The Leadership in Insurance Podcast - Insurtech & Innovation

This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, I sat down with Wardah Inam, CEO of Overjet, to discuss the dental industry challenges she aims to solve.In 2018, a team of dentists and scientists from MIT and Harvard came together to revolutionise dentistry. Overjet was born to help the dental industry provide better care, using AI to reduce administrative overheads with precision, consistency, and speed. From clinical to operations, Overjet focuses on the patient journey end-to-end, improving systems and allowing dental workers to focus on what they do best.Overjet is now a world-leader in dental AI, raising more than $130m in funding and lauded as a top AI startup by the likes of Forbes and LinkedIn.In this episode, we covered:How one bad experience switching dentists led to building the #1 dental AI company.Different ways AI is applied to improve the patient-carer experience.Real-life examples of how data processing impacts scale.The main reasons Overjet has become the ‘no-brainer’ choice in dentistry.This episode is an inspiring story that highlights how keen problem-solvers turn experiences into entrepreneurship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, I sat down with Tarun Mathur, Co-founder & Chief Business Officer of Policybazaar.com, to explore their journey from pioneering digital insurance in India to building out an ambitious global reinsurance strategy.Founded in 2008, PolicyBazaar has grown into India’s largest insurance broker, managing $3B in annual premiums across life and general insurance. Built on a unique digital + human model, their mission has always been clear: protecting India’s middle class through affordable, accessible insurance.In this episode, Tarun shares the story behind their growth, their push into reinsurance and surety bonds, and their vision to expand into Europe, the US, and beyond.✨ Highlights from the conversation:🌍 How PolicyBazaar grew from a small tech-driven startup in 2008 to India’s largest insurance broker, helping millions access affordable protection.🤝 Why blending digital platforms with human customer support was the game-changer that unlocked consumer trust and adoption in a market hesitant to buy insurance online.🏥 The company’s sharp focus on term life and health insurance as the cornerstone of protecting India’s middle class — and why this demographic remains at the heart of their strategy.🔄 Tarun’s vision for a reinsurance marketplace: simplifying complex transactions, reducing inefficiencies, and building a transparent, global risk-sharing ecosystem.💡 Lessons learned from digitising direct insurance that can now be applied to modernise and streamline reinsurance, an industry still reliant on traditional processes.🌐 Ambitious plans for geographic expansion — with Tarun outlining how PolicyBazaar aims to build a truly international footprint across the Middle East, Europe, and the US within the next 12–18 months.This was a fascinating conversation about innovation, trust, and global growth in insurance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode of The Leadership In Insurance Podcast, I sat down with Samuel Broomer, President of NormanMax Insurance Solutions, to explore how parametric insurance is reshaping the industry and what it means for carriers, agents, and customers alike.From its early applications in Sub-Saharan Africa to its role today in addressing protection gaps across the U.S., this episode dives deep into how parametric solutions are transforming the insurance landscape.💡 In this episode, we cover... ✨ The evolution of business meetings & podcasting – how virtual formats and informal storytelling can help build stronger industry connections. 🏢 The NormanMax journey – how an MGA backed by Lloyd’s Syndicate 3939 is delivering innovative parametric products for flood, earthquake, and hurricane risk. ⚖️ Challenges in the middle market – why homeowners and SMBs remain underserved, and how rising deductibles and complexity create barriers to adoption. 🔗 Embedding parametric into traditional cover – the opportunity to integrate parametric triggers with indemnity policies to enhance protection and scale adoption. 💻 Tech vs. fundamentals – why technology should serve the customer experience and efficiency, without overshadowing core insurance principles. ⚡ Transforming the claims experience – how parametric features can deliver clarity, speed, and transparency when customers need it most. 🌍 Strategic advantage of Lloyd’s – how global reach, capital strength, and brand credibility enable innovation and market entry. 📚 Consumer education – the need to simplify messaging and distribution to drive broader adoption of parametric solutions.This episode is packed with insights for anyone passionate about innovation, customer experience, and the future of insurance. Give it a listen via the links in the comments below 👇👇 👇 👇 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Distribution, Digitized: How Foxquilt is Reshaping Small Business InsuranceIn this week’s podcast, I sat down with Josh Reznick, Foxquilt's Chief Distribution Officer, to unpack how the insurtech is redefining distribution in commercial insurance.Foxquilt is a digital MGA focused on serving underserved small business markets across North America. By leveraging its proprietary technology platform, Foxden, the company has streamlined what was once a heavily manual process at traditional carriers — delivering a faster, more efficient quote-to-bind experience.But Fox Quilt’s real differentiator is its multi-channel distribution model. By balancing wholesale and enterprise partnerships, they have built a scalable approach that expands reach without losing control of the customer relationship. Josh brings over a decade of carrier experience from Aviva to Fox Quilt, applying partnership-driven strategies in a modern digital context.Here are some of the key insights from our conversation:🔹 Evolving Distribution Models – How Foxquilt achieved a near 50-50 split between wholesale and enterprise, and grew its agent network from 100 to 10,000 through just 7 wholesaler partnerships.🔹 The Insurtech Journey – The rewards (and “battle scars”) of building programs from policy zero, and why Foxquilt has thrived thanks to a stable leadership team and startup adaptability.🔹 Product Development for Underserved Markets – Why Foxquilt zeroed in on contractors and independent professionals, where contractual insurance requirements make digital solutions especially valuable.🔹 Dual Strategy Benefits – Enterprise partnerships allow for higher revenue per customer and co-branded solutions, while wholesale drives daily scale with hundreds of new policies issued.🔹 US Expansion & Growth Goals – Tackling state-by-state regulatory challenges, targeting key growth states like Florida, Texas, and New York, and looking ahead to a $200M GWP target within 3-5 years — with international expansion on the horizon.Thanks Josh for joining me this week - loved the opportunity to chat all things distribution - be sure to catch this one via the links in the comments below 👇 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast podcast, I had a brilliant conversation with Rohit Mittal, all about just that. We covered why he chose to buy and operate an insurance tech company and how he’s helping agents reclaim their time and boost productivity through AI.Here’s a few highlights from what we covered...⚙️ “From 45 minutes to 5 minutes” – Solving the data bottleneck with AI Rohit explained how InsurGrid uses AI to extract declaration pages and policy data by connecting directly to carrier websites. 🏢 Tech lags in insurance—and it’s costing us I shared my own frustration of being sent a fillable PDF by a large broker, which sparked a discussion on the gap between modern digital expectations and outdated insurance workflows. “We have self-driving cars,” Rohit noted, “but insurance still runs on paper.”🤝 Equipping small agencies to compete—with a personal touchRohit emphasized that InsurGrid helps smaller, independent agents offer a tech-enabled experience without sacrificing human relationships. “It’s not about removing people from the process—it’s about removing the repetitive tasks,” he said.🧠 Why Rohit chose operating over investing“I didn’t want to just deploy capital. I wanted to build,” he said. We touch on the serial founder mindset and much more... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I was joined by Grace Hanson, CEO of Elysian, who’s on a mission to fix one of the most overlooked parts of insurance: claims handling.“People underestimate how much profit lives in the claims department — and how much value is wasted when it’s not run well,”Grace calls Elysian an AI-native outsourced claims service — but what that really means is her team uses their own technology to handle commercial claims better than traditional models allow. Faster answers. Better data. Fewer inconsistencies. All designed by people who’ve actually sat in the adjuster’s chair.Some highlights from our chat...📚 From Courtrooms to Claims:Grace shared how she went from practicing law to leading claims teams — a move she made after having a baby and realizing, “I needed balance — but I also needed work that challenged me.” Turns out the strategic, big-picture thinking she honed as a lawyer was exactly what complex claims needed.📊 Claims: Insurance’s Hidden Profit Engine:We talked about why claims teams rarely get the spotlight — despite being the lever for an insurer’s profit and reputation. As Grace put it, “If you don’t run claims well, you don’t make money. Full stop.”🤖 What AI Actually Fixes:Grace told a great story about her time at Homeside — rolling out AI and machine learning to detect fraud and speed up everyday decisions. “You can’t fix just one piece. If the rest of the process is clunky, the tech is wasted,” she said.⚙️ Why Elysian Exists:How five years of tech advancements made Grace’s vision of an AI-native claims solution finally possible — and why now is the time to fix an industry pain point that’s too costly to ignore.🔥 Protecting People, Not Just Automating Jobs:Why better tech should empower adjusters to focus on high-value work — and how Grace’s team is tackling burnout by design. I loved Grace’s honesty when she said, “Adjusters burn out because they’re stuck doing repetitive tasks — our tech frees them up to do the hard thinking, the negotiation, the human work that actually matters.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was joined this week by Murtaza Ali, CEO & Co-Founder of Symphony (YC F24), for a conversation about how he’s tackling some of the biggest challenges in the insurance industry with cutting-edge voice AI — without losing sight of the human touch.A bit of context: Murtaza’s journey insurtech journey started at McKinsey before joining Tractable to build out their platform. He’s seen firsthand how AI can transform industries — but also where it can fall short without humanity in the loop. That insight became the driving force behind Symphony AI.What we covered in this episode: 🔍 From Tractable to Symphony: Why Murtaza left a leading AI scale-up to build his own YC-backed startup focused on the insurance sector. 🧑‍💼 The insurance industry’s talent gap: How Symphony AI is tackling high turnover and lengthy onboarding by using voice AI to simulate real-world claim calls. 🎭 AI-powered role-play: How claims adjusters practice tough conversations with AI personas — from handling a frustrated customer to delivering empathetic responses during stressful moments. 💡 Humanity in the loop: Why empathy will always be a competitive edge — and how AI can enhance it, not replace it. 🔄 AI adoption in traditional industries: The importance of messaging AI tools as training allies — not threats to jobs. 🚀 Insights from Y Combinator: How YC’s “make something people want” mantra helped shape Symphony’s roadmap — and what other founders can learn from it. 🔮 The future of claims handling: How automation may shift claims adjusters into project manager roles, overseeing AI agents while focusing on complex cases that demand human understanding.My key takeaway? Tech is powerful — but putting people first is what makes it stick. Symphony’s approach is a great reminder that the best AI solutions augment human skills, they don’t replace them.We've also got to give a special shout out to the I Love Claims team - and a huge congratulations to Murtaza and his co-founder Shobhit Srivastava for winning their pitch competition! We work with the ILC team every year to help them scout the latest in claims innovation and we're so glad that we were able to put these masterminds together! Sue Whyte Jonathon Valentine Mark Hadaway mbaIf you work in insurance, customer experience, AI, or just want to hear how real startups navigate AI hype vs. real-world impact — give this one a listen. 💬 I’d love to hear your thoughts — where do you see the balance between AI and the human touch going next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm excited to share this week's conversation on The Leadership In Insurance Podcast with no other than JP Fabri, CEO of myUbuntu all about transforming agricultural insurance in Africa 🌱🎙️ Tune into the episode: "From Risk to Resilience: Empowering Africa's Smallholder Farmers"We discuss a whole host of topics, here are some of the highlights... 👇 📌 JP's mission of targeting 200+ million smallholder farmers most vulnerable to climate change and their ambitious goal got insure 20 million farmers within 10 years ✨ 📌Their journey developing parametric insurance products with blockchain-powered technology platform designed to scale📌 We look at their unique distribution approaches: partnering with agricultural cooperatives and banks, engaging through religious organizations like Catholic parishes, leveraging mobile wallet technologies for rapid fund transfer and simplifying insurance concepts for farmers unfamiliar with traditional models📌 How to focus on mission-driven impact: helping farmers maintain economic stability during climate events, enabling children to stay in school during crop failures, providing immediate financial resilience and transforming agricultural risk managementThank you JP for joining me for this one - a powerful narrative of how technology, empathy, and innovative thinking can create meaningful social change in the insurance industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.