Scouting for Growth
00:11:17 · Amrit Santhirasenan
Some are still stored in green screen, like, underneath green screen systems. Some are in modern databases like Snowflake. Some are stored in PDFs and email systems. Getting this data together, operationalizing it so it can be used to make a decision, and then setting that process up so that actually that data gets get better over time is really hard. And that's where Hx came together... Came really onto the scene because we crafted the technology to actually take away all the boring act of kind of doing database manipulation or building algorithm containers or building web forms to let our clients focus on the problems that they actually cared about, you know, building the algorithms, using the data to make better decisions, surfacing that to the underwriters at the point of transaction. And that's where I think we really started to add value in a way that had never been seen before.
00:12:07 · Sabine VanderLinden
[00:12:07] S0: And what I hear here is we are going for dynamics. So we are moving through a business model, which is far more dynamic than static. When we actually start looking at where the market is going because of the complexity of the risk, we are starting underwriting. We need that dynamism. You won't believe that I was just last week presenting at the CCN Show Tech Hub in Zurich. And the enterprise application market is the largest one, the largest one which is still receiving investment, 1,600,000,000,000 investment to date. And when you start looking at, you know, some industry not doing that well, when you look at investment, your space is doing very well actually, Amrit. And I think it's important to highlight that. But then the second question is, you know, I get asked often by insurers is how do we mix external data sources when we start looking at this new world of decision intelligence with our historical data, we love our historical data, but we need to deal with those new emerging, right? So how do you address that problem around data to make better decisions?
00:13:21 · Amrit Santhirasenan
[00:13:21] S1: Yeah, another fantastic question. You know, something that I always found my job when I was an really fascinating, right? Because I often when I try to explain it, if you're an actuary, you have this really awkward situation at parties. If you're an actuary, don't go to that many parties, the ones I did go to, right? You have this awkward situation where you have to explain what you do. And one of the things that I think a lot about the way I did my job as a pricing actuary is really my task was to understand the world of the risk being priced better. Right? That was my job. Like, our job is to apply a framework to understand the risk and then set up the risk bearing structures on top of that that make the best sense for the customer, are the fairest, are the right price, are competitive in a marketplace. And so really, the job of a pricing actuary or the job of a pricing team, underwriter and actuary huddling together or data scientists in this day and age, you know, is really to understand that risk the best way possible. And I think when you think about pricing as that problem, the historical data is really important. Right? But you said something, Sabine, about the dynamism of the world. The world's never changed faster. Right? That's the thing about exponential growth. Right? It's never changed faster. The historical data is really important, but it's not the be all and end all. And if you look at risks like cyber, for example, the past isn't meaningfully a guide to the future for these emerging risks in the same way actually that it has been for maybe a more established, you know, if you think about like a fire risk or something, a classical fire risk for a more traditional line of business. One of our investors, we're very fortunate, the founder of Guidewire. Most people know who Guidewire is. Marcus Ryu is now a venture capital investor. He's at Battery. He used this really lovely phrase when he invested in us. It's like, actually pulling the signals out of the noise in a world that is never, you know, has meaningfully different from the past. The teacher is meaningfully different than the past is a hard challenge, and that's what we do. So when I look at these risks, actually, it doesn't phase me that we don't have a lot of historical data. In fact, the opposite is true for these very large risks.
00:15:23 · Amrit Santhirasenan
If you're looking at cyber, if you're looking at climate risk, you're looking at emerging technologies, science applied to those risks is much richer, Right? They're actually much more because they're new. The people analyzing those risks have a much more data first mindset than many of the other more classical fields. And as a result, actually, if you know where to look, if you're able to be partnerial with your clients, you can analyze those risks in a much more richer way. It's not the same historical data, because you're right, you don't have the claims. But you have a richer landscape of data. If you're thinking about battery technology, for example, right? Like the science and technology underlying the way batteries are being used has never been more analytical. Don't get me wrong, I think our industry has much more work to do to create the right incentives so that data is shared. But the best way to do that is to use it to price risks more fairly. I'm pretty sure if our clients knew that we could synthesize all the data from an Apple Watch to price their life insurance, they'd be much more willing to share it than if they didn't. And I think that's where hopefully Hx can come in. If we do our jobs really well, then people will want to share that data because they'll get fairer risks. And in a competitive landscape, the best thing you can do is increase the amount of information to make the decisions because that's how markets become fairer, become more effective, become more efficient. And so, I think I'm optimistic about it.
00:16:43 · Sabine VanderLinden
[00:16:43] S0: Yeah. I love what you are saying because we have been talking about data standards in the past. You know, we have seen, you know, open finance. We often talk about, are we going to have open insurance at some point, but this is still, I guess in progress. And when we look at our industry, still a lot of things are very siloed. But then, you know, I'm so excited that I will be able to see you at ITC Vegas twenty twenty four on the October 15 just in, I guess, in a few days time. And you already have talked about some of the major themes we are going to see there. Climate resilience, which is going to be a major themes on ITC, cybersecurity for small and medium enterprises, where there's still a major gap. Right? We have a major protection gap for small businesses. How does pricing decision intelligence plays across all those emerging risks that we are going to start tackling at the conference? And what are you excited to hear, to listen to the conversation you are looking forward to having when you are going to be there at ITC on the October 15?
00:17:58 · Amrit Santhirasenan
[00:17:58] S1: Yeah. So I think, you know, super excited for ITC. You can sense the British accent from me, but I'm actually calling from my New York office. I'm spending a week a month in America now. It's super exciting. You know? As we raise money from, from our our friends at Highland in Europe, but also two of the world's leading investors, Battery Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. We're increasingly an international business, increasingly a US American business too. So very excited to spend more time here, excited to get out to Vegas for my first ITC. So what would I say? I'd say thinking about the themes of ITC and how it addresses those challenges. So I think we're seeing a exploding data landscape in all of these areas in the climate space, in the cyberspace, in in particular, you know, the the way these classes are being underwrite... Underwritten is kind of begetting a huge landscape of data. And, you know, if you look at some of the leading MGAs out there who are underwriting these risks in a new way, they're capturing data in entirely they're capturing entirely new data sets and analyzing it in a twenty first century way. We're super excited to be part of that conversation. We're probably, I wouldn't seem probably, you know, almost certainly the leading platform to synthesize that data and convert it into insights and decisions for the purpose of pricing. So one of the things we see from our clients and the challenge they face is, it's like in order for our clients to narrow that protection gap, they need to be able to synthesize this data better. You can't take the data that all of these modern industries, these modern class of business have and whack it in a spreadsheet. You can't do that. What you need to be able to do is synthesize it at speed with a variety of modern techniques and do that map better. And whether you're an incumbent insurer or an emerging one, we want to be the partner for every single one of those people solving these super hard challenges. So to answer your question as it pertains to ITC, we're super excited to meet new technology partners. We always, you know, that's what we do. We kind of pioneered this five or six years ago, HxConnect, the ecosystem of pluggable data sources, analytical tools into our platform. We did this when we were very small, and we've got a rapidly growing set of integration partners.