Chris Cheatham – the Luke Skywalker of Insurance Policies - is the Vice President of Product at Bold Penguin, where he helps lead the Insurance Intelligence division. He has been working in insurance since 2006 and founded the Insurtech RiskGenius, which was acquired by Bold Penguin in 2020, and which was bought by American Family earlier this year.

Chris discussed the following topics with us in this episode:

➡️ How did the name “Luke Skywalker of Insurance Policies” come to be?

➡️ Which problem does Bold Penguin solve and what is the business model?

➡️ How has Covid impacted your business model?

➡️ American Family acquiring Bold Penguin: Did you find any pushback from commercial carriers?

➡️ What thesis do you have on the SME insurance market?

➡️ If you were to get a job for a commercial carrier in charge of SME for growth, what would you do and what would be the next steps you would take?

➡️ What is your view on the capabilities of carriers at this moment?

➡️ In your conversations with insurance executives, do you see that there is a switch in their mentality and a FOMO in terms of going digital and not waiting on the sidelines?

Florian Graillot is the Founding Partner of astorya.vc, a European early-stage insurance VC fund launched in 2017, which invests in tech startups to build the next insurance generation. He has been working in the investment space for close to 15 years; as an investment manager at listed property company Affine, an investor at Newfund Management and at AXA Strategic Ventures.

For this episode Florian sat down with us to share his insights on the following topics:

➡️ Do you have a specific thesis on the insurance market?

➡️ What is the core difference between open insurance and embedded insurance?

➡️ What are the major challenges connected to embedded and open insurance?

➡️ When partnering with large platforms, what is your advice to B2B2C MGAs to remain relevant and not be squeezed out as soon as the platforms have scaled?

➡️ How do you see the insurance market developing?

➡️ With your unique market insights and your core activity being investing in startups at the seed stage, is there a consulting side to your end?

➡️ What is the path to innovation in insurance and how should success be measured?

➡️ Is there FOMO in insurance and do you feel that there has been a change for insurance executives over the last year?

➡️ If you were responsible for growth for a national insurer, say a french mutual, what would you do to generate flow?

Additional Show Notes:

Innovator’s dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/142219602X

Minh Q. Tran is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Asset Builder Mandalore Partners, which seeks to create an innovative framework that enables investors of firms in early stages to achieve scale exposure to a range of traditional, alternative and tech venture capital assets. In addition to his experience as one of the founders’ team at AXA Ventures, Minh was also an integral part of several other VC firms, including Nokia Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures and Truffle Capital.

It was great discussing the following topics with Minh in this episode:

➡️ What is the difference between the VC model, Venture studio and Asset Builder model?

➡️ Which insurtech models do you see working and why?

➡️ What were your experiences and what did you learn from working with AXA?

➡️ What is the difference between corporate and classical VCs, and what would you recommend to an Insurtech in selecting one or the other?

➡️ From an investor point of view, under which conditions would you say does it make sense to go for the full-license versus the MGA route?

➡️ Looking at the French Insurtech market, how does it compare and contrast to other markets such as the UK, Germany or US? What is unique or specific and what could someone learn from the French market?

➡️ Do you think there is FOMO with insurance executives?

➡️ What was your best and worst investment decision in the past?

Additional Show Notes:

Former Deputy CEO of P&C Partners at SCOR: Adrian Jones (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianjo/)

Life insurance example with lottery tickets: https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2021/01/28/savings-account-app-yotta-raises-13-million-in-series-a/

Susanne Chishti is the CEO of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s first Angel Network focused on fintech opportunities and Founder of the FINTECH Circle Institute, the leading fintech learning platform offering innovation workshops to C-level executives and online courses. She has an extensive background in the financial services sector, starting her career working for a fintech company (before the term "fintech" was being invented) in Silicon Valley 20 years ago and then worked for more than 15 years across Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley and Accenture in London and Hong Kong.

It was a pleasure discussing the following topics with Susanne in this episode: 

➡️ Looking back at your career, what are your key takeaways from working in the financial services sector?

➡️ What was your vision behind starting FINTECH Circle?

➡️ Where do you see the future of Fintech? How will the sector evolve in the next years, and what are the trends?

➡️ The huge opportunity of embedded finance and insurance

➡️ Do you have some best practices that you see for fintech and insurtech startups partnering with incumbents?

➡️ The FINTECH Circle Angel Network - how does it work, and how are companies selected for investment? 

➡️ What is your advice to Fintech founders and entrepreneurs for choosing Investors?

➡️ Fintech has been ahead of Insurtech - What do Insurtech and Fintech have in common, and what can Insurtech take away from Fintech?

Steven Mendel is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bought by Many, which is disrupting the world of pet insurance through its innovative use of tech. He has over 25 years of experience as an actuary in financial services which has included leading Close Brothers Wealth Management during the launch of their non-advised offering; creating the world’s first art-focused wealth advice offering for Christie’s; working as part of the team that formed Barclays Wealth and heading the McKinsey UK Savings and Investment Group.

In this episode, Steven sat down with us to discuss the following questions and topics:

➡️ Why did Bought by Many decide to focus on Pet insurance exclusively?

➡️ Having started Bought by Many in 2012, you “only” decided to take venture funding end of 2016, can you walk us through the why and the how?

➡️  What does it take to build a successful insurtech MGA and what advice could you give in terms of product, distribution and what to focus on when looking to introduce the MGA model?

➡️ How do you decide on where to expand to next (why Sweden?) and can you share a bit on your US market entry strategy?

➡️ Do you focus on insurance brokers as well or do you only focus on the direct market place?

➡️ How could insurers collaborate with you?

➡️ What are the highlights in store for 2021 and the future, what are you most excited about?

➡️ What are your lessons learned and experiences with Munich Re?

➡️ In hindsight, are there any things or mistakes you made that you regret?

To watch the video of the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmeFpZFdqE

Nigel Walsh is an Insurance and InsurTech expert and only recently joined Google as the new Managing Director of Insurance for North America. Prior to that, he spent five years as a Partner at Deloitte, leading the global Future of Insurance and the Google Cloud alliance for Insurance, as well as co-leading the Global InsurTech team. He has helped build businesses from scratch in the Insurtech space, launching and designing new propositions, and is on a personal mission to make insurance loveable. :-)

In this episode, Nigel joined us to discuss the following topics and more:

➡️ What were your personal reasons for taking on the new role at Google?

➡️ Background on two Google Cloud projects: Partnering with Brit to create Ki and collaborating with Munich Re and Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty to launch an innovative cyber insurance solution.

➡️ What is your personal thesis on the insurance industry?

➡️ Embedded insurance & finance: where do you see the market moving (will it be super apps aggregating several insurers?) and what will be the key drivers?

➡️ Will companies like Google “eat” insurance as an industry?

➡️ The difference between evolutionary and revolutionary steps.

➡️ Will the big incumbents be able to overcome their legacy?

➡️ Do you think there is going to be more incumbents getting to innovate than the disruptors or new market entrants capturing significant market share?

➡️ The Platform economy and the cycle of engagement for insurance.

➡️ With all of the change happening, what do you think will stay the same in insurance?

Jean-Charles Velge is the Co-Founder of the Belgian Insurtech startup Qover. which just raised $25 million in its Series B funding round. Before founding Qover together with Quentin Colmant in 2016, Jean-Charles acted as a Vice President at private equity firm Redhorse and worked as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company.

For our fourth episode he discussed the following topics with us:

➡️ What are the two business models of Qover? 

➡️ What problems does Qover address and how does Qover create pan-European insurance solutions?

➡️ What role does VC funding play in accelerating the embedded insurance market?

➡️ The market participants of embedded insurance: where do you see the lines blur between competition and cooperation?

➡️ What are the advantages of the MGA versus the full-stack model?

➡️ What would you do if you were the CEO of AXA or Allianz or what would your advice be to someone who is?

➡️ If you were to start Qover today, knowing what you know now and the market being what it is today, would you do it again and how would that look like?

➡️ What can we expect from Qover in the next few months?

➡️ Where do you see the market in the long run?

Sabine VanderLinden is the CEO, Co-Founder and Managing Director of the venture validation and commercialisation lab Alchemy Crew. She is a pioneer in building innovation ecosystems and has co-designed, built and scaled Startupbootcamp InsurTech-London and Hartford-CT's InsurTech Hub. In addition to having accelerated more than 70 early-stage ventures and evolving the traditional accelerator model to a co-creation-led engagement model to deliver tangible outcomes, Sabine is the Co-editor of the bestselling INSURTECH Book and has become one of the key influencers in the Insurtech space.

In this episode, Sabine joined us to discuss the following questions and topics:

➡️ The Insurtech Queen: How to get more women into insurtech? (STEM, education, bias-driven, cultural, language)

➡️ Are acceleration and innovation dead?

➡️ What is the difference between innovation and digital transformation?

➡️ How to tap into the trend of Digital Nomads and Transient workers in the wake of Covid-19 and Brexit?

➡️ Some parts of the Alchemy model: Discovery, Defining Evaluation Criteria, Commercialisation (partnership, investment, acquisition).

➡️ Which insurtech models work and why?

➡️ What can insurers learn from subscription, circular and ecosystem models?

➡️ What advice would you give to incumbents?

You can check out the video of the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es5QrYaKO_k

Simon Torrance is one of the world’s leading experts on business model transformation, specialising in platform strategy, breakthrough innovation and digital ventures, and is an independent advisor to boards and leadership teams, fundamentally improving their economics as digitisation affects them. He currently focuses on the hot topic of embedded finance and insurance, which he projects offers a market opportunity worth over $7 trillion in ten years’ time. 

For this second episode, Simon discussed and shared his expertise on the following topics:

✅ Embedded Finance/Insurance: How do you define that topic and why is it so important?

✅ What are the societal and commercial benefits of this market opportunity and of closing the protection gap?

✅ What are examples of positive societal aspects in this area and should regulation speed up?

✅ What is the big buzzword “financial wellness” exactly about and how are companies helping people manage their financial wellness?

✅ Why is private and public collaboration important to close the protection gap?

✅ Do you think that partnering up with a large digital distributor will actually drive down the cost of distribution from an insurer perspective or will it be more difficult, having to deal with more powerful distributors?

✅  Putting yourself in the position of a board member/CEO of an incumbent insurer, what is your advice and what would you say are the key steps to capture this market opportunity?

For more information on the market opportunity of embedded finance, check out Simon's articles here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/embedded-finance-game-changing-opportunity-incumbents-simon-torrance/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/embedded-insurance-3-trillion-market-opportunity-could-simon-torrance/?trackingId=9%2FetEvcXvoB7vjNTdXNowg%3D%3D

Oliver Lang is the CEO at the leading digital insurer wefox Insurance - formerly One Insurance, whose renaming was just announced the day after we recorded this episode. He has extensive know-how and expertise in insurance, banking and other financial industry segments, combining consulting experience and first-hand knowledge of corporate players with innovative thinking and business building competencies. 

For this first episode, Oliver sat down with us to discuss the following topics and questions:

➡️ The background behind ONE being rebranded as wefox Insurance 

➡️ The business model of aggregators

➡️ Which parties do you see as the main competitors but also new players in your space?

➡️ How would you compare Lemonade and wefox, also looking at customer acquisition costs?

➡️ Why does wefox believe that it is fundamental to get advice before buying insurance?

➡️ What do you expect to happen with Lemonade in the next five to ten years?

➡️ What's your playbook for entering different countries?

➡️ How difficult has it been to convince investors of a new story and what is your advice?

➡️ What would you emphasise if you were to take on the CEO position of an incumbent insurer?

You can also check out the video of the discussion here: https://youtu.be/qqtgFavmS_Q