August 10, 2022

Farron Blanc: L&G America

44 minutes

On this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL interviews Farron Blanc, at the time VP, Brokerage Distribution & Strategy at Legal & General America (L&G America) where he works with an amazing team of innovators to drive growth within life insurance by leveraging emerging technologies to accelerate opportunities within the brokerage channels.

Farron is an entrepreneur, too. He started Gerry, a concierge Service platform that used data and licensed Social Workers to help thousands of Americans to navigate requirements and deliver the right support within the long-term senior care space. Farron and his team sold the company in 2021, when he moved to L&G America.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

I’ve been at Legal & General for about three months. L&G America is the world’s 11th largest asset manager, but in the US it’s a really nimble business. As a corporation, we’ve invested so much in digital. One of the things I’m really passionate about is helping the underserved get adequate, affordable protection through term life insurance. You have to use technology to reach customers today and empower brokers to do that most effectively. I’m loving it!

On the entrepreneurial side, in a venture-backed startup with $4, $10, or $100 million USD, money doesn’t solve anything because – until you’re a big tech like Amazon, Apple, or Google – that money is an investment in the future, and you will have to raise more capital in 12-18 months to scale. So the default mode is death, as you’ll run out of money at some point because you won't be profitable. Profit is indeed still the rule of the game.

Another thing people don’t understand is that when you receive funding or a specific amount of money, it comes with expectations. For some a $1 billion USD (Unicorn level) exit isn’t big enough, even if they’re only writing a $2 million USD cheque, they want to be in markets where companies can do $10 billion USD exits (Decacorn level.) If you can understand those metrics, unit economics, and expectations, you will do well. As an entrepreneur, you need to stay focused and relevant while hitting all the milestones you promised your investors, so you get there.

Within a corporation, the main challenge is actually "speed to market". You may have distribution, but you may not have innovation because you’re so efficient (e.g., you have processes, best practice committees, procedures, and meetings to ensure that everything that is done gets super efficient) Tech giants like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Google do phenomenally well at attracting talent to be able to attack a problem internally, and then by buying companies externally.

At L&G America, we want to cover as many families as possible with affordable protection. The only way to do that is by using technology to digitize processes and personalize engagements and internal processes (i.e., rates, the experience, the journey the policyholder goes through) across product design, underwriting, and claims processing. We’re probably the market leader in the application part of the process. Still, we have so much work to do on the back end. You then have to work with distribution partners to optimize all of this. I’d love to be proved otherwise, particularly in the life insurance or mortality coverage spaces. Let's remember that insurance is sold, not bought. No one wants to talk about death. The best way to sell it is through independent distribution, reaching out to the customer, and engaging with them in the way they want to engage and meet. There’s no one magic bullet.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I’ve always been fascinated by problems and what’s the best way to solve them. Sometimes it’s a clean sheet of paper with no rules, and sometimes it’s leveraging a 100-year-old brand with a $40 billion USD balance sheet.’

‘As long as you’re rapidly learning and re-assessing your challenges and assumptions, that’s the most enriching part.’

‘Within corporate venturing, you must have a strategic return lens on things. Whereas financial VCs are purely looking at gross IRR or total value paid-in capital and multiples. You have to look beyond the numbers even though they are so important.’

‘The response to the global financial crisis of 2008 was to print more money to avoid a global depression. I think that worked, but it inflated asset prices, and we were at a 0% interest rate environment for essentially two decades, meaning long-term contracts started to fall apart. What does the value of money mean now? It’s a debt obligation, but the rapid inflation we’re seeing means it’s going to be really interesting to see how we’re going to ride that out. How does being in an era of superabundant capital impact people’s subscriptions?’

ABOUT THE GUEST

At the time of this recording, Farron Blanc and his team help L&G America drive growth by leveraging technology throughout the broker channel. Prior to that, as co-founder and CEO of Gerry, Farron raised $3.75M in VC funding to launch the startup, a concierge service that used data and licensed Social Workers to help thousands of Americans navigate long-term senior care. Farron told us that he sold the business in the middle of 2021.

Farron was named by Digital Insurance as one of the 20 Insurance Innovators to know, as well as one of the top 35 young executives by Intelligent Insurer in 2017.

Farron is a recovering global reinsurer, corporate VC, life insurance carrier President, BCG Strategy Consultant, and insurance Chief Marketing Officer with deep Asian and North American experience in startups and corporations. Ensure to reach out to Farron; he is such an amazing expert, influencer, and person.

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.

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