The Future of Insurance – Sam White, Founder & CEO, Stella Insurance

Sam White is the multi-award-winning CEO of Freedom Services, an ever-expanding insurance business including Action 365, Pukka Insure and Freedom Brokers in the UK, and Stella Insurance in Australia. Having started her first company in 1999 aged just 24 in her sister's conservatory, 22 years later she employs over 160 staff with offices in Cheadle, Cheshire, and Sydney, Australia with a turnover of over £14million. Sam cares passionately about diversity, equality, innovation and above all, making business human. Motivated by a desire to change the insurance industry for the better, Sam is a vocal advocate for levelling the playing field for women and championing female leaders within the industry. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, Sam is a regular business commentator in media and have been seen discussing current business affairs on BBC's Wake Up to Money and Ian King Live on Sky News. She also hosts her own podcast "Human Business with Sam White" where she candidly discusses successes and failures with fellow business owners.

Highlights from the Show

• Sam started her first business at 24, doing motor claim adjusting work
• Having started a business as a young female in a very male-dominated space, you realize there are certain things that don't work for men or women in the industry or the consumers
• This is what drove the creation of Stella – what if the Financial Services industry more broadly was designed from a right-brain standpoint with more creative, supportive energy, would that better meet the needs of women (and others)?
  • They started by asking what people need, not just presuming they know, even if Stella's leadership was predominantly female, so they did a great deal of research to understand what risks people had that they needed help protecting, and how to go about that
  • They also found things women in particular were not happy about with insurance, including the 'loyalty tax' where you get a cheaper price as a new customer, and then it goes up when you renew, penalizing you for loyalty – no one likes that, but women had stronger feelings about it in particular
• Stella is less about products only for women than something built from that perspective and energy
• Stella currently writes Motor cover in Australia and the UK, have Pet in Australia, and are adding Travel in both markets
• The goal is to cross all of Financial Services with their approach, and to be a global offering
• The Stella Effect is about their ability to add to the product with the female perspective, and either redesign an existing product or create something new, like a Domestic Abuse cover to add to Motor
• They give back to several community-focused organizations in the markets they operate in, and support female entrepreneur forums
• The future of insurance to Sam is about the original purpose of insurance to protect society, and finding a way to create coverage to protect the true unmet needs of people

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance Volume III. The Collaborators, part of the Future of Insurance thought leadership 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.