Episodios

  • The Future of Insurance – Bill Pappas, EVP Global Head of Technology & Operations, MetLife (Live from ITI)

    The Future of Insurance – Bill Pappas, EVP Global Head of Technology & Operations, MetLife (Live from ITI)
    Jul 9 2024
    Bill Pappas is Head of Global Technology and Operations, and is a Corporate Officer and a member of the company's Executive Leadership Team. In this role, he directs a team of more than 43,000 people responsible for technology development, infrastructure, information and cyber security, data strategy and analytics, customer service, operations, crisis management, business continuity and procurement for all lines of business, serving more than 90-million customers across 40+ countries around the world. Pappas joined MetLife in 2019 from Bank of America, where he was the head of operations for the consumer, small business, wealth management and private banking businesses. In this role, Pappas directed a team comprised of more than 50,000 employees and contractors delivering integrated service and operations solutions to approximately 63-million consumers and clients. In addition, Pappas led the global business services team that provided integrated technology solutions across Bank of America. Pappas holds a B.A. cum laude in government and an MBA in international business from Bentley University where he serves on its Board of Trustees. He also is a contributing thought leader as a member of the Gartner Research Board and the Forbes Technology Council. Highlights from the Show Bill and his team are responsible for everything tied to customers and their experience, and includes roughly half of MetLife's staff with about 60k peopleBill has never seen the level of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty that we have today at any other time in this 30 year Financial Services career, and there's a convergence of these things today that's quite different Many of these issues – supply chain, inflation, political uncertainty, cyber – is the first time we're facing them, so there's no existing playbook for any of these items Customer expectations spiked in COVID, but haven't let up since then MetLife has worked on the process to understand the customer needs, wants and demandsThen they look at product and process match up with those customer requirements, and then move to development where there's a gap This takes also look at staff, and how they're supported in supporting customers, so MetLife looks at how it creates and maintains a contemporary workforce, which is something that must be dynamic over time How do skillsets evolve, and how do you ensure your workface has the right skills at any given timeWorkforces are hybrid, have moving priorities and expectations, and decision making isn't as command-and-control as it might have been years ago They are deliberate in not having technology for technology's sake but only in support of the company's strategic objectives, which helps protect against siloed thinking for any one functionInnovation is something they've moved to make it part of every staff member's work as part of the culture's DNA rather than existing in a specific team or group They run hackathons, setup investment mechanisms for new ideas and more to ensure innovation is everyone's responsibility and they're empowered to deliver on it DE&I is important to MetLife and is part of everything they do, but they couldn't operate with such a customer focus without it and the diverse thinking and skills that come with it For example, you cannot develop new, powerful tools like AI without different approaches and mindsets involved or you end up with something out of sync with your customer baseThey see a shortage of women in STEM, and have been working with universities to drive more involvement by women in STEM career paths, and then looking at how to support them better through their careers; this is something they've also worked with other companies and non-profit organizations in the communities MetLife operates in to help make meaningful progress You cannot move the industry or the market on your own, so MetLife has chosen to convene the industry to help learn together and foster the progress the company is trying to make on macro-level things like talent, AI and more This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk. Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes. Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    30 m
  • The Future of Insurance - Rick McCathron, President & CEO, Hippo (Live from ITI)

    The Future of Insurance - Rick McCathron, President & CEO, Hippo (Live from ITI)
    Jul 2 2024
    Richard McCathron is CEO and President of Hippo Insurance and has served as a member of the Board of Directors since February 2017. Prior to Hippo, Rick held senior executive positions at various insurance companies including First Connect Insurance, Superior Access Insurance and Mercury Insurance Group. Rick is both a Chartered Property & Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and a Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) and sits on the board of directors of Spinnaker Insurance Company and First Connect Insurance. He is an advisor for several other InsurTech companies and holds a BS in Finance from Oregon State University. Highlights from the Show Rick's insurance career spans a lot of areas, including different carrier functions, distribution and more, and has been at Hippo for 8 years, including his current role as President & CEO2023 reminded Rick of the Northridge Earthquake and the impact that had on the industryHail was a major driver of loss in 2023, which coincided with a trend to buy net quota share insurance (QS with a cap for CAT losses) and Excess of Loss (XOL) coverage above thatThere weren't big events that would trigger XOL coverage, but the small losses exhausted the QS coverage, so many carriers found their balance sheets impacted There's a fundamental shift in insurance around our financials but also consumer behaviorsThe pricing pendulum swings wildly because cost drivers move fast, but rate filings and approvals move slowlyTech solutions at carriers are helping to narrow the time gap to help with this, especially tech-driven carriers like HippoHippo also mixes its approach to the market between their own product, their fronting business that brings in revenue from other players and lines of business, and their distribution arm, First Connect, that brings commission revenue from selling other carrier's products Growth in this context is imperative to be about profitable growth, and Hippo has focused on this now, whereas there was an initial push to grow, generallyThat means having more specific offerings to specific buyers, like those who would adopt IoT to protect their propertyEmbedding insurance into new home construction, but using its agency to ensure they don't end up with aggregation issues when working with a builder to insure a new development Rick watches reinsurance profitability as a sign of where primary insurers will end up since there's a disconnect in when reinsurers move prices and when primary insurers are able to price that into their filingsThe fundamentals of insurance aren't changing, but the rate of speed that you have to adjust how you write and the customer demands and expectations continue to change constantlyRick shared his view on AI, where it is real today, but the AI being used now won't be anything like what we will use in 2 years given how fast it's evolving The traditional coverages the industry is selling are increasingly disconnected from what the exposures they insure are and what consumers actually need for protection (and the affordability of the coverage they can get)People want genuine customization in all aspects of their lives, and to know that what they're getting is genuinely built for their needsEmbedded insurance – we have to meet customers where they are, like embedding pet insurance in the adoption process or the purchase process for homes or carsRemembering the fundamentals, but that there's a customer at the other end of this, and we have to serve them if we want to ultimately succeed We talked about being proactive on claimsUsing Parametric coverage is one way to do that since coverage can be delivered instantaneously (or very quickly)Reaching out to customers when we think there's likely to be a claim (like when there's 2" hail in their area), which historically people think leads to buying claims, but Hippo has seen that the claims would come in anyway, but they'll come later and with some form of representation (attorney, public adjuster), so you end up paying more for the claim in the end than if you had handled it correctly from the moment the loss occurred. This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk. Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes. Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    31 m
  • The Future of Insurance – Charlie Sidoti, Executive Director, InnSure

    The Future of Insurance – Charlie Sidoti, Executive Director, InnSure
    Jun 25 2024

    Charlie Sidoti is the Executive Director of InnSure, an industry-funded not-for-profit with a mission to foster innovation in insurance. InnSure’s integrated programs are designed to help insurance professionals and organizations survive and thrive by improving their ability to respond to the disruptive forces that are reshaping the industry. InnSure provides a roadmap for corporate sponsors, experienced industry talent, and outside contributors to connect, innovate and move the insurance industry forward, together. To learn more, visit InnSure.org.

    Highlights from the Show

    • Charlie Sidoti spent 20 years with large, P&C carriers on the commercial side, and then 10 years in the analytics space around insurance before founding InnSure, which is a non-profit focused on innovation in the insurance industry around climate change
    • They looked at where investment around climate impact was going for the insurance industry, and it tended to be things to help us exit lines or markets faster (avoiding risk, raising rate), and that didn't seem to solve the real issue or be what insurance is meant to do
    • InnSure engages in its mission in a number of ways, including:
      • Climate Risk and Insurance Sandbox
      • Community Embedded Insurance Initiative - to help communities shape their insurability
      • InnSure Corps - multifunctional group from across and around the industry to take newer talent and help them see how to have an impact and grow their abilities as leaders of the future
      • Interacting with government and administering grants and prizes, such as the one from NYSERDA we talked about later in the episode
    • As a non-profit, InnSure can take a position and engage differently than for-profit, commercial enterprises can, including taking a long term view of things and investing with that horizon
    • The Innovation Prize, which is a $5m program from the NY State Energy Research Development Agency that InnSure is administering by giving grants of $500k to $1m
      • The program is helping to foster ideas past the initial risk in commercialization that many great ideas face early in their journey
      • Insurance in particular can help protect NYSERDA's investments in clean tech, clean transportation and clean buildings, with 5-10 ideas to be supported
      • The idea must be relevant to NY, though it can apply to other geographies in the US, too
      • The application process is open through July 22nd, 2024 at https://innsure.org/prize-page
    • Looking forward, the climate issues are very real now and not just talk, and we are starting to talk about things other than raising rates and exiting. You're seeing discussion about
      • Predict & Prevent
      • Parametrics
      • Community embedded insurance, with communities buying coverage for a hard-to-cover area

    This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

    Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

    Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    36 m
  • The Future of Insurance – Amir Kabir, General Partner, AV8 Ventures

    The Future of Insurance – Amir Kabir, General Partner, AV8 Ventures
    Jun 18 2024

    Amir leads Fintech and Insurtech investing at AV8 and has been one of the earliest investors in the Insurtech space. Amir has been an entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 15 years of experience, working with early and mid-stage companies on financing, partnerships and strategic growth initiatives.

    Prior to AV8, Amir was an investment director and founding team member at Munich Re Ventures where he lead and managed investment efforts for two of the funds and made early bets in Insurtech, Mobility and Digital Health in companies like Next Insurance, Inshur, HDVI, Spruce, Ridecell, Babylon Health etc.. Earlier Amir worked for several venture funds, including Route 66 Ventures, focusing on Fintech and Insurtech, and investing in companies such as Simplesurance and DriveWealth.

    He began his career in Germany as a network engineer and subsequently at Legodo AG (acquired by Open Text, OTEX (NASDAQ)), an enterprise software startup, where he held several roles in sales, business development and product management until acquisition.

    In 2019, Amir was ranked 11 out of 100 on Global Corporate Venture’s Rising Stars list and was named a “VC Champions Select” by All Raise.

    Amir lives in San Francisco and holds an MBA from Georgetown McDonough School of Business, a BS in Business Informatics from RFH Cologne in Germany and is currently finishing an MS in Law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

    Highlights from the Show

    • Amir started investing in InsurTech in the mid-2010s, and spent most of his investing career at Munich Re in their Ventures team, as the third member of the team
      • They started investing in industrial IoT and similar topics since their funding was from Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB)
      • In 2016, there was more of a pivot into InsurTech as it emerged
    • At AV8, Amir focuses on early stage, focused on very early stage to some revenue traction but still pre-series-A generally
      • Their majority LP is Allianz, and the fund is heavily FinTech-focused
      • They like risk taking businesses like MGAs and full-stack carriers because of the long-term returns, plus the difficulty in selling to insurance companies and surviving the long sales cycles
      • Amir has focused on niche markets or areas where incumbents lack digital solutions, and leading with building a new insurance approach and adding tech after it's established
    • Investing in long-term ideas may take longer, but then there's strong moats that can stop competitors from eating your lunch, which is harder to do with short-term ideas or SaaS areas
    • Investment has gotten tough, but there are investors out there still; they just may be looking more critically at profit potential than might have happened in the past
    • InsurTechs that went public and haven't done well were not alone – the market more broadly was pushing a lot of startups to go public so investors could get returns, but for many it proved too soon to go public because fundamentals weren't there yet

    This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

    Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

    Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    19 m
  • The Future of Insurance – Yaron Ben-Zvi, COO, Oka The Carbon Insurance Company

    The Future of Insurance – Yaron Ben-Zvi, COO, Oka The Carbon Insurance Company
    Jun 11 2024

    Guest Bio

    Yaron Ben-Zvi is an executive with a track record of building innovative businesses in complex spaces, such as insurtech and financial services. Yaron is currently COO at Oka, The Carbon Insurance Company. Oka is de-risking the voluntary carbon market (VCM) for buyers and sellers of carbon credits with first-of-its-kind carbon credit insurance, which provides buyers with financial compensation in the event of credit reversal or invalidation.

    Previously, Yaron was CEO of Haven Technologies and Haven Life. At Haven Technologies, Yaron led the build of a modern, cloud-based, and end-to-end technology platform for life insurance that became a key part of MassMutual’s transformation strategy. As Founder and CEO of Haven Life, Yaron grew the company into one of the leaders in online term life insurance distribution with its transparent and user-friendly product design. Along the way, Haven Life was recognized by U.S. News & World Report and Investopedia as one of the best term life insurance providers in the U.S. Previously, Yaron founded Goalmine, an early robo-advisor that was acquired in 2012.

    As a leader, Yaron is passionate about creating unique and collaborative company cultures that help teams realize their potential. At Haven, Yaron had the honor to build and lead a team of more than 350 technology and insurance professionals to make life insurance simple and expand access to this critical financial product.

    Yaron obtained his BA in history and political philosophy from Wesleyan University and his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

    Highlights from the Show

    • Yaron joined the show with the Life Insurance startup he founded, Haven
    • After leaving Haven, he was looking for an opportunity in something that connected to his interest in dealing with the climate crisis, which lead him to Oka, which insures carbon offset and credit transactions
    • Companies that use credits and offsets as part of their decarbonization strategy, the founding team at Oka realized there were a number of risks that make this difficult, with Oka focused on post-issuance risks, like
      • Reversal Risks - you buy carbon credit from a forest in Canada, but a wildfire burns that forest down. Or, illegal logging shrinks the forest. These are risks that could release the captured-carbon back into the air.
      • Invalidation Risks - the methodology behind the carbon credit was flawed, like fraud being committed in the actions that lead to the carbon sequestration
    • Oka was only started in 2023, and today has their own syndicate at Lloyd's, capacity from partners, and the technology to support it – with a team of seven people
      • The CEO, Chris Slater, comes from the industry, as do the board of directors, so there's a lot of experience building insurance businesses
    • The carbon market is split into two sub-markets
      • Voluntary Market – companies that are choosing to decarbonize
      • Involuntary Market – government or regulators force compliance with certain standards and timelines
    • Both markets are growing rapidly out of necessity, and there are buyers and sellers that need protection
      • Some buyers want protection if they're newer to the market, or are doing something unproven
      • Some sellers who want to enhance the attractiveness of their carbon credits and to protect themselves from something going wrong that makes it hard for them to deliver or fulfill the credits they've sold

    This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

    Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

    Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    27 m
  • The Future of Insurance – Festus William Amoyaw, Co-Founder & CEO, Figtech & InsurTech Ghana

    The Future of Insurance – Festus William Amoyaw, Co-Founder & CEO, Figtech & InsurTech Ghana
    Jun 4 2024
    Festus William Amoyaw started his career with Amex International Incorporated, a contractor for the USAID in Ghana Trade & Investment Reform Programme, Increased Private Enterprise Performance (IPEP) Component Project as a Market Research and Business Development Assistant. He subsequently worked in an indigenous Ghanaian Financial Institution, HFC Bank (Republic Bank), as a Credit Analyst focusing on Small and Medium Enterprises. In the last decade, he has gathered considerable experience in private equity and impact investment. He worked with GroFin Ghana, a subsidiary of GroFin Capital based in Mauritius, as a Business Development Manager and, subsequently, a Portfolio Manager. He also briefly worked as Investment Officer with Investisseur & Partenaires (I&), a Paris-based Fund Manager of I&P Afrique Entrepreneur Fund of Euro 55 Million in the Ghana Office. From I&P, he moved on to work at Acumen as the West Africa Officer, where he sourced for deals, conducted due diligence and closed various transactions. In 2018 he joined the Regional Offgrid Electrification Project (ROGEP), an Ecowas Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) initiative funded by the World Bank Group and partners as a Finance Expert. He also acted as the Coordinator for ROGEP before joining WAM. He has worked as a Principal Investment Officer with Women’s World Banking Asset Management (WAM) and Consultant for Lendahand and XpressGas Limited. Currently, he is the CEO/Co-Founder of Figtech Limited, a Fintech startup company in Ghana. Fintech has developed an App, MYFIG, to solve the challenges many faces in navigating various financial products. He graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi and the University of Ghana Business School in Agriculture Economics and a Masters in Business Administration, respectively. He is a Certified Digital Finance Expert from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Highlights from the Show Festus started working about 3 years ago on the issue of people in Africa having enough financial protection for retirement or to protect their families, and penetration rates of traditional life insurance products are very lowAfrica has seen the adoption of mobile payments, even on feature phones instead of smart phones, but that's largely not moved into financial services spending so much as general consumptionAll of this lead him to co-found Figtech, which is a platform to manage your insurance protection Life insurance is sold by individuals in Africa, but these agents don't tend to stand behind or support the policies after they're sold, so consumers struggle with basic things like updating their address (which requires going to the insurance company's office to change it in person) There are changes needed in the insurance market and regulation of it to see more penetration of insurance Some regulators have been creating more flexible paths for startups and new players to enter the market and growFor example, creating digital distribution licensesThey've also allowed for creation of microinsurance that comes along with or is embedded into other products, like insurance you get when you buy more airtime minutes for your mobile phone Figtech was part of the first regulator-organized startup competition three years ago, and that experience helped spark Festus to push to create an insurtech community in Ghana, starting InsurTech GhanaThey've been working with other InsurTech communities around the world, and started the first ever InsurTech Ghana conference in 2023, which they're holding again this yearAfrica is where a lot of new ideas of coverage and ways to protect people are being developed, and we would be smart to foster and watch what's happening there as a source of possible future product innovation ideas for the global insurance market This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk. Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes. Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    27 m
  • The Future of Insurance Podcast – Wayne Slavin, Co-Founder & CEO, Sure

    The Future of Insurance Podcast – Wayne Slavin, Co-Founder & CEO, Sure
    Apr 9 2024

    Wayne Slavin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sure, a VC backed insurtech startup. Prior to Sure he was the VP of Product Management at Tapingo, TechCrunch’s Most Innovative Company of 2013. His other past projects and companies include NetStumbler, a consumer app with more than 1.5 billion downloads, the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader, Buddy Media (now part of salesforce), and BackupRight the enterprise SaaS company he sold in 2012. He has a Masters Degree from Columbia University.

    Highlights from the Show

    • Wayne took his experience from outside of insurance and wondered if some of the things they were working on to remove friction could help in insurance
    • Sure initially provided a platform to enable embedding of insurance into other customer experiences, and not just for simple products we usually see embedded, like travel and event insurance, but for even the most complex, like Auto and Property insurance, including enabling embedded insurance sales for the largest car maker and EV maker in the world, mortgage lenders and more
      • They do this for legacy and startup companies, focusing on the consumer-facing brand and solving for their need to bring insurance into their experience
      • They aren't a carrier, so they can connect any insurance product or capacity provider into the mix
    • More recently, they've created Anywhere, which includes filed rates and forms with extreme flexibility to allow insurance providers to go to market faster and with much more flexibility to customize the offering and respond to changing market dynamics fast enough to keep competing instead of just pulling out of tough markets
      • Rolling out new programs or products can take years, and Sure wanted to find a way to make it take just a few short months
      • Existing solutions of using rate services organizations have taken too long, cost too much, and haven't left insurers satisfied with the outcome (financially or otherwise)
      • Sure also includes the technology to enable bringing the product to market and selling it, and not just rate and form

    This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

    Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

    Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    38 m
  • The Future of Insurance Podcast – Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation & Digital Officer, Nationwide

    The Future of Insurance Podcast – Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation & Digital Officer, Nationwide
    Apr 2 2024

    As Chief Innovation and Digital Officer, Chetan is accountable for leading the company’s digital vision and maturing our enterprise digital capabilities and expertise while creating new customer-centric products and services for members and partners.

    Chetan is a visionary leader who has repeatedly developed high performing teams to work towards a common vision and purpose. During his 18-year career at Nationwide, Chetan successfully delivered several of the industry’s largest transformations, with more than $1B in investment towards creating single core platforms for Policy, Claims, Customer and Data.

    In his tenure as the leader of digital and innovation, Chetan and his teams have advanced Nationwide’s strategy through digitization of customer journeys and the development of a robust innovation portfolio. Leading with a people-first philosophy, Chetan has fostered a culture of experimentation and collaboration, guided by a strong commitment to customer-centricity and focus on technology based innovation. His ability to anticipate and embrace change has accelerated innovation efforts and amplified key business outcomes for Nationwide.

    Chetan holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The Ohio State University, a Master of Science in Information Systems from Miami University, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Muskingum University.

    Highlights from the Show

    • Chetan runs the enterprise innovation and digital area, which is here to help focus on what's coming in the future
    • They think about the meta trends impacting insurance, insureds and insurers like autonomous driving, climate change, GenAI and more
    • Nationwide thinks about three things when looking at how to structure your innovation efforts so it's not just a hobby but something that has actual tangible benefit
    • As an industry, there are several things that hold us back, including the standard answers (regulation, it's not a sexy industry), but also things like what we sell not being easily understood / being complex; because the cost of product is unknown at the time of sale, it's very risky to do something new in the space because you won't know if it was a big mistake until it's been far too long to do anything about it; there's a misnomer in the idea of innovation being about something completely new but rather something disruptive
    • Gen AI is something Nationwide has been looking at, and doing some real, tangible things with, mainly focused on how to enable their people to be materially more empathetic much faster
    • Horizon 3 outlook is very much about how connected things impact what Nationwide does
    • Chetan says we need to decide who we are, first movers, fast followers or laggards

    This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

    Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

    Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.
    Más Menos
    37 m