Scouting for Growth

By Sabine VanderLindenBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology

Scouting for Growth episodes

July 11, 2024Bessem Ayari: Scaling up with Ergo ScaleHub Program
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Bessem Ayari, Head of Innovation Strategy & Scouting at ERGO Group AG, where he leads transformative initiatives that shape the future of the insurance industry. With a dynamic career dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration, Bessem is a pivotal force in the InsurTech landscape.
Bessem shares insights on how the Ergo ScaleHub is redefining the innovation ecosystem & helping bold entrepreneurs scale new heights in the insurance sector.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In these times of rapid change & digital transformation, the insurance industry is compared to any other industry, everyone expects the same service & speed as Amazon, Netflix, etc. That’s what drives me. Innovation strategy is about a culture that we need to shape & create to be on a good path but also to provide the means & tools to do so.
We have a very broad & on point innovation portfolio where we are very near to the core, really trying to solve today’s challenges. Innovation is about delivering valuable impact & we can only do so by tackling the challenges we have today. In our portfolio we also have the ability to look into the future at the trends in the business & technology side so we can see very early where the market is evolving & where we should dig deeper.
We’re pretty good when it comes to tech incubation, we have scaled RA process mining, AI and GPT initiatives as well as metaverse, VR, etc. We’ve created competency centres internally for these.
I truly believe in physical collaboration, having physical touchpoints really helps to get a better understanding, to understand Ergo, the processes, the people behind it. At the end of the day it’s a people’s business & you need to build trust. Trust is built by having a proper conversation face-to-face or having dinner together, getting into a boardroom & cluttering the whole space with ideas and concepts to be worked out.

BEST MOMENTS
‘I’m passionate about innovation, driving meaningful impact at work & giving something back to our customers & employees.’
‘Innovation is about delivering valuable impact.’
‘You don’t learn a technology from Power Point, you need to get your hands dirty, try it out, make it tangible, test it & derive a decision out of it quickly.’
‘Getting direct connections to corporates is super valuable, as a startup you need to understand how the corporate functions.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Bessem Ayari is a dynamic leader specializing in innovation strategy & scouting. As the Head of Innovation Strategy & Scouting at ERGO Group AG, he leverages his extensive experience to drive forward-thinking initiatives & foster collaboration between startups & the corporate sector. His passion for mentorship & a keen eye for identifying emerging trends in InsurTech position him as a pivotal force in shaping the industry's future.
Known for his strategic vision, exceptional leadership, & commitment to nurturing innovative ideas, Bessem has consistently brought tangible value to his organization. His expertise spans innovation management, strategic leadership, & startup mentorship, making him an accomplished innovation strategist with a proven track record in fostering innovation & collaboration. At ERGO Group AG, he leads the innovation strategy & scouting efforts, identifying & integrating cutting-edge solutions to maintain the company’s competitive edge.
Make sure to check the ScaleHub site for more details.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
51 min
July 03, 2024Andrei Mincov: What You Need To Know About Trademarking
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Andrei Mincov, founder and CEO of Trademark Factory, a company that specialises in trademark registration & protection.
In this episode, Mincov shares his insights & experiences on the importance of trademarks for entrepreneurs and businesses, as well as the common mistakes and misconceptions people have about the trademarking process. He will also explores the role of IP in business growth & success, & the strategies &best practices for protecting & leveraging your ideas & brands.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
My dad was a famous composer in Russia. A radio station that stole a song he wrote & turned it into an ad for Samsung without his permission, at the time I was attending law school & he asked me for help. I didn’t know anything about IP but in 1996 nobody in Russia had any idea about IP because Russia had just changed from Soviet law into free market law, so I gave it a shot & as part of that journey I became passionate about helping people who created something to protect it from others who want to steal it from them.
Trademarking is mostly the same around the world, there are small differences here & there & you need to understand them to be successful in those countries. But, this isn’t something I think entrepreneurs should care about, that’s why providers exists who can navigate them through this. What you should know are the basics, it’s not as complex as you might think: What is trademarking? What are you protecting? What do you need to show to the government to prove it's a brand & not a cute name or image?
The biggest misconceptions I see with trademarks is that you don’t own the word or the image you own the mental association between that work, phrase or image & specific products & services that you sell.
Why trademark? If you plan to be in business for several/many years, the brand will become the most valuable asset of your business. It makes it easier t=for you to attract better talent, attract better leads at a lower cost to advertise at lesser cost. Even if you file your trademark a day before someone else does, you’re good. The problem is you don’t know when someone else will file for a trademark, so you should do it early or else someone else will do it and you won’t be protected, even if you came up with the name first.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The trademarking process takes a long time & I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs being taken advantage of by unscrupulous firms that claim to be able to trademark their brand for $49.’
‘The success rate of your trademark application is directly related to your willingness to understand the basics.’
‘On a general level, what trademarks protect is the brand, whether it’s the name, tagline, logo, or some combination.’
‘Trademarks is the only type of IP that you can own, in theory, forever. Copyrights, patents, industrial right expire, if you renew your trademark every 10 years you can own it forever.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Andrei Mincov, the founder and CEO of Trademark Factory, is a renowned expert in intellectual property law. With a career that began with a fight to protect his father's music, Mincov has since written multiple books on the subject, including an international bestseller, & has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and companies protect their IP. His passion for ensuring that hardworking entrepreneurs are not taken advantage of led him to found Trademark Factory, the only firm in the world that offers trademark registration services with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget. When he's not helping secure trademarks, Mincov enjoys living in Dubai with his wife & 3 kids & playing his one-of-a-kind DrumDesk.
YouTube
Email: [email protected]
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
46 min
June 26, 2024Nick Pester: Mastering The Art of Scaling Legal Strategies for Expansion
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Nick Pester, founder of Beyond Legal, who is on a mission to revolutionise the way startups access legal support. But Nick's impact goes far beyond just providing legal advice.
Throughout his career, Nick has been a trusted mentor and advisor to countless early-stage businesses. From navigating the challenges of international expansion to securing major funding rounds, he has been in the trenches with founders, helping them scale their ventures to new heights.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
You have to balance the need of competitive advantage, moving quickly, & first mover advantage, which is super important and which I always try to support with the businesses I work with, against the harsh reality of doing something wrong or making sure you’re not being unnecessarily exposed and that you’re keeping yourself in a structure that’s attractive to investors.
If you compare 2021, when capital was much more freely available, and people could be faster and looser with how they did things, to where we are now, where capital has dried up, and VCs are focused on existing portfolios, you need to be tighter and more organised in terms of your structure & corporate admin has become much more important.
The best lawyers I’ve ever worked with are the ones who, alongside their very good technical legal knowledge, have the ability to see what the business is trying to achieve & marry the legal requirements with the business's objectives. Getting those types of people involved at the outset, even if it’s just a sense check, is so valuable.
Collaboration is key; we need to get away from the mindset that 2 opposing parties are adversaries. It’s a partnership & the best lawyers are the ones who recognise that the horse trade isn’t just “you give us A, and we’ll give you B”, it’s figuring out where the value lies for each individual party & marrying them together in a way that’s fair & respectful of each party’s interests.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s a tendency for startups to chase the shiny ball, it’s easy to get distracted by spin-offs of what you could do, businesses that succeed in the long term are those that have patience, dedication & control.’
‘Founders & business have a tendency to view lawyers as naysayers or box-tickers, people underestimate the value of a good commercial lawyer.’
‘If you’ve got a good commercial lawyer in your team, empower them, give them the chance to lead on things & you’ll see the value they can bring beyond the legal side of things.’
‘When selecting a lawyer to work with, find an individual that works for you, don’t just go on simple recommendations by name.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nick Pester is a seasoned legal professional with over 20 years of experience, specialising in FinTech & high-growth technology companies.
His passion for supporting the growth of innovative companies led him to found Beyond Legal, a venture that leverages his extensive experience to provide high-growth technology businesses with an alternative to traditional legal services.
Beyond Legal's primary offering is fully flexible, on-demand, fractional GC Services, which allows companies to access top-tier legal support without the commitment of a full-time hire or the high costs associated with external law firms.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
52 min
June 19, 2024Colin Sanburg: From Financial House of Cards to Thriving Enterprise
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Colin Sanburg, a seasoned entrepreneur & the Founder of FinElevate, an innovative strategic finance firm that is changing the game for small businesses.
On this episode, we dive into Colin's entrepreneurial journey, explore the challenges faced by small business owners, & learn how FinElevate is revolutionising small business finance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If there were 10 things that could kill a company, the very first business I got involved with was doing 9 of them! It was in really rough shape. But from the hardships of figuring out how to make it less bad & eventually get better, I became obsessed with finance & how to build a better business.
Now there are many more entrepreneurial groups & masterminds, but earlier in my career, I went years without knowing any other entrepreneurs. They were the hardest years when I was trying to figure things out. Luckily, I got turned on to a couple of books. After I got through that & connected to other entrepreneurs, the second stage of my career began.
When people hear “fractional CFO,” they think of a really experienced person who is C-Suite level who’s going to give them a complicated 12-page plan of all the things they should be doing that they don’t have the time to do. That doesn’t work for entrepreneurs; entrepreneurs want freedom, their business to do better than ever & live a better lifestyle. It’s hard to do that, but we get into your business to help improve it
The reality is, most businesses need to do some of the same things. We can train your team & get into your business &, instead of giving you a 12-page plan, we can say for the next quarter we’re going to focus on these areas based on your goals, thus making progress.
BEST MOMENTS
‘You can get trapped in a bubble of small business & limited mindset, but once you break out of that & work with other entrepreneurs, it’s so exciting.’
‘We’re training your leadership team. The fear when you ask them to make more profit is that the team hears: “Make me more money.” When we come in, we teach them how to grow their career as well as the company.’
‘The goal is not to do 450 things at once, it’s to have 450 things mapped out so that we know the next thing to focus on.’
‘You need to understand how your business makes money & you can describe that on a napkin.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Colin Sanburg is the Founder & CEO of FinElevate, an innovative strategic finance firm that helps small business owners leverage their financial data to drive profitability & growth. With an MBA & extensive experience as an owner & CEO of manufacturing, distribution, & service businesses, Colin has developed a passion for demystifying small business finance & empowering entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.
Colin's passion for connecting with & supporting fellow entrepreneurs led him to start several mastermind groups, where he became the go-to person for financial strategy & advice. He pursued an executive MBA to further enhance his skills & knowledge. Through his experiences, Colin has gained invaluable insights into the financial challenges faced by small business owners & is dedicated to helping them navigate the complexities of business finance to achieve long-term success.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
36 min
June 12, 2024Brian Childress: The Fractional CEO
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian Childress, a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education & more develop and scale their technology solutions.
In this episode, we dive into Brian's journey to becoming a fractional CTO, the most common technology challenges businesses face, his advice for non-technical founders, and his predictions for the game-changing technologies of the future. We'll also explore topics such as mitigating the risks of outsourcing development work, best practices for application security & scalability, strategies for closing the tech talent gap through global hiring, & the importance of collecting the right data to leverage AI effectively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Fractionality is a trend in which you seek access to high-level expertise even though you may not have the work or capital to employ them full-time. If we’re honest with ourselves, there’s not 40 hours' worth of work to do in a lot of organisations or in a number of roles, so if I can come in & make high impact in an organisation for a fraction of the cost, that’s really valuable.
One of the biggest things that’s helped me is that day-to-day I do software engineering work, but through most of my career I’ve been freelancing & moonlighting on the side, so I’ve doubled the amount of exposure & experience I’ve been able to gain in my career by working with a number of different organisations, teams, projects & technologies. I’m drawing on every single one of those experiences to help & support the teams I work with.
One of the biggest challenges I see for non-technical founders is determining which advice to follow. Technology can be a black box that’s really hard to understand, & for non-technical founders, there are a lot of people who look & sound like they understand technology, but unfortunately, they could be giving bad advice.
We make things too complex too early. Many of us think we have the next great idea & it’s going to be huge right out of the gate, so we need to build so we can support millions of customers from day 1. That’s never the case. But a lot of the guidance that’s out there comes from the Googles and the Netflixes of the world, and we build our architecture around these organisations. But we forget that they have thousands of people supporting those architectures & their complexity, & millions of users to support.
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s a fraction of the cost, not the expertise.’
‘Don’t follow the advice of the first person to come to you, it puts a lot of founders and companies in bad positions.’
‘Building in complexity from the outset hurts us all the way through the growth of our business.’
‘What is the simplest set of technologies & solutions that we can put together that solves a real business need? A lot of those boring technologies can be scaled up to support millions of users & billions of requests, we just have to be smart about the way we do it.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brian Childress is a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education, and more develop and scale their technology solutions.
As a technical advisor with a strong background in software engineering, cloud computing, & cybersecurity, Brian is experienced in helping CTOs & CEOs make the right technical decisions for their organisations.
Summit Labs
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
37 min
June 05, 2024Scott Ritzheimer: Scaling Predictable Success
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Scott Ritzheimer, the co-founder of Scale Architects and author of "The Founder's Evolution".
In this episode, Scott will share his wisdom on breaking through the common challenges founders face, wanting to grow faster despite constraints, overcoming the limitations of being the bottleneck to scaling, and building an organization that can thrive beyond the founder's direct involvement.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Business is hard; there are challenges that come up, of course, but at one point, while the company was growing really fast, the challenges started popping up faster than we could fix them. It felt like it got really hard again, which didn’t make sense because we were doing the same things that had spurred phenomenal growth over the last 5 years. The year-end financials have been declining for two years in a row despite cutbacks. We had no idea how to fix it because there wasn’t one obvious reason for it.
Every organisation goes through a stage called ‘whitewater’, where the complexity of the business causes us to cause problems; there’s no one problem to fix, it’s the complexity of everything that has built up, and it’s exceeding our ability to manage, lead, and deliver consistent quality for our customers. That gave me hope when my business felt like we were flailing.
There are things you need to do organisationally, but you also need to change how you show up personally as a founder, CEO, and leader, and how you build, structure, and architect your organisation. You have to do both. By doing this, my company tripled its bottom line in a single year & went on to open 2 multi-million dollar business units & increased profit margins by 5% for the next 2 years.
For founders/entrepreneurs/CEOs/leaders, there’s so much more on the line than just us. When we get it wrong, it’s not just about my profit margins, it’s about my life, my family’s life, my leaders’ lives, my teams’ lives, it’s about our ability to deliver quality for our customers & their experience. The opportunity we were able to create after achieving predictable success was night and day from the struggle we had in whitewater.
BEST MOMENTS
‘If you don’t have profit, you don’t have anything to invest with.’
‘Folks need to know how & when to hire a coach & what to look for when they do.’
‘I don’t want any founder out there to not know what their next level is.’
‘Predictable success is the set of 7 stages that every business goes through, by understanding it we can accurately predict what challenges we’ll be facing & the highest leverage strategies we can implement.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Scott Ritzheimer is a seasoned entrepreneur and co-founder who has helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits.
Scott founded Scale Architects to help other founders and CEOs identify and implement the strategies that fast-track their organizations to predictable success.
Through his work, Scott identified a universal pattern that consistently created success. He distilled these insights into the Founder's Evolution framework, which outlines the seven stages every founder must navigate.
This roadmap equips founders with the clarity to understand their current stage, intentionally plan their growth trajectory, and focus on the critical strategies for each phase.
Scott is dedicated to helping founders overcome the common challenges of wanting to grow faster despite constraints, of being the bottleneck to scaling, and of building an organization that can thrive beyond the founder's direct involvement. Scott’s unique blend of entrepreneurial experience and passion for enabling founders' success brings valuable insights to help listeners navigate their growth journeys with greater clarity and confidence.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
54 min
May 30, 2024Oliver Wyman Series: John Johansen – Leveraging the startup culture within legacy corporations
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to John Johansen, a senior technology executive & operational leader with over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles. She is also joined by Steven Abel, partner at Oliver Wyman.
In this episode, the two guests want to challenge & change current operational mindsets within large enterprises. They dive into the known tech challenges existing within our currently fast-evolving digitalizing insurance space, why an experimentation culture is critical to drive the relevance & resilience business needs today, what are the most effective paths for evolution, reinvention & consideration, & insights on how businesses can leverage tech ecosystems to scale digitally-driven revenue models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I started creating business applications when I was 13 years old & have been writing software ever since. I’ve been doing this in the insurance world for about 30 years. With Oliver Wyman, we’ve been able to create a team that builds tools at speed that really improve our clients’ businesses.
InsurTechs have admirable qualities of being able to run experiments & take them to investors & get feedback even in the early days, then pivot on the back of those results. They can quickly create real, tangible products that people can touch, feel & react to, which creates a new round of experimentation, including more people giving feedback, more experimentation & more changes. We wanted to bring that into a corporate environment that didn’t have that level of agility.
The idea of responsible innovation is super important. There’s nothing wrong with the big corporate machine because it does many things well. It protects the risk agenda; it enables bulletproof, very stable technology. We have a very large client we’ve worked with on innovation, and we’re beginning to scale that in the enterprise. We’re not thinking of this in three lanes: The innovation group, the BAU support group, and the enterprise architecture group.
One of the things that’s fraught with peril in any IT organisation is the transition from development to beta tests, to launch, to production support. Are we doing those things better? Is there less drama? Thinking through those early experiments & really demonstrating to people that the process is yielding that benefit/business change faster, with less investment, than an 18-month requirement process, an 18-month build & then a 12-month implementation. With the right experiments & stakeholder team, we are seeing those metrics trending in the right direction.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re still seeing some bureaucracy, which means it’s hard to maintain momentum. We wanted to break the bounds of the culture and progress in weeks, not months.’
‘There’s a lot that we can do to improve business processes & be responsive to our business users by running small experiments.’
‘The most important part of measuring success starts with picking the right experiments up front.’
‘We can begin to measure by throughput: Is this process of experimentation actually getting us to faster, better business results, implementations and hand-offs?’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
John Johansen is a seasoned senior technology executive & operational leader with a proven track record of success. Based in Naples, he brings extensive experience in driving growth & innovation within the technology sector. As part of Oliver Wyman, Johansen specializes in helping legacy corporations leverage startup culture to foster agility, accelerate digital transformation, & unlock new opportunities.
Steve Abel is a dedicated partner at Oliver Wyman, leveraging his 25+ years of consulting & executive experience to help clients tackle intricate challenges & lead teams in delivering reliable insights. With a strong focus on smart technological implementation, Steve has a proven track record of generating value for organizations.
His extensive expertise encompasses program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance best practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud solutions, & business & technical architecture.
Steve's passion lies in helping clients achieve their strategic objectives & optimize performance, while cultivating a collaborative, innovative, & high-performing work culture.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
51 min
May 22, 2024Oliver Wyman Series: Brian McDermott – Inside Victors $3bn InsurTech Success
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian McDermott, Chief Information Officer at Victor Insurance.
This podcast will be a little bit different. Steven Abel will join us to highlight Oliver Wyman's relationship with Victor Insurance, a Marsh McLennan subsidiary. Indeed, in the complex world of business, speed to value when delivering technology is critical & Victor Insurance has found a critical partner in the Oliver Wyman team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
An MGA is a company appointed by the insurer, typically the carrier, to exercise supervision & oversight on specific & targeted insurance programmes. We do everything an insurance company does, but we don’t source the capital; the carrier provides the capital for us, and they manage the risk associated with it. We underwrite the risk on behalf of others & handle a lot of the administration on behalf of the carrier, including claims processing, servicing, transaction processing, connecting with the broker, handling insurance fees, & processing any financial aspects.
We operate in 8 countries. The majority of the revenues & premiums derive from the US, around 80% left-side of the globe, 20% right-side. But we do see immense opportunity on the right side of the globe, as it’s an untapped market for products & service offerings we can provide. That’s a key strategic focus as we proceed.
Typically, InsurTechs’ challenges include having a great product but limited premium running through the platform because of the leverage they have with their carriers to bring those products onto the platform.
We differ from Marsh McLennan in that we’re a full, front-to-back insurance company: we place products through our digital portal experiences, provide policy servicing, process claims, report data, perform analytics, & underwriting. Marsh McLennan is a re-insurance broker; they don’t typically do underwriting. Our technology environments differ in that they’re built for different scales – we’re low-premium, high-volume; March McLennan operates in a different market segment: enterprise and high-end businesses; we operate in a small/micro market. We have to build scalable, fast products, whereas Marsh is more of a heavy-touch, relationship-based business with their clients. So it’s difficult to align with them completely, but there are a number of areas around complementary services.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re trying to become the Amazon for brokers in the small, commercial & speciality marketplace.’
‘One of the key challenges I have is to make sure that we can modernise while we integrate as we go on our journey towards the future.’
‘We sit in the middle of the value chain with the broker on the left-hand side, supporting the insured, & the carrier on the right, they provide the capital to us.’
‘We need to make sure that we harvest the data insights that we have: historical claims & underwriting data - & augment it with tools like machine learning, AI, data ingestion & enrichment.’
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Brian McDermott was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Victor Insurance, a leading global provider of specialty insurance programs & a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan.
Brian brings a wealth of experience to his role, with a career spanning more than 30 years in diverse industries such as retail, insurance, finance, & government.
Known for his disruptive thinking and innovation within the IT field, Brian is constantly exploring new ways to leverage contemporary technology & drive digital transformation within the insurance industry.
In his role as CIO, Brian is keen to embrace modern technologies & help drive the agenda within the broader Marsh McLennan corporation. His unique perspective, stemming from Victor Insurance's position as a high-volume, high-transaction business, enables him to provide valuable input on the digital connection between the market & the brokers & clients he works with.
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steve Abel helps clients solve complex problems & lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance-leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, and business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
1 hr 1 min
May 15, 2024Oliver Wyman Series: Steve Abel – Reinventing InsurTech to Yield a Competitive Edge
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Abel, Partner at Oliver Wyman. In this episode, they dive into the insurtech world & determine how to reinvent the InsurTech space by Leveraging Commoditized Tech for a Competitive Edge.
On this episode, they discuss:
The common mistake InsurTech startups make when investing in technology components is failing to develop well-thought-out architectures.
How InsurTech startups can leverage commoditized technology to focus on building unique value propositions.
The strategies for effectively orchestrating & assembling tech components into a symbiotic whole for faster go-to-market.
How InsurTech startups can focus on monetizing their algorithms rather than building the full tech stack.
The changing concept of differentiation in the InsurTech sector & how startups can leverage this to their advantage.
Useful links:
Cyber Security and Captive Insurance
Self-insured actuarial services
Capital modelling
KEY TAKEAWAYS
There are a couple of errors that founders make. The first is that you need to hire technologists to build everything for you in an undifferentiated way. Most of what you’re bringing to the market is not proprietary or unique. It’s a drag on money, speed & you may lose focus on what’s important to your business model. You don’t need to hire them; with the pace of tech change, a year from now you’ll need different talent because the tech will be different. Rent tech talent at the beginning.
Most innovation that occurs in the InsurTech space is from founders & companies that you may be innovating or own, you’re the force of innovation in this sector. That’s important for your investors because they want a return on their investment. It’s important for the sector because the huge advancements in the distribution & carrier space, to your customers are because of you.
Critically assess what technical talent is absolutely necessary to be core to your vision; it’s as important as thinking about your architecture & tooling in terms of what is generically available & what’s going to be part of your secret sauce.
InsurTech’s burn through time & capital fast, how can you assemble your solution in a way that you can test a market as quickly as feasibly possible? A lot of founders lose time tripping over boring, platform tech.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Modern tooling, especially cloud-based, already scales. The idea that you need to buy a specialised infrastructure or server is no longer important as it once was.’
‘Getting something in your customer’s hands as fast as possible to find out what they’re going to find valuable & pay for.’
‘If you’re a founder with a great idea, everything that’s core to that great idea you need to own.’
‘In order to make money, it’s important to understand how your product is going to be used & sold. These are not the same thing & that can be a very costly mistake.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steve Abel helps clients solve complex problems and lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance-leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, and business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
40 min
May 08, 2024Oliver Wyman Series: Steve Abel – Unlocking Legacy & Transforming Tech in Insurance
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Steve Abel, Partner at Oliver Wyman. In this episode, they dive into the challenges & solutions related to legacy debt & system modernization for incumbent insurers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A few decades ago, there weren’t as many or as complex systems in the insurance landscape. Generally, there was 1 or several admin systems that did everything. The cost & complexity of IT were relatively low compared to now. The proliferation of systems that solve business problems, the complexity of those systems has increased exponentially in part because of the sheer number of systems, but also because the landscape has evolved to accept that implementing a claims/administration/finance system should take years or months.
A lot of carriers have made successful bets in the past; they’ve bought a system, customised it & to a large extent, historically, they have fulfilled their promise to the business. Perhaps they were a little expensive or hard to implement, but at the end of the day, the stakeholders got what they wanted.
Take a hard look at your technology. A lot of these programmes fail – between 30% and 60%, depending on who you ask. Ask yourself: Is it worth the investment for my business? If you have a generic business, the cost of customisation might be very low, but if your business customises a lot & you’re done, you end up with a lot of spreadsheets, maybe that’s not a great idea.
BEST MOMENTS
‘There’s an emerging opportunity for insurance carriers to leverage a new ecosystem of tooling & providers that isn’t as monolithic & doesn’t require so many months & so much cost to implement.’
‘In modern (mostly) cloud-based technology, it’s possible to think of data as an enterprise/ecosystem asset, so you can keep that data in a structure that works for multiple business processes/calculations.’
‘Speed is now more important than ever in thinking about technology in an ecosystem. It used to be that you could pace your development choices in years, now technology is moving so much faster – years and months instead of decades.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
As a partner at Oliver Wyman, Steve Abel helps clients solve complex problems & lead teams to deliver insights that you can trust. Steve acquired over 25 years of experience in consulting & executive roles, delivering value to organizations via smart technological deployment.
Steve’s specialties include program management, operations, shared services, enabling technologies, business process reengineering, finance-leading practices, insurance products & data, actuarial platforms, machine learning, AI, cloud solutions, and business & technical architecture.
Steve is passionate about helping clients achieve their strategic goals & optimize their performance, while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, & excellence.
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.
If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.
And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]
42 min