Episodes

Sunday Aug 04, 2019
Sunday Aug 04, 2019
So what is Insurtech as a service? In these highlights from the second half of our 8th July event recorded in front of a packed room Matthew talks to Stewart Reeder of Hitachi (13:45) and three more of their partners, Damion Thompson Insurance Lead at Google Cloud, Michael Flanagan, CEO and founder of Xtract (17:15), Craig Olivier, VP of tech stuff at Genasys (22.10).
We continue our discussion (from podcast 38) about how Hitachi identify which companies to work with and put in front of their insurance clients and how they assess them as fit for purpose to ensure ease of integration, and value add for their Insurtech partners.
Google sees a lot of data. The Google Cloud team don’t have access to that data, but they do see trends. 15% of the search terms each year are entirely new, and customers are becoming more and more inquisitive and impatient. Damion talks about Google Cloud’s start up programme and other ways of getting involved with them. More information can be found here or contact Damion directly via Linkedin.
Xtract is radically improving the FNOL (First Notification of Loss) process for quick reporting and rigorous assessment of the loss using telematics to enable the claims handler to get notified of a loss within 5 seconds of it happening. Michael and Stewart reveal how the two companies met and why and how they are working together.
Craig Olivier talks about what Genasys has done to be successful whilst operating in the competitive space of policy admin systems, the benefit of having a REST API to enable full integration with Insurtech across the value chain and the work they are doing with Hitachi. And how did they set up a third party claim solution in two days?
Thanks to Hitachi for sponsoring the evening. The first half of the event with more of Hitachi’s partners, as well as Munich Re and Kasko can be heard on episode 38
Full information on this and all our event, including a write up of the companies speaking, a full transcript and photos of the evening can be found on the event page on our website www.instech.london

Sunday Jul 28, 2019
Sunday Jul 28, 2019
Another fast moving series of chats with more leaders from insurance, technology and data. In this episode, the first half of our 8th July evening at The SteelYard, Robin investigates how Hitachi (2:00), the 7th largest technology group in the world, is making it easier for established insurers to work with the emerging providers of data for trains, buildings and a whole lot more. Serif Otterburn, Business Development Manager, and Insurance Subject Matter Expert “Everything Hitachi builds, from trains to medical equipment, requires insurance. A lot of insurers use historical data to calculate risk, but Hitachi is using its expertise in IoT to assist insurers to develop newer better risk models". Joining Robin and Serif are Chris Gill from QBE (7:50) and Stephen Chadwick from Shepherd (16:00).
Munich Re Digital Partners (22:00) are well known for supporting a whole range of new MGAs and technology companies with capacity and sometimes investment. We get a peek behind the kimono at how they are getting on. In the words of Mark Dennis, European CEO "We’ve met with about a thousand InsurTech start-ups in the last three years. To date, we have about twenty live and wish ultimately to work with about fifty. Our job is to provide the scalability to get them to market as quickly as possible as InsurTech services.”
Kasko (34:20) was on stage at InsTech London 4 years ago at one of our earliest events, CEO Nick Sühr returns to talk about the work they are doing today with over 15 insurers providing plug-and-play ready solutions, enabling insurers to turn insurance products from idea or paper to digital in a few weeks.
The second half of this event follows in episode 39 with more from Hitachi and their partners.
For more details on the companies speaking at the event, and transcripts from all our recent events go to the dedicated event page
See the last 2 years history of InsTech London events and profiles with many of our speakers and sign up for our newsletter at www.instech.london

Sunday Jul 21, 2019
Graham Elliott CEO & Founder Azur Underwriting (37)
Sunday Jul 21, 2019
Sunday Jul 21, 2019
Graham Elliott describes Azur as a "Managing Digital Agency" (MDA). He founded the business in 2015, providing High Net Worth insurance for clients of UK brokers, in partnership with AIG.
Matthew Grant and Graham talk about the challenges of becoming a full digital insurer and other topics such as offering quotes based on only 5 questions, sources of data and the role of brokers.
You can learn more about Azur at https://www.azuruw.com/
And find out what we are up to at InsTech London at https://www.instech.london/

Monday Jul 15, 2019
Monday Jul 15, 2019
A double bill this week. Matthew talks to Robin about his experience of visiting the DIA Amsterdam conference this year with the highlights, lowlights and his meeting with the rising stars from insurtech in Japan.
Dan White, Managing Partner at Ninety Consulting talks to us about some of the themes emerging from their white paper "Examining the direct relationship between insurance innovation and company value"
We discuss topics such as why do insurers appear to compare so badly with other industries when it comes to innovation spend - is that real or just differences in the data? Which is better, lots of small innovation or a few large projects? And a lot more.
We are pleased to have Ninety Consulting as one of InsTech London's gold sponsors in 2019.
Follow us at InsTech.London for all past and future events. Sign up here to get our views on what is happening in insurance, technology and all things related via the Instech London newsletter.

Monday Jul 08, 2019
Sean Ringsted, Chief Digital Officer, Chubb (35)
Monday Jul 08, 2019
Monday Jul 08, 2019
In this episode Matthew Grant chats to Sean Ringsted about how Chubb is introducing innovation across the company and he gives some tips to help anyone starting up a new business aimed at selling to insurers.
Sean is Executive Vice President for Chubb Group reporting directly into CEO Evan Greenberg. Sean leads Chubb’s digital efforts aimed at transforming the company into a digitally integrated organization. Sean has 25 years of experience in the insurance industry. He was appointed Chief Digital Officer in 2017 and has served as the company’s Chief Risk Officer since 2008, prior to ACE’s acquisition of Chubb in 2016.
Chubb provides insurance in property and casualty, accident and health, reinsurance, and life insurance. The company has a presence in 54 countries and territories as well as Lloyd's and is the world’s largest publicly traded property and casualty insurer. Chubb is a corporate member of Instech London.
Matthew and Sean discuss what it means to innovate in a large company, how Sean keeps up to date with the latest information, the role of Linkedin, and the future of IOT for insurance.
Check us out at Instech London to see our range of past of future events and get access to a transcript for this interview.

Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
Keeping your algorithm safe, legal and morally acceptable (34)
Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
Tuesday Jul 02, 2019
With all the talk of the use of AI and algorithms in insurance innovation we thought we'd better check out some of the potential pitfalls and challenges that need to be considered with using algorithms in financial services. Robin discusses what to do, and what to avoid with Nicholas Berry and Peter McBurney from Norton Fulbright Rose and Wan Heath from Barnett Waddingham. Who'd have thought regulation could be quite so much fun...
Learn more about InsTech London at https://www.instech.london/

Monday Jun 24, 2019
33. More algorithms that really work from ChAI, e2Value and We Predict
Monday Jun 24, 2019
Monday Jun 24, 2019
More fun from our Algorithm and AI event at the Steelyard on 3rd June in this, our selected highlights from the second half of the evening. We covered the first half in episode 31. Now its Robin Merttens turn up on stage talking to three of the leaders from new and growing companies servicing the insurance market telling us how they are making it real in the world of algorithms.
Silvi Wompa, Chief Underwriting Officer, ChAI (1:30)
ChAI is releasing an insurance product to mitigate price risk for buyers and sellers of commodities by forecasting prices using both traditional and alternative data (including satellite, maritime and political risk data) in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques.
Todd Rissel, CEO and Founder, e2Value (11:24)
e2Value offers products to assist with property asset valuation. Its tools can be used for collateral asset valuation, risk management, and predictive modeling. e2Value is the SaaS provider delivering valuations for residential, commercial, and farm and ranch properties in the US and Canada.
James Davies, CEO and Founder, We Predict (18:00)
Munich Re backed We Predict use predictive analytics and its proprietary dataset Deepview to help vehicle
manufacturers make better purchasing and engineering decisions, and to insure their associated risks.
Learn more about what we are up to at InsTech London, including details of our all our events from last two years and information on our next events at www.instech.london
And if you enjoyed this podcast, we've 32 more already released waiting for you...

Tuesday Jun 18, 2019
Tuesday Jun 18, 2019
Dickie is CEO and co-founder of the open source catastrophe modelling platform Oasis. After a career in reinsurance broking, Dickie has spent the last 8 years creating a way to help insurers get access to emerging, niche and academic data & models. Today Oasis LMF is used by many of the London market re/insurers to price and manage global catastrophe risk. Matthew and Dickie discuss the history of the company, catastrophes and other themes relevant to all data and technology companies such as interoperability, fund raising and recruiting the best people.
Find out more about data, technology, insurtech and much more at www.instech.london
Oasis LMF is at https://oasislmf.org/

Tuesday Jun 11, 2019
Tuesday Jun 11, 2019
This week’s podcast features edited highlights of Matthew chatting on stage with leading figures from AIG, Cytora, WhenFresh and Polar Capital at our live event in The Steelyard.
Everyone’s talking about AI, but what’s really going on? Questions we asked included how far has AI really got in insurance, what are the regulatory issues, how to convince an insurer that the results are validated, how to tell the quality of a company’s AI credentials, where do insurers stand relative to the rest of the world, and a lot more. Our guests talk about the ways they are using AI and Algorithms in their own businesses and how they distinguish reality from hype. Tips for assessing the quality of a company that is claiming to use AI, and thoughts on how to encourage more data scientists to join the industry. What is the Moneyball effect and is your algorithm smart enough and humble enough to admit when it doesn't know?
The usual buzzing crowd and experts on stage made for another great evening.
Reza Khorshidi, Chief Scientist, Global AIG (1:20)
Hamzah Chaudhary, Director of Deployment, Cytora (10:45)
Mark Cunningham, CEO and Founder, WhenFresh (21:10)
Nick Martin, Fund Manager, Polar Capital (29:00)
Both Reza and Nick recommend the book: Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal

Monday Jun 03, 2019
Monday Jun 03, 2019
The team from Insurance Insider are regular attendees at our InsTech London events. Bernard Goyder, senior reporter for Insurance Insider was previously covering the London insurance technology and insurtech space but since April he has been based in New York. In this episode Matthew talks to Bernard about what he's learning about the difference between writing insurance in the US and the UK, and why this constrains innovation in personal lines.
Despite the regulatory challenges Hartford has developed into a major hub for insurance innovation and Bernard was there recently meeting the insurance commissionaire.
He reviews some of the new companies he likes along with an update on Lemonade and Bernard's own experience of trying to buy renters insurance.
For more information about InsTech London and our past and future events, find us at www.InsTech.London
Follow us on at twitter @InsTech_London