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00:04:00 · Kosta, Sam, Ed Leon Klinger, James Lowe, S5, William Loveday Powell
[00:04:00] S0: If we can get Will and Angel check. [00:04:04] S1: Ed? Hello. Hello, mate. I have a I have a guy who's been an incredibly cool company called Will Loveday Powell here. He's building in the insurance space. You obviously just sold an insurance company, and he's currently raising an angel round. And I think you should definitely get him to pitch you. Can we do it now? [00:04:25] S3: I'm all ears. [00:04:27] S4: Let's go. Okay. [00:04:28] S1: I'm passing you So [00:04:28] S0: can they hear that? Is that picking it up off the phone? [00:04:30] S1: It is. It is. It is. Will. [00:04:33] S0: The phone to, like, the mic or speaker, and we can... Hopefully, the stream can [00:04:36] S5: I'm just [00:04:37] S1: passing you over to Will now. [00:04:39] S2: Okay. Let's get the mic in the right place. Good morning, Ed. How's it going? [00:04:42] S3: Hey, Will. How are you? [00:04:44] S2: Doing well. Thanks. Yeah. Doing really well. It's quite surreal to be on the show with this kind of live pitch scenario, yeah. Doing well. [00:04:50] S3: Well, it's even more surreal for me. I was just in a coffee shop, and I got a phone call, and now I'm I'm live on air. [00:04:55] S2: Candid moments. Here we go. Live on air. Cool. So any questions you have, or should I go straight into the riff? [00:05:02] S3: Well, how about you just give me kind of the the executive summary? Like, what what's eight zero nine? How does it work? What makes you different?
00:05:02 · Ed Leon Klinger, William Loveday Powell
[00:05:02] S3: Well, how about you just give me kind of the the executive summary? Like, what what's eight zero nine? How does it work? What makes you different? [00:05:09] S2: Sure. So, we started with kind of quoting infrastructure for MGAs in terms of automating how they quote in their quote to mind systems. We realized that even the insurers have quite simple rating models. So, our main push is going to captive risk managers who manage big books of like self insured insurance portfolios and then giving them the infrastructure both to monitor their risk in terms of exposure. But then also aggregate quotes across reinsurance. Say they want to reinsure a certain catastrophe risk or any other type of their limit that they'd like to reinsure out to offset some of their own risk. But starting with kind of quoting for captives. [00:05:47] S3: So, Will, that... Really interesting. I I spent the last ten years building Flock, and and it's been a hell of a journey. One of the things I realized building Flock is that when it comes to insurance, getting kind of big traditional trad insurers or brokers to to change their behaviors, to change the way that they work, to change the systems that they use, it's really hard. Yes. Yeah. It takes a long time. Like, sales cycles can take years. [00:06:15] S2: Is that [00:06:16] S3: does that apply to you? Or or are you are you kind of circumventing that?
00:06:16 · Ed Leon Klinger, William Loveday Powell, Fabian
[00:06:16] S3: does that apply to you? Or or are you are you kind of circumventing that? [00:06:20] S2: Well, we started with that pure kind of like how can we tap into existing systems and definitely found that there's no way to speed up these sales cycles. A lot of friends in the space have said eighteen months is the kind of average at least for a data heavy kind of platform. We're saying we're kind of circumventing this in the sense that risk managers are a bit of a greenfield in terms of the software that they have. So, a lot of them are still purely in Excel. So, we spoke to a big bottling risk manager in Dublin. He's managing like a 300,000,000 property portfolio purely in Excel including exposure. So hurricane risk, well not hurricane in Dublin but flood risk and so on. So we feel like just giving them almost like a Bloomberg terminal to manage their exposure is one thing. And in terms of their coupling to their reinsurance broker, it's a bit looser than for the primary. So we feel like it would be easier to circumvent these kind of frictional, but heavyset ways of companies. [00:07:11] S3: Will, you're a young guy. You've had some cool jobs. You worked at Granola, which I think is the cereal company. You're starting an insurance company that focuses on risk managers. [00:07:25] S6: Yes. [00:07:25] S3: That doesn't sound like the sexiest thing. I mean, you're you're combining two kind of traditionally unsexy industries. [00:07:32] S2: Yes. What
00:07:32 · William Loveday Powell, Ed Leon Klinger, Fabian
[00:07:32] S2: Yes. What [00:07:32] S3: what... What's the motivator for you as a founder? Like, what what... Why is that attractive to spend the the best years of your life building enhanced risk management models for bottle companies? [00:07:42] S2: Yes. Okay. I said to the boys at the start, I'd kind of been through that cycle of seeing, you know, you can either be very product focused and win. It's gonna become harder and harder now. Or you're very conceptional and raise a lot of money and kind of kick off an acquihire. I felt like I wanted to build an industry where at least if there's some fundamental change it's seen over a longer time horizon. Purely from an economic perspective but just seeing how that change can actually speed things up, make things better. And the real hope was thinking where can I leave a mark that's kind of a bit more substantial and grounded over time? [00:08:13] S3: What what... So kind of related to this, you know, one of the challenges with Insurtech, and I speak to a lot of Insurtechs is, I mean, the key is in the name. Insurtech. Yes. Two industries which traditionally [00:08:25] S2: Just the position there. [00:08:26] S3: Not been so... You know, they they don't go well together. It's slightly oil and water. Yes. And the reason that's such a big challenge is because if you're building an InsurTech, you're probably working with the insurers or the reinsurers or the brokers. [00:08:37] S6: Of course.
00:08:37 · Fabian, Ed Leon Klinger, William Loveday Powell
[00:08:37] S6: Of course. [00:08:38] S3: So you're involving that world, and you probably need to hire some expertise from that world. But then you're also building tech and you're building AI, which is a completely different space, it requires completely different people. Yes. Different people with different mindsets, different culture, maybe different backgrounds, different education. Have you given much thought into how you kind of build a team that brings together oil and water and makes them play nicely together? This is this is a bit of a soft, skills question. I'm talking about people. I'm talking about culture. I'm talking about mindset. [00:09:07] S2: Yes. Yeah. So I think it's very difficult to find the balance. We've seen with initiatives by Lloyds themselves, you can't really throw money at this situation. It seems to just make things worse. Know, if you bring a consultant they have no vested interest to really change things. I think we really need to start by going to brokers and saying if you join us you might have more sovereign control over your book. You might have more of a commercial vested interest to place with us. And then hopefully, if the business is running in a very exciting way, engineers will follow. But really going from thinking about the actual industry experts before we consider the engineering side.
00:09:07 · William Loveday Powell, Ed Leon Klinger, Sam
[00:09:07] S2: Yes. Yeah. So I think it's very difficult to find the balance. We've seen with initiatives by Lloyds themselves, you can't really throw money at this situation. It seems to just make things worse. Know, if you bring a consultant they have no vested interest to really change things. I think we really need to start by going to brokers and saying if you join us you might have more sovereign control over your book. You might have more of a commercial vested interest to place with us. And then hopefully, if the business is running in a very exciting way, engineers will follow. But really going from thinking about the actual industry experts before we consider the engineering side. [00:09:44] S3: And so what's your killer hire? I could, let's say I wanted to help you out, and I know a bunch of people in this space, and if you said, look, we absolutely need to hire this killer, who are they? Or who are the people that you would hire first, do you reckon? [00:09:59] S2: Definitely like post pre seed, hire someone who's on the cat modeling side, very analytical, but also super in-depth in terms of client breadth on the insurance and reinsurance side. So, a bit of a generalist, but a technical broker would be a great hire for us. [00:10:14] S3: Do do I have time for one to... For one final question? [00:10:17] S1: Yeah. Last one. Yeah. One more one more question.