This week on the InsTech Podcast, Robin Merttens speaks with Martin Olley, Head of North America and APAC for AdvantageGo, and Laurence Trigwell, Head of Strategy and Chief Revenue Officer at Insurants, about how technology is transforming the commercial insurance and reinsurance landscape. Martin and Laurence explore how their respective platforms…

From our highly successful webinar last month sponsored by Fathom, we bring to you everything you need to know about models in a bitesize podcast. Flood models play a critical role in helping insurers, brokers and risk managers assess flood risk, but their inherent uncertainties make effective use challenging. Matthew Grant leads a discussion with …

Jonathan Gonzalez, CEO & Co-founder of Raincoat, takes the reins as guest host to explore one of the most pressing challenges in insurance: the disaster insurance gap. Jonathan speaks with Carolyn Kousky from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), about the rising economic losses from climate disasters and the need for more inclusive and innovative …

How can parametric insurance transform risk management in an unpredictable world? Munich Re, a leader in reinsurance, is paving the way for innovative parametric solutions addressing weather-related and natural catastrophe risks. Robin Merttens is joined by René Mück, Global Head of Parametric NatCat, and Marcel-Steffen Reif, Global Head of Weather…

How can impartial valuations drive transparency and trust in insurance? Kroll’s platform provides property valuations through data-driven insights that benefit insurers, brokers and property owners alike. Matthew Grant sits down with Kiran Aulakh, Kroll's VP of Fixed Asset Advisory, to explore how Kroll’s platform combines technology and real-time …

How do you shed light on ‘dark shipping activity’? S&P Global Market Intelligence aims to support insurers throughout the entire insurance value chain by providing critical data and insights. Matthew Grant is joined by George Devereese, who monitors and tracks shipping around the world to screen them against various forms of liabilities. This data …

Ben Turner joked that he’d “be a rich man for every pound [he] had somebody asking” what Salesforce has to offer the insurance world. Robin Merttens is joined this week by Ben Turner and Tom Swire at Salesforce, who touch on their journey to joining the company, the trouble with legacy systems and the exciting prospects for the future including an …

Determined to write delegated business better, Ben Laidlaw joined Nick Tye and Jacqui Ferrier to found Carbon Underwriting. Carbon Underwriting is a Lloyd’s Syndicate MGU that provides shareable underwriting conclusions on its Graphene administration system. The company has matured since its conception in 2018, and Ben discusses navigating ‘Decile …

Fadata’s CEO, Liselotte Munk, returns to the InsTech podcast with Robin Merttens to discuss the company’s recent developments, including its expansion to APAC and South America. Discover in this episode the intricacies of running a policy admin system provider, where Liselotte thinks the market is heading to next and the challenges with entering ne…

According to Mike Hobday, CEO of Insurants, the company is “a bit like being the Google Translator of the commercial insurance market”. Insurants is developed by Antworks in collaboration with Marsh McLennan to help commercial insurance companies manage and process their documents. This week, Matthew caught up with Mike, who previously having spent…

This week we are combining youthful enthusiasm with sage wisdom on the podcast, as Robin Merttens speaks to InsurX’s CEO, Gilbert Harrap and Chairman, Michael Watson. InsurX is a platform that enables insurers and brokers to undertake portfolio underwriting, automated contract binding, algorithmic underwriting and instant risk matching. Touching on…

According to Yann Barbarroux, Co-founder and CEO of Otonomi, “every year is like starting a new company”. It has been a year since we last caught up with Otonomi, and Matthew reconnects with Yann to discuss how parametric insurance helps mitigate supply chain risks, particularly in situations where traditional insurance falls short. Key topics incl…

At InsTech, we love featuring founders who took matters into their own hands to solve the problems they encountered. This episode shines a spotlight on one such entrepreneur who did just that. In the insurance industry, manually cleaning data remains a costly and time-consuming challenge. To explore this issue, Matthew Grant sits down with Nicola T…

Next month, Martin Reith will mark 40 years in the London Market. As he approaches this significant milestone, we sat down with him to discuss his journey into the industry, his most notable achievements, his decision to become Chairman of Artificial Labs, and his thoughts on the challenges of modernising the London Market. We also explored his str…

What does it take to build a company like Guidewire or attract investor interest? This week, Matthew Grant talks with Marcus Ryu, Co-founder and Chairman of Guidewire, and Partner at Battery Ventures. Marcus, one of Guidewire's five founders, shares his experiences from starting the company in 2002 and the lessons he learned along the way. In this …

Have you ever built your own solution to a problem? Quotech, founded by Guillaume Bonnissent, provides technology for commercial underwriters and brokers. Its integrated solutions cover data ingestion and extraction, pricing, distribution, policy administration and claims. Matthew Grant caught up with Quotech’s CEO and founder to touch on his under…

This week Matthew and Robin are pointing the microphones at each other and back for our popular "Partners' Chat" as they review the world around us. Find out what is making Robin happy this month - almost 10 years after the term Insurtech was coined are established insurers now finally embracing innovation and technology? What can we learn from the…

Joining Insurance Thought Leadership over 10 years ago, Paul Carroll’s motivation was his belief that of four areas yet to be disrupted by digital innovation, insurance was one of them. This week Matthew Grant caught up with Paul Carroll to ask after 11 years of looking at insurance, how are insurers doing with technology? Key talking points includ…

As one of the oldest insurtechs and thirty years in the business - what can we learn from Insurity? Robin Merttens spoke to Chris Lafond, CEO of Insurity - a P&C insurance software provider offering cloud-based solutions to help companies focus on profitability. After a series of acquisitions in 2019, Insurity continue to execute their thesis from …

Ahead of our next July evening event in London, Matthew Grant caught up with Deepak Badoni, President and Co-founder of EigenRisk Inc - a one-stop shop platform for the industry to bring all the catastrophe risk analytics in one place. Join Matthew and Deepak as they discuss the role of technology platforms in simplifying catastrophe risk analysis …

In this discussion, Leah Emma from Liberty Mutual, Caolan Kovach-Orr from Arch Capital, and Rohit Reddy from Swiss Re Corporate Solutions share their experiences and strategies for leveraging AI and technology in the insurance sector. They cover key challenges, data utilization, build vs buy decisions, and the importance of making underwriting more…

Crux Underwriting is a multi-line specialty underwriting business launched in early July by Graham Elliott. By combining underwriting with the tech arm of Azur Technology, founded by previous colleague Charlie Blackburn, we are witnessing the production of a 21st century MGA business. One for the technology lovers and the MGA innovators. Tune in to…

Reserv’s proposition is to help MGAs and carriers improve claims handling and increase data availability, making claim information available through multiple large language model (LLM) tools feeding automated workflows. After our successful May Evening Event hosted in collaboration with Reserv, Robin Merttens caught up with CEO CJ Przybyl and discu…

In anticipation of our upcoming release of panels from our most recent event in New York in June, we are taking another look back at our star-studded line-up from March. We asked: what does the future of insurance look like? One answer is digitising how risk flows. In this discussion, industry experts Nigel Walsh from Google Cloud, Meghan Hannes at…

Is your insurance technology up to speed? This week on the podcast, we have an insightful conversation with Joe O'Connor, Deputy CEO of RDT. RDT is a well-known software and services provider for the motor insurance industry, with plans to expand into the specialty market. Joe discusses how technology provision has changed over the last decade, wha…

Is climate risk a part of your analysis? On the podcast this week we are spotlighting an important collaboration between Mitiga, a climate risk intelligence provider, and insurer HDI Global. As climate change rises to become one of the most pertinent and defining risks of our generation, find out how the partnership is working to evolve the landsca…

In the first iteration of our upcoming parametric series with Raincoat, Matthew sat down with Jonathan Gonzalez to delve into how parametric insurance can be integrated with traditional indemnity insurance, the technical and regulatory challenges, and the importance of creating products that customers perceive as fair. Watch this space for some ver…

Unstructured data - is this a challenge that will ever go away? Or can it be a challenge which insurers adapt to work in their favor… At our last New York event in March, InsTech gathered three leading industry experts to candidly discuss what change in the industry looks like to them, specifically in the way unstructured data is handled and manage…

Root provides platforms and API for insurers, MGAs, brokers to build, launch and manage digital insurance products and embedded experiences in South Africa and the UK. Matthew Grant caught up with Louw Hopley on the opportunities and challenges in the insurance industry, focusing on the role of embedded insurance in adapting to changing customer de…

Swiss Re Reinsurance Solutions was launched two years ago to make Swiss Re’s unique knowledge and tools available across the insurance value chain. Swiss Re’s strongest point of knowledge is property - around which we centre this podcast. Robin Merttens spoke to CEO of Reinsurance Solutions Russell Higginbotham on approaching climate-related risks …

McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) helps accelerate disaster relief and economic recovery for insurers. Matthew Grant spoke to Rosina, Chief Product Officer for MIS, who shares insights from her MBA dissertation's findings on the adoption of technology in insurance, highlighting the necessity of collaboration between insurtechs, insurance compani…

KatRisk is a catastrophe modelling company providing global inland flood, storm surge and windstorm loss assessments for some of the largest insurers, reinsurers and brokers in the world. Taking a macrocosm approach, the company’s models offer an open software architecture, allowing users to better understand correlated risks and to make modificati…

From episodes 68, 227 and now episode 299, InsTech has consistently caught up with Cytora and followed the company’s growth and expansion. Alongside Google, Cytora supported InsTech’s March event in New York, after which Matthew Grant caught up with Richard Hartley on the company’s growth, entering the US market and its impact on the insurance indu…

Optalitix was borne out of the need for ‘optimization’ and ‘analytics’, as Co-founder and Director Dani Katz realized the biggest blocker for insurance companies was converting spreadsheets. Having now expanded beyond spreadsheets, Optalitix offers three software products to UK (re)insurers and MGAs. Robin Merttens spoke to Dani about the spreadshe…

Robin Merttens is joined by Ben Ruddle, Senior Principle in Strategy at Publicis Sapient, to discuss how technology can help insurers cater to customers outside the typical insurance model. The discussion covers the concept of 'Beyond Beige,' focusing on the opportunity to serve individuals and businesses with unique or specialized needs that stand…

HDI TH!NX was founded in 2019 by Verena Brenner, initially operating within the German insurer HDI Global, as an incubator for IIoT solutions. Now providing software to support risk management applications for insurers and insurance clients, tune in to hear Verena discuss the mechanics behind founding a startup within an insurer and the company’s d…

How would your clients describe you? This week on the podcast we have taken a slightly different approach and brought Previsico’s clients, Zurich Muncipal and Donaldson Timber, to discuss how Previsico has helped them with flood risk management. Previsico provides real-time flood forecasts, as part of its mission to reduce global flooding impact, b…

Groundwater flooding poses a great risk to properties in the UK but remains much less widely modelled than other types of flooding. This week, Matthew Grant caught up with Mark Fermor at GeoSmart, a company specializing in flood data analytics in the UK. They discuss GeoSmart's role in providing detailed flood risk assessments, leveraging their adv…

PwC’s Chris Temple and Christine Brogan join Matthew Grant to discuss transformation in insurance, specifically steering organizations towards achieving their ESG goals. The conversation covers the role of technology and AI in driving change in insurance as well as building resilient business models for the future. This episode is a great introduct…

“This economy we are heading into [...] we are referring to as the decision economy”. Robin Merttens spoke to Tom Wilde, CEO of Indico Data on how the company's intelligent intake solution is shaping the decision-making process in the insurance industry by structuring unstructured data. Data is important in our current 'decision economy'. Indico Da…

Arturo is a property intelligence company which combines multispectral imagery, geographic data and customer portfolio insights with machine learning models in a single platform. A lot has developed in property intelligence since we last spoke to Arturo on the podcast. Matthew Grant caught up with CEO Marty Smuin about how generative AI is adding a…

Robin Merttens is joined by CEO and President of Verisk Specialty Business Solutions (VSBS), Tim Rayner. The discussion covers VSBS’s acquisitions such as Rulebook and Whitespace for a broader digital ecosystem, and the challenges of decision-making and procurement in the London market. Key talking point: Growth and opportunities in the specialty m…

Since its start in 2001, the insurance platform provider Guidewire has grown to be used by more than 540 insurers in 40 countries. Guidewire's President and Chief Revenue Officer, John Mullen, spoke to Matthew Grant about the company's journey as it continues to grow, the climate of the insurance industry and what are the driving forces of innovati…

In this mid-week special, Matthew Grant speaks to Adrian Coupland at Earnix, a software provider to global insurers and banks. They discuss how the nature of risk in the insurance industry is rapidly changing, presenting new challenges in areas like motor pricing and supply chain management. The podcast ends with a discussion about Earnix's new pro…

After the popularity of our first episode, InsTech is back with another analysis of what happened in insurance in the past month. If you are curious to know what is going on behind the news items you read about in insurance or technology - we’re bringing together experts, founders, insurers and some well know figures to tell us the news items that …

In this episode, Matthew Grant sits down with Sarah Woolliscroft, Group Head of Operations & TPA and Wayne Calderbank, Group Data and Performance Director at Claims Consortium Group (CCG) for an exploration of the importance of technology in the claims industry and CCG's journey into the world of artificial intelligence. Synergy originated as a sol…

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 intere…

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 c…

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 au…

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 (B2B…