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 Dr. Oliver Wing, Chief Scientific Officer at Fathom, along with Caroline Fox from Guy Carpenter, Stefan Wunderlich from Swiss Re Corporate...

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 insurance solutions. Carolyn discusses her extensive research on climate risk management and disaster recovery, while also introducing her...

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 Agricultural Risks, to explore how Munich Re’s data-driven insurance products help corporates, public sector entities and industries navigate...

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 data to assess underinsurance and overinsurance risks across vast property portfolios.  Kiran shares her insights on the value of green valuations,...

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 is passed onto markets such as the insurance world, to build a better and fuller picture for the insurance contract.  A key aspect of this...

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 agency management system to be launched in 2025. If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to hear more, our October evening event hosted in...

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 10’ to gaining approval for Carbon’s second syndicate earlier this year, which will exclusively underwrite US business.  Key talking points: The...

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 new regions. Key talking points include: The market’s maturity and the problems this may pose. Running a business when policy admin system changes...

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 12 years at IBM, witnessed early AI automation with the likes of Watson, through which he fell in love with document processing. At Insurants,...

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 the importance of driving digitisation in the London Market, Michael also shares highlights from his distinguished career, with a focus on his...

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 include: Addressing pain points in maritime freight and global trade Developing and refining parametric insurance products Real-world case studies...

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 Turner, CEO and Co-founder of Scrub AI. Scrub AI is a platform that automates repetitive data cleaning tasks—a solution born from Nicola's own...

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 strong advocacy for algorithms and the advice he has for the next generation of industry leaders. Key talking points: Starting 40 years ago Founding...

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 episode, Marcus discusses his shift from leading Guidewire to investing through a multi-stage technology investment firm. The conversation covers...

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 underwriting past and how it has helped build a company, the issues with Excel spreadsheets and targeting specific insurance lines to produce tailored...

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 start of the hurricane season and do investors share our enthusiasm for the role that start-ups and scale-ups can play in really changing...

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 include: Looking back, we predicted greater disruption: the fault of regulation and risk capital The industry metabolism and its speed Dinner with Bill...

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 five years ago in embracing the cloud and providing the industry with out-of-the-box technology solutions. It is currently trusted by 12 of the...

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 for underwriters amid the start of the hurricane season. Deepak shares his journey of founding EigenRisk Inc., the challenges of building a...

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 efficient and engaging. A must-watch for anyone interested in the future of insurance. Speakers: Leah Emma, Assistant Director of Commercial...

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 hear Robin speak to Charlie and Graham about entrepreneurship in the MGA world, how technology can slot itself into an underwriting business and...

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 discussed the technology behind Reserv, including the integration of generative AI and modern data infrastructure, as well as the company's growth and...

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 K2 Cyber, Zaheer Hooda at Cytora and Charles Clarke at Guidewire delve into the current progress made by insurers, the challenges they encounter,...

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, what RDT has learned from providing services to general insurers, what the specialty market can learn from achievements in the retail sector, the...