Ep 124 Tom Hoad Head of Innovation TMK: Innovation is really about doing stuff

Innovation. We keep reading about it. We keep getting harangued at conferences to do more of it.

We also keep getting told that Innovation is really hard to do in insurance.

But is it? After all, innovation used to happen perfectly naturally and organically in the past.

It’s only in the last decade that we have started to take the business of innovation seriously and given it its own department and made people responsible and accountable for making it happen.

What have we learnt so far?

Meet today’s guest, Tom Hoad. Tom is Head of Innovation at Tokio Marine Kiln (TMK) and has been in the role since late 2015.

That’s a lot of accumulated knowledge about how to go about implanting new ideas into insurance.

Tom is bursting with energy and enthusiasm and this podcast packs a huge amount of learning into a very short time.

We start the conversation by running through one of TMK’s latest product launches in the clean energy space. This is a really great sounding idea and is what brought Tom to my attention again recently and reminded me to get him on the show.

But soon the discussion develops into a really broad one that harnesses all that Tom has learnt about the art and science of bringing exciting new insurance products to market.

It’s full of mind-expanding and very useful bits of knowledge that Tom has learnt from six-and-a-half years at the bleeding edge.

Anyone who wants to improve their innovation hit rate will find this a fascinating and really useful listen.

NOTES
I let BAU slip through the Abbreviation filter. This stands for Business As Usual.

We talk at the beginning about the Altelium battery warranty insurance deal. Here is the announcement in full
We also mention Parametrix cloud outage insurance.

The Episode with George Beattie of Beazley is Number 117. I’d recommend listening to these two episodes in conjunction with each other.

LINKS
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/