InsTech - insurance & innovation
00:22:19 · Matthew Grant, Jamie Wilson
[00:22:19] S0: Yeah. That whole integration piece, we talked about it for a while, but clearly it's a big difference for the ability to expand and no longer those long cycles to replace technology. And then, you touched on The US. I spoke to Richard Gunn last year. He's obviously in The US. He had, I think, 20 people at a time. I know that's gone from strength to strength, but I'd be glad to get an update on what's happening with your US clients and footprint. The US side of things has [00:22:42] S1: been going really well over the course of the last couple of years. You'll have heard from Richard a year ago. I think we've got to the point of, I think, about 35,000,000,000 of GWP is bound on the platform each year in The US. So we're seeing a lot of growth. That's coming from two key areas. One is our existing multinational customers. So even when we were in 2017, 2018, 2019, a pricing platform, one or two of our very early customers were actually US domiciled. Moving to The US has allowed us to partner more closely with existing customers. But, obviously, a large part of the reason to move out there is to start partnering with new carriers, new MGAs that we wouldn't have been able to reach from the London market. And so we kind of... We've seen more and more growth in that area, which is really exciting, and also brings about its own challenges as you start to then make sure the product works really, really well for the London market and also really well for The US market as well.
00:22:42 · Jamie Wilson, Matthew Grant
[00:22:42] S1: been going really well over the course of the last couple of years. You'll have heard from Richard a year ago. I think we've got to the point of, I think, about 35,000,000,000 of GWP is bound on the platform each year in The US. So we're seeing a lot of growth. That's coming from two key areas. One is our existing multinational customers. So even when we were in 2017, 2018, 2019, a pricing platform, one or two of our very early customers were actually US domiciled. Moving to The US has allowed us to partner more closely with existing customers. But, obviously, a large part of the reason to move out there is to start partnering with new carriers, new MGAs that we wouldn't have been able to reach from the London market. And so we kind of... We've seen more and more growth in that area, which is really exciting, and also brings about its own challenges as you start to then make sure the product works really, really well for the London market and also really well for The US market as well. [00:23:35] S0: Yeah. It's great for HX, great for the insurance world, it's great for The UK as well, having companies that are starting in The UK, expanding into The US. Congratulations on that. What else should I be asking you about? Anything we haven't covered that you want to talk about?
00:23:48 · Jamie Wilson
[00:23:48] S1: Yeah. There was one additional point that came out of the Underwriting Edge Survey, which is this concept of the succession paradox is how we're, like, terming it within the report. It's this idea we asked the underwriters in the reports, what's the one thing you are most concerned about over the course of the coming years? And so kind of like, flag one thing, what are you most anxious about? The number one future concern was senior judgment leaving the industry before it's had a chance to be passed on to more junior team members. So this idea of, okay, we've got lots of very experienced, very talented underwriters working at senior levels, but how many of them are going to leave the industry through retirement, through exiting kind of the insurance industry before they've had a chance to pass on that domain experience to kind of more junior underwriters? So that was the thing that people were most concerned around. The paradox piece comes in when we asked those same underwriters, what are your current company's top 10 investment priorities? And at the very end of those investment priorities, ranked tenth was coaching of junior team members. So you've got effectively, we are investing, like, heavily in technology, heavily in AI, so on and so forth. But the biggest anxiety on the underwriter side was what is, effectively, kind of loss of expertise, but that's not being met by the investment itself. So I think that for me was, like, a really interesting, like, finding of the report. And also, the kind of... If my hopefully not naive optimism is that actually AI might even play a role to support that. That effectively, if you imagine a system where I, as a junior underwriter, are looking at an individual risk and effectively an AI kind of... Or an agentic kind of support setup is telling me, by the way, did you know that senior underwriters in your company classically look at x y zed when they have looked at risks like these? Or your underwriter guidelines are telling you x y is a b c? Or did you know there's something very weird about this risk that you might have overlooked that kind of maybe AI won't be the only thing that solves for kind of that potential loss of talent, but maybe it has a role to play in helping to coach and support junior underwriters.
00:26:02 · Matthew Grant
[00:26:02] S0: And I think the other thing that helps in this, and maybe it's just a familiarity bias in this space, but I'm sure I'm hearing more and more from the children of friends and acquaintances, because I'm at that stage where they're starting to look for jobs, are actually very interested by insurance. Word has got out that insurance is a good place to go. So even the problem is underwriters who don't want to leave, there is a sort of pressure coming from people. Or at least, I shouldn't say pressure. There's availability of a lot of talent coming into the industry as well, who, of course, are all very much tied into understanding about technology and AI. Good old, Jamie. We covered a lot there. Before I let you go, though, I do need to get your recommendation on a book or a podcast in your spare time. And given that you spent your spare time a few years ago working on your product, you can have a technical offering or you can have one that's got nothing to do with technology or insurance at all, but I'd love to hear your recommendation for a book or a podcast.
00:26:50 · Jamie Wilson
[00:26:50] S1: I'm looking at kind of my bookcase in front of me right now. I would probably go with Thinking, Fast and Slow. It's a book that I've actually read about, I wanna say four times. In reality, it's more like three and a half times. But it's a fantastic book. I read it for the first time when my career was taking me more towards data science, predictive modeling, and it's got some really interesting kind of stories, analogies around the rise of data driven models, augmenting expert decisioning. So kind of like some fantastic stories around how data scientists were predicting the value and quality of wine years before kind of connoisseurs had had a chance to taste this, for example. So, like, some really interesting kind of examples there. And lots of it very, very relevant to... If you are trying to deploy data driven models or deploy technology, like, what's the behavioral aspect or the psychology aspect associated with people having to adopt that? And every time I read, I'm like, oh, that applies to what I was talking to so and so about last week. Or three months ago, I was working on something that's exactly like that. So it's a book that I've come back to time and time again.
00:27:52 · Matthew Grant, Jamie Wilson
[00:27:52] S0: It's absolutely fundamental. Daniel Kahneman was the origination of the term behavioral economics. And the interesting thing is you talk there about data, but it's actually also... In fact, I'll just use an example in my familiarity bias, which is sort of what he talks about. He covers so many things. And I actually cheat. I take notes on my Kindle and then reread the notes. So I haven't quite read the whole thing, but I do get back to my notes and reread it. But I probably should get back and reread the whole thing and get some fresh inspiration. Great choice. Definitely up there. It's one of my favorite books and actually very influential books as well. So, Jeremy, that kind of brings us towards the end. We said people could contact you on LinkedIn if they want to know anything. Any other sort of final takeaways that the people should remember before we wrap this up? [00:28:30] S1: If you're in New York in September, we've got HX Live happening there. If you wanna hear hear more about some of the things we've talked about, exactly as Matthew was saying, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Always happy to grab a coffee and talk a little bit more about technology transformation, whatever the topic. [00:28:46] S0: Right. Well, Jamie, thank you for your support. Thank you for all your colleagues at HX. It's been great watching you grow over all the years, and you've been a big part of the success of InsTech as well. So thank you very much. [00:28:56] S1: Brilliant. Thank you very much.