InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Alex Cardona, CEO and Co-founder: Recorder: Connecting brokers, connected insurance (341)

Feb 9, 2025

Alex Cardona, CEO and Co-founder of Recorder, shares his insights on revolutionizing broker management in the commercial insurance sector. He discusses how inefficiencies like manual data entry hinder the industry's progress and the transformative role of APIs in facilitating real-time connections between brokers and underwriters. Alex highlights the significance of standardizing risk data and automating data ingestion to enhance underwriting accuracy. Additionally, he touches on building a liquid marketplace and innovative funding strategies that allow for scaling without heavy investments.

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ANECDOTE

Data Flow Discrepancy

Alex Cardona's previous company, Codat, provided financial data to banks and insurers.
Insurers linked far fewer businesses than banks, highlighting a data flow issue from businesses to brokers to insurers.

INSIGHT

Manual Data Entry Bottleneck

Brokers spend excessive time manually re-keying information from PDFs and meeting notes.
This manual process creates a data bottleneck in the insurance workflow.

ADVICE

Build for Value First

Start by addressing the most acute pain points and build something that delivers immediate value.
Don't over-engineer initially; focus on shipping a functional product quickly.

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From manual data entry to slow underwriting decisions, inefficiencies in broker management have long been a challenge for the commercial insurance industry. But what if brokers could streamline data collection, enhance risk assessment and seamlessly connect with underwriters in real time?

In this episode, Robin Merttens speaks with Alex Cardona, CEO and Co-founder of Recorder, a company building the next generation of broker management software. After a successful exit from Codat, a financial data infrastructure business, Alex and his team are applying their expertise to insurance—helping brokers replace outdated workflows with automation, APIs and structured data.

Key Talking Points:

How Recorder is addressing inefficiencies in broker management
Why traditional broker workflows create data bottlenecks for insurers
The role of APIs in modernising commercial insurance
How automated data ingestion can improve underwriting accuracy
The importance of standardizing risk data for brokers and carriers
Challenges in adoption and how Recorder is overcoming industry resistance
Insights from Alex’s journey at Codat and lessons applied to Recorder
Why brokers are the key drivers of change in insurance distribution
How Recorder is scaling without heavy venture capital investment

If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. You can also contact Alex Cardona on LinkedIn to start a conversation!

Continuing Professional Development

This InsTech Podcast Episode is accredited by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). By listening, you can claim up to 0.5 hours towards your CPD scheme.

By the end of this podcast, you should be able to meet the following Learning Objectives:

List the key inefficiencies in traditional broker workflows that slow down risk assessment and underwriting.
Define the challenges brokers face in manual data processing and how technology is addressing these issues.
Explain why brokers are central to driving innovation in insurance data infrastructure and connectivity.

If your organisation is a member of InsTech and you would like to receive a quarterly summary of the CPD hours you have earned, visit the Episode 341 page of the InsTech website or email cpd@instech.co to let us know you have listened to this podcast.

To help us measure the impact of the learning, we would be grateful if you would take a minute to complete a quick feedback survey.