InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

With so much data now available from above us and around us to help understand properties, how should insurers, governments and others know which is the most reliable to use - and importantly - how to deal with the uncertainty and sometimes conflicting opinions? This week Matthew Grant is talking to Rachel Olney, Founder and CEO of Geosite. Join us to discover: The key problem Geosite is solving f...

We hear a lot about insurance protection for major catastrophes, but losses from frequent, local events now cause as much damage as the larger disasters that make the news. But insurance coverage is lagging behind leaving insurers and enterprises exposed to loss with no insurance protection. The Demex Group, a spin-out from reinsurer Munich Re is offering parametric cover to fill that insurance ga...

Digital innovation is creating new opportunities to support customers and create efficiencies for claims handling. Oliver McGuinness, CEO of RightIndem, and Tim Rankin, Managing Director of AA Accident Assist, join Robin Merttens to discuss how the two organisations are working together. Talking points include: How RightIndem has evolved since being launched in 2016 with a new founder and new focu...

Oliver Werneyer launched his first business aged 16 and later went on to launch Imburse when he discovered the true cost to insurance companies of collecting premiums and paying claims. Another fascinating story about building a business, identifying opportunities and building confidence with clients. Imburse is the glue and pipeline between insurers, their clients and payment providers. Join Matt...

We’re covering two main themes here - building a business that survives and thrives after ten years - and assessing the growing risk from a flood. We’ve been working closely with Fathom for many years. In Matthew Grant’s discussion with the co-founders of Fathom, you’ll discover topics such as: The advantages of building a business with close links to a university How increases in the resolution o...

Eigen Technologies provides natural language processing (NLP) technology to clients across multiple sectors. Chris Mullan, SVP of Product; and Tim Crowe, Director of Insurance Solutions, joined Robin Merttens on this episode to discuss how they help the insurance industry get access to all the insightful data trapped in the many bespoke, complex and rapidly changing documents that the industry rel...

This week Matthew Grant is talking to Nigel Walsh, Managing Director of Insurance, Google Cloud. You'll find out why Google launched its recent “start-up” - Google Cloud - growing in excess of 36% quarter to quarter. Nigel is well known for his love of insurance and engagement across a whole range of innovative topics - and his annual predictions. He relocated to the US from the UK last year so we...

This week we are back talking to another leader from one of the largest insurance companies in the world. Liberty Mutual. Parul Kaul-Green is Chief Digital Strategy Officer for Liberty Specialty Markets. Parul is at the sharp end of driving innovation across many of Liberty’s businesses as the company moves to digital. Join us as Matthew Grant discovers how Parul is supporting Liberty’s underwrite...

Cytora is well known in London and increasingly in the US too, as providing analytics for insurers - founded in 2014 and with some well-known clients including Allianz, Beazley and Markel - this is another company that’s made the transition from start-up to scale-up.  Richard Hartley is the Co-founder and CEO. In this episode you will discover why the company pivoted from its original premise of s...

Since being founded in 1688  Lloyd’s of London has grown into a marketplace supporting over £35 billion of premium. Innovation is at the heart of its success. More recently the “Lloyd’s Lab” has supported over 100 companies from around the world that are helping insurers find new solutions for the insurance protection gap and improving efficiencies. Dawn Miller joined Lloyd’s of London as the Comm...

There are some fascinating stories about companies that have existed for 10 years. At this point, almost every company will have found its product-market fit, be generating revenue and, in most cases, moved beyond start-up to scale up - but each of them will also have had to navigate through some tough headwinds and in many cases shift tack to identify what their clients really need. Praedicat is...

It's New Year's day as we release this so we're giving our regular listeners a break with just a quick word from the InsTech podcast. Matthew Grant reflects on the takeaways from 2022 and a brief look at 2023. Only 4 minutes. Back with our full schedule of great guests in January. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on Li...

Even podcasters need a break, so we're borrowing the podcast for this episode from Supercede to bring you founders Ben Rose and Jerad Leigh interviewing InsTech's Robin Merttens. This was recorded back in August 2022 and reviews our Marketplaces and Exchanges report released at that time ( available here ). Topics include What Is a Platform? The Evolution of Technology Lessons from RI3K Challenges...

We’re back with our occasional “Partner Chats”. Robin Merttens and Matthew Grant reflect on what is going on in the world of innovation and insurance. As usual, there are some things to celebrate, and some things to grumble about. We are the guests of QBE Ventures, the venture investment and development arm of QBE Insurance Group for this episode. Peta Kilian, UK Head of Strategy and Partnerships,...

We’ve released over 200 podcasts through our usual InsTech channel. At InsTech, we’re also keen listeners of other people’s podcasts. During 2023, we will be sharing a selection of the podcasts that we like, or appear in, through an occasional mid-week or holiday season release. For this episode, we’re bringing you the “Making Risk Flow Podcast” from Cytora. Cytora’s Chief Commercial and Operation...

In this episode we cover the highlights of our recent live event in London “Tropical Cyclone - Managing Tomorrow's Climate Risk Today with Reask and Fathom ”. We heard about how insurers and portfolio managers are taking account of the increased need to understand the combined risk of floods and hurricanes. We were joined by some of the companies providing climate analytics and data including: 1:3...

McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) provides catastrophe event response intelligence to the insurance market. It combines space and ground imagery with human intelligence and AI to estimate losses, helping insurers aggregate exposure data. Brush Claims is a US-based property and liability claims service provider. Matthew Grant and Ali Smedley spoke to Daniel Grimwood-Bird, Head of Sales and Marke...

PwC is a professional services network of firms. The company is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms. Glynn Austen-Brown and Michael Cook, Partners at PwC, joined Matthew and covered topics including why insurance companies need to move to be fully digital and what that takes. Other topics include: Examples of where a...

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 Jacob Grob , the Chief Revenue Officer at Tensorflight. They discuss his personal experience with Hurricane Ian, some of the latest developments in providing property data and the challenges of social inflation push...

Chubb is one of the largest global property and casualty insurance companies. It provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to individuals, families and businesses of all sizes. Sean Ringsted is the Chief Digital Business Officer at Chubb and joined Matthew Grant to discuss developments at Ch...

DQPro is a data monitoring platform designed for the operational and regulatory needs of the specialty insurance market. Nick Mair, DQPro’s CEO and Co-founder, joined Matthew Grant to discuss APIs, the London insurance market’s history and MGAs. Talking points include: The founder’s story - the problem Nick saw and what he has done to help fix it Why fixing poor data is now recognised at board lev...

Stripe provides technology infrastructure for the movement of money. Businesses use Stripe's software and APIs to accept payments and run financial operations in more than 100 countries. Robin Merttens sat down with the head of UK Enterprise Sales - Insurance & Insurtech, Calogero Scibetta. Talking points include: Why the insurance industry has been slow to embrace modern payment technology Supply...

Loadsure is a Lloyd's backed MGA using analytics to automate the underwriting of shipped goods and cargo. Matthew Grant is joined by Johnny McCord, Founder and CEO of Loadsure. Topics they discuss include the benefits of an instant embedded solution to offer insurance, why traditional insurance is unable to offer flexible products and the importance of a strong company culture in attracting the ri...

Gamma is a location intelligence provider, offering solutions to geographical questions. It uses software, data and spatial analytics to help companies reduce the risk of losses. Matthew was joined by Gamma’s Chief Commercial Officer, Richard Garry and CEO, Feargal O’Neill. Talking points include: Overcoming the challenges of local address data in Ireland and the UK Creating complete crime data an...

Súper is an MGA selling consumer insurance products in Mexico, including life, home contents and parametric earthquake cover. Matthew Grant and Henry Gale are joined by Dario Luna, Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Súper, to discuss parametric insurance, digital distribution and insurance trends in Latin America. Talking points include: How Mexico City is exposed to earthquake risk Why demand f...