Innovation

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Welcome to episode one of the Partnerships podcast in association with Aviva and Insuretech UK. My name is Steve Whitelock, group innovation business partner here at Aviva, and I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by Melissa Collett from Insuretech UK, who's joining me as a co-host.

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MELISSA COLLETT: Thank you for inviting me.

STEVE WHITELOCK: No it's lovely to have you here, joining us today. Perhaps we could just to start off, just give us a little bit of insight into what was going on to Insurtech UK at the moment.

MELISSA COLLETT: Sure. So Insurtech UK is a trade association for insurtechs. We have over 140 insurtechs and 40 insurers and partners in our membership, and we exist to help our members to scale and to grow.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Brilliant. And I think that's that's really, that really plays in nicely is what we're going to be talking about today. So today's episode is all about from Build to Buy. And what we're going to do is start exploring the question of why, partner, and to help us in that discussion. We're joined by two brilliant guests in the studio.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Welsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both.

Paul Welsh: Hi.

STEVE WHITELOCK: How are you?

PAUL WELSH: Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in.

STEVE WHITELOCK: No, it's great to have you. Simon perhaps I could come to you first. It'd be really good, I think, to hear just a little bit about the Pimloc story and how that journey has, I guess, found you now working with an insurer yourself.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Very happy to tell the story. And very good to have you here. The, So, yeah, I run a company called Pimlock. We are a privacy and intelligence platform, so we help public and private organizations manage personal and sensitive data and images, video and now audio. And as you know, everyone's been building out cameras across lots of different estates and businesses on the police forces and body worn cameras, drones, dash cams.

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SIMON RANDALL: Everybody's got a smartphone. And all that video that's been captured is now appearing in lots of people's kind of work streams and processes, workflows. We have a solution that allows, you know, a range of different sectors to manage that video so that either they can supply it to individuals, they can run models on it, they can store it, they can use it, they can share it and collaborate with it.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. And we've been providing that into public safety kind of policing. District attorneys, legal, into schools, transport networks, health care environments. You know, lots of places where there's lots of very sensitive data. Incident happens, and they have to kind of take the video and do something with it. And we've had a hypothesis for a while that that video is going to start to make its way into the claims process because, you know, if something happens at work, there's an incident, something happens on the street, something happens in a bar or restaurant or supermarket.

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SIMON RANDALL: There's now video footage of that event. And so as, as more and more video starts to make its way into the claims process, providing tools that allow those teams to very quickly and efficiently be able to anonymize that data. So anonymize everything except for the person that was involved in the claim, so that you can manage your privacy and compliance risk, but more importantly, so you can use the video.

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SIMON RANDALL: Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened.

PAUL WELSH: Exactly.

SIMON RANDALL: And so the, you know, in the past, there's been very complicated videos with lots of people in environments where the cameras are moving, where it's just not possible manually to redact those, and therefore they wouldn't have been able to be used. And so our mission is to make that video usable.

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SIMON RANDALL: Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Yeah. And I'm going to geek out a little bit here because I, I actually wrote a university assignment last year about the involvement of tech in particular AI and the impact that can have on the insurance industry. And I think that as you've articulated there, you know, we're seeing more and more cameras everywhere, even from the humble doorbell right, right way through to police body worn cameras and CCTV.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: So it's, it's a world that's continuing to evolve. So it's really interesting to hear how you've you've kind of your company has been built around that and how you, you know, tackling that going forward.

SIMON RANDALL: And actually your claims teams have a very hard job because in some sectors, like if it's a school, it tends to be CCTV.

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SIMON RANDALL: So fixed camera, kind of a fixed scene because it's inside a school environment. Children moving around. If you're on a bus, fixed camera inside a bus, very similar environment. Your claims teams get videos from everywhere so it could be a ring doorbell, it could be a dashcam from a car, could be CCTV from a, you know, a million different environments.

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SIMON RANDALL: And they have to have systems that allow them to very quickly process those. And whilst it sounds simple, the technical implications of being able to do detection and tracking those environments is quite tricky. And so that's kind of where we come in.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Brilliant.

MELISSA COLLETT: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, the complexity of it does seem enormous.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

MELISSA COLLETT: Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house?

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, sure. And, you know, let's think about what an insurer does in that the vast array of activity that happens that's going on. We always have to make quick decisions about, do we build this ourselves?

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PAUL WELSH: Do we buy? And obviously there are things that we really would want to invest in. And that's our kind of jewel in the crown. So things like pricing, underwriting, our customer experience is really important and we need control over that. And we need to be able to design it the way we want. But I think, I kind of think about this.

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PAUL WELSH: It's a bit like baking a cake, right? So if you bake a cake yourself, you've got full control over all the ingredients. You can put whatever you want into it. You can design it however you want. But do you know what? It takes quite a lot of effort and, you know, often costs more. Weirdly, these days.

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PAUL WELSH: And, you know, these things can go wrong. You know, you can come out and end up with a pancake rather than it a cake. So I kind of think a partnership is really a bit like going to a bakery where, you know, that hard work has been done already in the ingredients, and you can think more about the innovation.

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PAUL WELSH: You can think about how that's going to work with your customer experience, eating of the cake rather than the kind of core ingredients. But, it's a hard balance always. And I think for us as insurers, really focusing our build efforts on our, our real competitive advantage areas and then getting help, and understanding where people have developed real, real solutions to to help build those those out.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking.

PAUL WELSH: It's right. Because, you know, there are events where only a, homemade cake is going to do right? But, you know, sometimes colin the caterpillar does a great job.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: He really does.

MELISSA COLLETT: Do you like being likened to colin the caterpillar?

SIMON RANDALL: I mean, I'm quite happy, like.

PAUL WELSH: Exactly.

SIMON RANDALL: I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like.

MELISSA COLLETT: Yeah. I mean, I think it'd be interesting, though, to sort of ask you a similar question from the other perspective, you know, what's the why should you consider, you know, partnering with insurance companies, instead of going it independently?

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SIMON RANDALL: I mean, we have a very it's a very similar to way you've articulate we have a very similar challenge, albeit a slightly smaller business. You know, prioritizing what the team work on all the time is very important for us. And so being very clear about where our core IP is. And so we focus very, very heavily on solving the problem of how do we build a system that's performant across all the video types, basically, and that means that we then have a really good advantage that we can take that into lots of different sectors, because unfortunately, the video challenge sits quite horizontally, most at different industries.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so because we've been very clear about where we're adding value, that means that we can partner with, you know, Aviva, who you know, we don't understand risk and we don't understand insurance pricing. But we do understand video.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

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SIMON RANDALL: So yeah. Yeah we there's very similar parallels in our other sectors actually where you know in the police for example, they can focus on their operational needs and we can provide them tools to free up time when they're managing the video. And so, you know, it's very much about just finding where our core IP sits and making sure that we can slot that into the other businesses.

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SIMON RANDALL: And the good thing is that it's not, you know, we're not competing with your internal teams because you know, they've got other things to worry about. Like you know how to price new insurance out of risks or you it turns out the global market is quite uncertain at the moment. And I imagine risks are quite tricky.

PAUL WELSH: Yes, focusing those teams on the things that are kind of really core is is really important.

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PAUL WELSH: And if you think about the use case that we've got, you know, working with yourself, which is the video redaction, you know, with teams doing that manually first of all, and it's not that it's a, it's an important problem for that team. And, and you know, it's degrades the efficiency of the team. But actually is it something that we'd be able to prioritize for an internal build versus, you know, relaunching our app?

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PAUL WELSH: It's never going to get there. So, you know, partnering with with people have really solve that problem across other markets that can have a ready made solution that comes in really, really helps build efficiency into that team. You do lots of that, you improve efficiency, and there's lots of little touch points across piece.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Yeah. So you know what we've what we found is it's very easy to build a mediocre product.

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SIMON RANDALL: But the challenge is that mediocre actually ends up taking you more manual time. And so we use automation and we also have an application for review. But that automation has to be so good across all video types in order to genuinely save time for the end users. And so to your point, you know, you could very easily burn two years trying to get something.

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PAUL WELSH: Exactly. Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky.

PAUL WELSH: Yes.

SIMON RANDALL: And actually, if that's not your focus, you're never going to get something that's going to be good enough. And so in those kind of other areas, I think, you know, being able to partner is great.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

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SIMON RANDALL: And now we've seen and we did the initial kind of six month, six month trial. And now we're fully deployed. And actually we're getting really good feedback from the teams. We're saving time. And we're now starting to find that there's additional use cases alongside it where actually, if you could anonymize video, you can use it for a bunch of other things and you can collaborate with it.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so yeah, it's very exciting.

MELISSA COLLETT: We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah.

MELISSA COLLETT: I mean, do you see yourself going and focusing more and more on insurance? And, you know, what are the interesting challenges thrown up by the insurance sector?

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. So I think I think as I kind of mentioned earlier, one of the one of the unique challenges that the claims guys have is they can get video, images, video, audio, text from anywhere.

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SIMON RANDALL: Because, you know, especially in general insurance, the video content that's being captured everywhere is quite diverse. And so it could go all the way from a, you know, a small portrait smartphone video to a wide angle dash cam video going down the motorway to some video footage in a cafe. And so having systems that are good enough to process all that's very interesting.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so that but at the moment we're working very much in the post-event incident. So something bad happens. There's a claim, videos pulled, it's put into the claim, it's put through the workflow process and goes through. We're also starting to discuss some use cases where people are looking to deploy live cameras into certain environments so that they can live, monitor and see what's happening, to try and avoid the instance happening in the first place.

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MELISSA COLLETT: Prevent the loss from occurring.

SIMON RANDALL: Correct.

MELISSA COLLETT: And mitigate risk.

SIMON RANDALL: And if you can, if you can suddenly make live video feeds anonymized and streamed to a team who can evaluate an environment be it in a restaurant or a hotel or somewhere and say, actually, I can see there's some risk here. I can see this in patterns of behavior here, but on anonymized data, again, you can start to help your customers avoid those risks in the first place.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so rather than being a kind of a reactive and again, I don't understand pricing or risk, but being in a react rather than being in a reactive position, you can then start to understand, how can I work with our customers to mean that they actually claim less and there's less incidents, and that employees are happier and less things happen.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so I think over time, moving more on to that proactive side, it's going to be really interesting. Because I think the more you know, you can make use of all this data that's now available, the better. But in order to use it, you need really strong privacy controls to start with so that you can make it available to the business.

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MELISSA COLLETT: I feel like there's an opportunity here for AI. You mentioned that earlier.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, AI is, you know, the world of AI is expanding rapidly, isn't it? And, you know, it's, it's certainly becoming more on everybody's radar, I think. And, that's going to shift the landscape, I guess, again, going forward in terms of how products evolve and develop.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And I guess a question to you, Paul. Flowing through from that, where the world is evolving and changing, we've talked about, you know, partnering with Pimloc at Aviva. It's great. How from within Aviva, you know, parts of the business looking at partnerships now, I know within the innovation team, we have a really strong focus on partnerships and working outside of the business to bring really exciting founders and tech in.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve?

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, absolutely.

STEVE WHITELOCK: Over time.

PAUL WELSH: I think I think it's really interesting. And, you know, being able to introduce partnerships and external solutions into the organization has a huge benefit both on the culture of the organization, but also the way people think and and open up when I say really think Aviva really has its head up and is noticing what's out there and really speaking how that's how really thinking about how we can combine solutions and work with partners to create real collaborative, you know, solutions that are right for our customers.

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PAUL WELSH: Really good examples. I mean, we talked a little bit about those use cases that you just discovered. I think that's where the real power comes in, when you can work with an organization that does have that skill set, real understanding, and can actually work with a technology or solution provider that is an expert in that space, and you bring those two things together, the customer understanding, the risk understanding, the technology understanding.

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PAUL WELSH: And you can start to really uncover those use cases that maybe are not standard patterns are not going on. And I think, you know what? We're starting to establish that with you. We're starting to establish that with other partners as well. And I think that's where we're we get a real power. A power from the two parts coming together.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. Actually, from our side, we've, we've engaged with a lot of kind of innovation groups.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: Kind of large corporates. And a lot of the time you have a very good initial discussion with the innovation team. And then it takes about a month to work out they're completely disconnected, disconnected from the operational side of the business. And then you have to go have all those conversations again.

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SIMON RANDALL: Whereas actually with Aviva, even in that first meeting, it was very clear that the innovation team had a very good understanding of the operational challenges and the teams.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah.

SIMON RANDALL: And then very quickly we were able to say, oh, okay, here's these teams, which I think have a real burning need for this right now. Let's get the product into them.

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SIMON RANDALL: And actually that that process flowed through really well. And that's a really good thing. And so I think having the innovation teams very well connected and hardwired into the business operationally means you don't waste time in what they kind of, you know, kind of innovation theater for a few months and actually it's much more about how do we go solve a problem for a team that's using this stuff every day.

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MELISSA COLLETT: A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah,

PAUL WELSH: We're working really hard to to to remove that and to create these processes where, you know, we can really establish quickly. Is there a problem that that solved is, you know, is this burning for for the business right now? And is this solution right. And then how quickly do we get into a a test and learn pattern.

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PAUL WELSH: Right. So then we can get something up and running, improve it in the lightest way possible. And then we can really establish value and bring that business case to the floor. And that helps us get to a scale position. As you said, we, we did a six month pilot with Pimloc. And quite quickly we've seen the value and that's turned into a longer term relationship.

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SIMON RANDALL: Yeah. A slow no is the worst thing. Yes. Basically. Yeah. That's what that's what kills businesses basically. And that's also what stops people in engaging with certain sectors. Because if the sales cycle is long and there's a good chance that it's going to drop off, then people will back off and go to other sectors. So yeah. Yeah.

STEVE WHITELOCK: And I guess I guess.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: Melissa. From your perspective of Insurtech UK, kind of looking across both parts of it, how have you seen that evolve from a have you seen partnerships developing more broadly? I guess over the last couple of years?

MELISSA COLLETT: Oh, definitely. Because, initially, insurtech was all about disrupting and competing with incumbents. But it's moved really towards a situation most, insurtechs are collaborating and partnering.

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MELISSA COLLETT: And so, our members really want to meet companies like Aviva who are willing to embrace the technology, willing to pilot things and, you know, willing to not do this performative, type of activity but actually come with a problem and then, you know, look for a partner to provide a solution. And I think this is a great story to share with the wider community.

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MELISSA COLLETT: And we'd love to, you know, get you more involved as a, a company providing these insurance solutions, through tech, you know, to say, you know, this is we've got more where that came from.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah.

PAUL WELSH: Yeah, absolutely.

STEVE WHITELOCK: And I think that's a, that's a really nice way, I guess, to to lead into a final question really about, you know, we're obviously doing stuff in the here and now with eye on the future.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective.. You know, what do both of you see is kind of the long term strategic benefits and values that partnerships can bring for both of you actually.

SIMON RANDALL: So we have a very good understanding of kind of the multimodal landscape. Actually, what we lack is the the real deep understanding of what the burning problems are that the teams every day.

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SIMON RANDALL: What's great now is because we have active teams using the products, and we're having discussions very regularly. We're now starting to understand because we're solving a, a small part of the workflow problem. But actually, you know, how do you find the video, how do you manage it? What do you do with it what happens to it afterwards? How do you know who's looked.

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SIMON RANDALL: And so there's a much broader workflow that we can then start to work with you on. And certainly on the more I'd say proactive side, starting to have some conversations around, well, how how could we help empower you to be on the front foot for some of these risks and claims? How can we use live video? How can we use life sensing?

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SIMON RANDALL: So getting, you know, the fact that we have a a really good product in the here and now means it's much easier to have some of those more speculative conversations, which normally may be a slow no. But the fact that we have, you know, an existing relationship means you can manage some more experimental conversations.

PAUL WELSH: Yep.

SIMON RANDALL: Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

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PAUL WELSH: I think that brings me on to a point I would make, which is around agility as well. You know, partnering with a smaller organization which is more nimble can make changes very quickly, doesn't have to think about the whole system means that you can actually try things out quickly at lower cost. And then scale where you find the value, which is harder to do when you're doing that in the core of an organization where you do need to think of the, the impacts around the piece and the resource, etc..

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PAUL WELSH: So I think with partnership where we often do things, an experimental basis for short term, maybe unconnected, and then integrate later when we've got confidence on the solution and the scalability of it.

SIMON RANDALL: Yeah, we see that in a range of sectors actually, where we have end user teams will use our end solution directly. And then once we're embedded, we then look at integrating into existing, you know, in your instances be it claims management system exactly like many other digital evidence management or content management.

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SIMON RANDALL: Those sorts of things.

STEVE WHITELOCK: So brilliant. And I think that that's a really good way to kind of wrap things up, because we've talked here today about, you know, how important that sort of journey is from, you know, avoiding some of the slow no's. Right? But actually, what the longer term benefits are, particularly with tech evolving and the fact that, you know, partners can bring an external lens into the business.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And likewise, a company like Aviva can share what's going on more broadly across the landscape. So look, time flies when you're having fun. That's what we've, and we've reached the end today. That brings us to the end of episode one of the Partnerships podcast. I just want to say a massive thank you to Paul, massive thank you, Simon as well.

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STEVE WHITELOCK: And a massive thank you to Melissa my co-host. Thank you so much for coming in and joining us today. I hope you enjoyed today. Do join us again for the next episode. Thank you very much.

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Harriet

Welcome to episode two of the Partnerships podcast in association with Aviva and insurtech UK. My name's Harriet Granville Jones, group innovation manager here at Aviva. And in today's episode, we're going to be exploring the topic of pitching B2B.

 

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Harriet

I'm delighted to be joined in the studio today by Claire Mongeau, investor at Founders Factory, and by Arslan Hannani, group innovation officer here at Aviva. Welcome both. 

 

Claire

Thank you. Very, very happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. 

 

Harriet 

Good, good. So today we're talking obviously about pitching B2B. So, Claire, you must see thousands of pitches in your role.

 

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Harriet

Firstly, can you explain a little bit about what Founders Factory is and then what is a great pitch? 

 

Claire

Yeah. So Founders Factory is an early stage investor, an accelerator program. So, have been around for about ten years and invested in more than 400 plus companies to date. And the way that we operate is we partner with incredible corporates such as Aviva, to identify what are some really exciting up and coming trends in, the, in the markets, in the fields of insurance or wealth.

 

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Claire

And then we go out and find really incredible founders and startups to invest in. And our investment is not just cash, but we also have, a six month program that allows us to provide extra hands on support to the companies and also gives them access to the brilliant minds of Aviva and other corporate partners to help unlock that kind of unfair advantage.

 

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Claire

So yes, I see, thousands of pitches, in my day to day from, entrepreneurs pitching to ask for money, but then also from entrepreneurs preparing to pitch to potential clients. So I think the, the best pitches that I see in general are the ones that tell an amazing story. So these are the entrepreneurs that can really come in and, tell, a vision or tell a narrative that identifies a really clear problem that people can understand and resonate with.

 

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Claire

And the investor side, it usually looks like, what is a vision of the future and a market opportunity? That, we agree with that we've also identified for clients. It's we really understand there's this massive pain point in our workflows, or it's a gap that we need to solve. And then they're really easily able to, in simple words, present a really good solution that fills that problem or fills that opportunity.

 

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Claire

And really, the best pitches are also ones that a can build some really good rapport with the audience. That can be that feels a little bit more like a conversation. And then also prevents presents again, a really simple solution to a problem that everyone can agree with. And, that's very cliche, but that's something that is pretty pretty tried and true.

 

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Harriet

As simple as that. 

 

Claire

Yes, easy as that. 

 

Harriet 

And, what are the, like, common mistakes that should be avoided when insurers are pitching to insurers? 

 

Claire

I think that, some of the biggest problems are one, again, not actually demonstrating that they really understand the problem. Insurance is very complicated. We love insurance, but there's a lot of really, a lot of intricacies, and a lot of, nuances that, are kind of in the insurance value chain.

 

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Claire

And so a founder, or an entrepreneur should really come in and show that they understand either from past experience, if there were a lot of customer interviews, that they that they really get it. Because a lot of times your entrepreneurs will come in and say something pretty, maybe surface, maybe high level, and that just really kind of loses, honestly, credibility at the early stage.

 

00:03:47:22 - 00:04:13:05

Claire

So you want to show we really understand the problem that you're working with. And then can also demonstrate that they have the, credibility, the experience and the networks that can again, really fill, fill that problem or fill that's, give the solution that answers, that problem. So again, I think, I think there's, a lot of issues, especially when pitching any kind of financial institution or regulated industry where it would be super high level and then also prevent present.

 

00:04:13:05 - 00:04:39:01

Claire

Their solution is pretty. Maybe I just said simplicity is important, but present something that's, so simple as to not actually address the real problems, in implementing solutions. So I think that's one thing that's really important. I think another thing is that, an entrepreneur, a founder should recognize that insurers and big decision makers have seen so many solutions, have probably also tried to build them and in themselves maybe already have.

 

00:04:39:06 - 00:05:05:09

Claire

And so showing that, you really understand the world and the competitive landscape of whatever tool you're bringing in and how it complements not just, other, startups out there, but also the work that might be going on internally. So it's really being able to show, like, I understand truly the world in which this decision maker, the insurer is working with, and they're actually bringing something to add into it, rather than just saying, oh, you know, we know it's hard to process claims.

 

00:05:05:09 - 00:05:26:03

Claire

We're going to solve all your claims processing problems and likely not. Right. I don't know if you have anything.

 

Arslan

No. It's I think you've summed it up so well. And the one I would, I would sort of double down on is the oversimplification, because, you know, there's a lot of people we have a lot of colleagues. For example, if you think about Aviva, like problems and opportunities are being identified all the time.

 

00:05:26:05 - 00:05:49:19

Arslan

Right. And we're not just sitting here. We're trying to solve them and we're we're identifying all the complexities. But a lot of startups will come in and be like, oh this thing can solve all these issues. And it's like potentially yes it could. But have you really thought about the intricacies of how and have you thought about how do we you know, as Aviva, we have 20 million customers in our three markets.

 

00:05:49:19 - 00:06:11:00

Arslan

So if you think about the scale at which we need to solve it, for it presents the next level of detail, the next level of complexity they need to work through. So yeah, the oversimplification sort of gets me sometimes, which is like actually, you know, startups should do their homework and really understand the nuances. And I think that helps with, with, with getting the pitch over the line, too.

 

00:06:11:00 - 00:06:34:24

Arslan

Because if you can present that, actually we understand the complexities, we understand the challenges that the corporate faces, and we are prepared and we have the perseverance and patience to go through that, that gives us a lot more confidence to say, actually, this team could potentially solve that thing. 

 

Claire

I think the the question that we often ask on the investment side is what is this founder's unique insight?

 

00:06:34:24 - 00:06:54:23

Claire

What is a startup's really unique insight on the problem space? On the solution space? And if they can answer that for us, and they can definitely answer that for their clients. And so being able to even in the first 30 minutes of meeting someone, of course, is difficult. But if you can show, I really understand, I have a really unique insight into how we can solve this, that maybe people have thought about before.

 

00:06:54:23 - 00:07:27:01

Claire

But, you know, I think I can bring something unique to the solution space that is really, really, really helpful. 

 

Harriet

So not to sidestep the complexities, but actually to to delve into it and show that they understand it. 

 

Arslan

And look, it's it's going to be impossible for every startup to understand the complexities of an organization, for example, as big as Aviva, right, with as many customers, but showing an appreciation for the complexity and not oversimplifying this, the solution and the challenge, I think that's the important bit, right?

 

00:07:27:03 - 00:07:48:01

Harriet

And so say that the pitch goes really, really well and they get that over the line. Fantastic. What are what's the some of the challenges that might arise when trying to secure the, the pilot or trying to get the pilot to launch and how can they be overcome? 

 

Arslan

Yeah. Look, I mean, from a, I can only speak to an Aviva perspective, right.

 

00:07:48:01 - 00:08:07:22

Arslan

It might be different for different corporates, but we set a really high bar and a pretty high standard of the things that we put in front of colleagues or for customers. Right. It's so that means there's a fair amount of checks and balances. That means that it can take time in certain situations. But we we're not shy about that, I think.

 

00:08:07:22 - 00:08:32:09

Arslan

I think we do that because of the sense of responsibility and and, you know, the scale at which we operate. So I think often I've seen some startups lose patience. Right. And it's what I would challenge them with is like if you think about the scale at which we would want to do this, then have the appreciation for the checks and balances that is good for both us and for them.

 

00:08:32:14 - 00:08:57:00

Arslan

Right. And helps us make sure that we're doing the right thing and that we're going through the right processes. And it makes the startup, their product or their service, I think, a lot better, because if it can survive through a lot of these checks and balances and, and go through a couple of rounds of sort of investigating and thinking about it and due diligence, then the output should be better, right?

 

00:08:57:00 - 00:09:20:06

Arslan

And we should we should all have more confidence in him. 

 

Harriet

And Claire from your perspective, what other kind of characteristics are really promising in founders when they're trying to secure a pilot with a corporate?

 

Claire

Yeah. I think understanding the sales cycle and being able to, before even maybe the first sale or first pilot is done is, is is really, really important.

 

00:09:20:06 - 00:09:35:07

Claire

And that's one of the things we also look for, when we're talking to early stage Angel Pre-seed founders, you know, because the sales cycle and sales efficiency and onboarding time is something that people always underestimate.

 

00:09:35:07 - 00:09:49:13

Claire

that's that's fine. I did that myself when I was an entrepreneur. So I think it's it's one of those things that you know, before, before founders, reach any sort of pilot if they really understand, like, the first POC could take a year.

 

00:09:49:15 - 00:10:18:01

Claire

And getting to that could take six months. So how are we also fundraising? How are we allocating our resources appropriately? And then when they do get to a point of saying, great, we have an LOI, we're excited to potentially go into a pilot, maybe with an institution like Aviva. What we really like to see is, when founders are kind of mapping out, their first couple pilots as kind of a series of mini experiments or tests, to understand also what the onboarding and sales cycle looks like so that they're also learning along the way.

 

00:10:18:01 - 00:10:35:16

Claire

And then I can also mitigate some of the, I don't want to say frustration, but the challenges of how long, you know, potentially it might take are saying, like, okay, we're understanding that this time maybe, we didn't understand, in the sales process, how many stakeholders we need to get on board to implement successfully, like this aspect of pilot.

 

00:10:35:17 - 00:11:05:09

Claire

Now we know that we need to talk to this team, this team, this team and this team. Or we didn't understand that we need to go through, like, you know, this level of compliance of which I'm sure they would. But, you know, now we know we need to get that process done. And yeah, I mean, if if people have kind of planned and, are adjusting appropriately and that means when you do go through a POC and pilot, and if you've also set your metrics of what you're trying to learn out of that really well and aligned with the key stakeholders from the beginning, that means, I mean, insurance is all

 

00:11:05:09 - 00:11:36:24

Claire

about mitigating risk. But that means once you get through successful pilot, it's going to be hopefully pretty easy or you're there's going to be no surprises when you then want to go to a full enterprise kind of deployment. And so I, I think those are the things that we really look for, like an understanding around, it's a long process, but if it's done well and all the stakeholders are brought along on the journey, then you get that critical, move, shift from the from the pilot to the enterprise contract, which, yeah, is a dream.

 

00:11:37:01 - 00:11:59:12

Harriet

Exactly. And it is difficult because for a lot of these startups, they're in such small teams, obviously. But then when working with, corporate, it's not just one stakeholder you've got to get over the line for the pitch or the pilot. It's it's many. It could be all different teams. Arslan how do you align expectations with different stakeholders when going through the pitching or securing a pilot?

 

00:11:59:18 - 00:12:17:19

Arslan

Yeah. No, it's a it's a really interesting topic. And, you know, coming back to what you said Claire, like it's it's like let's just break this down into two parts. Right. But so there's obviously a procurement process which in some cases can be very fast. In some cases it can be a little slower. Depends on the situation, depends on the topic and so on.

 

00:12:17:21 - 00:12:37:17

Arslan

The other thing that can also be quite fast or quite slow is this sort of stakeholder alignment and sort of how aligned are the stars internally right from experience I've seen, for example, there's been scenarios where there's been some sort of, you know, like a cyber incident and then there's a capability gap identified and it all goes extremely quick.

 

00:12:37:19 - 00:13:06:00

Arslan

Right? Often, though, that is confused by actually the opportunity might not yet make sense for us. Right. There's a lot of startups out there that have some incredible ideas. And for some companies it's really good, but for others it may not be good or it may not be good enough. Yet. So I think it's really important not just to align the stakeholders, but understand what is it that they're trying to do, where is it that they're trying to go.

 

00:13:06:00 - 00:13:26:12

Arslan

So I would always say the startup ask a lot of questions. Like so often do I see, you know, people come up to me and just start pitching. And, you know, I was saying this to Harriet earlier, like, it reminds me of, like walking into a car showroom and the salesman is like, check out this 4x4. And I'm like, I don't know if you've asked me what kind of car I'm actually looking for, right?

 

00:13:26:12 - 00:13:47:17

Arslan

So have that patience and like, really ask a lot of questions, then tailor your approach, but also appreciate that maybe a great idea, but not the right idea for us right now. That may change tomorrow. That may change in six months. It may never change. But stay patient and like keep asking questions and see how we can fit it.

 

00:13:47:19 - 00:14:08:21

Arslan

Another tip that I would always, sort of, I always give to startups is identify your champion pretty quickly. You know, it's a lot of it's a lot of navigation that needs to happen. There's a lot of stakeholders that need to be aligned. There's a business case that needs to be done. There's there's just a lot of different aspects of of really building a, you know, a long term healthy partnership.

 

00:14:08:23 - 00:14:30:19

Arslan

So having somebody internally that really champions you and can help build the case. Yeah. And help identify when the stars are more aligned or less aligned. Or how does this fit in with the priorities of where a business is trying to go or where strategy is trying to go? Having that person like it's very important. And I'd always suggest that for a startup, just give them all the materials to fight for your case.

 

00:14:30:19 - 00:14:55:04

Arslan

Give them all the all the all the information and all the all the PowerPoints and all the sort of the all the examples and all the case studies to help them make the case internally. Yeah. 

 

Harriet

And timing is obviously really, really critical. Claire, how do you manage the, the timing. How do you know when it's the right time for a startup to go into a partnership?

 

00:14:55:06 - 00:15:19:13

Claire

Great question. I think startups want to go into partnerships as quickly as possible because that's where they'll make their money. So, I think that, we when we're working with the startups through, kind of the accelerator, a lot of the work that, like myself and my colleagues do, is kind of help the companies become kind of enterprise ready.

 

00:15:19:19 - 00:15:37:24

Claire

And often it's not even quite enterprise ready, but it's getting them to the point where they're getting there, ready to be enterprise ready. So a lot of that is looking at, okay, usually the founders, have identified a good problem. They've identified a good solution. Then it's really looking out for the solution that they're building.

 

00:15:37:24 - 00:16:04:13

Claire

How good does it have to be to get the client to say, yeah, I'm going to pay for it because what's the risk of it going wrong? So in some things, you know, like if you're putting together, let's say, like, a marketing agent, to help service, you know, more specific, like gen Z clients, for example, the cost of reach, having your ad reach a millennial versus a Gen Z, that's like, not that big a deal.

 

00:16:04:16 - 00:16:33:09

Claire

So maybe the fidelity doesn't have to be as strong for that. If you're, let's say, a cyber company that's, protecting maybe Aviva's, you know, SME clients against cyber attacks, that has to be really, really, really good. So then I, we always kind of look at it, say, where actually is the product? How good is it actually, how well is it actually delivering on the promise that, you're saying it is and then what other checks and balances, are you putting in place to showcase that?

 

00:16:33:09 - 00:16:55:13

Claire

What other kind of like, regulations or compliances have you go through? Who have been your other clients? Maybe an insurer is not the best first client for you, because, again, it's all about making sure that, you're mitigating as much risk as possible. Maybe it's going through another channel or through a smaller potential clients to validate your solution before you bring it to a big enterprise client.

 

00:16:55:15 - 00:17:16:05

Claire

And so those are kind of a lot of the steps that we typically go through, like we need to have a really good use case, and you need to have excellent proof that it's going to work not just on a small scale, but also across maybe Aviva's 20 million customers, for example. So that's how, we kind of try to help the startups plan their, their product roadmap.

 

00:17:16:07 - 00:17:44:18

Claire

And so maybe that doesn't look like showing up to Arslan's office and pitching and saying, all right, let's do a pilot tomorrow. But maybe it's meeting and saying, okay, what would you need to know? What metrics would you need to see, to be able to say, yes, let's go into POC and then maybe it takes a year to build that out and build that case, but at the same time, to the stakeholder alignment point, if you're continuing to build that relationship throughout and show how you're learning and growing, then you also build, some of that internal championship.

 

00:17:44:20 - 00:18:08:21

Claire

But yeah, it's it's especially for regulated industries. The product just has to be really, really, really good. And you have to be able to prove it. 

 

Harriet

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're we're taking that that risk and we want to work with the startup we're trusting their expertise. So obviously it has to be accurate. From an insurer's perspective, how important is timing and what is the right timing when you're looking for start ups?

 

00:18:08:23 - 00:18:28:02

Arslan

I mean, it it changes like it depends on the situation. Right. Like we talked about a couple of example of how it can change. I think more than the timing. Like maybe again we break this down in two sort of parts. Right. Like one I've already mentioned it. We've put a pretty high bar on the type of product and the and the quality.

 

00:18:28:02 - 00:18:51:08

Arslan

So sometimes we see something where like that can be very interesting. If and these things. So sometimes it's a timing of like I want, I just want to see the startup develop a little bit more. Another six months, maybe it's proof points with a client, or maybe it's a different a different angle to their proposition or a different sort of, you know, added benefit, whatever.

 

00:18:51:10 - 00:19:10:00

Arslan

That pays plays a part. And then internally we have to think about, well, does this actually help us accelerate where we want it to go. Right. So it's just because it's a really good idea. If it doesn't fit with my strategy it's not going to. But as we all know strategies evolve and priorities change over time.

 

00:19:10:00 - 00:19:32:08

Arslan

So something that may not be relevant today could be relevant in 12 months time or in six months time. So who knows. So I think I wouldn't want to say that this is how you optimize for timing or this is how you shorten or lengthen, but I think it's important. What I would say to the startups is like, it's important to understand the different parts of timing, like there's an internal piece, there's an external piece, and then there's a startup piece of like, how mature are you?

 

00:19:32:09 - 00:19:58:02

Arslan

Where are you on that curve and what would again, thinking about that high bar that we set what would we want to see for you to to meet that criteria? 

 

Claire

And I think, because we we've talked about this a lot in companies we jointly invest in through founders factory. The big questions we're asking now is what where is the market evolving and what is the big opportunity around, you know, this particular problem in this particular solution?

 

00:19:58:04 - 00:20:24:06

Claire

What does what where do we believe that the market is going over the next five years? And then finally, should a startup be solving this problem? And if the answer is yes, because, you know, there's, new technology, new innovation coming out, there's new research, there's some really cool insights that, a startup can be able to derive about, about customers, about users in a way that they would a large institution can't or won't, which is great.

 

00:20:24:06 - 00:20:45:17

Claire

And then it's looking at, okay, now, why this startup? So I think from the investment side, it's also a question of, is your market super, super crowded? That means you have to be even that much more excellent. On top of the other solutions that are available, have, other financial institutions been developing their own solutions to solve this problem in-house.

 

00:20:45:17 - 00:21:06:23

Claire

Then again, you have to be better than, what the, enterprise has already spent maybe millions of pounds building. And if there's a gap, then amazing. Then maybe market wise, it is the right timing. And then it's kind of. Yeah. Looking at, what exactly then do you need to show to be able to be rolled out to 20 million clients?

 

00:21:07:00 - 00:21:35:16

Harriet

And it's tough. That's a lot of elements to consider and to try and, get both the insurtech and the insurer to, to understand. So it is difficult. 

 

Arslan

If, if I could, like it is difficult. But I think startups also have to realize like we are investing and creating the teams and the scenarios and the landing zones for them, you know, so a we have an innovation team, we have joint ventures and partnerships like with Founders Factory.

 

00:21:35:18 - 00:21:55:00

Arslan

So it's it may seem hard, but there are these there are various ways we're helping too to say because look at the in the long run, we want to have our finger on the pulse. We want to know what their latest technology or startup or the idea is and if it makes sense, like it will, it will be quite quick.

 

00:21:55:02 - 00:22:20:04

Arslan

But sometimes the slowness gets confused with that actually may not make sense for us right now. You know what I mean? But for sure, I'm very keen that we keep having partnerships like this. And and within our team, we have these ready made champions so that if we do find something that fits, we know exactly who can sort of champion that startup and sort of build a case around it and get it through us as quickly as possible.

 

00:22:20:06 - 00:22:58:03

Harriet

Absolutely. And so last question, what what are the the mutual benefits that partnerships like this can bring for insurers and insurtechs? Claire do you want to go?

 

Claire

Yeah. So I, used to be an entrepreneur, and now I'm an investor. And so I've sat on both sides of the table to really understand and see, what is the, unfair advantage, maybe, of being able to have a group of people have built companies before us, staffed around you, to, to help you not make the same mistakes as maybe they made.

 

00:22:58:05 - 00:23:24:14

Claire

That's what I tell a lot of founders I work with. I'm like, I did this. Don't do that. And then there's also, the benefit of having, a thought partner, like the different, great people, at Aviva to be able to help you, like, look under the hood, even if you have, you know, decades worth of experience, you know, within an insurer having an extra set of eyes or people who can say, okay, here's how things work within, you know, our ecosystem.

 

00:23:24:14 - 00:23:43:19

Claire

Here's how it works in the ecosystem at large and help you shape, kind of the strategy and the mandate. I think that's the real benefit because, you know, when you're an entrepreneur at the early stage, you're doing literally everything yourself, you and your co-founder, doing everything from planning, you know, what's the vision of insurance? Look like in the next ten years?

 

00:23:43:19 - 00:24:05:17

Claire

And you're also trying to figure out how to file your taxes. And it's it's so much. And so I think, you know, the benefit of, of partnerships like this is having people come together and say, okay, here's where is the most valuable, like, place to spend your time. Here's some, strategies that can help you reduce your cognitive load so you can really focus on those things.

 

00:24:05:17 - 00:24:37:16

Claire

And also here are some people who've, like, been there before, who love the sector that you're working in and can also help give you some new insights that make sure that you know, you you can skip maybe 6 to 12 months of trying to knock on doors or trying to ideate or find solutions to things. And so I think that's the really cool, value add of kind of the Founders Factory, Aviva Partnership for insurtechs and, and other companies especially, just giving, giving them that like insight.

 

00:24:37:18 - 00:24:58:02

Claire

That gives them a little bit more of an edge and cool people to work with. 

 

Arslan

I mean, I agree with everything you said. And just from an insurer's perspective, it's so great to know that sort of, you know, founders factory are sort of our eyes and ears, right? Like, they can they can see things that we may not always see and it just ups the quality.

 

00:24:58:04 - 00:25:20:03

Arslan

Right. Knowing that quality team that Founders Factory has, we know that actually this great idea is surrounded by a great set of people and a great set of people who know us, who've known us for like nine years. Yeah. As a partner, know many parts of our business, knows a lot of the stakeholders. So we we feel that much more comfortable when something's coming through Founders Factory.

 

00:25:20:03 - 00:25:41:09

Arslan

Because because of Claire, because of the team and just knowing how well they know us. So like, I think I think it's a fantastic partnership. 

 

Harriet

So it's already vetted. It's already we already know that it's got a good chance. Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you so much Arslan. And thank you so much for watching episode two of the partnerships podcast.

 

00:25:41:13 - 00:25:43:15

Harriet

Hope to see you again soon.

00:00:01:18 - 00:00:33:04

Suzanne

Hello and welcome to episode three of the Partnerships podcast, in association with Aviva and insurtech UK. My name is Suzanne Lawson, partnerships lead at Aviva. And in today's episode we're going to be covering the topic of being enterprise ready. So what to do when an insurer says yes? I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by Eloise Morgan, managing director of ventures at Price Forbes and Manjit Rana, executive VP at Clear Speed.

 

00:00:33:04 - 00:00:34:14

Suzanne

So welcome to Aviva today.

 

00:00:34:16 - 00:00:37:12

Eloise

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

 

00:00:37:14 - 00:00:51:02

Suzanne

So let's kick off with a bit of understanding. This will be a question to both of you. What do we really mean by enterprise ready when it comes to that insurer insurtech relationship? I'll start with you, Eloise.

 

00:00:51:04 - 00:01:15:16

Eloise

Well, I think, if you're been in the insurance industry, you'll understand that things take time. Insurers take time to make decisions. So in terms of being enterprise ready, I would say from the insurtech's perspective is having all your ducks in a row, making sure that all of your internal corporate governance and all the things that you need to be able to push forward, start generating revenue with the insurer is ready to go.

 

00:01:15:18 - 00:01:22:03

Suzanne

And is that quite specific to the insurer. Or do you think that's more of a generic enterprise ready?

 

00:01:22:05 - 00:01:44:09

Eloise

I think definitely more of a generic. But what I would say in my experience of having spent the last few years working closely with insurtechs and insurers and seeing first hand how long things can take to go through. It's, just recognizing that things can take a little longer in the insurance sector as an industry say we tend to take longer to make decisions.

 

00:01:44:09 - 00:02:11:03

Eloise

There tends to be more paperwork, more red tape, more layers to go through. So perhaps it technology businesses and other industries may find it easier to get through that, especially if you're looking for capacity. I think being aware that that can take some time. So making sure that you've got sufficient funding to keep you going during that time so that when you do get that all important, yes, you're ready to really hit the ground running and start making some revenue.

 

00:02:11:05 - 00:02:14:00

Suzanne

Great. Thank you. And same question to you, Manjit.

 

00:02:14:02 - 00:02:54:21

Manjit

I think it's actually quite a broad topic, to be fair, but I would say a make sure you understand what your proposition is and ensure that you're ready. And if you're not quite ready by your propositions, only 80% shaped up. Don't be as your potential insurance partner. Tell them that that that's where you're at. Make sure you understand your process from initial connections into the insurance market all the way through to what you're going to do when you get to production, because when you're in the middle of working with somebody, it's really hard to try and do that kind of stuff on the fly.

 

00:02:54:22 - 00:03:16:04

Manjit

So just understand it. I think the other thing, in my experience from kind of being enterprise ready, most insurtechs I speak to or say, oh, we can do everything in the claim space for argument's sake. And it's I kind of use the analogy. It is just because you can run doesn't mean to say you should compete in every single running event.

 

00:03:16:04 - 00:03:37:11

Manjit

Yeah, pick your event, pick your segment, pick the bit where you believe you're going to add the most value and then focus. That doesn't mean to say you can't do the others, but don't spread yourself too thin. Really focus on where the maximum value is. And I think kind of just maybe following that running analogy, get a coach.

 

00:03:37:13 - 00:04:00:07

Manjit

That's where your, board advisors come in really handy. They can kind of shape, help you shape where you're going to be positioning. It's really easy for an insurtech to kind of go, oh, we got an objection over here. So let's say we can do that. And then they kind of pivot really, really quickly. Not massively pivot but pivot into use cases.

 

00:04:00:07 - 00:04:15:22

Manjit

So I think that's all part of being enterprise ready. Really understand where you're positioning yourself, what's the problem you're solving and make sure you've got, as Eloise said, all your ducks in a row ready to be able to actually do business. 

 

00:04:15:24 - 00:04:37:15

Suzanne

Yeah. Great advice. And I really love the idea of this kind of really open, honest relationship with your kind of business sponsor, on the insurer's side to be able to say, well, this is what we do. If you want us to do X, we need to take a bit of time just to have a think about it. It's not a no, but yeah, I can see that kind of enthusiasm and keenness prompts people to say, yes, we could do that.

 

00:04:37:15 - 00:04:41:21

Suzanne

Yes, we'll change this. Actually, just taking a bit of time to think about.

 

00:04:41:23 - 00:04:48:02

Manjit

I don't always want a yes. And actually quite often you don't really want the yes because it's really distracting to your business.

 

00:04:48:04 - 00:04:48:14

Suzanne

Yeah.

 

00:04:48:20 - 00:04:58:19

Manjit

Sometimes it's better to get a no. Yeah, but get the no early. Don't take the don't take six months to get to a no because that's really expensive.

 

00:04:58:19 - 00:05:01:13

Suzanne

Yeah. No one likes a slow no on either side.

 

00:05:01:17 - 00:05:02:09

Manjit

Yeah absolutely.

 

00:05:02:09 - 00:05:13:24

Suzanne

Yeah. We'll stay with you, Manjit, for the next question, can you share a moment when an insurer has said yes, what did it feel like? What happened next? Anything you learned from it?

 

00:05:14:01 - 00:05:40:06

Manjit

I think in my experience is actually quite rare to get an ultimate Yes. In a short, in a short period. Generally, it's a series of okay, let's move to the next stage. And what you're doing is you're rather one big when you're getting lots of little wins. And I would say, take those wins and use that to move to the next stage in the process.

 

00:05:40:08 - 00:06:10:10

Manjit

I can't really think of a scenario where someone's kind of gone, yes, let's go celebrate. For me, the real win though, honestly, it's it's not when you get the signature on the dotted line, the real win is when your client's standing on stage saying, actually, when these guys came to us, we were a little bit doubtful, but actually they've overdelivered and and our expectations from what our expectations were to where we've actually gotten the fact they're prepared to stand up on stage.

 

00:06:10:12 - 00:06:22:10

Manjit

That's the real win. Because not only have you just signed a contract, you've actually delivered value. And if you deliver value, that's where the real partnership shows the benefits to both sides.

 

00:06:22:12 - 00:06:35:11

Suzanne

Yeah. And I think knowing how cautious many insurers are about recommendations and sharing their experiences, that's so valuable isn't it to be able. For someone to stand up and say that's how we recommend this team.

 

00:06:35:13 - 00:06:36:16

Manjit

Yeah that is the real bit.

 

00:06:36:18 - 00:06:40:22

Suzanne

Yeah.

 

00:06:40:24 - 00:06:49:24

Suzanne

Over to you, Eloise. So when an insurer says yes, what's the immediate next steps for an insurtech, how would you usually approach that conversation with a founder?

 

00:06:50:01 - 00:07:23:02

Eloise

Well, I'm going to come at it from kind of the corporate governance, boring side of it, if you like. So you've got the fun bit of getting ready to go. But it's mainly about understanding what you need to have in place. It's going to protect you and ultimately the insurer partner as well. So whether you are seeking capacity and you need to be regulated by the FCA, whether that be directly or indirectly, perhaps as an appointed representative, or perhaps you are providing some technology to the insurer and you're more of a SAAS type solution where you don't need to be regulated.

 

00:07:23:02 - 00:07:43:00

Eloise

Either way, there's some considerations that you need to have in place in respect of your own insurance protections. These are often driven contractually. So my advice would be be prepared and think about these things before it gets to that stage. Because like I said, you should have plenty of time before it gets to the stage or you're ready to go.

 

00:07:43:02 - 00:08:03:23

Eloise

So just as an example, if you are going to be regulated by the FCA, you will need to have professional indemnity insurance. It's usually tied in with insurance distribution permissions. And that carries without getting into all the really exciting details, certain parameters around what you need to have in place, and there are a lot of stipulations around what your cover must look like.

 

00:08:04:00 - 00:08:13:18

Eloise

So that's not optional. You have to have that. And the last thing you want is to not have understood that early on and then that to hold you up because it's not always the easiest thing to arrange.

 

00:08:13:18 - 00:08:15:15

Suzanne

Yeah.

 

00:08:15:17 - 00:08:38:10

Eloise

Just also on that point, it's about thinking beyond just what you're required to have from a regulatory standpoint, but think about what's going to protect you and your business as you drive forward and go into this next exciting step of onboarding, more customers, generating revenue that comes with risk. And I mean, insurance. Well, you know, the insurers want you to have thought about that and taken proactive steps to manage your own risk.

 

00:08:38:14 - 00:09:01:10

Eloise

So having things like insurance in place to protect you, if your technology causes issues, perhaps there are problems in the way that it functions that ultimately leads to a loss. It may be that there's an issue with the functionality and the network goes down. The product isn't able to function. That could then lead to you facing issues with the insurer, and ultimately it could put your relationship with them in jeopardy.

 

00:09:01:10 - 00:09:25:17

Eloise

If you have a problem, particularly if you're linking in to taking some of their data or linking into their networks, it's really important to make sure you've got your own protections around that, because you're not going to get many chances to impress the insurer, right? So you've gone through all that hard work to sign with them. The last thing you want is there to be a problem with your products that causes them to think, okay, what do we want to continue this relationship?

 

00:09:25:17 - 00:09:32:09

Eloise

So just showing that you've been proactive and you've taken steps to manage those risks and get your insurances in place can can really help.

 

00:09:32:11 - 00:09:45:02

Suzanne

Great. Thank you. And if, if there's a founder out there who doesn't have access to someone brilliant like you with all of the knowledge, what's the best place to find support with those kind of insurance insurances?

 

00:09:45:04 - 00:10:22:14

Eloise

I think kind of going to your point about the community and your non execs board of advisors, I found the insurtech community to be really collaborative, really, helpful. So I think just utilize your network as much as possible, ask questions, you know, whether it be the law firm you're working with, even, you know, perhaps other insurtech founders that may have been through this, just reach out to as many people as possible, and they will either have experienced this, or they will know someone that has and they can introduce you to people but I think, you know, even resources like insurtech UK, there's lots of great resources coming from that.

 

00:10:22:16 - 00:10:29:22

Eloise

People like yourself, Aviva, do some great stuff. So yeah, just ask questions, use your network and go from there.

 

00:10:29:23 - 00:10:44:22

Suzanne

Yeah, brilliant. I love seeing how that kind of power of social capital can really help as well. And we we're so focused on financial capital a lot of the time it's easy to forget actually the power of that network. Otherwise it's quite a lonely place to be, isn't it? 

 

00:10:44:22 - 00:10:51:18

Eloise

Yeah. And I think even though there may be, you may be in competition with other companies, everyone is still really wanting to support one another.

 

00:10:51:20 - 00:11:12:04

Manjit

And the whole insurtech community, especially in London, is really tight knit. Everyone is very, very well connected. So and I think as well BIBA's an obvious place to go check as well. Because they can give you, they can point you in the right direction for people to talk to. But yeah, use the network.

 

00:11:12:05 - 00:11:25:10

Suzanne

Brilliant. Great advice. Manjit, have you got some real world examples of partnerships that have navigated this process well and what we can learn from them?

 

00:11:25:12 - 00:11:58:08

Manjit

I kind of think Clear Speed have done a particularly good job because we we knew from experience we knew what the barriers were going to be. We knew where the hurdles were going to be coming up. We designed around them. So I, I think we probably did a really good, not probably, we did a really good job of making sure that we understood which insurers we wanted to engage with, at what point, which use case, when we wanted to go talk to them.

 

00:11:58:10 - 00:12:14:23

Manjit

Because one of the things you'll find is no insurer ever wants to go first. Doesn't matter how much they love your solution. Everybody will always say to you, oh, wait, no, come back to me when you've signed up a couple of our competitors, which kind of feels a bit weird because you kind of want to go first generally.

 

00:12:14:23 - 00:12:42:07

Manjit

But but they, you know, is the industry that nobody nobody wants to take that risk usually. And so you can build a strategy around how do you encourage someone to want to go first or how do you, which insurers have the mentality to want to be leading edge, for instance? So I think a lot of it that a lot of that came about because we kind of knew from experience what the issue is going to be going to be.

 

00:12:42:07 - 00:13:03:04

Manjit

And as I said, you know, we designed the whole process and strategy around that. So, I think in the first year, our strategy wasn't really to sell to anybody. The strategy was basically to get the insurance industry and very senior people in the insurance industry go, who the hell are these guys, where have they come from? What are they doing?

 

00:13:03:10 - 00:13:24:15

Manjit

Who are they talking to? Because they're not talking to us. Yeah. And that that was also kind of the reason why we entered a whole lot of industry awards and won a whole stack of industry awards, because they created this vacuum where insurers were then wanting to basically go in and have the conversations with us. And I think that shortened our sales cycle.

 

00:13:24:21 - 00:13:51:02

Manjit

So yes, we spent the first year creating the vacuum, but the following year we signed up a whole bunch of insurers in a much tighter sales cycle that we would have had had we gone down the traditional route. So I think it's that but that comes with the experience. So I don't know how, how you learn that if you're a fairly new insurtech.

 

00:13:51:04 - 00:14:10:02

Manjit

And unless you use the network to try and learn from people that have done it before. But yeah, that's probably the there's a lot of planning. You can't just come up with a really cool, sexy product and think you're going to be able to go and get it into the marketplace. And just because you think it's brilliant doesn't mean to say the market will think it's brilliant.

 

00:14:10:02 - 00:14:15:11

Manjit

So yeah, strategy.

 

00:14:15:13 - 00:14:38:17

Suzanne

And I think it comes back to some of the other points we've touched on around social capital. So having those that time and the energy and the focus to build up those relationships in the first place. And Clear Speed's got some experienced people already with good, good relationships there. As well as the advice, as you say, from kind of supporters, coach, board members, who will also have their own network.

 

00:14:38:17 - 00:14:48:13

Suzanne

So beginning to kind of plant those seeds. And almost creating that kind of FOMO. So that, yeah, it increases the inbound. Yeah, it sounds really sensible. In that second year.

 

00:14:48:16 - 00:15:12:00

Eloise

I think it's similar to what it's like raising capital as well. Right? A lot of investors will sort of similar position to the insurers will. Will say well we'll invest that maybe see if you can get somebody else first. And then when someone follows they don't want to miss out either. So it's going to be a similar story to what a lot of companies and insurtechs are going to have probably found in raising their first round of capital and funding.

 

00:15:12:02 - 00:15:28:18

Manjit

I think it's about not actually in clearspeed, but in in other projects that I've been involved in, you get a lot of people, investors or say, oh, this is really interesting. I really want to be a part of this, but come back to me when you've got a lead investor and the challenge isn't finding investors. The challenge is finding the lead investor.

 

00:15:28:19 - 00:15:48:02

Manjit

Because everybody's quite happy to follow on, but nobody really wants to take that front position. And it's, it's the same when you're trying to get a product into market as well. You always need someone to trust you first. And that's quite challenging.

 

00:15:48:02 - 00:16:06:17

Suzanne

Yeah. And that's where the relationships come in again. Yeah, yeah. So, how do we mitigate blockers then Eloise? And I'm sure you've experienced a few of those in your time with all the insurtechs you've worked with. What do we, what do we do?

 

00:16:06:19 - 00:16:44:15

Eloise

Well, I think it's on us as the insurance industry to be more transparent with, insurtechs about how long processes can take on know I've already spoken about this, but I've seen so many examples in the past of clients of mine who it's taken at times 18 months to get these things agreed, and the insurer thought that that was a great result, whereas for the insurtech, it was a terrible result because that had they been a little bit more prepared and known that it can take that long, they perhaps could have managed their investors expectations a little better, their own expectations and, you know, done some things a little differently there.

 

00:16:44:15 - 00:17:00:08

ELoise

And so I think we sort of all need to meet in the middle a little bit, but it's about being transparent and everybody understanding everybody else's challenges, because it's easy for us to say, you know, the insurers are taking so long, why don't they speed up the you know, obviously they have their own issues about making sure that this is right for them.

 

00:17:00:08 - 00:17:21:15

Eloise

So that sort of mutual transparency, I would say, but also making sure as an insurtech that you are proactive also and you use that time wisely to make sure that you've got all your own internal corporate governance sorted, so that when you do get that yes, you haven't got an insurer saying, well, where's your cyber insurance, where's your professional indemnity insurance.

 

00:17:21:18 - 00:17:43:00

ELoise

And at that point, you know we see this a lot with fundraisers as well. Most investors will mandate certain insurances like directors and officers in place before they will commit to investment. And founders don't realize that until sometimes right last minute. And then it can hold up the deal. So it's similar on this. So I think just in everything, try and be as proactive as you possibly can do appreciate it's really difficult when you're a founder.

 

00:17:43:00 - 00:18:00:24

Eloise

You've got a million different things to be doing. You're wearing so many different hats and you can't be an expert in everything and quite frankly, don't have the time. So that's where it comes back to once again, the social capital. So just understanding who it is that you can delegate to, you can trust to go off and take care of those things for you so that it's ready to go.

 

00:18:01:01 - 00:18:11:12

Eloise

So, well, you know, for example, we would do is get a whole insurance program ready, won't implement it, but that it's ready to go. So once the founder needs it, it can all be put into place.

 

00:18:11:14 - 00:18:39:08

Suzanne

Yeah. So I think that to summarize, almost like that front loading of those documents, because so much of that well, the 18 months, it sounds like a worst case scenario. The 18 months, so much of that is reviewing it's compliance teams, governance teams, data teams, infosec, who all have challenges probably with capacity and resourcing. So as much as I think the founder and insurtech can do up front, it then means there's ample time for the review process.

 

00:18:39:08 - 00:19:01:09

Eloise

Yeah, absolutely. And sort of, you know, and everybody understanding, like I say, what is required of each because, you know, the insurtechs don't understand all the different levels that have to be gone through. So I think if that's communicated to them by us. Early on, that really helps. And you know, also the amount of forms and paperwork that sometimes have to be done, I know that some of the founders I work with can find it really overwhelming, because they don't understand a lot of the terminology.

 

00:19:01:11 - 00:19:07:15

Eloise

If you don't come from an insurance background, I mean, our industry can be, quite complicated, particularly in respect of.

 

00:19:07:15 - 00:19:09:02

Suzanne

Love an acronym.

 

00:19:09:02 - 00:19:24:13

Eloise

We really do, you know, so I think just, you know, again, reaching out to people and don't be scared to ask the insurer sometimes for clarity on those things, I've seen founders a lot of the time be a little bit too nervous to go back and ask what those acronyms mean in case it makes them, you know, look silly.

 

00:19:24:18 - 00:19:27:00

Eloise

But don't worry about that. I think just.

 

00:19:27:02 - 00:19:29:07

Suzanne

Yeah. Better to ask. Than guess.

 

00:19:29:07 - 00:19:29:24

Eloise

Absolutely.

 

00:19:30:01 - 00:19:34:22

Suzanne

Yeah. Anything you'd add to that, Manjit?

 

00:19:34:24 - 00:20:00:24

Manjit

I would say be a little bit cautious about not understanding the industry when you're trying to pitch to an insurer. I've seen a whole stack of scenarios where the person from the insurance insurer side kind of sees it as a challenge now to prove that they have the knowledge, and you really should have the knowledge before you come into that meeting.

 

00:20:01:01 - 00:20:21:10

Manjit

And so it kind of becomes a battle of who understands the market better. As opposed to thinking about what's the proposition, how does that fit fits in with those. So I would say don't underestimate how much knowledge you really do need to know about the industry. But then my view is you're selling to insurers. You should bloody well understand insurance.

 

00:20:21:10 - 00:20:22:14

Suzanne

Yes. Yeah.

 

00:20:22:16 - 00:20:32:04

Manjit

If I was, if I was selling to the motor industry and I didn't understand motor, I've got no right to be there. So you know you've picked that battle. Prepare for it.

 

00:20:32:06 - 00:21:00:13

Suzanne

And there is so much tools and information now to go and find out that information. Yeah. There's kind of no excuse is there, for misunderstanding fundamentals. Great. Thank you. So final question. I'm going to ask this to both of you. So final advice how can insurers better support startups in becoming enterprise ready? I know we've touched on some of this, but I think it'd be really useful to summarize some of those key points.

 

00:21:00:15 - 00:21:31:05

Manjit

I would say as an insurer, accept the fact that most insurtechs you talk to will fail your standard due diligence procurement process. They're not they're not a large corporate, they're not a large business. So maybe set up a more fast track procurement process, which I'm surprised most insurers don't do. You guys do it very well, through your Innovation team.

 

00:21:31:05 - 00:21:49:09

Manjit

But you really need to do that because it kind of using that running analogy. I was using at the minute for an, for an insurtech running their first couple of POVs is like literally me running down the track doing this with money. Yeah. I've got I have enough money to be able to get to the end of the race.

 

00:21:49:09 - 00:21:57:07

Manjit

And quite often insurtechs don't. And and it's hard for them to get investment until they've got POVs.

 

00:21:57:07 - 00:21:58:16

Suzanne

Traction. Yep.

 

00:21:58:18 - 00:22:25:13

Manjit

So it's a catch. You know, it's kind of almost like a no win situation. So insurers have got to be empathetic about that. Also, typically in my experience, 80% of very successful POVs with innovation teams fail when they go into BAU. So get the BAU function involved early so that if they've got any issues it gets addressed at the beginning.

 

00:22:25:14 - 00:22:47:09

Manjit

Of that process rather than when the insurtech thinks they've done everything they've got a successful POV and they think it's just going to be a tick in the box and it's going to go into production. It's just this is it's the start of second phase. It's not it's not the win. Procurement, the contractual stuff.

 

00:22:47:11 - 00:23:09:13

Manjit

Insurtechs don't have dedicated legal people that can sit and negotiate this for weeks and weeks on end. Insurers do. So just be a little bit more empathetic in terms of how an insurtech is going to get through this. I think ultimately it would be great if insurers actually seconded some of their people into the insurtechs.

 

00:23:09:13 - 00:23:31:23

Manjit

So they get a feel for what it's like to be in an in the world of an entrepreneur. Because most people that work in the corporate world really don't have a clue how difficult it is. Because they're, they don't have the luxury quite often of a standard salary that's going to get paid week in, week out, month in, month out.

 

00:23:32:03 - 00:23:45:07

Manjit

When you're an entrepreneur, you're literally fighting for. So that's why a three week gap between meetings to an entrepreneur might as well be six months. But to a corporate person, it's only weeks.

 

00:23:45:12 - 00:23:45:23

Suzanne

Yeah.

 

00:23:46:00 - 00:24:13:08

Manjit

It's not really that big a deal. And I'd say kind of be prepared as an insurtech to be prepared to deal with challenges that arise that you weren't they weren't expecting. I had a couple non insurance related examples. So I had a dating I set up a dating business years ago before smartphones. First evening, we're in a nightclub.

 

00:24:13:10 - 00:24:32:20

Manjit

There's 500 of my units out in this nightclub. There are Russian game console based. And they're all looking at the screen, and we can't see the screen because there's no backlit on the screen. But at no point during the design phase had we ever taken the device into a nightclub and told them to put the lights down.

 

00:24:32:22 - 00:24:55:05

Manjit

So how how do you deal with that on the fly in a live environment? But you've just got to be prepared to do that. Corporates don't really have to deal with those kind of situations, so they're not used to having to handle those scenarios. As an insurtech, you're going to get a lot of those. So be prepared to be creative in the way that you deal with challenges.

 

00:24:55:05 - 00:24:57:18

Manjit

So I'd say be be aware of that as well.

 

00:24:57:20 - 00:24:59:21

Suzanne

Yeah.

 

00:24:59:23 - 00:25:23:12

Eloise

Yeah I mean I agree sort of everything that I've already said about the transparency issue and to your point about perhaps a fast track, more simpler onboarding, procurement solution for insurtechs who don't have, you know, all the corporate due diligence teams around them to help them and some empathy. I think that's a great idea about seconding people out so that people can understand, you know, it's the same with lots of industries.

 

00:25:23:12 - 00:25:41:11

Eloise

If you come from a comfortable corporate background, you've got no idea what it's like to, you know, to be waiting on getting things sorted. Otherwise you can't continue your business. And I think just to avoid the classic slow no be transparent at the start about exactly what your criteria is and what you won't be able to do.

 

00:25:41:15 - 00:25:47:20

Eloise

From an insurtech's perspective. So that, you know, you can save wasting anybody's time.

 

00:25:47:22 - 00:25:48:17

Suzanne

And we all want that.

 

00:25:48:19 - 00:26:01:03

Eloise

Yeah. And perhaps sort of insurers to be better talking to one another in terms of their own innovation teams about well. This might not be something for us, but we know that these guys can help. So just making sure that it's you know, everybody's helping to build out this community.

 

00:26:01:03 - 00:26:24:05

Suzanne

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really important point. That community across the kind of the insurance peers, as well as the insurtech community to, so that we can work together to improve the situation. Brilliant. Well, thank you both. That's brought us to the end of the podcast today. Thank you, everybody, for watching. And thank you very much to Manjit and Eloise for joining us today.

00:00:02:22 - 00:00:38:06
Harriet
Welcome to episode four of the Partnerships podcast in association with Aviva and Insurtech UK. My name is Harriet Granville Jones, innovation manager at Aviva. And in today's episode, we're going to be exploring how insurers and insurtechs can work together successfully. I'm thrilled to say that I'm joined in the studio today by Leda Zaharieva a partner at McKinsey's insurance and Private equity practices, and James York, innovation consultant at the 49 and chairman of Innovative Risk London.

00:00:38:07 - 00:00:41:00
Harriet
Thank you both so much for joining. How are you?

00:00:41:02 - 00:00:42:22
Leda
Yeah. Thank you.

00:00:42:24 - 00:01:03:18
Harriet
So working with insurers and insurtechs, obviously it's something that we're we're really passionate about, but it's really critical to build trust, especially very early on in that relationship. How do you find that the best relationships build trust in that way? Leda, do you want to start?

00:01:03:20 - 00:01:28:14
Leda
Yes, of course. You're absolutely right. That trust is really critical also because I think that the definition of what partnership is quite broad. And typically people come to the table with quite different expectations. What I find important is to establish early on what the best outcome look like for both parties, and what are they looking to achieve through the so-called partnership?

00:01:28:20 - 00:01:48:13
Leda
Is it building new capabilities? Is it about, you know, revenue growth? Is it about efficiency? Is it about learning from each other so that they can then attract other people to join in the partnership? And I find that that transparency early on and alignment is really critical. What do you think, James?

00:01:48:15 - 00:02:08:21
James
Seconded on that, it's all about signals for me. The key resource that a startup has is time. So you have to really respect that when you're engaging with them and and vice versa, if you're meeting, you know, corporate entity and there's more than one person there and you're in their office and it's a meeting room, you have to sit there and think, this is costing them a lot of money to engage with me.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:28:02
James
So it swings both ways. There's also signals that can be sent both sides of the equation. Insurtech is all about innovation. So I think it's really fair to understand whether the company you're looking to partner with is looking to do incremental innovation, do something transitional or be radical with you. And that's that's really critical as well.

00:02:28:02 - 00:02:35:00
James
So those two signals time and you know, where your ambition lies, are really important. And without transparency you're going to get nowhere.

00:02:35:02 - 00:02:48:16
Harriet
Yeah, definitely. Transparency is is really key. Do you think, thinking about when you said about objectives, do you think it matters if they're very different objectives for the insurer or insurtech, or do they need to be more aligned?

00:02:48:18 - 00:03:09:09
Leda
I think it's fine if there are different. And oftentimes they would be different because the, you know, the starting point and the goal of those two parties tend to be quite different. But I think on the other hand, if they can establish how they can be helping each other, even if ultimately they're trying to achieve quite different goals, that's okay.

00:03:09:11 - 00:03:21:24
Leda
I think where things tend to go wrong is when people, pretend to be going after the same goal, but ultimately their inherent motivations are quite different.

00:03:22:01 - 00:03:26:22
Harriet
Right, okay. So just important to be really upfront and honest.

00:03:26:24 - 00:03:51:13
Leda
Yes. And, you know, sometimes people say it's a partnership, but oftentimes it's just a straightforward deal. I think, if people are in a clear in their mindset, in their communication, what they're trying to achieve that tends to prevent thinking, you know, things going off the wrong way in my experience.

00:03:51:15 - 00:04:00:01
Harriet
And how do you set those expectations at the beginning to make sure that that doesn't happen and that you are aligned?

00:04:00:03 - 00:04:07:09
Leda
So I think this is where James' signals come along. And I think it's quite important to be able to use them quite well.

00:04:07:11 - 00:04:28:23
James
Agreed. Completely. And you mentioned about the function of the, of the relationship. I think a startup, by its very nature, can be visionary. And inspire people it without disrespect to incumbent businesses. They have a different, ambition than appetite, and it's much more difficult to inject visionary things into a company that's kind of a going concern.

00:04:29:04 - 00:04:47:22
James
When you've got a blank sheet of paper, you can be that. So I think that relationship is fantastic because it means that an incumbent business can kind of revamp and outsource and import the, the inspiration into the business, as long as it makes commercial sense. It's worth distinguishing as well. You obviously have distributing insurtechs and you've got vendors who are selling software.

00:04:48:02 - 00:05:00:19
James
So there's a value chain and there's a distribution chain play there. And it's really, you know, for me about the signals of where the, where the company wishes to play in, whether they're buying or selling, depending on where they are on the supply chain.

00:05:00:21 - 00:05:26:02
Leda
One other thing I would say that's specific to the UK landscape is that, you know, in London we have quite a concentrated pool of insurance talent and people tend to have worked in many different places and tend to have come across each other in various settings, like we have, and I think that kind of like, richness of relationship in London is so valuable.

00:05:26:02 - 00:06:00:11
Leda
And that also tends to help a lot. And that's why I observe a lot of insurtechs have on their boards, you know, very experienced, people from, you know, the insurance industry in the UK. And I think that that can also help kind of like coach and guide the funders and, those non-executive directors, can or angel investors can also lean in with their experience and relationships to help in that trust formation.

00:06:00:13 - 00:06:04:23
Leda
So they can lend their expertise, like based on things that they've seen happen before.

00:06:05:03 - 00:06:14:20
Leda
And also their personal relationships. Because, let's be honest, you know, EC3 is such a concentration of insurance talent. People tend to know each other.

00:06:14:22 - 00:06:15:09
Harriet
It's a small world

00:06:15:09 - 00:06:16:17
Leda
World. Yes. Yeah.

00:06:16:19 - 00:06:38:06
James
I'd evolve that a little Harriet, there's a wisdom to it as well. A lot of founders would be remiss if they didn't explore what's been attempted before. Pre technology, pre pre evolution. And because insurance is all about trust which is a behavioural piece. And you know if you talk to people who've got a lot of experience in the market, they'll have tried different things before when they didn't have the technology available to them.

00:06:38:06 - 00:06:46:02
James
And the behaviour was the thing that let the product down, not the technology. So it's a really critical part of innovation to have that that long memory in your organisation.

00:06:46:06 - 00:07:07:22
Harriet
No, absolutely. And, you mentioned about expectations before new and around how resource is such a precious commodity. How do you find that people can manage expectations around things like speed and compliance? Because obviously for an insurer that is absolutely critical to success.

00:07:07:24 - 00:07:23:19
James
I think in some ways it's arbitrary. You can't say there are some insurers who have said, you know, we'll do it in this amount of time, and in some case, you're adding a staircase effect. There is an expectation management in the wrong way. You're trying to be transparent, but in some ways you're, you know, pre biasing the relationship.

00:07:23:21 - 00:07:46:10
James
I would say you've just got to make the processes clear and make the requirements clear. So the startup does their due diligence and brings the information that you expect to them and positions themselves with the right signals and likewise for you. And if there's resources available before the meetings that they can engage with or request, that's even better, because you really there's also an element of, of signal in the self-service mechanism.

00:07:46:10 - 00:08:07:00
James
If a big incumbent business wants to test the startup's resolve and nous, you know, set them some challenges. If they can't complete documents and forms and various bits, maybe they're not serious about working with you. So effort is called the Ikea effect in behavioural science. You know, make them have a little bit of effort involved. And, you know, the real stars will rise above it and jump out.

00:08:07:02 - 00:08:22:02
Harriet
So you can share as much as you can beforehand. But also some of those like precursor activities can maybe help to test the strength of the relationship and see how they can share and share and might insurtech might be behaving at the beginning.

00:08:22:05 - 00:08:44:03
James
Absolutely. And to the insurtechs out there, the same applies in reverse, right? Yeah. If you're working with a big insurer, you know, be the lion and behave like a a visionary animal that's building the future and you'll impress them. If you, if you not passive as well and get dragged along by corporate structure and don't create anchor points in ways to speed things up, you might get caught in a a process that's not a structured as you'd like it to be or moving as quickly.

00:08:44:03 - 00:08:50:05
James
So it's there's always going to be that friction. And transparency in relationship is the way you manage it, right.

00:08:50:07 - 00:09:09:02
Harriet
That I absolutely agree. And I find as well, working with a lot of startups, the ones who are really successful are ones who challenge the ways of working and challenge your thinking. It's not always that the insurer knows best at all. And often if they're saying, oh, actually, this is a more, a speedy way of working with us or we could do things differently.

00:09:09:02 - 00:09:11:11
Harriet
They're often usually the best startups to work with.

00:09:11:15 - 00:09:19:09
James
It's easier said than done. And of course, there should always be a process of retro and respect. Yeah, a retrospective review of that, because you're never going to get it right hundred percent the time.

00:09:19:10 - 00:09:36:16
Harriet
Yeah. Of course. And so you mentioned about, how something maybe as simple as filling in a form correctly like that could be maybe a bit of a red flag. Which kind of leads onto my next question of what are the kind of red flags that you might watch out for. Leda? Do you want to start?

00:09:36:18 - 00:10:09:00
Leda
Yes. I think that, it's best to learn from, you know, the well known failures of others. And I think there is a whole spectrum of red flags. But I think that doing your proper due diligence around the sources of funding, the legal structure, the governance, the voting rights is actually quite essential. Of course, early on it's, you know, people tend to talk about, you know, what is the value proposition of the insurtech.

00:10:09:00 - 00:10:29:23
Leda
Is it a value chain enabler, as you said, or is it, you know, a distribution play. But I think quickly, relatively quickly, it's important to understand. And is everything okay with those other areas? Because we have seen a few examples where if people had done their due diligence, failed quickly, find out that there were some red flags and they shouldn't have been, let alone gone.

00:10:30:00 - 00:10:30:19
Harriet
Okay.

00:10:30:21 - 00:10:46:23
James
Yeah, I've probably got to case that examples. You know, for me it's all about execution flow. I was in a supply chain situation when this is pre insurtech before everyone even debated whether there should be an E in the middle. And I was working with a very big Lloyd's of London company. It doesn't exist anymore.

00:10:47:00 - 00:11:04:22
James
And the red flag for me pops up when we've been going through a lot of work at the underwriter level and agreed a supply chain in principle, even the documentation had been done. And then people started creeping in to the process. Right. And it accumulated to the end, where I was in a meeting with 35 people who hadn't been involved from day one.

00:11:05:03 - 00:11:26:24
James
Now that's a major red flag. If you're in a sparse supply chain environment, when you're if you're especially if you're distributing product, that's a red flag. On the other side of the fence from insurers perspective, ask the simple questions to to test them. I was approached, through my regulatory network by a startup that wanted to be regulated as an appointed representative.

00:11:27:01 - 00:11:45:02
James
And they'd had VC funding. But then about a year later, after we didn't agree terms fair enough. A year later, they returned asking if we would hold their premium and, you know, simple things like this. They've managed to get through an executive on the board, getting supply chain, getting venture capital, seven figures. But they haven't figured out where the money would go.

00:11:45:04 - 00:12:05:01
James
And these are the simple things that trip people up. So those are two extreme examples I think. But you know, there's there's so many red flags you got to your stomach is the thing that you've got to trust most of the time. And, you know, ask around after people reputations are often good and bad for everyone. There's no one's got a perfect reputation or perfectly bad one.

00:12:05:01 - 00:12:06:22
James
So you've got to make a judgment call yourself. Ultimately.

00:12:07:02 - 00:12:22:10
Harriet
Yeah. Of course. And, how would you say that you can mitigate some of the risks? I mean, obviously not those extremes of the red flags, but typical risks that you might see in perhaps unsuccessful relationships, how can you mitigate those to make sure that they are successful?

00:12:22:13 - 00:12:38:16
James
Portfolio. Ultimately, you've got to have a lot and a lot of dogs in the fight, so to speak. Because if you if you don't have a high number of opportunities, you can't find your one in X. And, you know, the venture world's very good at that. They'll they'll openly admit most of our startups are going to fail. One's going to make it and pay the lot back.

00:12:38:18 - 00:12:43:12
James
And I think that's how insurers have to quantify how they deal with the venture world.

00:12:43:14 - 00:13:05:03
Leda
Yeah. So I fully agree I fully agree. And what's really important there is when you sense that something might be wrong to be able to cut your losses relatively quickly and not get things to escalate to a point where, you know, that might actually deter you from engaging with other insurtechs, because I agree with you, you inherently are taking risk.

00:13:05:03 - 00:13:23:08
Leda
So if you're thinking about the portfolio of your insurtech relationships as a zero risk or very low risk more. That is the wrong mindset and that will limit you quite significantly. I think there is value engaging in multiple ones and realising that some of them are not going to. You know, go to fruition.

00:13:23:10 - 00:13:48:16
James
It's about long game ultimately. And and a founder might, fail. God, say that word. It's a terrible word in the UK particularly, but a founder might fail at their first attempt and succeed at their third or second. If you've burnt bridge by not appropriately dealing with the relationship when you had the chance early on, they will remember because you're in a particularly if you're in a high pressure environment and, you know, ultimately helping people is free.

00:13:48:17 - 00:14:04:02
James
Kindness is free. If someone engages you and they're not right for you, think about how you can add value. Give them feedback on why it didn't work, make them better for the next pitch, and maintain the relationship because you never know where they or their peers or their investors will end up. And it's, you know, ultimately life is a long game, isn't it?

00:14:04:02 - 00:14:17:03
James
So if you're going to be in the venture relationship world, have a portfolio and have a long term perspective, because if you're, you know, being asked for instant ROI, it's just that's a red flag for you. Yeah. Put your reputation into the mix as well.

00:14:17:04 - 00:14:40:23
Harriet
No I'd agree. Yeah that's a red flag there. So, and like you say it is it is a small world. But with I think particularly the successful founders, they will have failed along the way. But it's part of that resilience that's shaped them, you know, to actually lead on to their success. And so thinking about successful relationships, how would you define that?

00:14:40:23 - 00:14:49:01
Harriet
What how can you visualise or how can you explain what success in a partnership looks like. Leda? Do you want to start?

00:14:49:03 - 00:15:14:06
Leda
Yes. So we started by talking about like, how do you shape trust? I think, one of the, you know, traits of a successful partnership. Is that where you have trust? I think it is one where you are aligned on what are you what are the ultimate value creation goals that you're establishing for this partnership having, clarity around how you are measuring it.

00:15:14:08 - 00:15:22:05
Leda
Having, clarity on how you're building on each other's capabilities and ultimately having fun along the way. Yeah.

00:15:22:05 - 00:15:25:06
Harriet
Yeah, absolutely.

00:15:25:08 - 00:15:43:24
James
Dare I be the more capitalistic of you team. You have to you have to acknowledge that, you know, this is a money game. So success is ROI. It's growth. But you can grow fast and lose money. You know, we're in the business of loss ratios, say expense and loss ratios really matter. But there is value in between there as well.

00:15:44:01 - 00:15:59:18
James
If you have a portfolio effect, you should be able to glean value in virtually every relationship, even if you don't enter it. A successful relationship might be something that doesn't actually result in a deal or a supply chain, but you've learned something and both of you have added value to each other quickly. That would be success to me too.

00:15:59:20 - 00:16:23:08
James
But ultimately something that's, equitized long term and ultimately innovates for the good of the market and its reputation. That would be fantastic. You know, we suffer as an industry for reputation. So everyone should have one eye on the perimeter in my view as well. So anyone that can add value to that and create something that pushes the boundaries, visionary, inspirational, that's going to be successful as well as.

00:16:23:10 - 00:16:54:01
Leda
You know, that's really interesting. As part of our insurtech UK report preparation, we survey, insurtech UK companies around what are their KPIs when we serve the surveyed them two and a half years ago, a lot more of the KPIs were still very much purely growth geared. When we surveyed them a couple of months ago, they were a lot more, expense management and, you know, cash flow positive, you know, profitability metrics geared.

00:16:54:03 - 00:17:17:13
Leda
But no one actually had, as one of their key KPI, something that was geared towards their reputation in the market. Obviously, the B2C companies tended to focus on NPS. I would say the B2B companies didn't incorporate that that actively, but no one had clear focus on their brand and reputation, which is quite interesting.

00:17:17:16 - 00:17:29:23
James
So you mentioned about the KPIs changing. I think that's to do with the venture cycle. So we've obviously gone through what would probably be called a bear market in terms of venture funding, which means everyone's being pushed to be profitable.

00:17:30:00 - 00:17:46:14
James
And it's a bit like folding steel. That was the analogy that got me caught a second ago. You know, the cycle is such that we started off with people perhaps incrementally improving insurance. So the first insurtechs were were adding to the peripheral and really trying as much as they could to change the products, but they couldn't much.

00:17:46:16 - 00:18:13:21
James
Now we've done that cycle, I think the next stage will start to see people really taking on transformational and radical innovation, because they've also come from an environment which has been schooled through the tough knocks to be profitable and to to really look at the cash flow and the commercial KPIs. And that's going to be really interesting. And let's say one of the first wave of insurtechs exits, that's when you're going to get some really exciting innovation happening, because the funding will be coming from the wisdom of the new generation who've made it and got the money.

00:18:13:21 - 00:18:29:00
James
So it's a cycle. And ultimately, anyone playing in that game needs to have a a strategy that lets them ride that wave. And, you know, you mentioned about failure. Every founder's going to fail even if they end up succeeding because you can't without figuring out where not to go and what not to do.

00:18:29:02 - 00:18:33:03
Harriet
So you think you're on the cusp of more transformational innovation then?

00:18:33:03 - 00:18:50:07
James
That's I really do now I really do. Because if you think about it, we've had hundreds of founders probing what they can and can't do and hundreds of incumbents doing that. And you know people move around. So you may have not been able to do something internally your previous job that you can now in an elevated position of responsibility.

00:18:50:09 - 00:19:02:04
James
And the fact that a lot of these companies are starting to be more savvy about the commercials, I think definitely it's a process. As I said, it's like folding steel. And I think what we'll come up with is something really exciting that resembles fintechs kind of momentum.

00:19:02:06 - 00:19:03:17
Harriet
I hope so, it sounds great.

00:19:03:18 - 00:19:39:13
Leda
Yeah. What I would say again as part of our research, it's interesting how we have seen also the shift of the type of innovation that's driven and the commercial models that are starting to attract more funding and traction in the market. Are you saying that initial first phase, there was so much focus on B2C propositions, so much focus, and admittedly, a few listed companies whose IPO were, you know, in 2022, 2020, 21 when, you know, valuations were at a very different level than they are today.

00:19:39:15 - 00:19:58:14
Leda
We see that actually now the shift of innovation is a lot more about those value chain enablers and companies that provide services or software to insurance companies. And we see a lot more funding being aggregated in that area. And I agree that that is one space where we can see a lot of innovation.

00:19:58:16 - 00:20:22:14
James
That's an interesting point because the valuations Leda's talking about there, my view is you're speak about US startups. Yes. But that's fascinating if we think about it from venture and incumbency and compare the two, in virtually every walk of life in the UK, we have American businesses pitching us quality products and coffee food banking, everything. But in insurance there isn't a Geico, there isn't a progressive, there isn't a state farm in the UK.

00:20:22:14 - 00:20:50:05
James
Why? Why haven't they come across when every other industry has helped you know themselves? To UK market share? I would really question that. And I would argue that perhaps UK ventures have a much more realistic chance of hopping to the US than the incumbents over there have of hopping over here, because the market itself is quite fragmented in the US, and if you can get there and get a foothold, we have the InsurTech corridor, which a big shout out to Connecticut for, for working with InsurUK on that.

00:20:50:07 - 00:21:20:12
James
I think there's a huge opportunity because if Geico haven't made it across here, you have to start thinking, well, let's unpack that. So it may be that the standard venture benchmark, if, you know, crack, crack your home market first when it comes to insurance, is that wisdom really tested? And I would argue maybe not. So it being a a bit of a disruptor, I'd argue that I'd love to see a few more insurtechs going and trying their luck in the US market and seeing whether they've got some competitive advantages because the UK is a totally different beast, hyper competitive.

00:21:20:12 - 00:21:20:24
Leda
Yes.

00:21:21:01 - 00:21:48:24
Leda
Yes, I agree with you. And in fact we have good examples of is the Israeli insurtechs doing that. Right. Having worked a little bit in actually the Israel home insurance market, my preconception going in there in the beginning was going to be that it is going to be quite an innovative, progressive market, but actually their domestic market is quite sleepy and not very advanced, despite a large number of insurtech entrepreneurs.

00:21:49:04 - 00:22:11:18
Leda
And the reason for that is they think, well, my local market is just not big enough and it's not ever going to be attractive enough. But I see a huge opportunity in the US market. And therefore I'm going to create, mark, you know, a proposition straight for that market. And we have seen a number of, you know, relatively successful insurtechs were incubated in Israel, but focus entirely on the US.

00:22:11:24 - 00:22:32:04
James
And you mentioned about the retail. There's an interesting juxtaposition there as well. We've had a lot of people attempt B2C, and some of the most successful insurtechs have definitely worked with brokers in the UK. The US is heavily intermediated and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The carriers are probably a bit more of a where aware of what comparison does to the dynamics of the market downstream.

00:22:32:04 - 00:22:51:14
James
So arguably, you know, a broker rich experienced insurtech could really do well in penetrating, you know, the independent broker market in the US where you've got thousands and thousands of distribution opportunities. And if you've got great tech, that resonates with an actual case study of mine. I used to sell, engagement reinsurance in the UK.

00:22:51:14 - 00:23:08:17
James
I was when I first started, I was the market leader of that product, and my underwriter always used to say to me, I wish my my jewelry distribution company in the US would use your technology. They're doing it all by paper and their book's 50 times the size of yours, because of course they've been around longer. And they're still like that now.

00:23:08:17 - 00:23:21:02
James
you know, when I caught up with them recently. So I think there's huge opportunity to to treat the tech and the product as separate and distinct, and show a bit more, you know, ambition to get out there because the market is accessible to UK.

00:23:21:04 - 00:23:49:05
Harriet
And then it's so true. It's so important to explore those opportunity areas outside of just what you're familiar with. But also I can see how that can play a role in setting expectations, because it's not just between insurers, insurtechs, but also internationally as well. There's going to be different expectations. And so bringing us to last question, what would be your one tip for insurers and insurtechs to make each other's lives easier in some way.

00:23:49:07 - 00:23:51:18
Harriet
Shall I pick on James first?

00:23:51:20 - 00:24:12:06
James
I'm going to go lateral here. I think they should find ways to work together without necessarily immediately doing business. So, you know, and this isn't a sycophantic shout out for Insurtech UK, but doing collaborative things together that represent the industry, whether it's pointing to the public or the government or the regulator, those are really good ways to understand how each other tick.

00:24:12:08 - 00:24:26:11
James
And it sounds like a waste of time, but it isn't because, you know, entering into business is a very serious thing. And if you can get to know each other and build trust before you offer a deal or a supply chain agreement, that for me is a critical part of the the cake.

00:24:26:13 - 00:24:31:22
Harriet
That's a great idea. And get some of those green flags as well and start to build trust as you say. Leda?

00:24:31:22 - 00:24:57:23
Leda
Yeah, no, I really like that suggestion. And in fact, through our collaboration with Insurtech UK, I have seen plenty of examples where that has been the case and I think that indeed, especially on the insurtech side, don't be hungry for immediate gratification. Invest into those relationship chips longer term. And on the other hand, on the insurer side, don't say no too quickly.

00:24:58:00 - 00:25:09:21
Leda
Explore the different ideas and think how they can challenge your current thinking. And don't go in with the mindset that you know best just because you're a larger and more experienced institution now.

00:25:09:21 - 00:25:22:03
Harriet
It's definitely better to go in with an open mind for sure. Great. Well thank you so much. That brings us to the end of episode four of the Partnerships podcast. Thank you so much, Leda and James, for joining us.

00:25:22:05 - 00:25:23:13
James, Leda
Thank you very much.