Innovation

00:00:03:05 - 00:00:18:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:00:18:15 - 00:00:46:23

Unknown

Thank you for inviting me. 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. 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.

 

00:00:47:00 - 00:01:01:08

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:01:10 - 00:01:22:16

Unknown

We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Walsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both. Hi. How are you? Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in. 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.

 

00:01:22:17 - 00:01:46:10

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:46:10 - 00:02:08:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:08:03 - 00:02:38:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:38:04 - 00:03:01:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:17:15

Unknown

Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened. Exactly. 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.

 

00:03:17:16 - 00:03:39:10

Unknown

Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do. 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 and CCTV.

 

00:03:39:11 - 00:03:53:15

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:03:53:15 - 00:04:12:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:28:07

Unknown

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

 

00:04:28:13 - 00:04:53:13

Unknown

I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul. Yeah. Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house? 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?

 

00:04:53:13 - 00:05:12:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:32:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:48:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:48:05 - 00:06:10:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:06:10:17 - 00:06:29:20

Unknown

I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking. 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.

 

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:53:05

Unknown

He really does. Do you like being likened to colin the. I mean, I'm quite happy, like. Exactly. I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like. 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?

 

00:06:53:07 - 00:07:25:17

Unknown

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.

 

00:07:25:19 - 00:07:45:12

Unknown

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. Yeah. And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them. Yeah. And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

 

00:07:45:15 - 00:08:05:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:08:05:02 - 00:08:25:01

Unknown

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

 

00:08:25:01 - 00:08:46:23

Unknown

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?

 

00:08:47:00 - 00:09:10:23

Unknown

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

 

00:09:11:00 - 00:09:28:19

Unknown

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.

 

00:09:28:20 - 00:09:48:11

Unknown

Exactly. Yeah. To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky. Yes. 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. Yeah. And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

 

00:09:48:11 - 00:10:06:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:30:00

Unknown

And so yeah, it's very exciting. We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially. Yeah. 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? 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.

 

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:47:20

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:47:22 - 00:11:11:03

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:11:09 - 00:11:33:12

Unknown

Prevent the loss from occurring. Correct. And I know think risk. 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.

 

00:11:33:12 - 00:11:50:11

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:50:15 - 00:12:06:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:06:08 - 00:12:25:23

Unknown

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

 

00:12:25:23 - 00:12:46:01

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:46:01 - 00:13:23:01

Unknown

But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve? Yeah, absolutely. Over time. 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.

 

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:46:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:13:46:17 - 00:14:03:13

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:03:15 - 00:14:22:09

Unknown

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

 

00:14:22:11 - 00:14:37:16

Unknown

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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, let's get the product into them.

 

00:14:37:20 - 00:14:58:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:58:04 - 00:15:18:21

Unknown

A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no. Yeah, sounds like you'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.

 

00:15:18:21 - 00:15:36:18

Unknown

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.

 

00:15:36:20 - 00:15:52:10

Unknown

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. And I guess I guess.

 

00:15:52:10 - 00:16:12:19

Unknown

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? 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.

 

00:16:13:00 - 00:16:37:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:58:09

Unknown

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. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

 

00:16:58:09 - 00:17:21:03

Unknown

The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective. Yeah. 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. 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.

 

00:17:21:05 - 00:17:36:10

Unknown

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 look.

 

00:17:36:15 - 00:17:53:06

Unknown

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?

 

00:17:53:09 - 00:18:13:22

Unknown

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. Yep. Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

 

00:18:14:00 - 00:18:41:21

Unknown

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..

 

00:18:41:21 - 00:19:08:21

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:19:08:21 - 00:19:24:06

Unknown

Those sorts of things. 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.

 

00:19:24:06 - 00:19:39:12

Unknown

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.

 

00:19:39:16 - 00:19:48:22

Unknown

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.

00:00:03:05 - 00:00:18:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:00:18:15 - 00:00:46:23

Unknown

Thank you for inviting me. 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. 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.

 

00:00:47:00 - 00:01:01:08

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:01:10 - 00:01:22:16

Unknown

We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Walsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both. Hi. How are you? Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in. 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.

 

00:01:22:17 - 00:01:46:10

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:46:10 - 00:02:08:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:08:03 - 00:02:38:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:38:04 - 00:03:01:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:17:15

Unknown

Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened. Exactly. 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.

 

00:03:17:16 - 00:03:39:10

Unknown

Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do. 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 and CCTV.

 

00:03:39:11 - 00:03:53:15

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:03:53:15 - 00:04:12:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:28:07

Unknown

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

 

00:04:28:13 - 00:04:53:13

Unknown

I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul. Yeah. Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house? 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?

 

00:04:53:13 - 00:05:12:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:32:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:48:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:48:05 - 00:06:10:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:06:10:17 - 00:06:29:20

Unknown

I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking. 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.

 

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:53:05

Unknown

He really does. Do you like being likened to colin the. I mean, I'm quite happy, like. Exactly. I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like. 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?

 

00:06:53:07 - 00:07:25:17

Unknown

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.

 

00:07:25:19 - 00:07:45:12

Unknown

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. Yeah. And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them. Yeah. And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

 

00:07:45:15 - 00:08:05:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:08:05:02 - 00:08:25:01

Unknown

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

 

00:08:25:01 - 00:08:46:23

Unknown

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?

 

00:08:47:00 - 00:09:10:23

Unknown

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

 

00:09:11:00 - 00:09:28:19

Unknown

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.

 

00:09:28:20 - 00:09:48:11

Unknown

Exactly. Yeah. To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky. Yes. 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. Yeah. And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

 

00:09:48:11 - 00:10:06:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:30:00

Unknown

And so yeah, it's very exciting. We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially. Yeah. 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? 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.

 

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:47:20

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:47:22 - 00:11:11:03

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:11:09 - 00:11:33:12

Unknown

Prevent the loss from occurring. Correct. And I know think risk. 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.

 

00:11:33:12 - 00:11:50:11

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:50:15 - 00:12:06:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:06:08 - 00:12:25:23

Unknown

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

 

00:12:25:23 - 00:12:46:01

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:46:01 - 00:13:23:01

Unknown

But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve? Yeah, absolutely. Over time. 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.

 

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:46:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:13:46:17 - 00:14:03:13

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:03:15 - 00:14:22:09

Unknown

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

 

00:14:22:11 - 00:14:37:16

Unknown

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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, let's get the product into them.

 

00:14:37:20 - 00:14:58:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:58:04 - 00:15:18:21

Unknown

A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no. Yeah, sounds like you'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.

 

00:15:18:21 - 00:15:36:18

Unknown

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.

 

00:15:36:20 - 00:15:52:10

Unknown

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. And I guess I guess.

 

00:15:52:10 - 00:16:12:19

Unknown

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? 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.

 

00:16:13:00 - 00:16:37:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:58:09

Unknown

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. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

 

00:16:58:09 - 00:17:21:03

Unknown

The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective. Yeah. 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. 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.

 

00:17:21:05 - 00:17:36:10

Unknown

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 look.

 

00:17:36:15 - 00:17:53:06

Unknown

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?

 

00:17:53:09 - 00:18:13:22

Unknown

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. Yep. Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

 

00:18:14:00 - 00:18:41:21

Unknown

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..

 

00:18:41:21 - 00:19:08:21

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:19:08:21 - 00:19:24:06

Unknown

Those sorts of things. 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.

 

00:19:24:06 - 00:19:39:12

Unknown

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.

 

00:19:39:16 - 00:19:48:22

Unknown

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.

00:00:03:05 - 00:00:18:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:00:18:15 - 00:00:46:23

Unknown

Thank you for inviting me. 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. 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.

 

00:00:47:00 - 00:01:01:08

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:01:10 - 00:01:22:16

Unknown

We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Walsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both. Hi. How are you? Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in. 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.

 

00:01:22:17 - 00:01:46:10

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:46:10 - 00:02:08:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:08:03 - 00:02:38:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:38:04 - 00:03:01:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:17:15

Unknown

Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened. Exactly. 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.

 

00:03:17:16 - 00:03:39:10

Unknown

Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do. 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 and CCTV.

 

00:03:39:11 - 00:03:53:15

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:03:53:15 - 00:04:12:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:28:07

Unknown

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

 

00:04:28:13 - 00:04:53:13

Unknown

I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul. Yeah. Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house? 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?

 

00:04:53:13 - 00:05:12:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:32:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:48:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:48:05 - 00:06:10:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:06:10:17 - 00:06:29:20

Unknown

I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking. 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.

 

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:53:05

Unknown

He really does. Do you like being likened to colin the. I mean, I'm quite happy, like. Exactly. I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like. 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?

 

00:06:53:07 - 00:07:25:17

Unknown

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.

 

00:07:25:19 - 00:07:45:12

Unknown

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. Yeah. And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them. Yeah. And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

 

00:07:45:15 - 00:08:05:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:08:05:02 - 00:08:25:01

Unknown

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

 

00:08:25:01 - 00:08:46:23

Unknown

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?

 

00:08:47:00 - 00:09:10:23

Unknown

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

 

00:09:11:00 - 00:09:28:19

Unknown

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.

 

00:09:28:20 - 00:09:48:11

Unknown

Exactly. Yeah. To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky. Yes. 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. Yeah. And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

 

00:09:48:11 - 00:10:06:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:30:00

Unknown

And so yeah, it's very exciting. We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially. Yeah. 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? 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.

 

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:47:20

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:47:22 - 00:11:11:03

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:11:09 - 00:11:33:12

Unknown

Prevent the loss from occurring. Correct. And I know think risk. 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.

 

00:11:33:12 - 00:11:50:11

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:50:15 - 00:12:06:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:06:08 - 00:12:25:23

Unknown

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

 

00:12:25:23 - 00:12:46:01

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:46:01 - 00:13:23:01

Unknown

But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve? Yeah, absolutely. Over time. 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.

 

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:46:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:13:46:17 - 00:14:03:13

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:03:15 - 00:14:22:09

Unknown

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

 

00:14:22:11 - 00:14:37:16

Unknown

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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, let's get the product into them.

 

00:14:37:20 - 00:14:58:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:58:04 - 00:15:18:21

Unknown

A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no. Yeah, sounds like you'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.

 

00:15:18:21 - 00:15:36:18

Unknown

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.

 

00:15:36:20 - 00:15:52:10

Unknown

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. And I guess I guess.

 

00:15:52:10 - 00:16:12:19

Unknown

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? 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.

 

00:16:13:00 - 00:16:37:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:58:09

Unknown

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. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

 

00:16:58:09 - 00:17:21:03

Unknown

The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective. Yeah. 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. 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.

 

00:17:21:05 - 00:17:36:10

Unknown

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 look.

 

00:17:36:15 - 00:17:53:06

Unknown

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?

 

00:17:53:09 - 00:18:13:22

Unknown

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. Yep. Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

 

00:18:14:00 - 00:18:41:21

Unknown

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..

 

00:18:41:21 - 00:19:08:21

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:19:08:21 - 00:19:24:06

Unknown

Those sorts of things. 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.

 

00:19:24:06 - 00:19:39:12

Unknown

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.

 

00:19:39:16 - 00:19:48:22

Unknown

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.

00:00:03:05 - 00:00:18:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:00:18:15 - 00:00:46:23

Unknown

Thank you for inviting me. 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. 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.

 

00:00:47:00 - 00:01:01:08

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:01:10 - 00:01:22:16

Unknown

We're joined by, Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, and we're joined by Paul Walsh, head of Group innovation here at Aviva. Welcome to both. Hi. How are you? Very good. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us in. 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.

 

00:01:22:17 - 00:01:46:10

Unknown

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.

 

00:01:46:10 - 00:02:08:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:08:03 - 00:02:38:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:02:38:04 - 00:03:01:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:17:15

Unknown

Because actually it's very good evidence of what happened. Exactly. 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.

 

00:03:17:16 - 00:03:39:10

Unknown

Sorry, a very long answer to your initial question, but that's what we do. 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 and CCTV.

 

00:03:39:11 - 00:03:53:15

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:03:53:15 - 00:04:12:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:28:07

Unknown

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

 

00:04:28:13 - 00:04:53:13

Unknown

I guess I'm I'm really interested to hear from Paul. Yeah. Well, why should insurance companies develop, you know, these partnerships, instead of developing this kind of technology in-house? 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?

 

00:04:53:13 - 00:05:12:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:12:14 - 00:05:32:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:48:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:05:48:05 - 00:06:10:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:06:10:17 - 00:06:29:20

Unknown

I love that cake analogy. I wish I could outsource that cake baking. 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.

 

00:06:29:22 - 00:06:53:05

Unknown

He really does. Do you like being likened to colin the. I mean, I'm quite happy, like. Exactly. I think, you know, analogies aside, what? We could be the cherry. We could be the jam. we like. 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?

 

00:06:53:07 - 00:07:25:17

Unknown

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.

 

00:07:25:19 - 00:07:45:12

Unknown

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. Yeah. And so we can provide very specialist tools into the teams that need them. Yeah. And leave you guys to worry about, you know the insurance side of the business.

 

00:07:45:15 - 00:08:05:00

Unknown

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.

 

00:08:05:02 - 00:08:25:01

Unknown

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

 

00:08:25:01 - 00:08:46:23

Unknown

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?

 

00:08:47:00 - 00:09:10:23

Unknown

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

 

00:09:11:00 - 00:09:28:19

Unknown

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.

 

00:09:28:20 - 00:09:48:11

Unknown

Exactly. Yeah. To get to the conclusion that, oh, turns out it's quite tricky. Yes. 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. Yeah. And you know, the fact that we've been able to partner with you guys to bring the solution into your teams is fantastic.

 

00:09:48:11 - 00:10:06:05

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:06:07 - 00:10:30:00

Unknown

And so yeah, it's very exciting. We talked earlier about you being an insurtech potentially. Yeah. 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? 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.

 

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:47:20

Unknown

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.

 

00:10:47:22 - 00:11:11:03

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:11:09 - 00:11:33:12

Unknown

Prevent the loss from occurring. Correct. And I know think risk. 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.

 

00:11:33:12 - 00:11:50:11

Unknown

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.

 

00:11:50:15 - 00:12:06:06

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:06:08 - 00:12:25:23

Unknown

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

 

00:12:25:23 - 00:12:46:01

Unknown

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.

 

00:12:46:01 - 00:13:23:01

Unknown

But how is the how is that being received at Aviva and how are you seeing that journey evolve? Yeah, absolutely. Over time. 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.

 

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:46:15

Unknown

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.

 

00:13:46:17 - 00:14:03:13

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:03:15 - 00:14:22:09

Unknown

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

 

00:14:22:11 - 00:14:37:16

Unknown

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. Yeah. 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. Yeah, let's get the product into them.

 

00:14:37:20 - 00:14:58:02

Unknown

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.

 

00:14:58:04 - 00:15:18:21

Unknown

A lot of our insurtech talk about the slow no. Yeah, sounds like you'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.

 

00:15:18:21 - 00:15:36:18

Unknown

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.

 

00:15:36:20 - 00:15:52:10

Unknown

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. And I guess I guess.

 

00:15:52:10 - 00:16:12:19

Unknown

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? 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.

 

00:16:13:00 - 00:16:37:14

Unknown

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.

 

00:16:37:16 - 00:16:58:09

Unknown

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. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

 

00:16:58:09 - 00:17:21:03

Unknown

The world is evolving where we're not sure where it's going to take you from a tech perspective. Yeah. 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. 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.

 

00:17:21:05 - 00:17:36:10

Unknown

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 look.

 

00:17:36:15 - 00:17:53:06

Unknown

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?

 

00:17:53:09 - 00:18:13:22

Unknown

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. Yep. Whereas without the existing business, it would be very hard to do that.

 

00:18:14:00 - 00:18:41:21

Unknown

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..

 

00:18:41:21 - 00:19:08:21

Unknown

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. 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.

 

00:19:08:21 - 00:19:24:06

Unknown

Those sorts of things. 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.

 

00:19:24:06 - 00:19:39:12

Unknown

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.

 

00:19:39:16 - 00:19:48:22

Unknown

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.

 

Transcript

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