June 24, 2025

Lou Smith: Transforming Insurance with Neuron by WTW

54 minutes

Sabine VdL talks to Lou Smith, a true trailblazer in the world of financial services and insurance.

In today’s episode, we’ll dive into Lou’s incredible journey, explore the vision behind Neuron, and discuss the key takeaways from the latest report that insurance providers need to consider.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

We all have moments in life where the last thing we want to look at is out credit rating and history, but those things can affect how you access financial services in the future.

Lou was part of the team that delivered the first end-to-end mortgage renewal online, started to break down investments and getting it to the hands of the many rather than the few.

Everybody says insurance is behind the rest of the financial services industry, and it’s a funny statement. It doesn’t matter. What I’m seeing in insurance in the last 5-6 years is that this conversation has circled around about what do we do? But in the last 12-18 months I’ve seen a passion for how do now think about using digital, distribution models, digital, analytics and AI and thinking of all of those things together and deliver distribution models that start to move industry forward.

The challenge is always in leadership, culture and change adoption. This is because it’s really difficult to step into an unknown and think it’s going to be better than what you’re doing today.

You want to power people with the data and capabilities so they can do what they’re brilliant at, which is focusing on the best product and position for their client. Neuron and others enable brokers to do that. You also want to attract a new generation into the brokering sector, but rather than have them focus on the admin of that sector, they should be having great conversations with clients. All the work we’re doing enables brokers to do that.

BEST MOMENTS

‘When starting my career I had a real passion for how to make the services we were offering more successful for clients and customers.’
‘We care about the customer and making financial data accessible to you through the narratives we use.’
‘I’d love to say this was all planned out, we didn’t call it anything or know what it looked like, we just started to bring data and technologies together to build ‘workflow’ and that’s now become cool.’
‘We want to be the easiest, most predictable and consistent broker to work with.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Louise (or Lou) Smith is a trailblazer in the financial services and insurance industries, with a career spanning leadership roles across digital transformation, data, product innovation, distribution, technology, and operations.

Her journey has been marked by groundbreaking achievements, including delivering the UK's first steps into digital distribution at Barclays, leading the digital transformation of the Royal Bank of Scotland (including NatWest) during its turnaround to profitability, and becoming the first-ever Chief Digital Officer at Lloyd’s of London.

Currently, Louise is at the helm of Neuron, a transformative initiative aimed at redefining the insurance and financial services landscape. Through Neuron, she is driving innovation, collaboration, and growth, focusing on creating a more connected and customer-centric industry.

WTWCO

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.

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This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

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By Sabine VdL

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