InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Gaia uses medical data to offer personalised financial plans to remove the financial barriers to accessing fertility care. It is the world’s first IVF (in vitro fertilisation) insurance product that predicts fertility outcomes and insures against the risk of failure. Robin Merttens is joined by the Founder and CEO of Gaia, Nader AlSalim, to discuss why he wants to remove the financial barriers to...

Inari delivers core technology platforms that provide cloud-based end-to-end management for insurers and reinsurers. Since launching 5 years ago, Inari has helped its clients increase operational efficiency, business flexibility and provide data governance. Inari uses Distributed Ledger technology within its platforms to record every event in the life cycle of a risk. Frank Perkins, Founder and CE...

Arbol provides parametric climate and weather risk management solutions for sectors such as agriculture, energy, maritime and hospitality. Siddhartha Jha, Arbol’s Founder, CEO and Chairman, joined Matthew Grant and Henry Gale to discuss how his experience of commodities trading helped inspire Arbol, how he built a company and a product and how it is addressing the needs of its customers with clima...

Archipelago is working with large global corporations to identify and source information about a property that's then shared with insurers and brokers. The company has over 170 people and according to PitchBook, has raised $57 million. Co-founder Hemant Shah last spoke to us on episode 145 and returns to the evolution of Archipelago in the last year. Talking points include: How Archipelago is work...

JBA Risk Management provides catastrophe models, flood maps and analytics worldwide to the insurance, financial, property and international development sectors. Judith Ellison, the Climate Commercial Lead at JBA Risk, talks to Matthew about the challenges of meeting multiple demands from different clients and sectors, the importance of working with academics and industry specialists and how standa...

Finding comprehensive sources of data for property underwriting continues to be a challenge around the world. Companies such as RE5Q are tapping into data sources previously unavailable to insurers and creating new analytics. Join Matthew Grant as he talks to CEO Martin Samworth and CTO Seth Rogers about how the company is using its experience in real estate to tackle some of the hardest problems...

Capgemini is an information technology services and consulting company partnering with businesses to develop innovation and integration solutions. Matthew talks to Kristofer le Sage de Fontenay, the Vice President, Insurance Leader UK, to discuss the importance of company culture, the benefits of being technology agnostic and what this means in practice for Capgemini’s data capabilities. You will...

World Innovation Lab (WiL) is a US & Japan-based venture capital firm with capital from governments and leading global corporations based in Japan and throughout Asia. The company's vision is to be the bridge between startups and corporates in key hubs across the globe - starting with Japan and the US. Matthew was joined by partner Steve Pretre. Talking points include: The areas of innovation in i...

In the second of this two-part podcast with highlights from our live event Matthew Grant looks back on the conversations Robin Merttens had on stage with Andrew Passfield (ICE InsureTech), Freddy Macnamara (Cuvva), Daniel Poole (Cover Genius) and Adrian Davis (Stripe) at our recent London event, “Making Payments Pay: Making the Most of Payments Technologies”.   Part one looked at why the method of...

Join us for the highlights of our live event “Making the Most of Payments Technologies”. Supported by Mastercard and Stripe, we lifted the lid and explored examples of the latest digital payments capabilities from some of the largest, and most innovative companies in this area. In the first of this two-part podcast, Matthew reflects on conversations he had with Ruth Polyblank, Jason Reddington, Al...

On episode 200 of the InsTech podcast, Matthew and Robin get together for another occasional chat about what is happening in the world of insurance innovation, insurtech and InsTech itself. Since the launch of the podcast, InsTech has released around 133 hours of podcasts, featured 220 guests and had 170,000 downloads. Our top listener countries are the UK, USA, Germany, Italy and Canada. Talking...

Henry Gale spoke to four young people across the insurance industry to produce a podcast about what it's like to be a young person in insurance. Ainsley Martin, Beazley; Kinga Wazydrag, Markel; Areefih Ghaith, Quantexa; Adam Yasir, Aon Inpoint, share personal experiences in the industry and discuss what the industry can learn from young people - covering topics like diversity & inclusion, technolo...

If we want to understand opportunities for innovation in insurance we need to understand what the customer wants – the people and companies buying insurance. Many companies are now setting up captives to use their own capital as an alternative or to complement the insurance they are buying.  In this episode, Matthew is joined by Richard Cutcher, Executive Producer of the Global Captive Podcast and...

ICEYE delivers what it calls “persistent monitoring capabilities for any location on earth” using synthetic aperture radar satellites. ICEYE’s data can be collected day or night and through cloud cover. Its constellation of 21 satellites enables it to capture images before, during, and after a flood event multiple times a day. Stephen Lathrope is the Global Head of Insurance for ICEYE and joined M...

With so much new technology and data available to insurers, it’s becoming critical to have an effective way to enable insurers to access these solutions in one place. Appian is working across many industries, using a low-code platform that improves access to legacy systems, joins up multiple solutions and increases the speed of implementation.  Gijsbert Cox, Industry Leader Insurance for Europe, M...

Plnar’s technology platform allows users to capture detailed property and loss information on their phones, with the data being used by insurers to support underwriting and claim processes. Matthew speaks to CEO Andy Greff about how images captured remotely by policyholders are providing new insights on property characteristics, speeding up claims by removing the need for a home inspection and Pln...

Matthew talks to Nick Martin, Portfolio Manager of the Polar Capital Global Insurance Strategy to learn about the characteristics of successful insurers - with a focus on established companies.  Talking points include: How leading insurers are using innovative technologies The significance of ESG, climate and cyber in both underwriting and investing Observations about the performance of insurtech...

Isabelle Santenac, Global Insurance Leader at EY, joins Robin on Podcast 193 to share her views on the future of insurance, digital transformation and why the industry needs to get better at attracting talent. The conversation covers the importance of 'human capital' to support automation and communicating career opportunities to people with digital and technology backgrounds. They also discuss ho...

One of the strengths of using parametric insurance for climate-related perils and events is the ability to offer an immediate payout to policyholders who can’t afford to wait for financial assistance. AXA Climate Underwriter Mia Vioulès and Robert Schablik, Associate Vice President, Head of Global Risk Management Sales at CoreLogic, join Matthew to discuss how the two companies are providing param...

Neil Eckert is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in many areas of insurance and beyond. He was an early advocate for the benefits of digital innovation and had the vision to predict the need for companies to manage their exposure to carbon almost 20 years ago. Neil joins Robin to discuss how the insurance industry has changed throughout his career, how to recognise and respond to new opportunities...

Zesty.ai uses aerial imagery and artificial intelligence to assess the potential impacts of wildfires and other climate-related events on individual properties. Kumar Dhuvur, Co-founder and Head of Product, joined Matthew to discuss how the company helps insurers to understand climate risks and how personal experiences of wildfires in California led to the creation of Zesty.ai’s wildfire risk insi...

Garrett Koehn is President at CRC Brokerage, and he is also an active investor, mentor and forward thinker on topics such as crypto, cyber and parametric. He joins Matthew to discuss the emerging trends in risk, investment and insurance. We find out about wholesale broking and the appetite of traditional markets for new risks. Companies discussed include Ensuro, AgentSync, Zenefits, Evertas, Stere...

Elizabeth Jenkin is the CEO of Nimbla, Co-founder of the women's network "Lift as you Climb" and is on the boards of Gallagher, Fidelis and the Women's Football Association. She joins Robin to discuss why she left her 20-year career as a broker with Aon and RFIB to join a start-up, how brokers and insurers differ and the importance of curiosity.  Talking points include:  The importance of the voic...

Send Technology is a software company founded in 2017 that has developed a connected workbench that enables insurers, brokers and MGAs to automate, streamline and optimise its operations. It has recently entered its scale-up phase and secured major clients such as Renaissance Reinsurance and Bowhead Specialty. Send Technology’s Co-founder and CEO, Ben Huckel, joined Matthew to talk about the impor...

Arturo delivers on-demand property data using multi-source imagery and provides AI insights for damage assessment after a catastrophic event. John-Isaac "JC" Clark, the CEO of Arturo, speaks to Matthew about how Arturo's information is used. They cover how satellites collect data, what underwriters are doing with it and how he expects this to evolve as innovation progresses. Talking points include...