Scouting for Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Annap Derebail, IBM’s Global Insurance Industry CTO within IBM’S Global Business Services Unit. Annap’S FOCUS has always been on delivering impactful business outcomes by re-imagining user experiences. Today Annap provides trusted advice to influence revenue growth for IBM’s clients by considering architectural leadership to transform client’s business through technology innovation. In this conversation they cover the future of insurance and implications on operations, how technology becomes a key enabler of growth today, and how can insurers simplify operations to build resilient business models.   KEY TAKEAWAYS          There’s a lot of market forces that are disrupting traditional insurance models. Firstly, around customer expectations. Customers are increasingly looking towards an Amazon- or Google-like experience when dealing with their insurance. The implications for insurers include creating some sort of personalised offerings, providing high levels of service and responsiveness. There are two key advantages that incumbent insurers have over new entrants to the market. Certainly, the new entrants are creating new business models and ways of attracting and approaching customers. But I think the advantages for incumbents are their huge existing customer base – keeping a customer is six times easier than acquiring a new one. Secondly, by virtue of having been in business for such a long time, they are sitting on tons and tons of data, they have knowledge of customer transactions/interactions. That’s a rich oasis with which they can develop a better understanding of their customers and what they need. Insurers really need to reinvent how they think about risk and what sort of a relationship they want with their customers. Reinventing that risk partnership and helping insurers with new risk experiences that offer personalised advise and demonstrating a new risk partnership between the insurer and the customer. Being able to harvest the data can be done by taking a fresh look at historically operating processes in the enterprise, critical processes such as underwriting claims, but also all of the support processes like billing, customer support, policy maintenance, etc. Just by paying attention to driving intelligence into those processes using data, we’ve been able to example reduce 15% of our customer churn by implementing a churn detection model. At the infrastructure level, what I see is a lot of incumbent insurers still operating legacy IT systems still working on legacy infrastructure. The immediate opportunity there is to migrate those onto a cloud-based platform. This brings inherent benefits like flexibility in terms of scaling up and down in response to demand and to market needs. You can access cloud-based services from anywhere in the world.   BEST MOMENTS ‘The insurance industry needs to adapt and respond to new disruptors and this response has to be driven by data and new technologies and using them to gain a business advantage in the market.’‘Less than 10% of insurers have actually been able to meet what we call ‘the data dividend’, effective use of data in order to achieve competitive advantage because of a lack of knowledge of how to access data, how the data is siloed within the infrastructure of the business.’‘We can help drive a step change in core productivity of incumbent insurers. About 60% of their costs goes into legacy IT systems, modernising by having multiple core systems in place and moving to a SaaS model reduces issues.’‘The typical underwriting or claims process tends to have heavy human involvement and requires a large number of steps in order to make decisions. The scope there is to effectively use the mountain of data that insurers are sitting on to present the right data to the right decision makers at the right time – not just raw data, but insights drawn from the raw data. – to improve the process and categorise incoming cases that can either be automated or needs human intervention.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Annap Derebail has 20+ years of professional experience in systems and integration architecture, design, development and management of complex industry solutions.  In his current role, he works with insurance customers worldwide to create innovative solutions for business problems leveraging microservices and API driven architecture, distributed, multi-tier systems and application integration architecture, AI/ML, blockchain, IoT, cloud computing and services-oriented architecture. In the last five years, he has worked with worldwide financial services clients to provide trusted advice on their digital transformation initiatives, while serving as leader of the global IBM insurance industry architect community.  His work with clients has spanned several application areas: Modernization architectures for insurance and banking, Blockchain applications in insurance, Enterprise architecture for aircraft systems health, Supply chain collaboration in automotive and retail, RFID based track and trace solutions, Product design-to-manufacture integration, and Supply chain optimization.  Over the years, he has been IBM’s technical representative in industry standards bodies, including ACORD, BIAN, PDES Inc, STAR and AIA.  He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Texas A&M University. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdL LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden Instagram: sabinevdLofficial Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial TikTok: sabinevdlofficial Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com Website: www.sabinevdl.com  

On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Christie Downs. A self-made entrepreneur and problem solver who started handdii with her co-founder Kathryn Wood.After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, Christie saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims.This is how handdii was born as a three-way digital platform, combining insurance, construction and contractors, where contractors can easily connect, engage and promote their businesses. KEY TAKEAWAYS I am a high-energy business leader who loves solving problems and creating exciting solutions that transform people's lives. After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, I saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims, making it quicker, faster, and cheaper for insurers, clients, and tradespeople. We’re just at the starting line, there’s so much opportunity ahead. I think the early innovation in our sector has been pretty straightforward. How do we buy faster, make things convenient, streamline processes and save cost? Quite a lot of separate practical solutions. For example, right now, there are many inspection tools and solutions an insurance company would use – virtual inspections, drones, AI, and they might actually use various tools all at once. Our vision is to make small property claims amazing. The industry has a cumbersome process for property claims with multiple people and approvals involved designed for large losses. This process is not designed to fast-track small claims, and moreover, the major suppliers to the insurance industry would prefer not to handle small claims. So, my Co-Founder and I set out to change that! Handdii is a really practical solution to a common problem. Any Claims leader can see the opportunity in their portfolio to improve how small claims are managed. We’re really focused on our niche, and when we partner with an insurer, we make it easy to work with us. Our team has a solid property claims background, reflected in the product and program we have built. This makes it easy for the insurer to work with us because we speak their language and understand their challenges while having the speed and the money to be an innovative partner creating solutions for them. BEST MOMENTS‘My experience also includes being Executive of Carlton Football Club as the General Manager of Business Development introducing unique revenue streams, the creation of Carlton Respects program against family violence and Blue Skies program supporting diversity and inclusion in the inaugural year of AFLW.’‘I think the future of innovation will become more and more integrated into our lives, activities, and systems. Bringing all of these different solutions together, then once that efficiency is achieved, we’ll look to bring innovation to achieve more purposeful outcomes around sustainability, inclusion, and prosperity.’‘COVID has made some things much easier and others more challenging. For example, onboarding contractors, meeting via video rather than in person, has streamlined how quickly we have expanded our contractor network across multiple states this year. Whereas meeting new insurance companies is more challenging, we are certainly happy the in-person conferences are kicking off again now.’‘When working with large enterprises, be patient, be persistent, be astute commercially – if you’re bringing great value, hold your line on your cost.’ ABOUT THE GUESTChristie Downs: I am a high-energy business leader who loves solving problems and creating exciting solutions that transform people's lives and work. After working as an executive in the construction industry, building deep experience and broad industry relationships, I saw an opportunity to use technology to improve the way customers connect with contractors when they are making property insurance claims, making it quicker, faster, and cheaper for insurers, clients, and tradespeople. I made the leap to entrepreneurship in 2018, starting handdii with Kathryn Wood.handdii is a three-way platform where contractors can easily connect, engage and promote their businesses, insurers experience reduced cost, and both and customers find their property insurance repairs are easier and cheaper to organize with better results.My core career experience of ten years was as group sales director and board member of the national construction company, Johns Lyng Group, ASX listed as JLG. I played a lead role in the national expansion and exponential revenue growth of the group, from $12 million in 2004 to $350 million in 2015. During this experience, I saw first-hand the problems people had with getting repairs done, often after stressful situations, and experienced fantastic contractors who ran great businesses.My experience also includes being the Executive of Carlton Football Club as the General Manager of Business Development, introducing unique revenue streams, the creation of the Carlton Respects program against family violence, and the Blue Skies program supporting diversity and inclusion in the inaugural year of AFLW.I am passionate about contributing to society and was Chair of Starball Committee Sydney for 3 years, raising more than USD $1 million for Starlight Children’s Foundation.I love to share my experiences and learnings with #public speaking on the value of diversity and inclusion, starting your own venture, and how the insurtech industry is evolving. About handdii: Having worked as a Director of a Construction company in the Insurance industry for 10 years, I know customer satisfaction in property claims is very low. This is because the traditional fulfillment process is complicated and takes 60 days on average to get a property repaired. Yet, 80% of property claims are small and only require 1 or 2 trades.For this 80% of small claims, handdii dramatically improves the customer experience by pairing the customer with the trade they need to assist in claim determination and complete works immediately. Cutting claim life from 2 months to 1 week.handdii makes workflow easy for trades through pre-agreed rates, opt-in scheduling, automated processing, and payment. Minimizing these friction points empowers the trades to focus on providing quality work and an awesome customer experience.For insurance companies, handdii can provide claim lodgement and allocation, save 25% in claims cost and enable digital transformation for property claims. A significant positive impact on customer satisfaction (NPS) will lead to new customer acquisition and further product opportunities. https://www.handdii.com/  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Mark McLaughlin a respected figure in IBM and its insurance division to discuss the future of customer experience within a fast-evolving world. KEY TAKEAWAYS You must improve the way you engage with your customers whether this is through distribution channels (e.g., brokers or affinity partnerships) or directly. Your customers are demanding digital frictionless engagements and experiences. They are seeking transparent and optimum convenience in the way they access insurance products and services. They also want transparency in the way their data is being used. In the end, this is the way you earn customer trust. When data, intelligence, automation, and insights are combined as one, they augment decision-making among stakeholders but also require changes in skills, processes, technology, and cultures. Think about the “reconfiguration” of the internal fabric of the enterprise to deliver the required personalized experiences. InsurTechs are doing well. Over $47 billion have been invested in InsurTechs. Over 30 have become unicorns and more are expected to become unicorns in the years to come. Today, to realize such a vision and upgrade legacy systems and global delivery presence, IBM works with the top 100 carriers worldwide, bringing capabilities such as blockchain, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and cloud for flexibility and innovation as well as industry expertise to deliver unique capabilities able to yield differentiated experiences. BEST MOMENT‘To elevate customer experiences and achieve customer-centricity and unlock new growth opportunities, insurers must identify innovative opportunities internally and external partnerships to reinvent the core of their business.’‘We are in the days of “Risk experiences”.’‘If insurers think about repackaging old format analog processes into digitised options, they are going to fail. Customers are asking for more. They want products and services aligned with their needs.’‘We know that insurers are better placed at focusing on “risk” (e.g., algorithmic underwriting) while InsurTechs are great at building unique customer experiences (e.g., lemonade, Hippo, etc.).’ ABOUT THE GUESTMark McLaughlin is IBM’s Global Insurance Director, leading IBM’s Global Insurance strategy, solutions, and partnerships. Mark’s teams analyse trends in the insurance business and in technology, predict strategies for insurers, and build IBM insurance solutions to meet insurer needs. He also shares IBM’s point-of-view on insurance with business leaders, regulators, and conference audiences worldwide.Mark is a 25-year veteran of the insurance industry. He has previously led business units in insurance distribution and analytics, technology infrastructure, CRM, and insurance business process. Mark has personally led implementations in strategy, program management, analytics, data warehousing, expert systems, commercial claims, and underwriting for multiple top 20 US insurers.Titter: @mclmarkLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mclmark  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to two renowned FinTech Influencers and respected voices in finance and insurance, Danielle Guzman – head of social media at Mercer who is an expert at activating employees and creating business impact on social media, and Theodora Lau - Founder at Unconventional Ventures, author, podcast host and public speaker who advises many startup ventures. KEY TAKEAWAYS Danielle - The future of work is something I’m passionate about, both personally and professionally and the journey over the past years has been about reinventing myself and how to stay relevant in a world that is changing so radically. The pandemic has only accelerated that journey, not just for me but for everyone to be thinking about this a lot more, using social media channels to connect and make a difference. Theo – I spent the bulk of my career in telecom, not finance and banking, don’t hold that against me! What’s interesting is, when you look at high-tech, telecom, financial service industry, and FinTech and InsurTech startups, a lot of what we do inherently at the end of the day is about people. Technology is a means to an end and allows us to communicate and exchange ideas. As a broader society, we’re starting to realize that self-care is actually not self-indulgence. The conversations around mental health and well-being are now becoming what they should be. Health is embedded in every aspect of our lives, but mental health and taking time to invest in our own well-being have always been secondary things. It’s critical that now through organizations and leaders that it’s becoming a very real and daily conversation at the table. I grew up in a generation where you had a career, and now we’re part of a generation where you’re having career experiences. There’s so much that needs to be done for that to become accessible to everyone, there doesn’t seem to be an answer to that right now but organizations are trying to figure that out. That’s going to be a watershed moment for the future of work and one of the biggest changes that we will probably see in our lifetime and we’re at the beginning of that journey. At the crux of that is the concept of trust.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I like to look at everything as not making big changes all at once, but how we can make small, incremental changes that have a compound return over time.’ ‘The past 18 months have shown, we might be in the same storm, but we’re not in the same boat. We have been very aware of a lot of the challenges and inequalities that exist in our society, but I hope we take away the learning from recent months that there’s a lot we still need to do.’ ‘Longevity is a challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity. Since the early 1900s we’ve all gained an extra, healthy 30 living years. Living longer affords us to try different things in our careers.’ ‘Are new solutions being created to mimic what we’ve always had in the past, or are they being created to support these new opportunities? Are there enough solutions out there to support small business owners and gig workers? I would say we need more.’ ABOUT THE GUEST As the VP of Social and Distributed Content at Mercer, Danielle uses data to assess the viability of risky campaigns and predict the future of digital content consumption. Since diving head first into the world of insights-driven marketing and leadership, Danielle has seen data transform the careers of dozens of marketers—including her own. Website: https://www.mercer.com/ Theodora (Theo) Lau is a public speaker, writer, and startup advisor, whose work seeks to spark innovation to improve consumer financial well-being. As founder of Unconventional Ventures, she focuses on developing and growing an ecosystem of financial institutions, corporates, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists to better address the unmet needs of consumers (e.g. older adults and gig economy workers), with keen interests in women and minority founders. As part of her work, she regularly mentors and advises FinTech startups. She is recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Economy and Finance, No. 1 Women in Finance by Onalytica, and Top FinTech influencer by various publications including Onalytica, Retail Banker International, and FinTech Finance. She co-hosts Rhetoriq, a podcast on longevity and fintech innovations, and runs a weekly blog on Irish Tech News. She is also a regular contributor for various top industry events, publications, and podcasts, including Harvard Business Review, MIT Tech Review, Money20/20, Finovate, RISE, American Banker, Breaking Banks, Financial Brand, Financial Revolutionist, Irish Tech News, Mercer, and INV Filter. She provides strategic advisory services to a broad set of corporates; she advises startups and mentors entrepreneurs from different accelerators and incubators around the country. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusion – and frequently writes and speaks on the need for diversity on gender, ethnicity, age, education, and more. Her end goal is to help more financial institutions (incumbents and startups) focus on the needs of the forgotten demographics and build sustainable and inclusive business models. Website: https://www.unconventional.vc/  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdL LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden Instagram: sabinevdLofficial Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial TikTok: sabinevdlofficial Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com Website: www.sabinevdl.com

On this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Gunther, General Partner at IAG Firemark Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund from IAG located in Australia. Scott has been at IAG for over 10 years and has been running the Venture fund for over 6 years. With strong expertise in marketing customer experience among others, Scott wanted to bring something new to the group, by opening his doors to the external world to ensure its resilience and relevance for the very long term. During this podcast, the pair discuss Scott’s path to CVC Land, and what IAG Firemark Ventures do to remain on top of its game. They also cover the topic of talent, talent, and talent, and what remote working means for Scott and his team. Finally, they discuss best practices for startups, scaleups, corporate innovators, and investors wanting to build their corporate venturing arm. KEY TAKEAWAYS Everything we hear, see and experience in the startup world today is not new, it happened way back during the dot com boom. That’s where I started and I couldn’t ask for a more impressive grounding, working for one of Australia’s largest companies and trying to set something up – 90-day sprints to try to launch businesses, products, and services and thinking about the World Wide Web before it became the World Wide Web, eCommerce and the like. As a young man, at the time, coming out of university, I probably had no idea what the future was going to hold for me. A fundamental part of why we do what we do is to bring the outside world inside our own enterprise and try to transform how we deliver insurance. That means that every day is different because, as you’re starting to look at global, macro trends or at different markets to see what’s working, or looking at different parts of the customer journey. We’re working today with business-to-consumer businesses, Agritech, or AI businesses, there are no two days that are the same. The more that you can experience, whether it’s industry or role, function or geography, it really sets you apart from the rest to have this flexibility. Successful CVCs across the world are made up of teams that have got really diverse skill sets. CVCs fail or succeed depending on their acknowledgment that they’re part of something bigger and that the corporate HQ has its primary direction and purpose. At IAG our purpose is to make your world a safer place, we’re there to insure customers, their assets, businesses, livelihoods, and a whole heap of other different risks. But also, if an incident or a claim happened, to be there to help them to recover. Working for an organization that is very purpose driven gives you something to work backward from and something to aim for, like the North Star. Any CVC has to make sure that they’re not just a little adjunct of a corporation, they’re a really integral part of the business and as a consequence, you really have to know your business inside and out. When we put our investment thesis together we had to get razor-sharp on the things that you can and can’t do. You might want to invest in every market, look at all sorts of different stages of startups, and invest different amounts.  When you first get going you need to give yourself guardrails, like not investing in series c stage scaleups for instance. For instance, our CVC does not lead investment rounds. We do not invest in certain markets. As we evolve, we will adjust, refine and expand our investment thesis which will change for the better over time. BEST MOMENTS ‘I’ve always been a believer in breadth and depth of experiences and my journey took me to different parts of the business world but also into very relevant adjacent verticals too.’‘Insurance is something you fall into and if you fall into it, you stay there.’‘Those CVCs who are really intrinsically in tune with understanding changing business models, but also the relationships across businesses and our industry, are the ones that are probably more successful.’‘Innovation is something that anyone in an organization should aspire to do. If you’re not moving forward you’re standing still and if you’re standing still, realistically, you’re going backward.’ ABOUT THE GUESTScott Gunther is a corporate venture capitalist (CVC) & startup enthusiast. Scott every day partners with business leaders to help them identify and understand strategic opportunities to achieve digital transformation and customer growth. With years of experience designing future state digital-first businesses and delivering transformation programs across multiple industries, Scott possesses the unique skills and experience of both strategy and execution - a differentiator at the board table for both blue chip and emerging businesses. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdgunther/ IAG Firemark Ventures website: https://firemarkcollective.com/ventures ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

On this episode of Scouting For Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henrique Volpi, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Kakau – one of the very first InsurTechs in Latin America. Kakau is an InsurTech and tech platform that delivers digital experiences while improving insurance operations and easing the delivery of complex financial services. Kakau's SaaS model is powered by machine learning and robotic process automation. Henrique is one of the co-authors of the InsurTech book and is also the co-founder and board member of the InsurTech association of Brazil. During the conversation, Sabine and Henrique discuss InsurTech in Latam and Brazil, selling insurance via the phone, Brazil's regulator approving subscription transaction models, NFT policies, and the future of tech-led business models. KEY TAKEAWAYS Back in the day, people would question whether it was possible to sell insurance digitally. Insurance sales were only done by phone. Indeed, you could originate business via Google Adverts and so on. Still, the delivery of a fully digital experience wasn’t the case back then. So, we did the contrarian thing and went to design a digital-first platform as we knew this was a global trend. The first thing we did was to discuss the project with a very large legal forum in Brazil and asked them for their help because insurance is a regulated industry and we knew the importance of having a legal team, and we designed one of the first digital MGAs in Brazil. Since the beginning, we spoke to the regulator. This approach was very different from other startups that were afraid to go to Rio and speak to them. We just shot straight and said: “We want to do this. Is that legally OK? Can we move forward?” We took a different approach from the other startups. Over time the regulator told us that we could not engage with them that much. So, we went back to our legal partner and set up the first Brazilian InsurTech Association to help technology startups get access to the insight they needed to build their InsurTech right. We started with 4-5 companies and now we have more than 20 members. The first thing I believe we need to educate others is on finance and therefore insurance, especially in Brazil. This should be the same in South-East Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a whole. Individuals must learn how to make money and take care of their money because many people do not know. They have to learn how to lend money, they have to learn how to manage that money, and hopefully, they will learn how to save a little bit. Only later they will think about insurance. Typically, you start with lending and credit cards before going up the value chain to investments and then insurance. Insurance and InsurTech are probably 5-6 years less mature compared to FinTech in Brazil which is going very strong.  Don’t be afraid to pivot your business model, you’re going to pivot many, many times around your journey and you have to be aggressive in terms of technology. We’ve seen around the world many, many companies that don’t really have a good tech stack, it’s just a front-end. What’s interesting though and I’m excited about this too, is when a market player realizes that it does not need to own everything then it can consider licensing. When you license the best capabilities that are out there you have a different perspective on how you serve your customers and users.    BEST MOMENTS ‘Even though it was very hard and there was a lot of work to do to prove the content, we proved that one can sell insurance policies digitally. Now it’s something that’s growing very fast in Brazil.’‘We may be going through a crisis. Still, what’s happening now is very volatile. So, when growth opportunities return, the launch of digital-first businesses may return faster than a lot of people think.’‘I’m very interested in the ramifications of cyber risk within our digital world. I think another trend we need to pay attention to is the monetization of value-added services. Some big carriers in Brazil are setting up services companies that will prevent risks from happening, especially around commercial lines.’‘Go for it. The world needs people who have the courage to become entrepreneurs.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Henrique Volpi is known for having a positive attitude, execution focus, and servant leadership. Committed to making a positive impact, Henrique Volpi is the co-founder of Kakau, one of the first InsurTech startups in Latin America. A technologist for the past 25 years working in leading tech companies such as Servicenow, EMC/Dell, and BMC Software. Henrique co-founded and became the president of the Brazilian Insurtech Association. He is a co-author of the Insurtech Book.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriquevolpi/ Kakau Technologies reduces the complexity of financial services and insurance operations through the efficient use of AI technology. By leveraging ML and RPA Kakau Tech delivers seamless SaaS solutions in Risk Model Management, NLP Claims Management, NFT Policy Management, and Churn Prediction. Kakau's technologies is a digital platform that uses artificial intelligence technology to deliver more accurate results in the insurance segment. Kakau delivers a fully digital experience seamlessly powered by machine learning across multiple product categories. The platform enables users to get insurance for various products like motorcycles, cell phones, digital devices, and bikes among others. Website: https://www.kakau.co/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

On this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Dylan Bourguignon, CEO of SO-SURE. He is on a mission to restore customer trust in insurance He has set up his digital insurance platform with a unique model that delivers win-win insurance. In this conversation, the pair discuss Dylan's journey setting up SO-SURE, why he moved into insurance, and how useful sales strategies and skills have been to scale the business. KEY TAKEAWAYS Having been an engineer twice over, I went into strategy consulting and then private equity for 10 years, and acquired an MBA on the way. In the latter part of my time in private equity, I was focused on insurance and I got to understand the entire value chain of insurance and how there was a chasm between the consumer experience of insurance and the margins the industry was making. As an investor, I was looking for businesses that were addressing the issue, sadly there weren’t any so I decided to do it myself. Whenever you try to change the equation for consumers, if you just try to focus on a single element that matters to them, whether it’s distribution, policy admin, or claims, as individual segments of the value chain, you’re only optimizing a sub-optimal point. If you really want to have a step change in customer experience, you really have to take control of the entirety of the value chain and redesign it. That’s what we’ve done.  Our platform does deliver a risk pooling model, it delivers a network model. Think about it as Mutual 3.0 (the next stage of a John Lewis Partnership model.) The idea is that I buy a policy, I’m covered, I can then connect to my friends and family who I trust, and every time I connect to them, I and my friends each get £10 added to each of our reward pots. We can all connect to as many people as we want until my reward pot is worth 80% of the value of my premium. At the end of the year, if I and my friends have not claimed, the money in my pot is paid out to me. My pot is not dependent on my friends' connections, only with those networks of people I connect directly with. Embedded insurance is a bit like "the emperor's new clothes." I feel that it is just like dressing up something that’s been around for a long time. "Dixons" was selling insurance with laptops in the 90s already. The only difference is now the ability to make it part of the consumer experience when you purchase a product, as distribution partners you can also build a better understanding of their customers and you can use some of that information to provide a more relevant and bespoke solution for the customers in terms of the insurance. There are all sorts of charges that the industry needs to be mindful of. Think about the issue of over-insurance. If you insure for loss/ theft/ damage for every single item that you own – a couch for example – is that not covered by your home and content insurance already? The solution that we’re creating for consumers needs to be relevant and we also need to be delivering through an impeccable moment of truth -- a superb claim experience -- that needs to be as seamless as the purchase itself.   BEST MOMENTS ‘For us at SO-SURE, we needed to gain control of the customer experience from purchase to claim. What you quickly realize is that there’s no way of fundamentally changing the paradigm for consumers unless you have control over the entire value chain – policy admin, claims, distribution.’‘Consumers don’t trust the promise that when things go wrong their back is going to be covered. Unfortunately, this is broken. Nobody has the consumer’s best interest at the heart of what they are doing. We’ve addressed all those issues in our redesign of the consumer experience. It’s so critical to focus on what the customer’s experience is going to be when they claim and how it can be a good experience.’‘Win-win means amazing if you need us. Our insurance products are incredibly competitive, up to 40% cheaper than our competition, it’s very clear and written for consumers, and when you claim we fulfill the claims within 24-72 hours, 10 times faster than the competition. If you do not claim you get rewards (95% of people don’t claim on insurance.) If so you can get up to 80% of your money back if you and your friends in your pool don’t claim. What’s not to love?'‘Be yourself and don’t stop believing.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Dylan Bourguignon is on a mission to restore consumer trust in insurance. He has developed a digital Insurer with a unique model that delivers win-win insurance based on a social business model that rewards the customer for great behavior. With 10 years of private equity investing and business development experience across a broad spectrum of industries (i.e., consumer, media, industrial, and financial services). With special expertise in business growth drawing upon sales, strategy, negotiation, M&A, financing projects, and leadership skills, Dylan has a lens on what makes sense for consumers. Dylan gained analytical and financial skill sets grounded in an MBA and a Chartered Engineer status degree. Worked in Europe with exposure to Asia and USA. Bilingual French-English with conversational Spanish and basic German. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanbourguignon/  Dylan built SO-SURE insurance so that one can have his cake and eat it! SO-SURE makes it fast and easy to claim when a customer needs support. And when the customer does not need SO-SURE, then the team rewards him or her with up to 80% of premium payback.SO-SURE offers coverage against theft, loss, accidental damage, water damage, and more. It also offers insurance premium reimbursement every year. It offers online claims processing services. It also offers replacement or repair once the claim is approved.Website: https://wearesosure.com/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, co-founder and CEO of Tapoly, an on-demand gig economy worker InsurTech UK startup. In this interview, Sabine and Janthana discuss business model innovation, target market and customer segmentation, and what building a lifestyle brand in insurance means. They finally cover company culture, talent acquisition, and founding a business. KEY TAKEAWAYS Tapoly came about because I was so surprised with how backward we were in terms of offering insurance and the whole end-to-end process for gig economy workers and micro-businesses. This was an industry in which I thought I could add value. Tapoly is a very timely and much-needed platform because we are able to operate at a micro-premium level that some traditional players may not be interested or capable of delivering. Our fully-automated process where we use technology to drive our pricing and underwriting means it’s easier for us to gain that economy of scale and save costs even if the transaction is much lower than a traditional player would want to underwrite. This is needed because someone needs to serve these customers. We differentiate ourselves from our peers by our product differentiation, our approach – which is from the customer angle, looking at their profile and asking ourselves what we need to do in order to get the relevant insurance to cover our clients’ flexible lifestyles. To cover this you need to expand your product range and list of carriers, which is time-consuming and costly. The next stage is to grow our business. Gig workers could work three jobs, each job with a very different risk profile, so it’s very hard to buy coverage to cover all three risks. Offering an on-demand, usage-based solution relevant for a variety of activities will help the insured and us so that we know what risks we are taking as opposed to getting a surprise when the client claims for something which is obviously not covered by the policy.   BEST MOMENT ‘What’s needed in the insurance space is a joined-up system that tracks every single transaction from every single source. That’s why Tapoly has gone from being a reach-out player offering micro-insurances to moving up the chain.’ ‘Our gig workers include either micro-business, sole traders or freelancers that are difficult to make a profit from but need insurance to cover core products like employer liabilities for businesses that everyone must have. There are also professional indemnity public liability and other add-ons that may be relevant to their business activity and risk profile.’‘I’m a first-time founder as well as being a female, and on top of that I didn’t have much insurance experience when I started, and the profit margins are small on microinsurance products. A lot of investors would prefer to invest in a company with larger margins and at a more mature stage of development, still, we are hopeful that we can prove to them that we are one of the valuable platforms that they should invest in.’‘I chose my co-founder, Sam, based on three aspects: Skill to add value, work ethic, and his ability to financially support the business when needed We both chose our team based on the talent that we know we needed, and individuals that we could coach and teach so they don’t pick up any bad habits. The experience was not necessary for us. An interest in the business and high work ethics were key.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Janthana Kaenprakhamroy is one of the Top 10 Insurtech Female Influencers as ranked by The Insurance Institute. Founder of Tapoly, the first on-demand insurance platform for the gig economy in Europe, as seen in the Top 100 European Fintech Awards 2017. Chartered accountant and former investment banking professional. Janathana was also one of the co-authors of the InsurTECH Book. Website: https://www.tapoly.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janthana-kaenprakhamroy-0b73546b/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

In this episode of the Scouting for Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mike Minett, CEO or Chief Ideas Guy at Portabl. Portable is a platform and community which provides insurance, benefits, and savings products for freelance and self-employed professionals. In this podcast, Mike and Sabine cover: Why Mike decided to move from consulting to building an InsurTech focused on the future of work, what Portabl’s focus and core proposition are, what is required to build a gig economy-focused startup, and a little bit of ESG and the Future of Tech. KEY TAKEAWAYS We exploded out of the gate and got some opportunities in the US which was probably too big for us for where we were at in our journey. So, we made the decision to come back and technically build and launch again out of London. Then we got a bit of Covid interruption when we were due to close our first round of funding in March 2020 and things fell apart at that point, but interestingly Portable and our proposition to serve and support the independent, freelance, and gig world of work continued to be interesting and Covid accelerated everything. So, on the one hand, we lost time, but actually, I think the timing will work out even better for us as we prepare to finally launch into the market. It’s been a journey! We want to create a portable structure that wraps around the individual and follows them with whatever they’ve got going on, whatever pieces of work they might have on the go, for whichever client they might have on the books, and ultimately, across any geographies that they might be traveling to and working through. The old model is no longer fit for the way people are choosing to live and work. Building an insurance business has its challenges, especially considering the regulatory constraints and the risk profiling requirements, which is our secret sauce – ‘frisk’, our freelancer risk. People’s underwriting score and credit score both drops simply because they’ve become independent, yet this is the same person with the same network, the same skills, and experiences, and potentially the same career trajectory. Why should they face biases and penalties just because they are independent? The only reason is that the models are built for the old world. At Portabl, we’re trying to tackle risk profiling through data and analytics, getting a better understanding of these individuals, to present that story back to our insurance and credit partners on behalf of these individuals so they get a better and fairer deal. We try to free up a lot of time and stress for our customers so they can concentrate on their work. Insurance for good is a good thing, but people don’t wake up in the morning and say “I wish I had more insurance”, they don’t even know what they have, what they don’t have, what they should probably have, and that it’s a lot more affordable than they probably think. A lot of our insurances come with really nice features like access to a virtual GP, counseling and mental health support, physio, etc.    BEST MOMENTS ‘The fear of startups and the whole concept is that you need to be doing more faster and you’re constantly watching the clock.’‘By 2023, 50% of the world’s workforce is going to be working independently in some shape or form. Who’s looking after this new 50%? While today they are few, they will become a major portion of the working population tomorrow. That was the genesis for the idea of Portabl.’‘As an independent, it’s precarious, if you lose your health. Your health impacts your ability to earn. And if you lose your ability to earn, this also impacts your health. We really concentrate on the health and wellbeing piece by trying to keep our members happy, healthy, and productive.’‘The laptop and the mobile phone are the most critical business tool for many of us, do you have them insured? You really should because all your data, your IP, and your knowledge are likely to be either on your phone or on your laptop. Independent workers don’t have the company to replace the phone or laptop.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Mike Minett is the CEO and founder of PORTABL.co, an all-in-one, a data-driven platform providing portable insurance, benefits, and savings products to the world's freelancers and gig economies – nicely wrapped up in a single monthly membership bundle. PORTABL.co does the heavy lifting for these new and typically underserved markets, saving members’ time, money and stress with easy-to-understand and use risk and financial products.Mike is no stranger to disrupting the market with unique perspectives on the twenty-first-century workplace – driven by a rich understanding of the impact of demographics. After a 20-year consulting and management career across fintech, insurance, and risk management for global investment banks, Mike launched The Positive Ageing Company, a SaaS-based data business focused on addressing the challenges and opportunities of the global aging workforce. That start-up was acquired by MMC Inc. (Mercer) in 2016.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeminett/ PORTABL.co is empowering the world's independent workforce and the future of work.Portabl has built the world’s smartest platform and community providing flexible financial wellbeing, health benefits, and insurance products to the 50% of the workforce living and working as part of gig-based economies.  At its heart is our proprietary FRISC Score – set to challenge traditional underwriting and credit scoring of independent workers. Never has our mission to better serve and support the world’s independent workforce been more important and relevant.Website: https://www.portabl.co/ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com

In this episode of Scouting for Growth,  Sabine VdL interviews Naby Mariyam, CEO of Coverhero an insurance platform that provides cover for all types of gig economy hustle. The first product delivered by Coverhero, Hustlecover.com was recently launched to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing gig economy and self-employed generation. KEY TAKEAWAYS Before setting up Coverhero, the last two startups I did were in the gig economy and supply chain, so I have a bit of experience in building marketplaces and gig economy-based platforms. I launched Australia’s first ride-share platform, Ridehero, and a last-mile delivery platform, ZipMate.  Before transitioning into tech I was a social scientist in academia for about 15 years.  It’s very humbling to go into a whole different industry where you don’t know how it’s done after being an expert in academia. In my area, I was at the top, and then to go to a completely different industry and started from the bottom was deeply humbling. This is core to my existence, to who I am, I have to fight through these barriers pretty much every single day: I left the Maldives to move to another country and started over. I then decided to get into tech, tick all of the diversity boxes and fought those biases. And to build what we have built at Coverhero is a huge accomplishment. There’s no other way for us but to build a customer-centric business. This is what was truly weird when I first started talking to insurance industry executives who design products around the actuaries or the loss/expense ratios, it’s very product-centered rather than customer-centric. I then learned how broken the supply chain of insurance is and that got me really excited because I really love solving non-sexy, complex supply chain problems. I wanted to find out how we build a product that customers actually wanted, as well as determine how we acquire customers, and retain them at a lower cost.  Our philosophy is to build a really valuable piece of software that connects the insurer to distribution. There were a couple of things that led us to take this direction. When we first started we wanted to go direct to consumers and acquire customers that way, but along the way, we realized that to build a company that can dominate a category you need to find a gap, then define, refine and refine again this new category. The category that we define is "work integrated life cover", which is for someone who has finished university and who decided to go into the workforce as a self-employed. BEST MOMENT ‘I wasn’t really interested in insurance, but I had a life-changing experience where I got really sick and we had an insurance claim rejected. That process led me to be curious enough to think “why is this so difficult? Why can’t it be as simple as booking an Uber?”’ ‘To leave academia to jump into the startup world was an existential crisis, I think.’‘I’ve always been passionate about creating equity and opportunity for people that don’t have access to networks, this is something the world needs to do a lot more of.’‘The last four years I’ve been in the space I’ve seen a lot of money being invested into ideas that may or may not work, and the bar that’s being set by the insurance industry is very different from the bar that is set for a startup that is not from the InsurTech industry.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Naby Mariyam says: Graduating with a Master of Philosophy in Management at the age of 22, I have had 18 years of experience in a wide range of industries across Senior level positions spanning Academia (Business studies, Research Methodology and Design), Management Consulting, Documentary production, Travel & Destination Marketing, and Technology. Naby's Research background is in social science where she deeply studied human behavior in her Academic career. Naby is currently taking a break from her PhD to focus on building technology-driven solutions that solve community problems. Naby shares that she is not a new face to the startup scene in Australia, with a number of her own startups, and Business ventures working closely with founders and catalysts of innovation in the Australian Startup Ecosystem in the last 8 years. Naby advised the United Nations Development Project on building start-up ecosystems and designed accelerator programs to drive innovation in developing Nations. Naby was an Australian delegate at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs conference in Berlin in 2017. Naby is a Keynote speaker, commentator, thought leader, and advocate for diversity of thought in the financial services and technology sector. She loves salsa dancing, poetry, and InsurTech (in that order). When Naby is not exploring her side hustles, she runs Coverhero, an embedded InsurTech startup focusing on revolutionizing insurance services focusing on the needs of Millennials and Gen Z. Coverhero Launched its first product www.hustlecover.com to fill the gap of financial insecurity for the growing Gig Economy and self-employed generation, and its smart home insurance API www.lucci.io in 2021. Website: www.hustlecover.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabymariyam/ Email: naby@coverhero.au Instagram: @nabymariyamMedium: @nabymariyamFacebook: @nabymariyam Podcast on Spotify: @hustlechat ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers & accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdLLinkedIn: Sabine VanderLindenInstagram: sabinevdLofficialFacebook: SabineVdLOfficialTikTok: sabinevdlofficialEmail: podcast@sabinevdl.comWebsite: www.sabinevdl.com