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 Commercial Director in 2022 after a career with some well-known global insurers - having cut her teeth as...
Jan 15, 2023•29 min•Ep. 228
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 one such company and Matthew Grant caught up again with Bob Reville, Co-founder and CEO. With a miss...
Jan 08, 2023•39 min•Ep. 227
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 LinkedIn . Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning. To...
Jan 01, 2023•5 min•Ep. 226
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 of Digital Risk Documents Vs. Data Difficulties of Industry Consensus The B3i Blockchain Initiative...
Dec 26, 2022•53 min•Ep. 225
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, joined us ready with a list of questions from her colleagues across QBE. Talking points include: Do...
Dec 18, 2022•36 min•Ep. 224
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 Operations Officer, Juan de Castro, is talking to two insurance companies about the challenges that insurers ...
Dec 14, 2022•26 min•Ep. 223
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: 1:38 Jamie Rodney, CEO, Reask; Andrew Smith, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Fathom; David Vica...
Dec 11, 2022•54 min•Ep. 222
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 Marketing at MIS and Troy Stewart, COO and President at Brush Claims. They cover the way the two companie...
Dec 04, 2022•22 min•Ep. 221
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 analytics are improving how companies support their customers How companies are overcoming the histor...
Nov 27, 2022•35 min•Ep. 220
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 pushing up costs. Other topics include: The difference in the way insurance is sold in the US compared t...
Nov 20, 2022•33 min•Ep. 219
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 Chubb including Chubb Studio and increased use of IoT devices in insurance. Topics include: How Chubb ...
Nov 13, 2022•34 min•Ep. 218
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 level as a top priority The cost of the data being incorrect and the fines being levied A day in the li...
Nov 06, 2022•26 min•Ep. 217
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 chains, traceability and understanding transactions What an optimal payment infrastructure is a...
Oct 30, 2022•22 min•Ep. 216
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 right talent. Further talking points and learning points include Examples of how practical ways that i...
Oct 23, 2022•32 min•Ep. 215
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 analytics from different sources Working with partners such as JBA Risk Management and Terrafirma (par...
Oct 16, 2022•32 min•Ep. 214
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 for earthquake insurance spikes in September Acknowledging how policyholders perceive risk Issues of ...
Oct 09, 2022•30 min•Ep. 213
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 fertility treatment. Talking points include: The insurance gap Nader’s personal journey that encoura...
Oct 02, 2022•27 min•Ep. 212
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 CEO of Inari, joined Robin Merttens to talk about: The benefits of interconnected systems The immutabi...
Sep 25, 2022•17 min•Ep. 211
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 climate risk transfer. Talking points include: Insuring cotton gins against low yields Combining parametr...
Sep 18, 2022•37 min•Ep. 210
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 working with companies to collect information about properties for insurers and brokers Issues associate...
Sep 11, 2022•47 min•Ep. 209
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 standardisation across the industry will increase resilience. Talking points include: How JBA Risk can pro...
Sep 04, 2022•19 min•Ep. 208
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 when finding verifiable and timely information for insurers, along with case studies and client exam...
Aug 28, 2022•23 min•Ep. 207
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 also discover some lessons on insurance and technology innovation from experiences of farming in ext...
Aug 21, 2022•28 min•Ep. 206
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 insurance that Steve and his colleagues are investing in, including opportunities in the emerging...
Aug 14, 2022•36 min•Ep. 205
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 making and receiving payments is critical to insurers and the evolving needs of customers. This part ...
Aug 07, 2022•26 min•Ep. 204
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, Alice Glenister, Ian Slater (Mastercard); Ben Smyth (Arma Karma) and Bruno Soares (Imburse). Talking p...
Jul 31, 2022•28 min•Ep. 203
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 points include: Good news on funding for early-stage companies from the Amsterdam DIA conference An ...
Jul 24, 2022•26 min•Ep. 202
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, technology and social media. The guests highlight where the industry has done well in those areas as wel...
Jul 20, 2022•42 min•Ep. 201
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 the Ambassador for the Captive Special Interest Group at the UK Risk Managers Association (Airmic). ...
Jul 17, 2022•31 min•Ep. 200
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 Matthew to discuss how ICEYE is expanding its offering from floods and into other natural perils, its...
Jul 10, 2022•44 min•Ep. 199
