the same for a lot of people online, right, is that if they don’t feel like they have tangible access to it, they don’t feel like it’s theirs. They feel like it’s gone.
Gregor Arn 12:01Correct. And you know, that’s a very interesting topic now that you touch. If you don’t see it, you don’t feel it. There is also a risk with that. Let’s assume that you are really living this digital life and all your money is digital, you access it through your wallets and banking apps. What if they’re offline? What if you have no connectivity? You cannot pay, right. And I think the big difference in the traditional world, if you had banks, you have branches, you can walk up to them, right? You don’t need electricity or anything. And I think this is going to be something that’s very interesting. Also, from an insurance perspective, and specifically parametric insurance. If your cloud infrastructure is down, or electricity is out, I mean, we’re a business that can have significant impact in terms of revenue sources, if you can’t sell anymore. And I think this is a complete new area for a lot of products in, you know, across the board payments, insurance products that actually address this new type of risks that people want protection from.
Michael Waitze 13:05Yeah, I mean, again, in the United States, not to put too fine a point on it, right? Let’s do it in reverse. In China, you have Singles Day, right, which is what November 11, billions of dollars trade on that day of goods and services. And United States Black Friday is the biggest shopping day is the day after Thanksgiving before Christmas. Massive I think it was like $10,000,000,000.09 point something billion dollars traded on that day. And if the internet’s down, or your connectivity is down to your cloud is down or your wallet is down, that can’t happen. And if that doesn’t happen, what happens to all that value that didn’t get created? Is there a parametric insurance solution to this where the service is down for a specified amount of time it’s verifiable based on third party analytics, and you receive a payout, not a full payout, right? If you can make the case you’ve lost a billion dollars on that day, no one’s gonna pay you a billion dollars parametrically. It’s not just going to show up in your wallet, but you may get 100 million bucks, you may get 10% of it right. And that 10% can keep you going until the rest of your indemnity part of this gets solved. Right. So this idea of parametric into para indemnity is a term I like to think about is where I think parametric becomes really powerful, as well as a bunch of different use cases. But that’s the one that I think about, particularly in the context of what you said business outages and sales and online stuff. Yeah,
Gregor Arn 14:21yes. And as a matter of fact, there are a few projects we’re working on that we are also involved with, are so we are talking to a partner actually to build a parametric product for cloud doubt. So it is something that is going to be it will take some time. But it’s definitely going to have a lot of application in the time to come. And, and that’s where the beauty lies with decentralized setups, you have data is available, data is available. What you need to do is you need to connect it to the insurance providers to the risk carriers, you need to connect it to, you know, ultimately to the Want to restore, verify? But everything is there today.
Michael Waitze 15:04So where does decentralization come into this part of the conversation from a
Gregor Arn 15:07data capture perspective? So the data source could be a public source, it could be different data points that, you know, let me take a simple example right? On top of my head, yep. Let’s say 1000. People run a little script on their computer. And they ping a certain website ran at random times every day. And if these 1000 programs report that a certain website is inaccessible, yep, during a given time, yep. Then you’ll have crowdsource data. So to say, it’s not one data source, it’s multiple data sources that say the same thing. It is on the blockchain, it is available, it’s verifiable. And you could use this to trigger a claim disbursement. That doesn’t have to be any human involved in the whole journey. And that’s where a lot of these Yeah, I guess, decentralized opportunities lie, you will still depending on the product, you know, like because we are in a regulated space, depending on the product, you do need humans involved, right. But not every product is a regulated product, in some cases, like a flight delay, protection and rights, an example is something that’s very, very simple and straightforward.
Michael Waitze 16:18So what kind of process do you need to put in place to make sure that those 1000 people that are pinging a particular website just based on your example, right, that they’re actually telling you the truth? Do you know what I mean? In other words, is there a distributed ledger technology, a proof of work or proof of stake is zero knowledge proof that’s possible to run mathematically against that to say that we trust these people and that as soon as they fall out of trust, they become not part of that decentralized data gathering that you’re doing? But they just get ostracized and don’t get used anymore? Does that make sense?
Gregor Arn 16:51Yeah, totally. And I guess that’s the that’s a big question that decentralization needs to address. Right? I mean, if you get like on any blockchain, if you get a majority of a node validators to work together against the rest, then yes, you do have issues. And but that’s actually what we tried to solve with decentralization, ultimately. But I think, to your point with data, I mean, today, where are the data feeds coming from? They’re coming from Oracle providers, you have some big ones out there. Yeah. I mean, how do you know,
Michael Waitze 17:22sorry, for people that don’t know, can you just define what an Oracle provider is? Yeah, it’s
Gregor Arn 17:25basically simply called it’s like a service that takes data that is available anywhere in the world, like flight data as an example. And that can be used by smart contracts or smart contracts, use that connect to that data and then trigger certain certain actions. But you don’t know where that data comes from? Yeah, you know, and that’s actually something that is, especially in the financial service world is more and more, I wouldn’t say an issue per se, but it’s demanded to have more degrees of identification on who provides and is responsible for the data source. And it goes as far as having data providers that are KYC. So if I were to tell you to use the example before, if you have, like 1000 people that you know, are responsible to submit the certain data on a daily basis, these people are identified these people similar to note, validated or operated, these people provide a certain amount of collateral and they get, you know, they would get, quote, slashed. If they provide false data, then yes, I think you would be in a very, very similar space that I mean, decentralized system is in today.
Michael Waitze 18:36Do you worry sometimes, look, we can make a case that this new technology hasn’t found any great use cases yet? I disagree with this. But you and I aren’t the target audience for that argument, right. But do you worry sometimes that the shenanigan can re for lack of a better term that’s been happening even recently in the crypto market, which is separate from what you’re discussing, yeah, somehow overshadows what happens here, and that it creates a longer runway for the success of this technology, because people are like, I’m not using anything associated with X, because X is a scam, even though the technology itself is awesome. But the people that are using it to do bad things. First of all, it’s not decentralized. If you look at the problems that are have been have, it’s not decentralized, super centralized, right. And it doesn’t even use the stuff that you’re talking about. But you worry sometimes that like, the recent stuff that’s been happening, gets in your way.
Gregor Arn 19:25Absolutely. It is that the recent events definitely set back the industry, probably four years. It is, again, we are when it’s about money you are whether you want it or not, you’re in a trust business. Definitely. You need to restore that trust and that confidence with consumers. And I think this is something that yeah, we have to address as an industry in general to move things for what it is. There is a lot of upside Yes, and a lot of products and a lot of benefits, ultimately from the technology. But I also think in a way it’s part of evolution almost right. It’s part Out of every innovation and process, it’s not perfect from the get go. And you need to have these type of let’s say battle tested events or or events that make a new technology battle tested or a system to to get to that point where it’s really the right one for for MAs.
Michael Waitze 20:16Do you think like if you go back historically and look at let’s just talk about the development of Wall Street, right? I’m really curious about your opinion on this, because of the way you framed the recent events. In the old days, right before there was a New York Stock Exchange, people would just like trade on the street on Wall Street. Like that’s why all that stuff happened on that people just stand outside. And I think that if you if you had the same type of real time, like webcam, focus on what was happening back then that would have taken 40 more years to get like Wall Street to be a thing because everyone would have just been like, wait a second, that’s a scam. This is a scam. This is terrible. That’s horrible. Where’s all that stuff gonna happen in the dark? I’m not saying it should happen in the dark. But we need to figure out a way to analyze stuff in real time and not dismiss it immediately if one thing goes wrong. Does that make sense? I’m simplifying a little bit. But you know what I mean, right now fully
Gregor Arn 21:01agree. I mean, the road is not, it’s not a straight road. It’s a bumpy road with a lot of challenges. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 21:06So talk to me about versa. Where does versal fit into this whole ecosystem?
Gregor Arn 21:09Yeah, so Verso is essentially helping traditional insurance companies to expand or to add capabilities to their value chain a using decentralized technologies and, and blockchain in particular, so I’ll give you a few examples. If you look at the insurance value chain, basically, you’ll have like, you know, cite from the research and all of that, but you have like the underwriting piece of products, you have the distribution piece through the agent, networks, brokers, etc, to get it to the consumer. And then you have like the whole claims management piece that’s coming after that. And in all of those three areas provides specific value that is connected to parametric products. So as an example, from an underwriting perspective, new risk models could be underwritten in a decentralized way by everyone. Today, underwriting insurance products is something that’s very interesting financially, but it’s restricted to big funds, like you and I will not be able to put our money into an underwriting pot sort of say, right, so that’s one area in the underwriting piece where you were decentralized, finance could play a big role. And just one thing to add here, just important, this, again, is a regulated activity. So versal is helping and enabling that, but we are also working with partners to make it happen.
Michael Waitze 22:30Right, the only point I was going to bring up is if you go back and look at the history of insurance, it started in the way you’re suggesting. So if you go back to the cafe, where like Lloyd’s of Lloyds started, there were just a bunch of people that and I’m simplifying again to make a point, right? But if you go back to this little cafe, where like, mariners would come in, and wealthy people were having tea, and they were like, wait a second, you want to go to the Far East, but that’s expensive. And what if your boat sinks and all this other stuff? Here’s 10 grand for me and five grand from her and six grand from them. And we’ll pull this together. And we’ll make sure you’re okay. Over time, of course, it needs to be regulated to protect people from bad things happening to them. But you’re right, there’s a massive amount of capital out there that could make this whole thing way less expensive to do if you could tap into it in a way that wasn’t problematic for individuals, right? Correct.
Gregor Arn 23:22Yes. So I think underwriting is one area that we are looking at, that’s very interesting, specifically for new type of risk products that are not yet you know, or maybe even from an experimental point of view, where traditional insurers may not, you know, underwrite the product yet so you could use the defy to basically create small underwriting pools and test the product, the new product out, etc. But then the next piece where we where we really also come in is the distribution piece connecting these insurance products and plugging them into the user journeys. So give you an example there, we are talking to a travel company, providing different like flights and hotels, etc. And the idea is that when you sell let’s say you purchase a weekend getaway with I don’t know, your wife, your girlfriend, your best partner. And it’s a really beautiful hotel you pick, you have something to celebrate, and you spend a lot of money on it, but then it ends up just raining the whole weekend. So you could actually spend a little bit more extra on the start of the checkout journey for that trick. You add weather protection, and then if weather data shows that it has rained over a certain amount of time or over a certain rainfall like in terms of you know, inches, you have your money in your wallet. Without the claim oh that type of upsell opportunities for protection is what we help with as well. Specifically when you when you purchase these trips with crypto sets. And then the last piece where we come in is in the claim disbursements. And that’s where a lot of opportunities lie. So we talked, we touched on that earlier. So automated claim trigger data sources, verify data sources, they just, you know, trigger the claim disbursement process, and you have funds in your wallet without needing to do anything. But the easy example, there is always flight delay insurance. I know it’s a product that everyone uses to explain things. But it’s, it’s actually, if you imagine your book and flight and you’ll miss your connection, as an example, there could be a lot of additional costs coming to you. Because of that, you may have to stay overnight or, or maybe it’s just a matter of a few hours, and you end up like having dinner at the airport. But today, even if you have flight delay insurance, traditional insurance, think about how you get the money. Like you won’t see that money, even if you get $50 around it, because you won’t see it for like two months, probably not even worth the effort to make that claim, right, because you have to read through the paperwork, fill out the forms. But here’s the parametric comes in. So your flight lands, and it is so much late that you will miss your connection, that can be old, that can all be predefined. Yeah. And that means before you actually set foot in the, you know, into the terminal of the airport, your funds are in your wallet, and you cannot spend it at the airport. So it’s like that is where where a lot of opportunities come in using this, you know, parametric opportunities in the decentralized way. What does
Michael Waitze 26:46it look like from your perspective, from versus perspective, trying to do this kind of what’s the right word, Value Chain Innovation, right picking pieces out of the value chain and saying we want to fix this, we want to fix that we want to connect this. But you can’t do it alone, right? You need to do it with incumbent insurers because that’s where all the money is. And that’s also where all the the excusing where all the policies are. What’s it like trying to convince them in little bits and pieces to be able to do this with a new company? Yeah,
Gregor Arn 27:15that’s a very good point. And you know, to be very honest, like when we moved into this space, we underestimated this, by far, really, it’s like a lot of traditional insurance companies they are, you know, this is a topic they are interested in, we have various conversations, but from conversation to action is taking a lot of time. And to say the least, and especially now in this market, and just quickly want to connect to your earlier point, in terms of you know, the current environment, we have a trust, a lot of insurance companies, they have big names. And as a matter of fact, not just insurance companies, any big corporate has a brand has a brand equity, right. And you don’t want to be associated with something that you don’t know will work, or wear or like, let’s put it another way around. You don’t want to be associated with something where you know that it’s like a lot of scammers in the space. Yeah. And all of a sudden your name gets pulled into something that you don’t want to be associated with. So it is normal and totally understandable that there is a certain hesitation to move forward with this new, untested products. And for us, it’s proven to be challenging, because we do want to build, we do want to move forward, we go to want to bring products out, but you can’t do it alone, as you said. And that’s the challenge of being a b2b play we did now, although, despite all that we now did actually, you know, put unity despite all these recent events, and this is just something super, super new that we want to focus on for the time being. So I think these persons is actually a much bigger topic than we thought. Yes, claim disbursements can help a lot for insurance companies in terms of reducing overhead and automating payments and, you know, etc. But the process if you really think what this means the process of moving funds into a destination wallet, irrespective of what the trigger is. That process is relevant specifically now for crypto in general. It’s what we call off ramp, you know, if you take your meta mask, or your self custody wallet, and you want to move those funds into your local Fiat wallet, let’s say or into bank, your bank account, it is not straightforward. You send it to an exchange first and you convert it to fiat then you have to trigger a withdrawal process and then it takes you know depending on your country four to five days until those funds in your local bank account. And remember you offer them to pay a bill or something. You don’t offer them for fun No. So you have to keep logging into your bank account to see until the funds arrive. And then once they arrive, then you make a payment. And all that journey is essentially something that we go through as part of claim disbursements. But if we can make this available for people to use as an off ramp channel, and essentially automate all the steps, and not going by exchanges from from a user journey perspective, that is there is a lot of a lot of opportunities there. And yet, it’s something we want to test now, it will definitely be interesting to see what happens. And it’s something that we can control. We don’t have that dependency from, you know, from threat fi in the same way that we have with partners that we have been talking to. I’m not saying we won’t talk to them anymore, that those conversations are still going on. But the reality is just the way the market is at this point that at all the unsold fake questions, the industry is not going to move quickly. And yeah, and we are here and we want to do something. So that’s that’s what we’re going to focus on
Michael Waitze 31:0720 something years ago, and you’ll see where this is connected. Some drugged up dude tried to light his shoes on fire on his way through on his way to boarding a plane. And in a way it’s forced all of us to like take off our belts and take off our shoes. I travel in flip flops now because it’s just 1000 times easier. And I laugh at people that like untie their wingtips when they’re trying to get on a plane. It’s like what were you thinking before you got on? But the point is that it changed the behavior of an entire industry. And I feel like one of the issues with banking in the finance industry is that to them, everybody looks like a money launderer. Right. So when you add another step, which is going from crypto into Fiat, now it really feels like oh, you wouldn’t be in crypto unless you were trying to launder money, which is patently not true. Right. So what do we need to do to get to a place where just that additional step? Well, first of all disintermediate other necessary steps, right? Like there’s this idea of like an on ramp and off ramp to this out of the O thing should be anathema to the whole process? Right? If you really want it to be seamless and frictionless. None of that should be necessary. It should just happen. Yeah. But before that, what needs to change to make it so that everybody doesn’t look like they’re laundering money?
Gregor Arn 32:20Well, I think if there’s a lot of there’s a lot of elements to that, I think we do need to have certain clarity in the regulatory area now. To which which will go a long way to, you know, to provide or reinstate that trust or confidence into this crypto space in general. But he doesn’t need, he doesn’t need a certain degree of regulation. We have seen this now with recent events, but I think it’s, you can even take it a step further. And we’ve said this before as well. It is also about consumer protection in general. So that means, you know, like, yes, code is law. And, you know, there is like there’s all these apps that you can try out, etc. But there is absolutely no protection. I mean, if I’m in traditional finance, if I’m selling you something, you have certain consumer protection, there’s consumer rights, there is like a lot of things that, that help people to not, you know, to not get scammed, and also in terms of education to understand what you’re actually buying. But in crypto, that is not the case, you can purchase a service or a product. And oftentimes there are no terms. And if it doesn’t work, you know, like, okay, too bad. Our code was, you know, not mature enough for the product. Sorry, not our problem. So I think there’s a lot of things that need to happen in the space that is not just regulation to prevent the big events that we had in the recent months, but also more generally to protect everyday consumers from services and products they consume into space. Do you
Michael Waitze 34:10think that like some of the big insurers are kind of splitting themselves into two big camps right into really bifurcated camps, where one is just like, we’re gonna try to keep doing stuff that way. We’ve been doing it because it works and it’s profitable and stuff like that. And then other incumbents who think, you know what, we’re gonna make a technology bet on this. And that those are the companies that are easier for versatile work with.
Gregor Arn 34:31Yes, that’s a very clean, yes. I mean, we are now you know, we are moving much faster with small companies that are just actually focusing on this specific niche. Right. So we are like, what is the example I mentioned earlier? With the electricity or cloud downtime, protection? That’s something that we are actively pursuing right now. And we are like, it’s we are three companies that are collaborating on this same opportunity, and they’re all super small. And yes, it does need that, that, I guess. You cannot be like big and you know, flexible at the same time. It’s just I mean, maybe you can to a certain degree, but never as fast as a small team can be,
Michael Waitze 35:19which is harder. And it’s all your stuff
Gregor Arn 35:20API first. Yes, we are purely b2b. So we are just do you
Michael Waitze 35:24think we wake up? Because look, small companies are definitely going to be more nimble than bigger companies just by definition. But at some point, if they’re way more nimble and more innovative, right, they can actually get bigger because the small insurance companies access to capacity. Right? If they’re building good products, if their loss ratios are in line and all this other stuff, there’s no reason why they can’t grow, and then why they can’t grow exponentially? And do you feel like, there’s a way that this type of technology and this type of innovation can help them grow to a point where they then become the leaders? And then we wake up in 10 years? And what we consider to be incompetent shores? Are companies we hadn’t heard of today?
Gregor Arn 36:01Well, I don’t have to Crystal Sure.
Michael Waitze 36:03I don’t either. But you know what I mean, right?
Gregor Arn 36:05I think that’s not going to play out that way, I believe it’s going to the two worlds are coming together, threat fi and device coming together slowly. But surely, what I see happening is that, like companies like us, and others in this space, we find our way where we work with traditional insurance companies, they have to there is definitely a win win in this for everyone. Right? I mean, we can bring capabilities to track five that they do not have, right. But on the other hand, that phi has, like the regulatory experience trekfest licensed for for, like, you know, and they have existing relationships as well. So it’s, it’s something that is, in my view, a true case for Win win. But we still have to do a little bit more work, in defy and crypto to really get to a product that does add value to threat fi in their existing business case, their business model.
Michael Waitze 37:02Do you think that some of this testing and maybe already doing this, right, but what’s the implication of having a sandbox in a particular country or in a particular region that says, You know what, we’re gonna let you test this thing at scale with really big companies. And it’s kind of regulatory approved, but again, because it sits in the sandbox, the tests are smaller, but still valid? How does that work for you guys?
Gregor Arn 37:20We haven’t gotten to that point just yet. But yes, it’s definitely something that would be super exciting. I mean, we did see large scale products in the parametric space, or we do see them out. But they are literally in two categories. All the large scale products you have today are either stuff like that would be for government back, let’s say for for natural disasters, these type of parametric products are out there. But you don’t have much on the small, commercial side or even personal side, very, very little. And to test that in a restricted environment is something that will be super exciting, even if it’s just for a particular market or user group. But yes, you’re definitely right. That’s where also the collaboration comes in with threat five, yeah. And something that we have been talking, as I said earlier, as well, but it’s just taking time. And unfortunately, it’s not in our hands how to define the priority on the agenda item for the threat by insurers.
Michael Waitze 38:28Do you feel like one of the things that you’ve learned by building your own company is that and I’m talking my own position, in a way, right, but I’m just curious, from your perspective, do you feel like surviving is half the battle? You know what I mean? That if you can just kind of Outlast everybody, obviously, out innovating people is super important too. But if you can figure out a way to just Outlast people that overtime, you know, the markets moving in your direction, but you want to be there when it gets there, if that makes sense. Right? So timing is actually super important to know.
Gregor Arn 38:55Absolutely. Like, yeah, absolutely. That that was also the case when I when I started with, you know, moving into the payments and wallet space back in the day. So we wanted to build it was literally to work even now is kind of, for us as a startup as a nimble startup. There’s two options, either you can wait until the time is right. And you, as you say, you go through it. And you’ll be you’re persistent. Or you also are very open for the opportunities that present itself. Yeah, I mean, now we could either we could just wait until insurance is more receptive, again for crypto in general. Or we could see if we can tap this opportunity from your friend space. And I think those are the choices that you have. And I have at least from my experience, I can say the best things happened unexpected. And, you know, you start off with a venture with an idea and what you end up building at the end what makes it in the market is rarely the exact same that you started off with. Yeah, I guess this is just part of the journey.
Michael Waitze 40:06Does that surprise you in the building? You know what I mean? Because it surprised me this idea that, like, I have a concept, I want to build that concept. People are going to enjoy this concept, you start building it, you go out to try to sell or to convince people do the right thing. And they’re like, stuff that would be better if it were just a little greener kind of thing. And you’re blue. You know what I mean? Like any kind of thing you’re like, Hmm, I don’t think so. My favorite color is purple. Like it’s just gonna be purple. And they’re like, Okay, and then you start changing over time, and you end up with this purple thing that you never decided you were going to build. And then everybody wants it to me.
Gregor Arn 40:37Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a progress, right? Yeah. I mean, everything is the progress the progress.
Michael Waitze 40:44Okay. I’m gonna let you go Gregor Arn the CEO and Verso Finance. Thank you so much for doing this today.
Gregor Arn 40:49As a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Mike.
The post EP 193 – Gregor Arn – CEO at Verso Finance – It Is Not Just a Question of Technology appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Close to the end of 2022, we see more money pouring into InsurTech in APAC. Australian Cover Genius raises $70M in Series D funding, Hong Kong InsurTech platform CoverGo received a strategic investment from Middle Eastern venture capital fund Noria Capital and Singapore InsurTech Igloo increases its Series B to $46M. Many are predicting a colder investment climate so are those the last major InsurTech investments?
Beyond new funding rounds we have lots of news coming out of Singapore. DocDoc announced their partnership with Aon and more insurers in Asia to offer data-enabled patient empowerment solutions to members of employer health plans. We just had founder and CEO Cole on the show. Listen to the episode here.
Singapore Insurer Income announced their expansion beyond Southeast Asia to Japan. Only last month we reported on their expansion into Thailand. ReMark, the digital solutions provider of global reinsurer, SCOR, is the first international partner to adopt Income’s micro-insurance franchise model.
Aggregator MoneySmart launches own insurance brand, Bubblegum in Singapore. Bubblegum seems to be operating under MoneySmart’s license and offers branded insurance products underwritten by a range of different insurers.
With so much InsurTech activity, the Singapore authorities launch their own initiative. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG) announced that individuals will now be able to digitally access and aggregate information on their life, accident and health insurance policies held across different participating insurers.
On December 8th you can witness the most innovative insurers and InsurTechs globally pitch live at The World’s Digital Insurance Awards 2022 – Global Finals. Watch the live pitches and vote for the winners. You can sign up here.
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 60 – Hugh Terry, Theresa Blissing and Simon Phipps – Raising a Round appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rajiv Malhan, the Head of Strategic Projects and Business Transformation at Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance, about customer expectations today and how insurers can pleasantly surprise customers by predicting their wants and needs. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze 0:04 Hi, this is Michael Waitze and […]
The post EP 192 – Rajiv Malhan – Head of Strategic Projects & Business Transformation at Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance – If You Are Not Able to Touch Base With Your Customer Then You Are Going Out appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast caught up with Cole Sirucek, a co-founder and the CEO of DocDoc, to talk about what is new with DocDoc, what entrepreneurship really means and why product innovation is so hard. You can find our previous conversations with the DocDoc team here. Michael Waitze 0:00 Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is […]
The post EP 191 – Cole Sirucek – CEO of DocDoc – Inside the Markets, There Is a Wicked Amount of Arbitrage appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another busy month and we see more investments pouring into the region. Warburg Pincus is investing $350m to set up a Southeast Asian digital general insurance platform called Oona Insurance. Similar to other players Oona starts with a range of existing insurance assets including Indonesia’s PT Asuransi Bina Dana Arta Tbk and Philippines’ Mapfre Insular […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 59 – Hugh Terry, Theresa Blissing and Simon Phipps – In a Digital World, Strategy Beats Execution appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Jan Mandrup Olesen, the Head of Delivery at Seven Peaks Software. Jan has a long history of digital transformation in and out of the insurance industry. We covered a lof of topics, including how important the proper mindset is and how his insurance industry colleagues were hungry for technological […]
The post EP 190 – Jan Mandrup Olesen – Head of Delivery – Seven Peaks Software – You Need to Be Change-Ready appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with James Benham, the co-founder and CEO of JBKnowledge and the host of the InsurTech Geek Podcast about the crucial components of innovation, the lessons learned from being an entrepreneur and investor and the biggest opportunities in the insurance industry. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze 0:05Hi, […]
The post EP 189 – James Benham – CEO and Co-founder of JBKnowledge – It’s Like Endless Optimism appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Sam White, the CEO of Stella Insurance and the Chair of Freedom Services Group, about what products we are missing in the insurance industry and how to design new products with women in mind. Michael Waitze 0:03Let’s keep that spirit going. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back […]
The post EP 188 – Sam White – CEO of Stella Insurance – Every Business Sits in an Emotion appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Michelle Chan, a co-founder and managing partner at The Phygital and the FinTech Association of Hong Kong co-chair of InsurTech, about how to connect the physical world and the digital world. Want to learn more about InsurTech in Hong Kong? Listen to our episode with Lapman Lee, aProfessor […]
The post EP 187 – Michelle Chan – co-Founder and Managing Partner at The Phygital – Digital Methods Aren’t Magic appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
It’s the end of the month again and the AIP News Roundup team has come together to discuss the latest news in digital insurance and InsurTech in Asia. In India, Liberty General Insurance introduces a new AI claims platform. Over the past few months, we have seen an increase in value chain innovation projects, something […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 58 – Hugh Terry, Theresa Blissing and Simon Phipps – When it Comes to Digital, There Are No Geographic Boundaries appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Hassan Karim, Head of Strategy – APAC at Zurich Insurance to talk about the potential of strategic partnerships in APAC. The last time we spoke, Hassan was the CEO of Zurich’s P&C business in Indonesia. Listen to the episode here. Here is the transcript of our recent […]
The post EP 186 – Hassan Karim – Head of Strategy, APAC at Zurich Insurance – When You Stop Innovating, You Die appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Moniruzzaman Khan, the Head of Digital Business and Senior Executive Vice President at Green Delta Insurance, about the emerging insurance market in Bangladesh and the opportunities to build digital ecosystems to reach more people and expand the addressable insurance market. If you want to learn more about the insurance […]
The post EP 185 – Moniruzzaman Khan – SEVP & Head of Digital Business at Green Delta Insurance – We Try to Find a Different Way appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Sabir Samad, the Head of Sales and Partnerships at Symbo, about the difference of working for a startup compared to a corporate and why tier two and tier three cities in India are on the rise when it comes to embedded insurance. Listen to our other episodes with Symbo […]
The post Episode 184 – Sabir Samad – Affinity Partnerships and Alliances at Symbo – You Have to Believe in the Outcome appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We are wrapping up August with news from FWD. The group introduces a new health app called omne. Omne is an ecosystem of services in partnership with Dacadoo, Nuralogix, STASH NextGen, Shadow Factory, Koa Health and Imunis. Another healthtech solution making news this month is Ubie. The Japanese healthcare startup has raised $26.2 million in […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 57 – Hugh Terry and Simon Phipps – Continue to Walk the Talk On Insurance Innovation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Harprem Doowa, a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Eazy Digital. We spoke about his new venture Eazy Digital and had an honest conversation what it takes to build a successful startup. Listen to our other episodes with Prem here. Find the transcript of our […]
The post EP 183 – Harprem Doowa – Founder and CEO of Eazy Digital – I Know How to Sell appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Varun Mittal, the Chief Growth Officer at SingLife with Aviva, about the power of ecosystems and and what is needed to improve the ecosystem further in Singapore. Listen to our previouse episode with Walter De Oude here. Find the transcript of our conversation with Varun below. Michael Waitze 0:18Hi, […]
The post EP 182 – Varun Mittal – Chief Growth Officer, SingLife with Aviva – Rapidly Switching Context Between Optimism and Realism appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Andrew Schwabe, the founder of ForMotiv, about his decision to build an US focused InsurTech in Vietnam and how data analytics can help insurer provide better customer service. Michael Waitze 0:01Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are […]
The post EP 181 – Andrew Schwabe – Founder, Chairman at ForMotiv – People Are Starting to Wake Up and Say “Service Matters” appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with John Brisco, the CEO of Coherent. The last time we had John on the show was in December 2020, you can find the episode here, and a lot has changed since then. We talked about Coherent’s new product, Spark, and the company’s expansion globally. Find the transcript […]
The post EP 180 – John Brisco – CEO of Coherent – It Takes a Lot of Small Changes to Get Things Done appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mohandeep Singh, a co-founder and the CEO of Agiliux, about the evolution of InsurTech and why InsurTechs might disappear in the next 10 years. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze 0:05 Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we […]
The post EP 179 – Mohandeep Singh – co-Founder and CEO of Agiliux Cloud Insurance – In the Next Ten Years, the InsurTechs Will Die appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Our July news roundup starts with exciting news from SingLife With Aviva. The insurer announced the launch of a cross-industry collaboration, A Better Odyssey, which will help promising start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore to digitalise and scale their operations. This reminded us a little of ZA Tech’s Asia Fintech Center (AFC), […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 56 – Theresa Blissing and Hugh Terry – Why Is the Metaverse Always in Purple? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Thomas Dijohn, SVP APAC at Dacadoo and Jeremy Rolleston, Head of Global Partnerships for Life and Health at Swiss Re, about how to make partnerships between InsurTechs and incumbents work and how to break down insurance and make it more accessible. Listen to our other podcast with Thomas Dijohn […]
The post EP 178 – Thomas Dijohn and Jeremy Rolleston – dacadoo and Swiss Re – Looking at Insurance in a Snackable Way appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Lapman Lee, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Chulalongkorn University and a board member of the Hong Kong FinTech Association. We talked about the FinTech and InsurTech ecosystem in Asia and their global connections and how FinTech and InsurTech can become greener and support the UN Sustainability […]
The post EP 177 – Lapman Lee – Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University – Building Trust With Data and Technology appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Chris Borrett, the Chief “Everything” Officer at flip, about how flip is targeting younger demographics with new insurance products and how to build a fun but trusted brand. Michael Waitze 0:04 Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. You can’t […]
The post EP 176 – Chris Borrett – Chief Officer at Flip Insurance – We Want Things to Be Super Simple appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Cherie Wang, the co-founder of Planner Bee, about the changes we are seeing in distribution in general and why the insurance industry has been lagging behind this new movement. Listen to our other epside with Cherie here. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael Waitze 0:03Hi, this is […]
The post EP 175 – Cherie Wang – co-Founder Planner Bee – Doing Sales Digitally Is So Different appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
June has been a busy month with ITC Asia in Singapore and the TDI APAC Awards. Congratulations to the winners: AIA and Bolttech. In other news, digital asset platform Amber Group has secured insurance coverage for its wallet infrastructure from Arch Syndicate 2012 at Lloyd’s and Hong Kong InsurTech firm OneDegree backed by Munich Re. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 55 – Theresa Blissing, Simon Phipps and Hugh Terry – It Gives Us License to Speculate a Bit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Happy (belated) Birthday AIP! Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze have started the Asia InsurTech Podcast over three years ago and a lot has happened since then. Theresa and Michael discuss what has changed over the past three years, how InsurTech in Asia has grown up and became an inspiration for markets in the West and […]
The post 174 – Michael Waitze and Theresa Blissing – Has It Been Three Years Already? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Irene Tsang, the founder and CEO at LIFTwomen, about why we see fewer female founders, what challenges women experience when trying to raise funds and how LIFTwomen is supporting female entrepreneurs. Michael Waitze 0:32Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast today we are […]
The post EP 173 – Irene Tsang – Founder & CEO of LIFTwomen Group – We Have to Change the Narrative for Women appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast sopke with Luiza Gusmao, the VP Customer at Cover Genius, about the excitment of working for an InsurTech startup and the power of embedded insurance. Listen to our other epsiodes with the team at Cover Genius here. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael Waitze 0:31Hi, this is Michael Waitze […]
The post EP 172 – Luiza Gusmao – VP Customer at Cover Genius – We Create Magic appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz, a co-founder and the CTO of Nexar, about the limitations of self-driving cars and the power of big data and AI to help people drive safer and insurers to settle claims faster and more efficiently. Bruno and his co-founder Eran Shir founded Nexar with the idea to […]
The post EP 171 – Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz – co-Founder & CTO at Nexar – Humans Are Teaching Computers How to Drive appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Wrapping up the month of May with more news from bolttech. The InsurTech partners with Viettel Telecom in Vietnam to launch their insurance exchange on Viettel’s mobile app. Viettel customers will be able to buy car, motorbike, health, travel and home insurance via the MyViettel mobile app. Meanwhile in Hong Kong there are rumors that […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 54 – Theresa Blissing, Simon Phipps and Hugh Terry – Partnering As Much As You Can to Make Things Happen appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with George Kesselman, the Chief Commercial Officer for Southeast Asia at ZA Tech and the founder of the InsurTech Asia Association, about what it means to work in a startup, what we can all learn from InsurTech in China and what to expect from ICT Asia June 7-9. Join ITC […]
The post EP 170 – George Kesselman – Chief Commercial Officer, SEA at ZA Tech – Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Speed appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Matthias de Ferrieres, the CEO at Wellnex, about the current InsurTech hype and what academic research says about it. Matthias holds a PhD in Entrepreneurial economics and published a disertation with the title: “The Rise of the Digital Economy: Estimating the Impact of a New Generation of Entrepreneurs as […]
The post EP 169 – Matthias de Ferrieres – CEO at Wellnex – People Don’t Care About the Plan, They Care About the Advisor appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In partnership with TDI Connect and ITC Asia we recorded a live podcast with Cherie Wang, a co-founder and CEO of Planner Bee, Eddy Wong, a co-founder and CEO of VSure and Lapman Lee, a Professor of Practice (ESG and FinTech) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a Board Member of the FinTech Association […]
The post EP 168 – InsureTech Connect Asia – Cherie Wang, Eddy Wong and Lapman Lee – What’s Next in InsurTech in Asia? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In partnership with InsureTech Connect (ITC) Asia, we recorded a podcast panel with Gordon Tay, the Co-founder of Surer, Matthias De Ferrieres the founder and CEO of Wellnex, and Nicolas Faquet, the founder and CEO of Roojai. 2021 has been a record year for InsurTech, however, we have seen very little evidence of profitability yet. […]
The post EP 167 – InsurTech Sustainability – Gordon Tay, Matthias de Ferrieres, and Nicolas Faquet – How Do I Create Long-Term Value? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Tetiana George, a founder and the CEO of Curium, about the potential for InsurTech enablers, why nobody has solved the biggest challenges in claims management yet and how Curium is planning to make a difference. Michael Waitze 0:04Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech […]
The post EP 166 – Tetiana George – Founder and CEO of Curium – Death of the Disruptors appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
April has been a busy month in InsurTech in Asia and we have seen lots of development in the digital asset and cyber space. Hong Kong virtual insurer OneDegree announced a multi-year partnership with Munich Re to launch digital asset insurance under the brand name OneInfinity. We had Alex Leung, the co-founder of OneDegree on […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 53 – Theresa Blissing and Simon Phipps – The Tokenization of Pretty Much Everything appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast very much enjoyed speaking with Alex Taylor, the Global Head of Emerging Technology, QBE Ventures at QBE Insurance. We had a great conversation about how the increasing power of compute, universal access to data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning lead to knowledge-based approaches to risk and increased product personalization. Michael Waitze […]
The post EP 165 – Alex Taylor – QBE Ventures at QBE Insurance – What Should We Be Doing and How Could We Be Doing It? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gordon, a co-founder of Surer, about how he and his co-founders are solving some of the pain points the insurance industry is facing and are making the sales process of traditional channels more efficient and products more meaningful. Find the AI transcript of our conversation below. Michael Waitze 0:06Hi, […]
The post EP 164 – Gordon Tay – Surer – How Does Technology Change the Way the Insurance Industry Perceives What It Can Do? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Sorabh Bhandari, a co-founder of Riskcovry, about how insurance can be integrated in other business models and how contextual insurance is changing the game. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael Waitze 0:00Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. We are joined […]
The post EP 163 – Sorabh Bhandari – Founder of Riskcovry – Going Towards the Vertex appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Varun Dua, the founder and the CEO of Acko, about what sets Acko apart from other InsurTech players in India and how the insurer is changing the game for health insurance. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze 0:00Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. […]
The post EP 162 – Varun Dua – Founder and CEO at Acko – Before Malls Could Happen, There Was eCommerce appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Hugh was still in the UK after attending InsurTech Insights’ conference in London and gave the lay of the land that included a huge focus on embedded insurance. While embedded insurance is not a new idea, technology is making it a lot easier to implement in a way that is even more contextual and relevant. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 52 – Hugh Terry and Simon Phipps – There Is a Whole New Landscape Emerging appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Christina Cai, a co-founder and the COO of Lydia AI, about applying AI to healthcare data and the challenges of founding a startup. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze 0:00Okay, the recorders on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. […]
The post EP 161 – Christina Cai – co-Founder and COO at LydiaAI – How Do We Link Health and Wealth? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast had a great conversation with Sanchit Malik, the co-Founder and CEO of Pazcare. We discussed approaching the Insurance and InsurTech markets from a B2B perspective and how Sanchit and the Pazcare team look at solving problems and creating efficiencies using technology. Please see the transcript of the conversation below. Michael Waitze […]
The post EP 160 – Sanchit Malik – co-Founder and CEO of Pazcare – Every Problem Requires a Founder Market Fit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was speaking with Vivek Mannige, the founder and CEO of AccelTree Software, about how to increase insurance penetration in rural India, how to build an innovation culture and about life long learning. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze 0:00Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And […]
The post EP 159 – Vivek Mannige – CEO at AccelTree Software – The Only Answer Is, “Talk to Them” appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast in conjunction with The Digital Insurer recorded a panel with Amarit Franssen, a co-founder of Appman, Christopher Dennis, an advisor at Luma and Remy Dorflinger, a managing director at Coherent to talk about the state of digital transformation in Thailand. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation […]
The post EP 158 – Amarit Franssen, Christopher Dennis, and Remy Dorflinger – The State of Digital Transformation in Thailand appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
February has been a super busy month for InsurTech in Asia. AIA is again in the news. The insurer has announced their “One Billion” initiative planning to engage a billion people to live Healthier, Longer, Better Lives by 2030. Adding to promoting a healthy lifestyle, AIA has also announced its new joint venture with South […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 51 – Theresa Blissing, Hugh Terry and Simon Phipps – It Did Require That Long-Term Commitment appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In January 2022, the Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Bob Wouters who is in charge of FWD general insurance in Thailand and bolttech InsurTech Exchange. bolttech has entered the market in Thailand with its device protection cover, transformed former aggregator Frank.co.th into the bolttech Insurance Exchange and partnered with telco provider DTAC. Listen […]
The post EP 157 – Bob Wouters – FWD and bolttech- It’s Digital With a Human Touch appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Vipul Sud, the head of insurance at Azentio Software, about the importance of identifying the underlying business objective and how Azentio is consolidating the fragmented InsurTech platform market globally. The company has acquired essential tech capabilities to be one of the leading software providers in the financial services industry […]
The post EP 156 – Vipul Sud – Head of Insurance – Azentio Software – We Want Those Different Colors To Change into Mercury appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Simon O’Dell, the managing director at InsurTech Gateway Australia, about the state of InsurTech in Australia and how the industry has accelerated over the past years. Here is the transcript of our conversation: Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is […]
The post EP 155 – Simon O’Dell – InsurTech Gateway Australia – Let’s Hold Hands and Partner, Please appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Sanjib Jha, the CEO and Executive Director of Coverfox, about the startup ecosystem in India and how Coverfox has pivoted during Covid and came out the other end stronger than ever. Listen to our podcasts with PolicyBazaar here. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. […]
The post EP 154 – Sanjib Jha – CEO & Executive Director of Coverfox – Every Crisis Is an Opportunity appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Shanai Ghosh, the CEO and Executive Director at Edelweiss General Insurance, about how insurance can become easier, friendlier and more transparent and how digital has helped the company thrive during the pandemic. FInd the transcript of our conversation here: Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and […]
The post EP 153 – Shanai Ghosh – CEO Edelweiss General Insurance – The FMCG of Financial Services appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Happy New Year everyone! We are looking forward to another exciting year in InsurTech in Asia! Kicking off the year with a major acquisition story. UOB is looking to acquire Citibank’s operations in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam by 2024. In Hong Kong, eCommerce startup Bloom has announced a collaboration with AIA. This continues AIA’s […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 50 – Theresa Blissing, Hugh Terry and Simon Phipps – Falling IPOs appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast caughtup with Skye Theodorou and Anish Sinha, the co-founders of UpCover to talk about how UpCover has pivoted and redefined their business model. Listen to the episode and hear them discuss the lessons they learned starting an InsurTech from scratch and managing through adversity. Listen to our first episode with Skye […]
The post EP 152 – Skye Theodorou and Anish Sinha – UpCover – There’s Something Here appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Andy Ann, the co-founder of YAS Digital, about embedded, small ticket micro-insurance and how the pandemic has helped accelerate digital transformation of the insurance industry. Listen to our first episode with Andy Ann in November 2020 here. Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia […]
The post EP 151 – Andy Ann – CEO and co-Founder of YAS Digital – It Feels Like a Gift appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Hamilton Angluben, the founder and CEO at Kwik Insure about how digital transformation of insurance has accelerated in the Philippines. Michael WaitzeOkay. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought […]
The post EP 150 – Hamilton Angluben – Founder and CEO at Kwik Insure – You Have to Be Omnipresent appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia IsnurTech Podcast spoke with Alex Leung, a co-founder of OneDegree, about their journey from starting a virtual insurer in Hong Kong selling pet insurance to cybersecurity and NFTs. Here is the transcript of our conversation: Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only […]
The post EP 149 – Alex Leung – OneDegree – In Hindsight, Everything Is Planned appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We end the year with a trend that we have been following throughout 2021 – embedded insurance. A pioneer in this space, Cover Genius, has just announced a new partnership with Agoda to offer embedded travel protection in Southeast Asia. We have talked about this only recently with Cover Genius’ MD for Southeast Asia, Arijit […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 49 – Theresa Blissing, Hugh Terry, and Simon Phipps – The BattleGrounds May Change a Bit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Jess Tham, the Executive Director and Head of claims of KSK in Thailand, about how incumbent insurer KSK is working together with InsurTech startup Sunday. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. […]
The post EP 148 – Jess Tham – KSK Insurance – We Should Embrace Change and Not Fear The Inevitable appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
2021 has been another record year in InsurTech. According to Willis Towers Watson’s Quarterly InsurTech Briefing – October 2021, InsurTech investments in 2021 could reach the entirety of 2018 and 2019 added together. Willis Towers Watson’s Quarterly InsurTech Briefing- October 2021 But InsurTech is no longer just about startups. The Asia InsurTech Podcast has closely […]
The post Year End 2021 Special appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Suhail Ghai, the Chief Digital and Information Officer at Max Life Insurance, about what insurance can learn from consumer goods companies and how technology has changed the inner works of an insurer. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to […]
The post EP 147 – Suhail Ghai – Chief Digital & Information Officer – Maxlife Insurance – The Customer Wants a Consumer-Grade Experience appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Kevin Angelini, the head of strategy and M&A for Asia Pacific at Zurich Insurance about the Zurich Innovation Championship and how startups can work with insurance incumbents. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to […]
The post EP 146 – Kevin Angelini – Head of Strategy & M&A, Asia Pacific – Zurich Insurance – Customers Want Processes to Be Easy and Seamless appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rob Schimek, the Group CEO at bolttech about the power of embedded insurance and how bolttech is aiming to be the rails that the insurance industry builds itself on. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome […]
The post EP 145 – Rob Schimek – Group CEO bolttech – Enable the Customer to Get a Yes appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another busy month in InsurTech in Asia. Swiss Re and Chinese tech giant Baidu are teaming up to help advance autonomous driving. Autonomous vehicles will disrupt the motor insurance market and early partnerships might be the way to go. In Hong Kong, the Insurance Authority (IA) is exploring possibilities for an Open API Framework to […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 48 – Theresa Blissing and Hugh Terry – There’s a Bit of a Broader Dynamic Here appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Evan Tanotogono, a co-founder and the CEO of Rey, about his vision to revolutionize healthcare in Indonesia and the reason why seasoned insurance executives are leaving the corporate world to start their own InsurTech. Michael Waitze Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to […]
The post EP 144 – Evan Tanotogono – CEO and co-Founder at Rey – A New Level of Awareness appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Amerson Lin, a co-founder, and the CEO of Giga Cover, about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gig economy and how Giga Cover has pivoted since we last spoke with Amerson in August 2019. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, […]
The post EP 143 – Amerson Lin – GigaCover – The Macro Trends Still Held in Place appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Andrew Wong, the founder of Koba Insurance, about the insurance market in Australia and the potential of pay-per-mile usage-based insurance. Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that […]
The post EP 142 – Andrew Wong – Koba Insurance – We Jumped in the Big Kids’ Game appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Arijit Chakraborty, managing director for APAC at Cover Genius, about embedded insurance and the need for personalization. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Michael Waitze Okay, that’s on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only show in Asia […]
The post EP 141 – Arijit Chakraborty – Managing Director, APAC at CoverGenius – Seamless, Curated, Event-based individual Needs appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Prannay Batra, Director and Head of General Insurance at PhonePe about affinity partnerships and the massive opportunities in the Indian insurance market. Michael Waitze Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives […]
The post EP 140 – Prannay Batra – Director, Head of General Insurance at PhonePe – We’ve Barely Scratched the Surface appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
October ends with some major partnership news! Check out our new episode for more details and to find out which two new guests decided to drop by the AIP News Roundup where we discuss how AIP is getting even better and why blockchain is not dead! This month we saw more partnerships and more investment […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 47 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – That Was Some Pretty Big News appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Aniruddha Sen, a co founder at Kenko Health about health insurance penetration in India and how Kenko Health is planning to close the gap in the market. Michael Waitze Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia, […]
The post EP 139 – Aniruddha Sen – Kenko Health co-Founder – There Is Almost a $350BN Gap Waiting to Get Filled appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rajive Keshup, a director at Cathay Innovation and Nicolas du Cray, a partner at Cathay Innovation, about ecosystems, embedded insurance and the role of InsurTechs when it comes to accelerating financial inclusion in Southeast Asia. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. Hi, this is […]
The post EP 138 – Nicolas du Cray and Rajive Keshup – Cathay Innovation – The Ecosystem Is Now Too Big to Ignore appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mario Berta, the Country Managing Director for Igloo in the Philippines about micro insurance in emerging markets and the potential for new insurance solutions in the Philippines. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze Okay, we are on Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to […]
The post EP 137 – Mario Berta – Country Managing Director, Philippines – Igloo – Must Be My Italian Input appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Roopa Malhotra, the head of digital APAC at Chubb Insurance, about embedded insurance and how to build an innovation culture that embraces digital. Make sure to join Roopa’s keynote panel at the much-anticipated FinTech Connect Asia (5-7 October, SGT): ‘Digital led business models in Insurance – How are start-ups […]
The post EP 136 – Roopa Malhotra – Head of Digital, APAC at Chubb – Digital Is Part of Everyone appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another month with more record-breaking investments in InsurTech. While most economies in Asia are still suffering from the COVID pandemic, investment in InsurTechs is not slowing down. A category that is attracting the most investment is health care. Singaporean Digital health platform Doctor Anywhere raised S$88 million in series C. The startup has a presence […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 46 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – I Think It Was Just a Matter of Time appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was speaking with Ala Ahmad, the CEO of MetLife in Bangladesh, about insurance innovation in Bangladesh. As one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia and with an insurance penetration of 0.5 % of GDP, Bangladesh presents lots of opportunities for insurers and InsurTech. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael […]
The post EP 135 – Ala Uddin Ahmad – CEO MetLife Bangladesh – Customer Expectation Has Changed Significantly appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was speaking with Aparajit Bhattacharya, a managing partner at Insure First, about what kind of products, processes and technology is required to take insurance to the underserved. Find the transcript of our conversation below: Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. […]
The post EP 133 – Aparajit Bhattacharya – Managing Partner at Insure First – From a Product-Centric Approach to a Solution-Centric Approach appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Tom Duncan, the Managing Director Insurance and Wealth at Grab Financial Group to dicuss financial inclusion, the power and limitations of embedded insurance and how social media can help increase awareness. Listen to our other episode with Tom here. Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome […]
The post EP 132 – Tom Duncan – MD Insurance and Wealth – Grab Financial Group – What Are the Metrics You Manage To? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
There is no summer break for InsurTech. Hong Kong’s OneDegree raised $28 million in a new round of funding and is looking to expand further in Asia. The InsurTech startup holds a virtual general insurance for Hong Kong and also has a SaaS business that operates across Asia. Listen to our 2020 episode with co-founder […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 45 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – I Know What You Want to Say appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Benny Fajarai, a co-founder and CMO at Lifepal, about their latest funding round and how the company is leveraging social media to increase financial literacy in Indonesia and increase insurance penetration. Find the transcript of our conversation below and find our conversation with Lifepall COO Nicolo Robba here. Michael […]
The post EP 131 – Benny Fajarai – LifePal co-Founder and CMO – Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast caught up with Nadia Suttikulpanich, the head of Fuchsia Innovation-Center for Muang Thai Life Insurance. Nadia has been on the show first in 2019 and a lot has changed since then, especially consumer behavior using digital services. Muang Thai was one of the first insurers to offer telemedicine pre-Covid and the […]
The post EP 130 – Nadia Suttikulpanich – Fuchsia Innovation Center for Muang Thai Life Assurance – We Believe In Repeatable Models appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Jonas Piela, the host of the Digital Insurance Podcast in Germany. Since April 2020 Jonas has published podcasts around digital transformation and speaks with C-level executives in the German insurance market. Michael Waitze and Theresa Blissing took the opportunity to discuss with Jonas the differences between a mature, European […]
The post EP 129 – Jonas Piela and Theresa Blissing – Blockchain Is Over appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, a co-founder of Turtlemint, about how to increase insurance penetration in India and bring insurance to tier two and tier three cities. Turtlemint is one of the early InsurTechs in India and has shown despite the ongoing pandemic solid growth. Find the transcript of our conversation below: […]
The post EP 128 – Dhirendra Mahyavanshi – co-Founder Turtlemint – We Are Flag Bearers of Digitization appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Romil Turakhia, Head of Markets at Azentio Software and former co-founder at Candela Labs, about the cloud revolution in insurance and the new freedom insurers will experience with SaaS for cloud. Romil shares how he and his team are planning to democratize technology for all insurance players and enable […]
The post EP 127 – Romil Turakhia – Head of Markets at Azentio Software – This Is a Real Revolution appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We are kicking off the second half of the year with more incredible news on InsurTech. Global investment in InsurTech is at an all-time high, a trend we have been following in Asia all year. The good news is that investment in established players is increasing and the number of early-stage deals. We are looking […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 44 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – You Have the Perfect InsurTech Storm appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Kamesh Goyal, a founder and Chairman of Digit Insurance, to talk about the massive volatility we are experiencing at the moment and what this means for risk assessment. The course of COVID has proven to be hard to predict, the same applies to weather patterns due to […]
The post EP 126 – Kamesh Goyal – Chairman of Digit Insurance – Don’t Only Go By the Scenario of Reverting to the Mean appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gui Wainwright, a co-founder of Jamm about customer engagement in insurance and the future of telematics. Find the transcript of our conversation below. Michael WaitzeWe are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia, focused on […]
The post EP 125 – Guiam Wainwright – co-Founder at Jamm – Changing Those Habits Requires Lots of Little Engagements appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Dominique Roudaut, Head of Asia InsurTech Partnership and Innovation Solutions at HannoverRe, about the major trends in InsurTech, namely embedded insurance, parametric insurance, and becoming a risk partner. Find the transcript of our conversation below: Michael Waitze Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech […]
The post EP 124 – Dominique Roudaut – Hannover Re – The Idea Is To Empower Your Lifestyle appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Amarit Franssen, a co-founder of Thai InsurTech Appman to talk about the impact of Covid, the future of motor insurance, and Appman’s latest funding round. Find the full transcript of our conversation below: Michael Waitze Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech […]
The post EP 123 – Amarit Franssen – co-Founder AppMan – It’s About Connectivity and Teamwork appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Money, fund raising and IPOs…where does it all end? We started with a conversation about FWD, the InsurTech arm of Pacific Century Group, and its planned IPO in New York. This would make it the largest Hong Kong or China-based insurance IPO in New York since 2003. This is just indicative of the amount of […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 43 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Ain’t Misbehavin’ appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Sarbvir Singh, the CEO of PolicyBazaar, about the future of the insurance industry in India and the power of data analytics. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the […]
The post EP 122 – Sarbvir Singh – CEO at PolicyBazaar – Technology Platforms Tend To Bring Transparency appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast caught up with Manuel San Miguel, a co-founder, and the CEO of Ignatica to talk about some of the changes, both good and bad, that the insurance industry has experienced over the last 18 months. It has been almost that long since we last spoke with Manuel and the world is […]
The post EP 121 – Manuel San Miguel – co-Founder and CEO of Ignatica – The Deeper You Go Down Into the Value Chain, the Higher the Stakes Are appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gustaf Agartson, the founder and CEO at Bima about the opportunities for insurance in emerging markets like Africa and Asia. Find the full transcript of our conversation below: Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. I’m already nervous, […]
The post EP 120 – Gustaf Agartson – Founder & CEO at Bima – Combine the Digital Approach With the Human Touch appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Russell Higginbotham, the CEO of Reinsurance Asia at Swiss Re about changing consumer behavior, the latest consumer trends and the new role of insurance. Here is the transcript of our conversation: Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech […]
The post EP 119 – Russell Higginbotham – CEO Reinsurance Asia at Swiss Re – Ultimately, We Should Be Driven By How Our Customers Want To Do Business appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another month, another regional expansion for bolttech in Southeast Asia. In May, bolttech announced its partnership with Vietnam’s e-commerce platform Tiki to offer device protection plans. The Asia InsurTech Podcast has been following the trend of alternative distribution channels for a while and bolttech is certainly one of the major ecosystem players in the region. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 42 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Hopefully, We Are Getting Into a More Normal World appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Nitin Malhotra, a co-founder and Head of Growth for Yoors about how insurers can drive digital transformation and about use cases that allow insurers to quickly digitize and optimize their sales channels. Michael Waitze Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia […]
The post EP 118 – Nitin Malhotra – Yoors – This Is the Right Time To Invest In Digital Tools appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia Insurtech Podcast spoke with Naval Goel, the founder and CEO of Policyx.com. Michael Waitze Hi. This is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs thought leaders and investors a platform to discuss how technology is reshaping the […]
The post EP 117 – Naval Goel – CEO PolicyX.com – The Difference Lies In How You Serve Your Customers appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rahul Nawab, Practice Leader – Insurance Analytics at EXL about data analytics, digital transformation and how InsurTech is impacting the insurance industry as a whole. Michael Waitze Is that working? Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech podcast. This should […]
The post EP 116 – Rahul Nawab – Insurance Analytics and RPM, EXL – Are My Insurance Journeys Just As Robust as an Amazon Is? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze from the Asia InsurTech Podcast and Tunde Salako from Africa InsurTech Rising came together for another episode of Conversations on Emerging Markets. This time the three are discussing alternative forms of distribution. Distribution is one of the hardest codes to crack in micro-insurance and in general insurance for low-income populations. […]
The post AIP and AIR Conversations on Emerging Markets – EP 02 – Tunde Salako and Thereas Blissing – The Dots Are Being Connected appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was happy to be joined again by Harshet Lunani, the Founder of Qoala. The first time he was on the show was back in August of 2019 and then he subsequently participated in.a panel discussion about COVID-19 in April 2020. AIP wanted to catch up with Harshet because so much has […]
The post EP 115 – Harshet Lunani – Founder of Qoala – Some Simple Things Can Go a Long Way appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Thomas Dijohn Senior Vice President Asia Pacific at Dacadoo about living in real time, ecosystems and data analytics. Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought leaders and investors […]
The post EP 114 – Thomas Dijohn – SVP Asia-Pacific at dacadoo – Banking Is a High-Frequency Environment, Insurance Is Not appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
No slowing down in InsurTech in Asia. Despite the ongoing pandemic we see new funding rounds every month. This time, Hong Kong-based InsurTech Ignatica secured US$7 million in a pre-series A. Listen to our episode with CEO Manuel San Miguel here. In Malaysia, Bolttech continues its expansion across Asia and announced another partnership with Samsung. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 41 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – It Just Doesn’t Stop, Does It? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The majority of developing countries can be found in Africa and Asia. Designing insurance solutions for those markets has its very own challenges but at the same time presents the largest untapped market for insurers. Distribution and payment are just two areas that need to be reinvented in order to work in a developing country […]
The post AIP and AIR Conversations on Emerging Markets – EP 01 – Tunde Salako and Thereas Blissing – It’s Becoming a Whole New World of Opportunities appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Julie Jung-Eun Kim, the founder and CEO at Smallticket to get an update on how the Korean insurance market has changed over the past two years. Just like in other Asia markets, platforms have attracted new partnerships with insurers and Smallticket is offering insurance coverage to food […]
The post EP 113- Julie Kim – CEO SmallTicket – You Have To Jump In, Otherwise You Will Lose appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Adrit Raha, a co-founder and co-CEO of Symbo, about how InsurTechs can help insurance incumbents to digitize along the value chain. Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought […]
The post EP 112 – Adrit Raha – CEO at Symbo – The Disciplined Pursuit of Doing Less appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We are in the second quarter of 2021 with more exciting InsurTech news. ZA Tech has announced the opening of its Asia Fintech Center (AFC) in Singapore. The Hong Kong-based company said the AFC is dedicated to exploring financial services innovation and helping industry partners in the region to build new products that will accelerate […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 40 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – I Do Believe We Will See Some Consolidation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast had the pleasure of speaking with Sherry Du, a Managing Director of RGAX APAC at Reinsurance Group of America in Hong Kong. We had a great conversation during which we discussed: How access to new data streams can provide better products and services Sherry’s extensive experience in the insurance industry The importance […]
The post EP 111 – Sherry Du – Managing Director Asia Pacific at RGAX – Open Minded To New Ideas appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia IsnurTech Podcast had a roundtable discussion with Romil Turakhia, an Executive Director of Innovation at Candela Labs, Rohit Nambiar, the Group Chief Executive Officer at Tune Protect, and Reid Bailey, the Transformation Director at Bupa. We had a dynamic conversation about how insurers can connect the dots between legacy enterprise systems and emerging […]
The post EP 110 – Romil Turakhia, Reid Bailey and Rohit Nambiar – CIO vs Chief of Digital, Practical Advice On Digital Transformation and the Cloud appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The first quarter of 2021 ends with more major InsurTech news. Zhong An Online, China’s first online insurer and InsurTech unicorn, has announced its results for 2020. The insurer ranked 9th for P&C insurers in China and passed breakeven with a reported USD 85MM in profit. FWD has launched an InsurTech and Takafultech accelerator programme […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 39 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Whoever Owns the Ecosystem Owns the World appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Vivek Ramji Iyer, partner and national leader of financial services and risk advisory at Grant Thornton Bharat about how insurers are moving from risk protection to risk prevention. Michael WaitzeHi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia in InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in […]
The post EP 109 – Vivek Ramji Iyer – Grant Thornton Bharat – Risk Protection To Risk Prevention appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Rohit Nambiar, the group Chief Executive Officer at Tune Protecy Group about what it takes to be an innovator and what role technology plays. Michael WaitzeOkay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused […]
The post EP 108 – Rohit Nambiar – Tune Protect – If You Really Want To Innovate, Be Ready To Be Fired appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gourab Mukherjee, the CEO at Aktivo Labs about how InsurTechs and HealthTechs can help consumers live a healthier life and avoid lifestyle and chronic desease. Find the transcript of our conversation here: Michael Waitze 0:00Okay, the recorders on Hi, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia […]
The post EP 107 – Gourab Mukherjee – CEO at Aktivo Labs – Building More Contextual Ecosystems appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
March starts with news from Symbo. The InsurTech secured another funding round and collected $9.4M to expand across India and Southeast Asia. In China, Xiaobangguihua has raised new funding as well. The startup focuses on online insurance sonultation and offer online courses to increase financial literacy. In Hong Kong, OneDegree es expanding beyong pet insurance. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 38 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Financial Literacy Remains Important appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Kanpassorn Eix Suriyasangpetch, an army dentist turned tech entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of OOCA, the anonymous video-call platform to help people go through stigma and help connect with psychiatrists and psychologists through online video call- it’s the first telemedicine that focuses on mental wellness app for […]
The post EP 106 – Kanpassorn Eix Suriyasangpetch – CEO of Ooca – This Is Going To Be With Me My Whole Life appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Steve Tannason, a co-founder of Amanco.id about what we can learn from social media platforms like TikTok for InsurTech and how Amanco.id is planning to change employee benefits in Indonesia. See the full transcript below: Michael Waitze 0:00Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitzer and welcome back to […]
The post EP 105 – Steven Tannason – co-Founder AmanCo – A Reflection of Shifting Consumer Behavior appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
For a while now, we have been looking for a way to make the AIP News RoundUp more interactive. That’s why we have joined Clubhouse! On Clubhouse we will discuss the latest news with InsurTech peers live and on the podcast we will still publish the summary of the news. Feel free to join us […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 37 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – We Tried Clubhouse, Have You? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In partnership with InsureTech Connect we hosted a panel with Nicolas Faquet, the Founder & CEO Roojai.com – Thailand, Yen Ming Lee, the co-foudner of Policystreet – Malaysia, and Nicolo Robba the co-founder and COO at Lifepal – Indonesia. The panel was part of InsureTech Connect’s Digital Distribution & Ecosystems: Virtual Summit held on February 25th, […]
The post Panel – The Era of Digital Distribution – Emerging Markets appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Arsh Maini, the Chief Executive Officer of Candela Labs about the wave of Digital Transformation in the Insurance Industry and the fact that it is definitively here to stay. We discussed how data helps drive micro-targeted and personalized products and the impact that the move to cloud computing will […]
The post EP 104 – Arsh Maini – CEO at Candela Labs – The Making of a Perfect Storm appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another awesome month for InsurTech in Asia! Congratulations to PasarPolis for raising US$5M from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), which focuses on accelerating financial inclusion and literacy in developing countries. It is IFC’s first investment in an Indonesian startup and demonstrates the belief that InsurTechs like PasarPolis can help increase insurance penetration in […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 36 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – The Nature of Work Is Changing and the Nature of Insurance Is Changing With It appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Yannick Even, Global Analytics Business Partner at Swiss Re, about the use of data in (re)insurance. Data has the power to transform insurance as we know it and enable insurers to offer better, more personalized products and help close the protection gap. Yannick shares how data allows insurers to […]
The post EP 103 – Yannick Even – Swiss Re – Customer Expectation Is Driving the Change appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Kulin Shah and Yogesh Agrawal, the co-founders of Onsurity. The startup just celebrated its one year anniversary. Onsurity has the vision to bring affordable healthcare to SMBs and to increase insurance penetration in India. Transcript: Michael Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This […]
The post EP 102 Kulin Shah and Yogesh Agrawal – Solving a Problem, Not Selling appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
It is only the first month of the New Year and we already have Asia’s first InsurTech unicorn of 2021. Certainly a promising start! Indian InsurTech and licensed general insurer Digit achieved a valuation of US$1.9 billion. The company was only founded in 2017 by industry veteran Kamesh Goyal, who previously worked for insurance incumbent […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 35 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – It Doesn’t Mean You Get the Journey Right appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Kamesh Goyal, the founder and the Chairman of Digit Insurance which has reached unicorn status in January 2021 with a valuation of USD 1.9 billion. Kamesh has been working in insurance for almost 33 years. Before starting Digit, he worked with Allianz for almost 16 years in Asia, the Middle […]
The post EP 101 – Kamesh Goyal – Chairman of Digit Insurance – One Has To Really, Really Focus On Basics appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
For our 100th episode, Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Winnie Wong, the CEO and Executive Director of Avo Insurance and Asia Insurance, and Walter De Oude, the deputy chairman of Aviva SingLife, about InsurTech in Asia. How has the industry developed over the past 2 years? What is next in InsurTech in Asia? There is […]
The post EP 100 – Winnie Wong, Avo Insurance and Walter de Oude, Aviva SingLife – Go Big or Go Home appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Samdarshi Sumit, the President Director, and CEO at PFI Mega Life in Indonesia. Samdarshi shares how life insurance has changed due to the global outbreak of Covid-19 and how digital transformation has accelerated. When it comes to transformation in general, some of the biggest challenges are changing behavior, mindset, and […]
The post EP 99 – Samdarshi Sumit – President Director and CEO at PFI Mega Life – A Lot of Bite-Size Insurance Being Sold appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Happy New Year! Asia InsurTech Podcast is back with more exciting news kicking off 2021! Grab Financial Group (GFG) starts the year with a bang, securing over US$300 million in their series A funding round. According to Grab, GFG increased its total revenue by over 40% in 2020 vs 2019. Its insurance distribution reached over […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 34 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Is Bitcoin Bad for Blockchain? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Nicolo Robba, the Co-founder and COO of Indonesian InsurTech Lifepal. Nicolo first came to Southeast Asia with Lifepal co-founder Giacomo Ficari when both of them were working for startup studio and venture builder Rocket Internet and helped build e-commerce giant Lazada. Seeing the massive opportunities for insurance in Indonesia with […]
The post EP 98 – Nicolo Robba – COO at Lifepal – Trust Is Built Online appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Mahesh Subramanian, Co-founder & CEO of AI startup CamCom. The company is focused on deploying AI in the automotive space and to innovate along the insurance value chain. For example, with the help of drones and computer vision, CamCom could assess damages on a car within minutes after an accident. […]
The post EP 97 Mahesh Subramanian – CEO CamCom – The Drones Become Your First Responders appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
For the last News Roundup of 2020, Theresa Blissing, Michael Waitze, and Shefali Sonpar reflected on what 2020 meant for InsurTech and digital transformation and what 2021 might look like. 2020 was the year that insurers all over the world were forced to accelerate digital transformation and embrace digital distribution. InsurTechs have played a crucial […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 33 – Year End 2020 – Shefali Sonpar and Theresa Blissing – The Larger Ecosystem Is Now Getting More and More Technology Adaptable appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Deepak Bhuvneshwari Uniyal, Co-founder and CEO of Insurance Samadhan, a tech platform resolving insurance complaints and claims in life, health, and general insurance. Deepak has started as an insurance sales agent and experienced first hand why insurance is so important for people to manage risks. Insurance being a very technical […]
The post EP 96 – Deepak Bhuvneshwari Uniyal – CEO at Insurance Samadhan – It’s So Complex, You Don’t Really Understand If You Want To Buy It or Not appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Michael Gerber, the CEO of 360F. Originally from Switzerland, Michael has worked as a consultant in over 100 projects in more than 20 years and understands the pain points the insurance industry is facing. He shares why he chose to work in insurance and why the industry has often a […]
The post EP 95 – Michael Gerber – CEO of 360F – What Is Transactional Insurance? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
December started with some major FinTech news. Grab-Singtel received the digital full-bank licenses issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Only two digital full-bank licenses and two digital wholesale were awarded to four of the 21 applicants. The AIP Team is wondering if a (re)insurance license will follow next! Other major news is the […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 32 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Hopefully, 2021 Will Be Less Crazy appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with John Brisco, CEO & Co-Founder of Coherent. Originally from Scotland, John has worked for insurance incumbents AXA, QBE, and Manulife in Europe, Australia, and Asia. With his rich experience in the industry, he started Coherent to help insurers get new, innovative products out to market faster, tackling the challenges around […]
The post EP 94 – John Brisco – CEO and co-Founder of Coherent – How Do Insurance Companies Increase Product Speed To Market? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mark Wales, co-founder of Galileo Platforms, a B2B platform technology company. Mark has over 30 years of experience in financial service IT and spent the past 16 years in Hong Kong and Singapore. After working for major international corporations including ING, he co-founded Galileo in 2016. Galileo’s blockchain powered platform […]
The post EP 93 – Mark Wales – co-Founder of Galileo Platforms – At the Heart of Our Platform Is a Blockchain appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
November ends with more news from Singlife. The newly formed holding company Aviva Singlife issues S$550m subordinated notes to be listed on the Singapore Exchange. The money collected will be used for funding the purchase of Aviva Singapore operations and the capital requirements. In India, InsurTech startup Turtlemint raises $30 million. Turtlemint works with insurance […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 31 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – Why Does So Much Money Keep Flowing Into InsurTech? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Harprem Doowa, the CEO and Co-Founder of Frank.co.th. Before starting Frank.co.th, Harprem was working in the e-commerce space and co-founded e-commerce company WhatsNew and Moxy. The lessons he learned about selling products online helped Harprem to start the successful online distribution platform Frank.co.th which was fully acquired in 2019. The […]
The post EP 92 – Harprem Doowa – CEO of Frank – How Does It Really Feel to Get Acquired? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast talked to Andy Ann, co-founder of YAS Digital. Andy is a serial entrepreneur who has won numerous awards and brings a wealth of big data, digital media and entrepreneurship expertise. He is the founder and Chairman of NDN Group, a digital conglomerate focusing on data, mobile and media technologies and founded […]
The post EP 91 – Andy Ann – co-Founder YAS Digital – How Can Content and Data Analytics Drive Insurance Loyalty? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Ruth Haller, the CEO and co-Founder of Anapi, an insurtech platform that helps startups and entrepreneurs get key insurance coverage to cover new and emerging risks. Ruth is a very experienced insurance executive who started her career with incumbent Zurich Insurance. Ruth and the team at Anapi are focused […]
The post EP 90 – Ruth Haller – co-Founder and CEO at Anapi – How Can Startups Find Insurance To Cover Emerging Risks? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
November started with some exciting blockchain news. Singlife Philippines adopts Galileo’s blockchain solution as their insurance core policy administration system. After years of proof-of-concept projects, this is Galileo’s first implementation and possibly the first time ever a blockchain platform is used by an insurer as a core system. Blockchain platforms promise to lower admin costs […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 30 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – Is There a Real Use Case for Blockchain In Insurance? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke to Victor Roy, the Founder of Bindcover. Victor has almost two decades of experience in the insurance industry. He has worked in brokerage firms, did some marketing and also opened his own agency, which is still active. Running his own agency at the beginning was difficult because all of the […]
The post EP 89 – Victor Roy – Founder of Bindcover – How Can the Smaller Brokers Compete With the Biggest Brokers? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We talked to Melissa Wong, the Group Chief Digital Officer at bolttech. Like insurer FWD, bolttech is part of Pacific Century Group (PCG) and the group’s latest international InsurTech business. It was launched in Asia in 2020 and is integrating three capabilities including device protection, insurtech exchange, and digital insurance. Melissa comes from a digital […]
The post EP 88 – Melissa Wong – Group Chief Digital Officer, bolttech – How Do We Make Insurance Contextual? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
October ends with the theme of conglomerates entering insurance. Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent is applying for a re-insurance license which seems to be part of their overall strategy all along. In 2017, Tencent has already launched its insurance platform WeSure and has invested in a number of InsurTechs including Zhong An, Waterdrop, Policy Bazaar and […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 29 – Theresa Blissing and Shefali Sonpar – Is Mobile Phone Coverage the New Motor Coverage? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We spoke to Ashish Kenath, the Regional Lead – New Markets and Business Development at Prudential Insurance Growth Markets. Ashish has 15 years of experience in the insurance industry including a posting in the US where he worked for Aetna in Hartford, CT. He received his MBA in HK and then joined Prudential. He posited […]
The post EP 87 – Ashish Kenath – Regional Lead Digital Ecosystems – Prudential Vietnam Assurance – What Happens To an Insurance Company As It Goes Through Digital Transformation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The Asia InsurTech Podcast had the pleasure of speaking with Amit Ghosh, the Head of Asia Pacific for R3. R3 is an enterprise software company that provides purpose-built distributed ledger technology across industries to foster digital transformation. AIP was excited to have a DLT platform on the show to discuss ways in which this developing […]
The post EP 86 – Amit Ghosh – R3, Head of Asia Pacific – There Are Key Problems the Insurance Industry Wants to Solve appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Mid-October is seeing some very interesting developments in the Asian InsurTech space. The product and services space is bursting with innovative offerings. This week’s News RoundUp started with a discussion of CoverGenius’ $12M capital raise that in our view is a bridge round. We expect them to come back with bigger news soon. Next we […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 28 – Rahul Mathur and Shefali Sonpar – A Knowledge Transfer Partnership appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Raghav Murali-Ganesh, the Founder of CancerAid, a leading Australian health technology startup empowering cancer patients and improving the provision of care. Raghav is a radiation oncologist and cares deeply about his patients’ physical health and mental health. He did his training as a medical doctor and supplemented that […]
The post EP 85 – Raghav Murali-Ganesh – Founder CancerAid – The Core Concept of the Blend of Tech and Touch Is Very Powerful appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talked to Hassan Karim, Deputy Chief Executive Officer & Chief Marketing Officer at Adira Insurance, Indonesia. Adira is an acquisition made by Zurich Insurance in November 2019. Indonesia has seen a rapid transformation towards digital distribution, especially after the outbreak of the global pandemic. Hassan explains the implications for insurers and […]
The post EP 84 – Hassan Karim – Adira Insurance – Integrating Insurance Products and Services Within the Ecosystem of Others appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
September ends with more investment news. GirnarSoft will invest $20 million in its omnichannel insurance subsidiary InsuranceDekho. The funds will be used to strengthen InsuranceDekho’s transaction businesses and expand deeper into the country with its B2C platform. Singaporean InsurTech Igloo is in the news again with the launch of PandaCare together with food delivery company […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 27 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – It’s Time To Start Building appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we spoke to Naby Mariyam, the founder and CEO of Coverhero and gig economy insurance platform Hustle. The platform offers income protection in case of an accident for gig workers and business owners in partnership with Agile Underwriting. Naby has a background in academia and academic research. With Hustle she is now […]
The post EP 83 – Naby Mariyam – Founder and CEO of Coverhero – Intensity Is the Right Word appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talk to Cindy Kua, a co-Founder, and CEO of Thai-based InsurTech Sunday. The startup serves individuals and businesses as the “one-stop insurance shop” for digital healthcare, electronics, automotive and travel. Launched in Thailand in 2017, Sunday is now looking to expand into other markets in Southeast Asia. With the latest funding […]
The post EP 82 – Cindy Kua – co-Founder & CEO of Sunday appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
This week’s News Roundup is all about new rounds of funding and how InsurTechs are looking at the opportunity to capture new markets. We covered the announced merger of Singlife and Aviva Singapore. The combined entity will initially be known as Aviva Singlife. This merger creates one of the largest in the Southeast Asian insurance […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 26 – Rahul Mathur and Shefali Sonpar – Some Really Insane News appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We talked to Abhishek Poddar, the co-founder, and CEO of Plum, an Indian InsurTech aiming to re-imagine and co-create group health insurance products from the ground-up. While the retail health insurance space has been digitised thanks to players like PolicyBazaar, group health insurance is still widely manual. Plum is planning to change that. Michael and […]
The post EP 81- Abhishek Poddar – Plum – Agents Are Not Going To Disappear appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talked to the two co-founders of Australian InsurTech Upcover, Skye Theodorou, who is the CEO, and Anish Sinha, the COO. UpCover is an InsurTech building tailored, simple, and pay-as-you-go insurance protection and benefits products for the gig economy, the fastest growing workforce in the world. The way we work is changing […]
The post EP 80 – Skye Theodorou and Anish Sinha – UpCover – Unbundling of the Traditional Workspace appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
August has seen some exciting developments with Insurtech and marked developments in digital adoption by Asian Insurers. The theme continues to be digital adoption to reach a traditionally untapped customer base. We start this episode with Chinese InsurTech Waterdrop who has raised US$230M Series D led by reinsurance giant SwissRe, alongside China-based internet firm Tencent. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 25 – Rahul Mathur and Shefali Sonpar – Customer Experience Is Kept at the Heart of this Transformation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talked to Dipu KV, the President and Head of Operations, Communities & Customer Service at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance which has won a number of awards for its digitization activities and its mobile app has over a million downloads. However, like all insurers around the globe, Bajaj Allianz has experienced a […]
The post EP 79 – Dipu KV – Bajaj Allianz General Insurance – The World Is About “Learn It All” appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talked to Vincent Kasten, the Head of Intelligent Operations at Prudential Asia. Vincent has a diverse and quite interesting background. He has worked in the US, Africa and Asia and has witnessed innovation and disruption across a range of industries. During his exceptional career, Vincent has accommodated a number of major […]
The post EP 78 – Vincent Kasten – Head of Intelligent Operations – Prudential Asia – Develop that Solid Culture of Innovation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we spoke to Ravi Saraogi, the co-founder and President of Asia at Uniphore Software Systems. Ravi is a software engineer by training and after graduation from university, Ravi and his co-Founder Umesh Sachdev entered an incubator program at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. It was here that Uniphore, a company […]
The post EP 77 – Ravi Saraogi – Uniphore Software Systems – AI and Automation Are Upending Business Verticals appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The month started again with investment news from Indian unicorn PolicyBazaar. In July, Softbank invested USD 150 million and PolicyBazaar CEO called it a “mistake”. This month, Google is looking to do the same as part of the company’s India investment strategy. Meanwhile, Tesla has set up its first overseas insurance brokerage in mainland China. […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 24 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – Doubling Down On an Opportunity appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, we talk to Timo Uustal, co-founder and CEO of Nursebeam, a HealthTech startup that helps people manage their health while traveling. For example, when suffering from a mild illness, the integrated chatbot suggests over the counter medication available in a foreign country and even recommends trustworthy pharmacies close by. By integrating this […]
The post EP 76 – Timo Uustal – co-Founder and CEO of NurseBeam – Four Hours of Sunlight appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Aurora Voss, the co-Founder, and CEO of ClaimSpace. The startup was founded in Australia in 2017 and Aurora gives some insights into the Australian InsurTech landscape and how insurers are responding to the current global pandemic. Like in other parts of the world, insurers in Australia are accelerating […]
The post EP 75 – Aurora Voss – co-Founder and CEO of ClaimSpace – Will Customers Ever Be In love With Insurance? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
InsurTech in India is not slowing down one bit and powerful US tech players are entering the market! While WhatsApp is currently piloting its insurance offerings, Amazon Pay has launched auto insurance in partnership with licensed InsurTech Acko. What is even more interesting, Amazon is offering extra benefits including additional discounts on premiums to Amazon […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 23 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – Pretty Good Lock-In Value appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Firras Sabbah, the founder of Go! Insurance. Firras started his career in insurance with German insurer Allianz and was the CIO of Allianz General Insurance Thailand. Experiencing the problems insurance incumbents are facing first hand, he decided to start Go! Insurance. While Go!’s first concept was around motor […]
The post EP 74 – Firras Sabbah – CEO and co-Founder Go! Insurance – Digital Health Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Hung Phan, co-founder, and CEO of Vietnamese InsurTech Papaya. Coming from a banking background, Hung’s first experience with insurance was when he joined newly launched FWD Vietnam in 2017. In 2018, Hung started Papaya and focuses on employee benefits and simplifying benefits administration for corporations. Michael and Hung […]
The post EP 73 – Hung Phan – co-Founder and CEO, Papaya Insurtech – Focused On the Customer Experience appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
July started with major investment news coming out of India. SoftBank made another investment of USD 150 million into PolicyBazaar and holds now a 15% stake while CEO and co-founder Yashish Dahiya calls the investment a ‘mistake’. (Listen to the podcast we recorded with Yashish in April 2020 here.) More international investment rumors coming from […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 22 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – Have One Source of Truth appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waizte talks to Charles Hung, the CEO & Executive Director of Blue Hong Kong, a joint venture between Hillhouse Capital, a leading investment management firm, Tencent Holdings Limited, a leading Internet value-added services provider, and insurance group Aviva. Blue focuses on providing simple, flexible, and valuable insurance solutions through online channels […]
The post EP 72 – Charles Hung – Blue Hong Kong – How to Unlock the Power of Data appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze speaks to Tim Attia, co-founder, and CEO of Slice Labs. Originally from the US, Slice has started expanding into Asia. While the US and Europe are well established in terms of insurance penetration and traditional distribution, Asia presents a chance to bypass analog distribution and leverage on the mobile-first economy. […]
The post EP 71 – Tim Attia – CEO Slice Labs – Insurance Being Part of Other Buying Experiences appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The second half of June had some exciting news coming out of Malaysia with the largest investment yet into a Malaysian fintech. Axiata Group announced a strategic investment of US$ 70 Million by Great Eastern into Boost Holdings Sdn Bhd. Boost Holding currently has several startups in its portfolio including e-wallet business Boost, microfinancing and […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 21 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – Insurance Begins With the Claim appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Quang Ninh Tran, CEO of SaveMoney Corporation, a digital insurance marketplace in Vietnam. The company is using data from telecommunication companies, banks, and social media for data analytics. Quang Ninh is an actuary by training and has more than 10 years of experience in the insurance industry. With […]
The post EP 70 – Quang Ninh Tran – SaveMoney – Using Big Data, AI and Machine Learning appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Michele Grosso, the co-founder, and CEO of Democrance and Mallika Uswachoke, who is in charge of Strategic Development and Emerging Customers at Krungthai Axa Life Insurance in Thailand. Driven by the desire to restore insurance to its original purpose of providing mutual aid for those who need it […]
The post EP 69 – Michele Grosso and Mallika Uswachoke – Democrance – Providing Mutual Aid for those Who Need It Most appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
June started with lots of InsurTech news from familiar faces. Go! Insurance announced pre-seed funding and the launch of Thailand’s first insurance platform that allows purchasing health insurance online with automated underwriting. DocDoc has announced a new partnership with a Chinese insurance risk control company Kaitaiming Technology (KTM). KTM will give access to DocDoc’s doctor […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 20 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – June 15 – It Becomes Like a Behavioral Nudge appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Amit Naik, CEO & co-founder of MetaMorphoSys Technologies, a SaaS-based digital insurance platform. The Indian startup has developed an end-to-end platform that takes care of the entire value chain for insurance incumbents. Amit started his career in the insurance industry with IT provider Majesco in 2001 and later […]
The post EP 68 – Amit Naik – co-Founder CEO MetaMorphoSys – Tilting the Scale in Favor of Incumbents appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Kenichi Nogami, the CEO of inSharerance. Kenichi started his career 40 years ago with Nippon Life and experienced how the industry has changed over the years and adopted new technologies. During his time with Zurich Life, he implemented the first online life insurance products and was behind the […]
The post EP 67 – Kenichi Nogami – Insharerance – Good Risk Is Very Stable and Very Profitable appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Yen Ming Lee, co-founder and CEO of PolicyStreet. In 2016, the Malaysian InsurTech started as a marketing partner for selected insurers distributing term life policies. But PolicyStreet wanted to offer more products and services, so Yen Ming successfully completed his CFP and the team turned PolicyStreet into a […]
The post EP 66 – Yen Ming Lee – PolicyStreet – What We Wanted to Do Was Beyond the Sandbox appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the AIP News Roundup, the team talks about MicroInsurance, InsurTech in Singapore, and APIs. Riskcovry, an Indian based Insurtech startup focusing on API and distribution, has secured an undisclosed amount in Pre-Series A funding. JETCO, the Hong Kong Electronic Teller Services company, announced a partnership with insurtech start-up GoLion to offer […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 19 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – May 30 – Providing the Infrastructure to Go Digital appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Sibtain Jiwani, the founder and CEO of Smartchoice.pk. The startup is Pakistan’s leading insurance aggregator helping individuals and businesses compare and buy insurance plans instantly online. The aggregator started in 2014 and has since partnered with 10+ insurance companies offering motor, travel, health and life insurance products. Studying […]
The post EP 65 – Sibtain Jiwani – Founder, SmartChoice – Why Can That Not Happen In Pakistan? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Alex Leung, a co-founder of Hong Kong-based InsurTech OneDegree. The Company started in 2016 as a tech enabler and has just acquired a virtual insurance license in Hong Kong as the first independent technology startup. The company today has two business models, one as a licensed virtual insurer […]
The post EP 64 – Alex Leung – co-Founder OneDegree – The Best Way to Manage Disruption Is to Be Part of That Disruption appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The beginning of May saw lots of InsurTech news and familiar faces. ZA Technology in a JV with Fubon Life acquired a digital insurance license for ZA Life in Hong Kong. Online aggregator and FWD-owned Frank.co.th partnered with Rabbit LINE Pay, the e-wallet service from messenger app LINE in Thailand, and SuperYou by Sequis Life […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 18 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – May 15 – They Don’t Have a Legacy System appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Lars Heibutzki, the CEO of Allianz Ayudhya General Insurance, Thailand. Lars shares insights about how Allianz is empowering its people with technology. The Company has built its own tech capabilities with Allianz Technology mainly around core systems but is also working with external providers to get access to […]
The post EP 63 – Lars Heibutzki – CEO Allianz Ayudhya General Insurance – It Needs to Be Fully Integrated Into the Platform appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Yashish Dahiya, the co-founder and CEO of PolicyBazaar. The Company started in 2009 and reached unicorn status in 2018. Tencent and the Softbank Vision Fund are among some of their prominent investors. Before starting PolicyBazaar, Yashish was a strategy consultant with Bain & Co. He shares why he […]
The post EP 62 – Yashish Dahiya – CEO Policy Bazaar – Anybody Who Owns the Customer Will Eventually Take the Value appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The end of April saw some impressive funds raised in InsurTech. Singaporean Axinan has raised USD 8.2 million and rebranded into Igloo. The Company has used the Igloo brand previously only for their consumer-facing protection plans. End of 2019 we had founder Wei Zhu on the show. You can find the episode here and a […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 17 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – April 30 – Moving On from Cats and Dogs to Humans appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Michael Lovegrove, the founder, and CEO of JRNY. The Company is on a mission to reduce the globally underinsured population which amounts to approximately USD 1.2 trillion with many of them found in Southeast Asia. The New Zealand startup is working with insurers globally to develop easy to […]
The post EP 61 – Michael Lovegrove – Founder and CEO of JRNY – We Need to Be Aligned on a Mission appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Bob Wouters, the country manager of FWD’s general insurance practice in Thailand. Bob shares a bit of FWD’s digital strategy. The Company has recently started to roll out non-life insurance capabilities across all its markets. FWD had already made a seed investment in Thai non-life aggregator platform Frank.co.th […]
The post EP 60 – Bob Wouters – Country Manager FWD General Insurance – The Relevance of Insurance Is Becoming Clearer and Clearer appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the AIP news roundup we are taking a break from all the COVID-19 related news. And despite the global pandemic, we have lots of exciting InsurTech news coming out of Asia. The biggest news for this month so far is the first official media appearance of bolttech. The company is part […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 16 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – April 15 – Still Smashing Goals appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Chris Bayley, the Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Cover Genius. Prior to starting Cover Genius, Chris was one of the first few employees in Google’s Sydney office where he managed the insurance team. While Cover Genius has started in Australia in 2014, the company has now offices […]
The post EP 59 – Chris Bayley – Cover Genius – Focusing on the Big Chicken appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Nicolas Faquet, the founder and CEO of Roojai.com. The two discuss the impact that COVID-19 has on the insurance industry and how the pandemic is forcing insurers to accelerate digital transformation. While most companies have developed some sort of Business Continuity Plan (BCP), hardly anyone is really prepared […]
The post EP 58 – Nicolas Faquet – Founder & CEO Roojai.com – Within Minutes We Had to Decide appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Like all news outlets at the moment, the AIP News Roundup Team covers the latest Corona News in insurance. Several insurers across Asia have rolled out COVID-19 coverages. Indian neo-insurer Digit has already sold out their Sandbox-powered COVID product and incumbents like AIA and MSIG rollout digital capabilities around claims and remote healthcare. In non-corona […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 15 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – COVID-19 Accelerates Digital Transformation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Natalia Kozyura, the Head of Innovation Centre at FWD. Natalia comes from a tech background. Before joining FWD Natalia has worked for Tech giants Microsoft and Amazon as well as tech startups in Southeast Asia. At FWD she now oversees a tech team prototyping and building tech solutions […]
The post EP 57 – Natalia Kozyura – Head of Innovation Center, FWD Insurance – Innovation Needs to Be Decentralized appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode Michael Waitze talks to Anuj Jindal, the CEO & co-Founder of SureClaim in India. Anuj has a background as an engineer and worked in HealthTech prior to starting SureClaim. SureClaim is a consumer-centric tech platform designed to help consumers make the best use of their health insurance through intelligent decisions and smarter […]
The post EP 56 – Anuj Jindal – CEO SureClaim – Claim Is Layered Around Trust appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode of the AIP News Roundup Michael and Theresa talk about the launch of the new AIP website and its new functionalities. They also talk about the soft-launch of InsurTech Mentors, a global mentoring platform that connects insurers with startups and young talents. In collaboration with Aerate, the team is onboarding insurers and […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 14 – Theresa Blissing and Michael Waitze – March 17 – The Problem Is Changing Behavior appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded at Insurance Innovators Indonesia in Jakarta. She is joined by Tom Duncan, the head of insurance at Grab, Mike Eksteen, the VP of Digital at Chubb Asia Pacific and Hendra Tan, the President Director (CEO) at PT. OneConnect Financial Technology Indonesia. The panel is discussing the importance […]
The post EP 55 – Tom Duncan, Hendra Tan, and Mike Eksteen – Insurance Innovators – Can We Speed That Up Through Technology? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Karin Zulkarnaen, the Chief Marketing Officer of Allianz Life Indonesia. Karin has spent 15 years with Allianz and talks about the massive changes technology has brought to the insurance industry and how it is helping to shape the future of insurance in a country like Indonesia. With insurance penetration below […]
The post EP 54 – Karin Zulkarnaen – CMO Allianz Indonesia – Insurance Is Part of Life appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks again to Kazy Hatta, the founder and CEO of JustInCase. We had Kazy on the show in May 2019 (find the episode here) and are excited to have him back and talk about its impressive progress over the past 10 month. JustInCase has recently raised USD 10 million in Series A funding and doubled […]
The post EP 53 – Kazy Hata – justInCase – You Have to Change appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We round out February by welcoming Lyndon Reid as a permanent member of the AIP News RoundUp team! The team started by looking at the recent announcement by SwissRe’s iptiQ platform that it will partner with Ikea in Singapore and Switzerland to offer on-line home insurance to Ikea customers. We see this as part of a growing push by reinsurers to […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 13 – Rahul Mathur and Lyndon Reid – February 28 – The Too Hard Bucket Came Into Play appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded at Insurance Innovators Indonesia in Jakarta. She is joined by Hassan Karim from Zurich Indonesia, Dr. Kartina Sury, a senior researcher on digital and marketing as well as Tommy Martin, the co-founder and COO of Qoala on the topic Human vs Machine. The panel is discussing if machines are taking over insurance jobs and how important the human […]
The post EP 52 – Hassan Karim, Dr Kartina Sury and Tommy Martin – Insurance Innovators Summit – It’s Not Replacing, It’s Augmenting appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to John Moore, the founder of Ikigai Partners. Prior, John was in charge of the global innovation strategy at Bupa in London. He shares his experience in setting up innovation units and InsurTech investment arms. John explains what insurers are looking for in startup partnerships. Based on his experience, most startups do not understand […]
The post EP 51 – John Moore – Founder, Ikigai Partners – The Sweet Spot Was Partnering appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this AIP News Roundup Theresa, Michael and Rahul are discussing the latest news from early February. GoJek has partnered with PasarPolis to launch GoSure on its 3PP platform. Grab in the meantime has acquired Bento, a Singapore-based wealth-tech Robo-advisory startup. Lots of news coming out of India again. Acko is about to raise around USD 4.2 million in venture debt after raising USD 35 million last November. WhatsApp Pay […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 12 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – February 15 – Does Anybody Really Want To Engage? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Chang Li, the Director InsurTech at Plug And Play Japan. Chang Li, originally from China, gives an overview of the differences between the InsurTech market in Japan compared to other countries in Asia and dives deep into the InsurTech startup ecosystem in Japan. Chang Li and Michael talk about the Japanese culture […]
The post EP 50 – Chang Li – Director, InsurTech Plug And Play Japan – No Mom, That’s Not The Case appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to David Yeng, co-founder of InsureVite. The Singaporean based startup aims to help insurers transform their customer experience through social messaging apps leveraging transactional chatbots and artificial intelligence. The solution can be integrated into different messaging apps such as WeChat or LINE. The InsurTech has customers in Japan and Australia, while their tech team is based […]
The post EP 49 – David Yeng -Co-Founder InsureVite – Either You Complain About It or You Do Something About It appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Lyndon Reid came back to join Rahul Mathur and Michael Waitze on our bi-weekly trip through the most important news in the Insurance and InsurTech space in Asia. The three started with an announcement from Slice and Sompo Holdings, Asia about a roll-out of an on-demand travel insurance product. They determined that this product did not seem much different from most other travel insurance […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 11 – Rahul Mathur and Lyndon Reid – January 31 – There Is Probably a Monkey Exclusion appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Celine Le Cotonnec, the Chief Data Officer at AXA Singapore. Celine has spent 17 years in Asia, mostly in China where she was in charge of new technologies for the French embassy and she worked for car manufacturer PSA before joining AXA and the insurance industry in 2017. With her unique experience of developing use-cases […]
The post EP 48 – Celine Le Cotonnec – AXA Singapore – A Big Fantasy for Every IOT Provider appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Rick Tsing, the Founder and CEO of OneOneDay. OneOneDay started in 2017 and is not an InsurTech. The startup is developing permission-based advertising for internet, smartphone and smart TV users that rewards viewers for consuming ads. The reason we got them on the show is their super fascinating […]
The post EP 47 – Rick Tsing- OneOneDay – Insurance Is Getting Much More Accessible appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Welcome, 2020! We are looking forward to another year filled with exciting developments in InsurTech and innovation in insurance in Asia. The biggest financial news to kick of the new decade has probably been the race to become one of Singapore’s first digital banks. On December 31st the application period ended and we are seeing […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 10 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – January 15 – Continuous Deluge of Activity appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke with Manuel San Miguel, the CEO and Co-founder of Ignatica Ltd. Ignatica enables insurers to deliver more product innovation, personalized servicing, and build market-leading customer experiences. The Company delivers the core platform needed to quickly build new products that deliver straight through, true digital client experiences and applies a […]
The post EP 46 – Manuel San Miguel – CEO Ignatica – Dynamic Definition of Risks appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talked to Shefali Sonpar, a Digital Transformation Evangelist. Shefali spent 20 years in the global insurance industry, mostly on the IT side and is a global Thought Leader in digitization of the insurance industry. Originally from India, she has worked all over the globe including Europe, US and Canada. Shefali […]
The post EP 45 – Shefali Sonpar- Global Thought Leader – Business Transformation Is Going To Have a Modular Approach appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze recorded with Amarit Franssen, the co-founder of Thai InsurTech AppMan. The venture started as a software development startup and focused on insurance very early on. Since 2014, AppMan has been exclusively providing solutions for insurers and has a strong focus on digitization of the sales process. This Thai startup has […]
The post EP 44 – Amarit Franssen- co-Founder at AppMan – We Try To Think Forward Also appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
2019 has undeniably been a busy year in terms of InsurTech in Asia. It has been the year InsurTech accelerated across Southeast Asia. Michael, Theresa, and Rahul discussed which companies, in their opinion, had a major impact in 2019. Ride-hailing service and super app GRAB has made big waves by entering the insurance space with […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 09 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – December 26 – Year End Round Up appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Maureen Nova Ledesma, a co-Founder and the CMO of Vesl. In its own words, Vesl is a financial technology company that is innovating in the trade finance sector by providing a platform that connects trade lenders and businesses to per invoice trade credit insurers, among other specialized insurance […]
The post EP 43 – Maureen Nova Ledesma- CMO co-Founder at Vesl – Using Technology to Make Insurance Products More Accessible appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded at the InsurTech Insights Conference in Hong Kong with Lyndon Reid – the Chief Commercial Officer at Shift Insurtech, Cole Sirucek – co-founder of DocDoc, Chang Li – Director of Plug and Play Japan, and Thibault Demoures – the Asia Head for health solutions development at Axa […]
The post EP 42 – Cole Sirucek, Chang Li, Thibault Demoures and Lyndon Reid – InsurTech Insights Roundtable – The Initial Concept Was Massive Scalability appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
During this special episode of AIP’s bi-weekly News RoundUp, Rahul Mathur and I were joined by Lyndon Reid, the Chief Commercial Officer at Shift InsurTech. We had a spirited, fun and informative conversation as we wrapped up the previous two weeks of news in the InsurTech universe. As always, there was a ton of news […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 08 – Rahul Mathur and Lyndon Reid – December 17 – Overeating Their Pudding a Little Bit appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke to Mitesh Jain, the co-founder, and CTO at Symbo Insurance. Mitesh previously worked for Deloitte and worked on the rollout of Obamacare in several US states. After coming back to India he founded and exited tech HR startup Happy2Refer before he co-founded Symbo in India in 2017 and which […]
The post EP 41 – Mitesh Jain – CTO co-Founder Symbo Insurance – Exactly at the Point of Need appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
At the Singapore Fintech Festival, AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded a panel episode analyzing how InsurTechs and traditional insurers can collaborate and co-exist. The panel is joined by Yannick Even, Head of Digital & Smart Analytics APAC at Swiss Re, Wei Zhu, Founder and CEO of Axinan and Laurens Koppelaar CEO Singapore and Head of […]
The post EP 40 – Yannick Even, Wei Zhu, and Laurens Koppelaar – InsurTech vs Incumbent Roundtable – Collaborate and Co-Exist appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Stephen Barnham, CIO for Asia Pacific at MetLife. Stephen shares some fascinating insights on MetLife’s view on the InsurTech startups ecosystem and its appetite to partner and work with startups. Stephen and Michael have known each other since the early 1990s when both were working for Morgan Stanley […]
The post EP 39 – Stephen Barnham – CIO MetLife Asia – Our Customers Trust Us appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
At the Singapore Fintech Festival AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded a special episode with Plug and Play Singapore and three of their startups from batch 0 and batch 1. In this episode were Kayvon Deldar, Program Head, Singapore Insurtech and Fintech at Plug and Play Tech Center, Dr. Geok Leng Tan, CEO of AIDA Technologies, […]
The post EP 38 – Dr. Geok Leng Tan, Jong Tong Foo, Kayvon Deldar and Zal Dastur – Plug and Play Roundtable – It Might Be Innovation Tourism appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The second half of November was again filled with InsurTech news and the largest InsurTech conference in Asia of 2019, InsurTech Insights, took place in Hong Kong. AIP founder Theresa Blissing was at the conference together with several AIP alumni and shares some of the stories from the two-day conference. In the news in the […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 07 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – December 3 – Is This Just Startup Hype? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Jonathan Larsen Chief Innovation Officer at Ping An Group and the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Ping An’s Global Voyager Fund. Ping An, founded in 1988, is a world-leading technology-powered retail financial services group and one of the largest financial services companies in the world. If you […]
The post EP 37 – Jonathan Larsen – Ping An Group – Technology Was Largely an Inhibitor appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Walter de Oude, CEO of Singlife. The Singapore headquartered neo-insurer, valued at $360M, acquired a license from the MAS in 2017 and began selling life insurance policies after buying Zurich Insurance’s Singapore business. Singlife closed a $90M Series C funding round on 1st July 2019. This announcement was […]
The post EP 36 – Walter de Oude – CEO Singlife – We Built the Tech and then Sold the Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing recorded live at Singapore FinTech Festival and talks to Ian Pollard, Group MD Delta Insurance, Michael Lovegrove, Co-founder and CEO of JRNY, and Matthias de Ferrieres, the founder and CEO of my-insurer. JRNY and Delta Insurance are both headquartered in New Zealand, a country with a smaller population […]
The post EP 35 – Ian Pollard, Michael Lovegrove and Matthias de Ferrieres – Singapore FinTech Festival Roundtable appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
November continued to busy with InsurTech News coming out of China and India. November 11th is Single’s Day in China and Zhong An reported a jaw-dropping 1 billion CNY (USD 142 million) Gross Written Premium for this date alone. Waterdrop was awarded Innovator Startup of the year and Tencent acquired a 10% stake in Indian […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 06 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – November 15 – Were Products Mis-priced? appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing visited the DocDoc office in Singapore and talked to the co-founders Grace Park and Cole Sirucek. Grace and Cole, a husband and wife team, share their very personal stories. When their daughter was three months old, her liver was failing and she required a rare liver surgery. This […]
The post EP 34 – Grace Park & Cole Sirucek – Founders at DocDoc – Nailing Jello to the Wall appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Michael Waitze recently spoke with Kobi Bendelak, the CEO of InsurTech Israel, which is both a consulting business and a fund that invests in early-stage InsurTech startups. Kobi has had a more than two-decade career in the insurance industry, including being the founder and CEO of Reshef Insurance Brokers, which was eventually sold to Generali. […]
The post EP 33 – Kobi Bendelak – CEO InsurTech Israel – Create an Environment for Disruption appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The second half of October wasn’t any less busy in terms of InsurTech news coming out of Asia. SingLife is in the news again with Walter de Oude, CEO and founder of SingLife, explaining on MoneyFM the SingLife account system and how they are combining savings, protection and spending into one account as well as […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 05 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – October 30 – Jaw Dropping appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talked to Dr. Snehal Patel, Co-Founder & CEO of MyDoc. The Singaporean B2B HealthTech company has built a comprehensive healthcare services network across Asia that connects organizations, governments, and patients to doctors, pharmacies, insurers, and laboratories. MyDoc’s goal is to create an efficient and effective healthcare ecosystem for patients and […]
The post EP 32 – Snehal Patel – CEO at MyDoc – Less Disruption, More Cooperation appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, AIP founder Theresa Blissing visited full stack InsurTech Axinan in their Singapore office and talked to the founder, Wei Zhu, and the Chief Insurance Officer & General Counsel, Arijit Chakraborty. Openspace Ventures backed and Paypal incubated, Axinan is both a B2B and B2C InsurTech focusing on logistics as well as consumer electronics. […]
The post EP 31 – Wei Zhu and Arijit Chakraborty – Axinan – Get Those Labs More Integrated appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Another busy month for InsurTech in Asia. Regulators across Asia are changing the game. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Thailand’s Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to boost cooperation in insurance supervision. AIP already talked to the Secretary General of the OIC and the strategy of the […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 04 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – October – A Super Interesting Proposition appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michal Waitze speaks with Rohan Kumar CEO and Co-Founder of Toffee Insurance. Toffee Insurance was founded 2017 and its focus is on selling micro insurance for different kinds of services. Rohan went to the University of Lincoln and Massey University. Early in his career he worked for companies like Shell. Rohan discovered […]
The post EP 30 – Rohan Kumar – co-Founder & CEO Toffee Insurance – It’s a Collaborative Effort appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke with Dr. Suthiphon Thaveechaiyagarn, the Secretary-General of the Office of Insurance Commission. The OIC regulates and supports insurance companies and startups in Thailand. Dr. Thaveechaiyagarn studied law at Thammasat University and was honored with a scholarship to study at Harvard University. Dr. Suthiphon notes that technology is the biggest trend in […]
The post Special Episode – Dr. Suthiphon Thaveechaiyagarn – Secretary General – Office of Insurance Commission appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke with Jay Weintraub the Co-Founder and CEO of InsureTech Connect. InsureTech Connect was founded in 2016 to bring InsureTech entrepreneurs and startups together. Jay was born in Texas and studied Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Jay has always had an entrepreneurial spirit, founding, among other things, companies such […]
The post EP 29 – Jay Weintraub – co-Founder & CEO InsureTech Connect – Learn To Speak Incumbent appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The second half of September was again dominated by news coming out of Mainland China. The CareVoice, one of China’s largest health InsurTech, has launched their own operating system, CareVoiceOS, after closing an eight-figure Series A funding round in August. We already spoke to Sebastien, the co-founder and CEO of The CareVoice, about this announcement […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – Episode 03 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – September – Running From Pillar To Post appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode Michael Waitze talks to Sebastien Gaudin, the CEO & Co-Founder of The CareVoice. The CareVoice is a Shanghai-based health InsurTech startup that focuses on making healthcare more human while using technology. The Company is already working with 15 insurance clients in China and Hong Kong. After completing the Ping An Accelerator, the […]
The post EP 28 – Sebastien Gaudin – CEO The CareVoice – The Way You Learn and Grow Is By Doing Things appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke with Cleosent Randing, the founder and CEO of PasarPolis. PasarPolis is a tech platform that provides solutions for their partner companies including Go-Jek, Traveloka and Tokopedia. Cleosent studied at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His first job was in digital performance before starting PasarPolis because he saw a […]
The post EP 27 – Cleosent Randing – Founder & CEO at PasarPolis – Democratization of Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke to Tom Duncan, the Head of Insurance at Grab. Tom is not new to the financial services sector in general and the insurance business in particular. After more than a decade working in Global Markets at banks like ANZ and Barclays, Tom moved into the startup world and then […]
The post EP 26 -Tom Duncan – Head of Insurance at Grab – Radically Simplifying the Product appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Halfway through September, it is time for another InsurTech news roundup! Singapore’s CXA was in the news announcing it was looking for fresh funding and its desire to become Southeast Asia’s first InsurTech unicorn. It also maintained that it expects to be profitable by 2020. Axinan, another Singapore based company, was back in the news […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 02 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – September – We Are Living In a New Reality Now appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze discusses the state of the Thai InsurTech market with Panu Boonyakiat, Co-Founder of Claim Di, Firras Sabbah, Founder of Go! Insurance, Harprem Doowa, Co-Founder of Frank.co.th and Nicolas Faquet, CEO of Roojai.com. The panel covers much ground, including how the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) continues to work with InsurtTechs […]
The post EP 25 – Panu Boonyakiat, Firras Sabbah, Harprem Doowa and Nicolas Faquet – Thailand Roundtable – Look at It From an Entrepreneur Standpoint appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze speaks to Abhishek Shah, the Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy Therapeutics. Wellthy designs clinically validated behavioral interventions to help people change their behaviors and reduce their risk of chronic disease. This concept is enabled through the intersection of technology and clinical outcomes helping users to actively manage their health risks. […]
The post EP 24 – Abhishek Shah – Wellthy Therapeutics – How Can My Health Get Better appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
It’s difficult to keep up with all of the latest InsurTech news in Asia. DocDoc raised USD 13 million in funding to go global, MyDoc has partnered with Prudential, GRAB has launched a new MicroInsurance product for its drivers and Axinan has obtained a license to underwrite insurance in Malaysia. And this is only August […]
The post AIP News RoundUp – EP 01 – Rahul Mathur and Theresa Blissing – August 2019 appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze spoke to Harshet Lunani, the founder of Qoala. Qoala partners with leading insurers to build technologies and insurance products that use big data for validation of claims. Harshet studied mathematics and computer science at Oxford University and worked for globally recognized corporates including Merrill Lynch, BCG and Endeavor before starting […]
The post EP 23 – Harshet Lunani – Founder of Qoala – I Would Rather Give a Thousand People a Dollar appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode Michael talked to Dr. Woody Mo, co-founder and CEO of eBaoTech. eBaoTech is a Chinese company founded in 2000 that aims to be a global leader in enabling connected insurance. The Company offers a platform as a service and software for traditional insurance carriers’ core systems. Dr. Woody touches on how the […]
The post EP 22 – Woody Mo – CEO at eBaoTech – Functionality, Connectivity and Data appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael Waitze talks to Amerson Lin co-Founder of gigacover. Prior to gigacover, Amerson joined the Singapore military and then worked with data analytics company Palantir. With the rise of FinTech, Amerson and his friend Cheng Xun Chua founded gigacover. gigacover is serving the flourishing gig economy with a suite of flexible and affordable […]
The post EP 21 – Amerson Lin – co-Founder gigacover – Adopt an Ecosystem Approach appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Kulin Shah is the Business Head at Acko General Insurance. Acko is a licensed digital general insurance company in India started in 2017 by Varun Dua, who is also behind aggregator Coverfox. Acko has some of the best investors in the world on its cap table including Accel, Amazon and Flipkart. He speaks about how […]
The post Ep 20 – Kulin Shah – VP Acko General Insurance – Obsessively Customer Focused appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode we dig deep into tech with Koby Karp, Executive Director at RGAx, the Transformation Engine of RGA. Koby has always been passionate about technology and using Artificial Intelligence to build better products and services. Born in Russia, Koby moved to Israel in his teens, studied robotics and today is considered a thought […]
The post Ep 19 – Koby Karp – Executive Director RGAx – A Tradeoff Between Risk Management and Sales appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Michael Waitze moderated a special HealthTech panel episode in collaboration with BeachCity Media live at the Startup Nation Summit at True Digital Park, Bangkok. The panel was joined by Dr. Kanapon Phumratprapin, CEO & Co-Founder of Health at Home, Emmanuel Fauvel, General Manager & Co-founder of Fatster App, Robin Emond, Innovation Project Manager at Fuchsia […]
The post Ep 18 – Dr. Kanapon Phumratprapin, Emmanuel Fauvel, Robin Emond and Theresa Blissing – HealthTech Roundtable – Patient Focus, Personalization and Prevention appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Scott Montgomery, the CEO and co-Founder of WellteQ, a digital wellness engagement program for employee health including activity challenges, mental wellness, financial wellness as well as support functions for HR like onboarding, virtual coaching for employees and data analytics. Scott used to train elite athletes in New Zealand before […]
The post Ep 17 – Scott Montgomery – CEO WellteQ – Segment Down To a Population of One appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
In this episode AIP founder Theresa Blissing and host Michael Waitze discuss InsurTech trends and the differences between the US and Asia with US based insurance Thought Leader Rob Galbraith. Rob is the author of the new Amazon bestseller “The End Of Insurance As We Know It” and the Director of Innovation at AF-Group. Rob […]
The post Ep 16 – Rob Galbraith and Theresa Blissing – East Meets West – The Most Interesting Man and Woman In Insurance appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
At the 7th Asia Motor Insurance and Claims Management Conference organized by Asia Insurance Review, we recorded a podcast roundtable with conference speakers Trevor Lok, CEO – Merimen Group, Dr. Woody Mo, President and CEO – eBaoTech Corporation, Nicolas Faquet, CEO and Founder – Roojai.com and David Henderson, Co-Founder & CEO – DRVR. The experts […]
The post Ep 15 – Dr Woody Mo, Trevor Lok, Nicolas Faquet, and David Henderson- Asia Insurance Review Roundtable II – Insurance Fundamentally Is About Having Randomness appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Nadia Suttikulpanich is the Head of Fuchsia Innovation Center for Muang Thai Life Assurance Public Company Limited. Fuchia focuses on initiating innovations and embracing changes with businesses and start-ups that emphasize consumer needs. Prior to launching Fuchia, Nadia worked for Unilever for 8 years also focused on innovation. While there, innovation is most effective when […]
The post Ep 14 – Nadia Suttikulpanich – Fuchia Innovation Center for Muang Thai Life Assurance – It All Starts With the Consumer appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
For this week’s episode, we sat down with Insurance Thought Leaders live in Jakarta and discussed innovation happening in the insurance industry in Indonesia. The panel discussion was joined by Hassan Karim, President Director of Zurich Insurance Indonesia, Evan Tanotogono, Head of Digital Channel at Sequis Life and Tris Rasika, Country Director Indonesia at GoBear. […]
The post Ep 13 – Hassan Karim, Evan Tanotogono and Tris Rasika – Jakarta Roundtable – The Tipping Point is Where We Can Serve the Whole Value Chain appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Julie Jung-Eun Kim is the Founder & CEO of Smallticket, the first InsurTech in South Korea with the goal of reaching new generations of customers through customized and personalized insurance offers that respond to interests of a group from the age of 20s to 30s. Prior to establishing Smallticket, Julie graduated from Northwestern University in […]
The post Ep 12 – Julie Jung-Eun Kim – Founder & CEO SmallTicket – Micro-segmented Groups Are Very Attractive appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Zal Dastur is the Chief Operating Officer and co-Founder of Lucep. Lucep focuses on developing mechanisms that enhance the engagement of customers to sales teams based on leads generated from digital channels. Having been in the field of Sales and Marketing for 12 years, Zal recognized the lack of effective mechanisms for managing and distributing […]
The post Ep 11 – Zal Dastur – co-Founder and COO, Lucep – It Skews the Advantage Hugely to the First or Second appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Shwetank Verma is a General Partner and co-Founder of Leo Capital, an early-stage venture investor operating in India and SouthEast Asia. Leo Capital focuses on Digital Health, InsurTech and FinTech. Shwetank is an advisor on open innovation to Fortune 500 companies and a speaker on Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, Digital Health, and InsurTech. Prior to founding […]
The post Ep 10 – Shwetank Verma – co-Founder and General Partner Leo Capital – Investing in Asian InsurTech – India Edition appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.
Alvin Cahyadi is an Investment Associate at Convergence Ventures, an Indonesia focused Venture Capital firm investing in high growth startups. Alvin is in charge of monitoring the FinTech sectors, which includes payments, lending, and insurance. Following the trend of InsurTech, Alvin has been the core insurance practice lead, spending a significant amount of time conducting […]
The post Ep 09 – Alvin Cahyadi – Convergence Ventures – Investing in Asian InsurTech – Indonesian Edition appeared first on Asia InsurTech Podcast.