Insurtech is constantly evolving and insurers are harnessing its power to create new products, solve old problems and generate solutions to emerging risks. Join us for a discussion on how the creation of new technology is allowing carriers to transform all facets of the insurance process for customers and insurance professionals alike, making it more transparent and efficient.
Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Patti Harman (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Digital Product Innovation, where technology and new ideas converge. I'm Patti Harman, editor in chief of Digital Insurance, and I will be your moderator for today. Innovation and technology adoption in the insurance industry have expanded more probably in the last decade than in the previous 30 years. As technology evolves across the spectrum of all businesses, the rise of insurance technology as created numerous opportunities for insurers to expand their products, modernize the insurance process, and create more transparency across the insurance ecosystem, as well as automate repetitive tasks. These advancements require a careful balance of innovation against the risks that these opportunities create. Joining us today to discuss some of the transformation occurring in the insurance industry and how insurers are blending technology and opportunity, while being mindful of the risks are two experts. We have Jim Ryan, who works for State Farm as an innovation executive, where he leads two of their subsidiaries, Quanata a next generation risk prediction and mitigation platform, and HiRoad, a direct to consumer behavior-based auto insurer.
(01:28)
Jim's extensive experience spans multiple roles in industries, and during his career, he has developed and marketed over 50 products and services across the us. Also, joining us today is Chaz Perera. He is the CEO and the co-founder of Roots Automation and is responsible for business development, finance and customer success. In his nearly 20 year career, Chaz has launched new products, growing global businesses and led teams with thousands of employees, including a team comprising 7,000 people across 50 countries. I can't even imagine what your Zoom meetings were like for that team. And before founding Roots Automation, he was the Chief Transformation Officer and the head of Global Business Services for AIG. I am so excited to have both of you join us today because your experience in this aspect of the insurance industry will allow us to explore how dynamic the insurance technology has become.
(02:34)
So thank you so much for joining us. And as a quick reminder to our audience, don't forget that you can put your questions in the chat at the bottom of your screen. So Jim, let me start with the first question with you. Where do you think the insurance industry is in terms of digital development? And by that I mean, do you think it is still making the transition? Have insurers already made the transition and we're seeing wide adoption? And then are we even moving into the next phase maybe with a focus on utilizing existing tech to create new products?
Jim Ryan (03:14):
Yeah. Well, great to be here. Thanks for having me. I think we're still pretty much in the early innings on this. If you think about it, the insurance industry as a whole is primarily made up of very large companies that are responsible for very important things. We help insure people, we help make sure that if they have an accident or their house burns down, that we're going to help them out financially to restore where they're at. So overall, I'd say that this is an industry that tends to move slowly and move very concisely and precisely when it comes to execution. But one of the things that State Farm's done that's pretty smart is we've actually started a set of companies outside of State Farm, outside of that parent where we're allowed to move a lot more quickly to try things and innovate much more quickly and then take those innovations back into State Farm. And that's what we're doing with HiRoad and our direct to consumer business as well as with Quanata, a brand new brand that we just brought to market, which is a platform that's leveraging a lot of the capabilities that have been built up for things like understanding and managing risk, understanding and modeling risk, and then helping people basically better manage their lives.
Patti Harman (04:21):
Wow. It's interesting to see how you're incubating these new technologies and you're able to test them. Chaz, from your perspective, where do you think the insurance industry is in terms of its digital development?
Chaz Perera (04:37):
First, Patti, thanks for the opportunity to speak today, and Jim, it's great to connect with you. I think Jim is absolutely correct that it's in its infancy and I think the challenge is only getting harder and the need to transform is only getting more dire because the insurance industry has a human capital problem. They can't hire people and often they can't even retain the people they have. One recent statistic from the Department of Labor here in the United States is that hiring at insurance companies has slowed by 87% last quarter to this quarter, and primarily hitting personal lines, but certainly hitting commercial lines as well. And the only mechanism to get past that is through continued automation, digitization and really thinking differently about how you engage your customer and create value for them. But importantly also how you engage your employee and create value for them, right?
(05:40)
To retain talent and retain the best talent you really need to give them a different work experience. And insurance companies have tried to do a lot of things around transformation, often in personal lines, often around mobile, but they forget that the value chain is much broader than simply selling a policy. And the companies Jim mentioned are examples of that. The stuff that we do to support insurance carriers and TPAs are examples of that. The value chain is expansive and transforming all parts of the value chain is really important. Insurance companies have only started to scratch the surface.
Patti Harman (06:20):
I'm glad you talked about staffing and what a challenge that has been. I've been involved with programs where we're trying to expose high school and college students to the insurance industry because they have this perception that it's a dry uninteresting industry, and it's just the opposite of that. But all of the insurers are competing against companies like Facebook and all of these other tech companies for the same kind of talent. So you're right, it really is going to be kind of a challenge. So I'm wondering where have you seen some of the greatest advances in InsureTech development? And I'm thinking in terms of different types of technology, and Chaz, I'll ask you that first.
Chaz Perera (07:07):
Yeah, I think where insurance companies and just insurtech generally made its first forays were around the MGA/MGU space. So how can we improve the underwriting experience, improve product or deploy product faster into the market? Unfortunately, as you look at recent IPOs of insurance companies, Hippo, Root and the like, unfortunately the underwriting, the underlying underwriting practice was not as strong as the tech- forward experience they were creating for customers. And so I think a lot of companies have spent a lot of time on the acquisition of the customer. Where they need to spend a lot of time now is really on getting that underwriting decision correct. And frankly, on the claims side, improving claims leakage, at the end of the day, you can generate a lot of revenue, but if you're assessing the risk poorly or you're reserving poorly, you're not a fundamentally sound insurance company. And so I would say they've done a great job thinking about how the buyer will buy insurance. Now we need to start to transition to how will the human at the insurance company assess risk, assess price, assess reserves,
Patti Harman (08:28):
And there are a lot of aspects where technology can help with that too. But I don't want to steal your thunder. So Jim, I'll ask you, what have you seen in terms of the greatest advances in tech development?
Jim Ryan (08:41):
And I think really building on that, I think one of the areas that we've really seen some opportunities there to better price risk and understand risk is in the area of telemetry. And especially with auto policies and being able to understand what people are driving and how they are driving and where they are driving, and then being able to then therefore properly price that risk of providing that policy and properly aligning that policy and the cost of that policy. I think we're still at the very early stages of that as well. There's a lot of innovation to happen there. There's a lot more information and insight that we're just beginning to get access to with things like connected cars and such, that really opens the door for us to really know a lot more and have a lot more insight as to what's going on to be able to properly manage that. That also has implications as you look throughout the value chain on how you manage the customer over time, and then also how you manage any claims that come along as well during the life of the policy.
Patti Harman (09:38):
That's very true, and I think people don't realize that technology permeates every aspect of the insurance ecosystem, and we're just beginning to see how it's impacting that. And along those lines, I'm wondering where have you seen the greatest adoption of InsurTech in the industry? Are there maybe certain aspects where the adoption has been a little bit easier or faster? I'm thinking maybe in terms of either using it for underwriting or the claims process, sales, that sort of thing. Jim, I'll ask you first
Jim Ryan (10:14):
And really just building on this concept of telemetry in auto, because like at State Farm, we've got, if not the largest, one of the largest bases of users of our telemetry product or drive safe and safe product as well as within the premise of our business is to offer behavioral-based insurance. So that based upon your driving, if you drive better, you pay less. And to try to reinforce that positive loop of doing better and getting a result from it and trying to build upon that behavioral over time within our customer base. And we're really seeing some real positive benefits both for the insurer, but even more importantly for the insured, because it's a lot better not to have an accident than to have an accident. So the more we can educate and help people make positive decisions there, the better off they can be and the better we can serve them.
Patti Harman (11:08):
That's so true. I agree. And I find it even with the way that I drive now, and there are certain times that I'll be very careful and I think, no, I don't want to have an accident. I don't have time, I don't want to spend the money. There are just so many other things that come into just making wiser and safer decisions. So Chaz, I'm wondering where you've seen the greatest adoption in InsureTech for the industry.
Chaz Perera (11:33):
I think it's hitting on what Jim just mentioned, Patti. It is on the personal line side, certainly around customer acquisition, the ability to purchase a policy, renew a policy, add endorsements, et cetera, with a mobile app, with a website, is far ahead of what people are doing in life insurance and health insurance in the commercial property and casualty space, largely because the data is highly structured and the underwriting data that you need can be sourced from third parties in a structured manner where all the other product areas that I mentioned have been held back is the fact that they're relying heavily on unstructured data. And that's really the next big solve for the industry is how to corral all that unstructured data. It's frankly, even why on the personal line side claims is challenging to automate against because you're heavily reliant on unstructured data. So where it has been successful in personal lines is on the underwriting and sales, the acquisition and customer acquisition and sales side and the underwriting side. Lots and lots of other opportunities still to be explored and value to be generated.
Patti Harman (12:49):
You've both talked about the adoption on the personal lines. Are you finding that the consumers are comfortable with adopting technology and using it too? I'll ask either one of you.
Chaz Perera (13:02):
Yeah. Look, if you think about today, if you think about who the average buyer is for an insurance policy, whether it's a consumer buying insurance or a risk manager buying a commercial insurance policy, it's an overused term, so pardon, pardon me, but it's millennials and millennials have grown up in an environment where they want an easy purchasing process, but if there is complexity, they want to be able to speak to someone. And so I think as an industry, we've done a great job of trying to solve for the ease, but we haven't connected the final dot taken at the last mile, which is now how do you connect that buyer to an expert at the company so that they can reasonably understand what they're purchasing, what the underlying experience will look like, when God forbid a claim occurs. And that's where I think the real gaps are so fantastic on the front end, a lot of work still to do on the backend.
Patti Harman (14:06):
Yes, true. Jim, anything you want to add to that?
Jim Ryan (14:09):
Yeah, it is a funny thing. I'm only a year into this industry specifically. I grew up in the technology space and in the connectivity space and data and data analytics, that's been a 30-year plus career. And I spent the last year really focused on this and really helping State Farm to bridge between what has been a traditional insurance model into a lot of these new innovations. And one of the many, there's been many epiphanies along the way, but one I've always found really interesting is that insurance is a very odd product. You buy it, you really don't get anything from it until something goes wrong. And then it's basically whoever has a really great experience with an accident or with your house being on fire, that's always a bad thing. So even if you do a great job on the claims side of it, all you're doing is helping to mitigate pain, right?
(15:00)
There is going to be pain. So wow. So now that's your product, right? So how do you go and market that? How do you make that a happy thing? Great, I got insurance. No one gets excited when they get their insurance. So really when you think about modernization of that experience, what's the opportunity there? And it really is an interesting dynamic within State Farm because really if you think of what our mission is, our mission is to help people manage risk in their everyday life, to recover when they run into issues, and then also help them realize their dreams. And that's an aspirational thing, but that actually speaks to our intent, not just to ensure, but to help our customers along the way, and how do we do that? There's a whole new generation of things we can do to help people live better lives, to not have accidents, to not have their house catch fire, to live a longer life in the case of their life insurance policy. And that's the exciting part, I think, of the new offer, part of what insurance has as a potentiality.
Patti Harman (16:03):
I've been covering the insurance industry for a while and it's been interesting for me to kind of watch the dynamics change a little bit and watch insurers become far more proactive in terms of how do we mitigate this risk, how do we help you prevent it from even happening to begin with? And I agree that's a really exciting way to approach the entire insurance experience. So I'm wondering what developments or product adoption gives you the most concern at this point in time? Chaz, you want to give us your thoughts on that?
Chaz Perera (16:38):
Sure. So my company, we are an AI company. We essentially offer an underwriting assistant and a claims assistant to insurance companies. That is AI. And you can appreciate, we've been in the large language model space for a long time, and I regularly have customers asking me questions like, Hey, could your software determine coverage on a claim? I know in our research and development we can, but I don't necessarily want that suddenly alive in the world simply because I don't think insurance companies fundamentally understand the change management exercise that's required before you institutionalize something like that to that degree. And the example I'd give you here is generally there are two types of people. They're the people that are overworked. And that's not uncommon in insurance. I can imagine a claims adjuster having a pending file of 400 claim files. And so they're going to make mistakes, they're going to skip important steps in a process. And then there's the subset of people that are just lazy. And I can imagine a scenario where software says this claim shouldn't be covered, that's communicated to the customer. The customer calls in and says, why was my claim denied? And a human says, oh, well the machine told me to do it.
(18:04)
That is why I think when you think about how you integrate technology and integrate technology into your environment, yes, there is a technical exercise and aspiration around that, but it's really a change management exercise. How do you change the behaviors of the people to make sure that they feel enabled and enriched to do their job effectively, but own the decisions that are happening in the process? And so one of the things that we talk about as an AI company is how do we ensure that there is a human at the end of each of these transactions and that we take care of the human properly, the human employee of the insurance company, the human customer of the insurance company, because that is your brand at work. All the other stuff doesn't matter. And that's really the one thing that we talk about constantly. How do we make sure that that comes to life?
Patti Harman (18:56):
That's so important because insurance is such a relational industry and business, and once you lose that personal relationship, it changes everything else. So Jim, what developments or product adoption is creating some concern for you?
Jim Ryan (19:12):
Yeah, I think for us, on the one hand, we know there's a tremendous amount of data that's now coming together that's being created, that's coming from many different sources that's now going to become more readily available. And there's also more technology to make use of that data and turn that data into information and insight. But for us, one of the key areas that we're keeping a close eye on, and it's one of the things I think that's fairly unique about State Farm in the industry is we're a mutual company, which was again, another new thing for me. It's my first mutual company In 30 years, I've always worked for companies where it's my job to go make money for my shareholders. Actually, our shareholders are our customers. It's not our job to make money for them. It's our job to help protect them. It's our job to work for them and on behalf of them to help improve their lives.
(20:01)
And so we're not in this to make a profit, we're actually in this to go accomplish that objective, which is to help our customers. And so with that context in mind, when we are looking at data, when we're looking at the evolution of all those technologies, we're looking at ways to enable those customers to have better information and insight about themselves, about their risk, about their lives, so that they can actually better manage their lives. My fear, quite frankly, and I think one of the industry fears is as this data is coming together, as you have more information and insight, the companies that aren't necessarily really completely aligned with those end users who have their own interests in mind, who need to go make their profits for their shareholders, that the power of this stuff is going to be quite startling actually, I think to a lot of folks.
(20:48)
And if not properly utilized, if not properly informed, if not properly centered around the user. And if the users don't understand that's what's happening around them, that we have a real opportunity for this to go sideways and for a lot of this data to be used, quite frankly, against these individuals, not on behalf of these individuals. So we really need to closely manage that and closely understand what's going on there. And we need the customers to make smart choices about who they're doing business, so they're actually make sure that they're actually, they're protected and that the evolution of this technology is to their benefit.
Patti Harman (21:22):
Yeah, it's going to be exciting to see what happens in the next couple of years. I just want to remind our audience, if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat and we'll take a look at those at the end of our broadcast. So where do you see, we've talked a little bit about the developments that give you some concern, but I'm wondering where do you see some of the greatest risks with rapid adoption of technology? And I'm thinking in terms of Gen AI and some of the other large language models, there are a lot of benefits to using them, but I think insurers are also aware that there are some risks involved with a really rapid adoption. And Chaz, I'm wondering what you're seeing from your perspective.
Chaz Perera (22:14):
A whole bunch of customers that use our Gen AI product today, every single day, we have customers that also are experimenting with the likes of ChatGPT or Bard or llama, you name it. I think the thing that people need to recognize about this space, by the way, super exciting space, even with all the drama happening at OpenAI today, super exciting space. You need to find people who fundamentally understand the industry, understand the language. And in some ways, and I think Jim sort of speaks to this as well, have a reverence for what the industry is trying to achieve. Because to do this right requires a lot of contextual understanding of how decisions are made, why those decisions are important and simple things like understanding the nuance in insurance language from country to country. Those things matter, right? Those are the types of things that lead to in the context of large language models and gen AI hallucinations.
(23:20)
If you don't fundamentally understand those things, you're going to get to the wrong answer, which is why we have spent so much time training and training and enriching and training and enriching these models. And the humans that are training these models and improving these models are our customers' employees because they are the true experts in the work that is conducted every single day. And I think this is where people sort of make mistakes first when they're thinking about not just GenAI, but AI generally. And I would say the second thing, Patti, in the context of AI, AI is not simply the instantiation of a model. It is very much about how do you keep that model feature rich? And there's this really sad statistic about ai, homegrown and insurance companies. Essentially the shelf life for an AI built by an insurance company is under six months, even though they spent a year building it.
(24:17)
And the reason for that is model drift, and there is no underlying system by which to manage, maintain, and enhance these models. So they think the job is just to put a model out there and then you're done. No, that's like step on in a long journey. And these are the things, this is why, not to hawk my wares here a little bit, but just to say this is why you should work with an insurtech like Roots Automation because we could help to accelerate that journey, but do it in a way that's accretive, not just to you as a company, but to the industry as a whole. Because really what we're trying to do is solve a problem for an industry.
Patti Harman (24:54):
And I was going to say it just underscores the importance of collaboration between all of the different players, both within the insurance industry and insurance adjacent, I will say for the most part. So Jim, where do you see the greatest risks with the rapid adoption of certain types of technology at this point?
Jim Ryan (25:15):
I think when these models are built, they're built for a reason. And I think really the purpose behind these is some of the opportunity and also some of the major risk. For example, if you're building a model in claims to make sure that you optimize the ability to resolve claims and to handle them positively, ethically, and completely as possible, right? You'll build one type of model. If you're building a model that says, I want to maximize my profits while paying out as little as possible in my claims, you're going to have a different type of model. So it's really the intent of the model when you start is the output of the model when you're done, and it'll evolve over time based upon, it's like a child, they grow up and based upon how you raise them and then how you actually continue to use them over time.
(26:10)
So I think that one of the dangers here is that these models are extremely powerful and that if they're not properly raised, if they're not raised with the context of the end user in mind and proper care of that end user in mind, then you can have very odd things that actually happen as a result. Now, the challenge with that is that you have companies, they may be fit for purpose, right? If you're maximizing profit, then you may be very well able to actually train models that actually you to increase your profits. One of the things that's always been good about the insurance industry is that it actually still has a lot of people in the middle. And that is a burden because it burdens our cost, it burdens our ability to find effective labor and train that labor and keep that labor and task.
(26:58)
But one of the things that people always appreciate is that if your house burns down, trust me, you want to talk to someone. And that's why our agent base is so important. That's why our relationships are so important. And the key part of our value prop within State Farm is that relationship. And I don't think that's going anywhere. In fact, what we're looking to do is leverage technologies to increase the relationship, increase the value of that real time relationship so that the agents can be properly informed, the claims agents can be properly informed and have that nutritious conversation with the right information and the right resolution. But the risk ultimately to your question is that if you don't have that intent, if you have a different intent, your models would be very good at that point.
Patti Harman (27:40):
Great, thank you. So we've been talking a little bit about some of the risks, but I want to know what do you think have been some of the most important technological innovations over, and I'll say just maybe like the last 12 to 18 months, there's been a lot that's been going on in the insurance space and in the insurtech space, but what have been some of the most important innovations that you've seen, Jim?
Jim Ryan (28:05):
Well, yeah, I'll end with this, which is, it is funny, and maybe it helps make my point is that it's an innovation that's happening that then insurance actually, and the users benefit from the evolution in driver safety with the technology being deployed in vehicles today, the various different assisted driving capabilities that are coming to bear. Now I'm just in the process of buying a new car for my daughter. So I've been out of the market for a few years and everything now has these driver assist capabilities to various degrees. It might not be completely self-driving, but it assists you in terms of braking, it assists you in terms of lane. There's a lot of help there. And if it's properly deployed, it is going to reduce accidents. It is going to reduce death on the road, and that's a great thing. And that will help people in terms of their cost burden when it comes to insurance. So I think that will have a knock on impact, a positive impact for insurance, and we're looking to find and discover and assist and do more things in that space.
Patti Harman (29:00):
So Chaz, what do you think have been some of the most important technological innovations over the last couple of months?
Chaz Perera (29:06):
I think Generative AI is the answer to quite a few things. But most importantly, where I think it's most important to insurance is the opportunity to dedicate humans to the most complex tasks and dedicate humans to the final decision and the communication of that final decision, the ability to be empathetic, maybe sometimes sympathetic. That is insurance in a nutshell. You made a point, Patti, that it's hard to attract people into this industry. In many ways it sort of makes sense because you never buy your own insurance policy until you're an adult. You never really interact with an insurance company until you're an adult. So we don't have many opportunities to influence the customer and influence the way they buy and the way they think of the industry. One way to do that is to really have a higher degree of touch and a higher degree of engagement between humans and their customers, our underwriters and our claims people and their customers. And GenAI, I think is absolutely going to enable the human to focus on the most complex tasks and make those final decisions.
Patti Harman (30:20):
Technology is just going to play such an important role because as you've both said, having people come into the industry to offset some of the knowledge that, I mean in terms of the number of people who are retiring over the next three to five years, I think technology's role is going to become just that much more critical to help manage some of these decision processes and just kind of help spread the burden or the importance of handling all different aspects of the insurance process. So what I want to know now is what excites you the most about the innovations that you're seeing in the insurance industry? I've been covering it for a while and it's just, to me, it's so exciting to see so many different things coming about and how it's just really changing the practice and different aspects of the insurance industry. So Jim, I'll ask you first what innovations excite you?
Jim Ryan (31:17):
Yeah, I do think we are at the very beginnings of a major transformation in terms of really helping things not go wrong versus actually financially compensating people for when they do go wrong. Just a real quick example, to get out of the auto space for a second, we launched a product here working with Whisker labs called Tinging, which actually you plug it in and it tells you what's going on with the electrical current in your house. And literally thousands of fires have been stopped already as a result of people uncovering issues with their electrical and getting it fixed rather than waiting for it to start a fire. So we're now actually positively impacting lives here by protecting people and stopping bad things from happening. And we're at the very edge of major breakthroughs in that I look forward to the day where basically people's even notion of insurance is about actually, oh, that's the company that helps protect me. Not that that's the company that takes my money until something goes wrong, that that's a company that actually I rely upon to actually be in my corner and to make sure that I'm doing the right things and that I'm safe.
Patti Harman (32:24):
That would be a huge shift in terms of how people see the insurance industry. So Chaz, what innovations excite you in terms of what's going on?
Chaz Perera (32:37):
Yeah, two things from a product insurance product perspective, Patti, the fact that the insurance industry has so much data now they can start to leverage that data. This unstructured data in an effective way opens the opportunity for parametric insurance at a pace that we've never been able to exercise before. And it will also open up essentially a whole new industry, which is just event-based insurance, right? You need insurance for five minutes, here it is. And I think that's opening the doors will open the doors for significantly more innovation at other industry in a way that we haven't been able to. So from a product perspective, I'm really excited about that. And then to your point about talent leaving the organization, how do we retain talent and how do we retain knowledge? I think about some of the stuff we're doing from an RD perspective. I don't think we're that far away from a GI for industry where you can tell software, you're an underwriter, you're a claims adjuster, go, and it contextually can do a lot of the work that we are struggling to hire for.
Patti Harman (33:47):
That's true. I mentioned earlier about being involved in telling high school and college students about the insurance industry, and I think that there are just so many different aspects, and I'm hoping that some of this new technology development will create some excitement about working in the insurance industry because not only do they like to help people, they really are so focused on utilizing technology all of the time. So hopefully some of these innovations will catch their attention and let them see that there is so much more to the industry than maybe what they had perceived or thought ahead of time. You both have been involved in product development for some time, and I'm wondering how has it changed over the last few years and where do you see it progressing from here? Chaz, I'll ask you that first because that has certainly been a hallmark of your company and what you've been involved with.
Chaz Perera (34:46):
Yeah, I think the speed by which you can conceive test and go to market is substantially faster than anything we saw five years ago, nevermind a decade ago. Moore's law in a very real sense, just in the context of this industry, which I think bodes well for product innovation, insurance product innovation, not just technology innovation, but insurance product innovation in the industry. I'm really excited about that and that should bring new people into the industry. That's the sort of thing people want to be a part of, that they're building something new. And I certainly think that's what I would be looking forward to.
Patti Harman (35:32):
Jim, are there certain products that have really changed or how has it changed over the last few years? For you, when you were explaining what State Farm is doing, to me that is a huge innovation, but what are some areas where you've seen product development change and how do you see it progressing from here?
Jim Ryan (35:52):
I agree that the speed at which things can get done is amazing. Now, basically, if you can think of it, there's no technical reason why things can't happen, and I've never been able to say that in my 30 plus years. There's always really hard stuff that, whoa, we've got to solve that problem. It's not really a technology problem anymore. The problem now is doing the right things and then probably even more so explaining that to the consumer of these things and explaining what their opportunity is within this and so that they can make smart decisions and that they understand the value. And then evolving the value proposition of these various different offers and products and services, especially the insurance space. And that, I think it's a different job. It's not really a technology development job anymore. It's a marketing job, it's a positioning job, it's a brand job, but the technology is there and the capabilities are available, and that really, it's exciting.
(36:48)
It terrifying also at times because the opportunity to do things that aren't so good are also quite available to people. But the opportunity to be transformative and to really provide significant, fundamental new value for consumers in this space and really all customers in the space, it's there. And quite frankly, it is necessary. The insurance industry needs to evolve and it will, and it's happening. And as it happens, it's going to be major. It's always been a major bedrock of our economy, quite frankly. You cannot have an economy without an insurance model. Think about that. You can't have a house, you can't have a commercial environment. You can't have anything without someone willing to actually spread the risk and provide you with the means to actually function. So that's been forever and that will continue. But to do that now in new ways and unique ways, in higher value ways, above and beyond just the mere protection of financial risk, that's really the future of this business. And it is very exciting.
Patti Harman (37:49):
Yes, it really is. And when you consider that insurance literally touches every aspect of our lives, I just think that there are so many opportunities for this industry going forward. We have covered an awful lot in the last 35 or 40 minutes, and I'm wondering, is there something that I haven't asked you that you think is important for our audience to know when it comes to either new product development or adoption or anything else involving the use of technology in the industry? Chaz, I'll start with you, please.
Chaz Perera (38:26):
I guess just a broad comment or statement, Patti, as you think about technology that you want to bring into your company, remember two things. Every single process is bookended by people. Even if you are able to automate a process, there is still a person at the start and still a person at the end, and that's what you're optimizing for. So always remember that. The second is, I know insurance people don't like to hear this, but insurance company to company is all the same. So if you're looking to adopt technology, be open to adopting the technology the way it works, don't try to overly customize it because you are breaking the technology. And as soon as that technology is broken, it's utterly useless to you. And I think this is a mistake. Big companies and small companies make time and time again. They're excited about new tech, but then they try to make it their version and it just doesn't work properly.
Patti Harman (39:33):
So true. Jim, I'm going to let you have the last word. So what would you like our audience to know?
Jim Ryan (39:40):
Well, remember the name, Quanata. You're going to hear a lot more about it in the future.
(39:46)
And secondly, I just think at any time anyone is looking at building something new, and this applies to insurance, but it really applies to anything quite frankly, but especially in insurance and especially in the context of the way that we are doing insurance and how we serve our customers and shareholders, you got to keep the consumer in the center of it, the ultimate end entity that is going to consume your product and service. And I think a lot of times, because insurance is complicated and it's large and there's big numbers involved and big people involved, that a lot of times the ultimate end consumer sometimes gets lost in the equation a little bit. But you got to keep in front and center, and there's so many things that we can do to do a better job for that consumer. And that's if we focus our energy on that and we really look to improve the quality of the lives of the people that we're insuring, we're going to end up with great products and services and all the rest of it'll take care of itself.
Patti Harman (40:39):
That is so true. Well, thank you so much to our audience for joining us today. Thank you to our guests, Chaz Perera of Roots Automation, and Jim Ryan of State Farm, and we look forward to seeing you again next month for our next transformation forum.
Jim Ryan (40:56):
Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Patti Harman (40:58):
Okay, thank you.
Jim Ryan (40:59):
Cheers.
