InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

This week James Orchard, CEO of QBE Ventures, joins the podcast and discusses the shift in insurers' appetite for innovation, partnerships with startups, and the importance of collaboration in achieving strategic goals.  The conversation covers how QBE Ventures is making strides in data and AI, resilience, and growth in emerging markets, with interesting prospects for cyber coverage and embedded i...

This week, we return with Henry Gale as he caught up with Garrett Koehn, President of CRC Brokerage, and Gordon Wintrob, Co-founder and CTO of Newfront. The discussion covers the potential of generative AI for insurance brokers, with real-world examples of brokers using AI right now. Garrett and Gordon talk about how generative AI can improve the customer experience and discuss which AI solutions...

Cognizant is a global professional services company helping companies across different industries with generative AI.  Henry Gale is joined this week by Colville Wood, Chief Technology Officer for Insurance (UK&I and EMEA) and David Fearne, Global Director of Generative AI at Cognizant. The discussion covers how Generative AI has the potential to automate manual tasks, optimize processes, and...

In our first podcast of 2024, Jamie Crystal , CEO of MIC Global, discusses with Matthew Grant their aim to close the insurance protection gaps by offering insurance products tailored to the needs of underserved individuals, including income protection, identity theft protection, and incident coverage.  MIC uses a business-to-business-to-customer (B2B2C) model and all of its products are embedded w...

The InsTech team is taking a break and we’ve outsourced this week’s short podcast to ChatGPT. But fear not - humans will be back in the loop next week. Interested to find out more about how insurers are using AI. Sign up to our Generative AI newsletter here .  If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn . To find out...

This Christmas Eve, we bring to you our last Partners’ Chat of the year. Robin Merttens and Matthew Grant reflect on the year and the developments we’ve seen in insurance, particularly those set to define the industry in the next year. As always there are things to celebrate, and some things to be grumpy about. Talking points include: Our increasing understanding of what can or cannot be automated...

Instabase offers technology solutions to extract information from unstructured data and automate processes. This week Matthew Grant speaks with Bas de Goei, Director of Growth Marketing at Instabase about how generative AI is helping the insurance industry tackle its pain points, and specifically “give people time back to do things that are uniquely human”.  To find out more about how Instabase ca...

This week we hand over the mic to Robin Merttens as he talks to James Gillespie, Head of Pricing, and Grant Dewar, Client Services Director at Aon’s Strategy and Technology Group (STG). In this episode, they discuss the evolution of Aon STG in the 18 months since it was created, what has been learned and what clients are seeking. It goes on to describe the body of services and resources it is buil...

We’re piloting a new style of podcast this week and borrowing the InsTech podcast channel to test this out.  If you are wondering what is going on behind the news items you read about in insurance or technology then this new podcast is for you. We’re bringing together experts, founders, insurers and some well know figures to tell us the news items that are capturing their attention - and why.  Mat...

What drives insurers to look into adopting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into their underwriting processes? Salman Siddiqui at Moody’s Analytics and Adiraj Maitra at Canopius join Matthew Grant in this podcast to discuss ESG and sustainability in the insurance industry, centring the conversation around the recent Moody's report on incorporating ESG into P&C underwriting. ...

Inversion specialises in bespoke software development services tailored for the insurance and reinsurance sector. This week Robin Merttens spoke with Inversion's founders, Jacques Bosch and Piro Vorster, and in their conversation they touched on the story behind the creation of the company, and the various secrets to success the founders have picked up by working together.  Key talking points incl...

Arbol, an MGA specializing in parametric insurance, has been rapidly growing and expanding since we last spoke a year ago. Arbol recently announced a partnership with reinsurer Beazley, enabling them to deploy capacity in the US for weather risks. Tune in to Henry Gale, Senior Research Analyst at InsTech as he speaks to Arbol’s CEO, Sid Jha, about Arbol’s plans to target unmet risks in the energy...

Addresscloud has grown from a team of three to a team of eleven since InsTech last spoke to Founder and CEO, Mark Varley.  In this episode, Matthew’s discussion with Mark covers Addresscloud’s core services such as geocoding and peril risk assessment, and its recent launch of a new management platform called Addresscloud Risk. Tune in to hear more about fire blocks and how Addresscloud utilises op...

Capgemini is an information technology services and consulting company which partners with businesses to develop innovation solutions. In this episode, Matthew Grant speaks to Kristofer le Sage de Fontenay, Insurance Leader at Capgemini, about the company's investment in generative AI. Capgemini is focusing on helping clients solve their pain points through digital solutions, investing $2 billion...

Zywave provides a platform of modular solutions that enables digital distribution and revenue operation optimisation for insurers and brokers. Over the past five years, the company has made ten acquisitions, spending nearly $1 billion dollars to bring leading brands and innovative companies together under one unified organization. Join Matthew as he speaks to Zywave CEO, Jason Liu on how the compa...

Robin speaks to Liselotte Munk, CEO of core administration system provider Fadata, available across all major lines of business to help insurers contribute successfully to the security and well-being of customers. Join Robin and Liselotte as they discuss meeting customer demands in an increasingly digital world, the benefits of a diverse and global workforce, the power of networking and the experi...

Tensorflight uses AI, aerial and street view imagery to provide property data for risk analytics on commercial, personal and industrial properties globally. Matthew Grant was joined by Jakub Dryjas, CEO of Tensorflight. They discuss various topics including the importance of partnering, advances in commercial property information by using AI, and tips for aspiring CEOs. Talking points include: Wha...

What does parametric insurance mean to Jonathan Gonzalez, Co-founder and CEO of Raincoat?  Raincoat is a technology company that works with brokers and insurers to develop and distribute parametric climate insurance for consumers in at-risk regions. The company is involved in parametric schemes around the world and aims to extend parametric protection to those exposed to disasters globally.  In th...

Chat GPT was launched a year ago in November 2022, and its existence has consistently brought to the forefront questions surrounding adoption and implementation of AI and technology. It comes as no surprise that insurers are increasingly exploring new opportunities made possible by generative AI.  In this podcast, Matthew Grant speaks to Sam Taylor and Paul Merrey from KPMG to discuss how generati...

The first podcast in our series with PwC touches on the Scale-up programme for insurtechs and the key to transformation in speciality insurance. Matthew Grant speaks to Anthony Joseph, Partner and Andrew Caswell, Director of Insurance Consulting at PwC UK, on why insurers are now progressing with the move to digitization, what transformation really means and how - and which -  insurtechs are the k...

Parsyl is an integrated risk management and insurance solution for supply chains in food and health, which underwrites policies globally via its managing general underwriter in the US, its Lloyd’s cover holder and its Lloyd’s syndicate (Syndicate 1796).  Robin Merttens is joined by Gavin Spencer, Chief Insurance Officer at Parsyl, to discuss how the company is able to establish its identity as a d...

The climate has been on our minds since the record-breaking summer heat we had across the world. In this podcast we turn to matters closer to home. In this episode, Matthew speaks to Richard Garry, CCO at Gamma Location Intelligence, which provides software and data services to help insurers understand location risk and climate. Tune in to find out more about how Gamma is helping insurers adapt to...

This week on the podcast Matthew speaks to a returning guest, Amrit Santhirasenan who is the Co-founder and CEO at hyperexponential . Their discussion focuses on pricing decision intelligence and what this means for insurers. Listen to find out more about hyperexponential’s evolution as a start-up since Amrit previously spoke on the podcast in 2019, and how hyperexponential want to “take the tech...

This week on the podcast we go into detail about an exciting partnership between two InsTech members. Robin Merttens is joined by  David King ,  Artificial Labs  and  James Slaughter ,  Apollo Underwriting , following the two companies announcing an augmented underwriting collaboration. The portfolio will be underwritten Apollo's 1969 syndicate and will run on Artificial Labs' technology. Listen i...

In this episode Robin Merttens moderates a panel discussion organised by Optalitix and hosted at Lloyd’s. Joining him were Dani Katz , Optalitix ; Alison Quinlivan , Google; Ruta Mikiskaite , Swiss Re and Chris Mullan , Eigen Technologies .  The discussion touched on how the future of insurance is being changed by new technology and data sources and how the industry needs to respond. Tune in and h...