Post-COVID, Where will insurance ideas come from?

Nicole Gunderson, Principal, ManchesterStory; Beti Cung, VP of innovation and labs, CSAA

Transcript:

Nicole Gunderson (00:10):

So I was going to use that as a starting point. For my own background, I joined Manchester story, and I'll talk a little bit more about that momentarily. But prior to joining the firm last year, I led the Global Insurance Accelerator also in Des Moines, Iowa. That's a really early stage accelerator for Insurtech companies backed by insurance carriers more specifically. And I did that for four years, from 2019 through 2022. That was really my entree to meeting Nathan and the Digon team and Insurtech, my background prior to that was actually in financial services and FinTech. A lot of parallels there as I came into the industry and what was so interesting for me about the GIA and why did carriers want to support this organization, it came down to everyone's in their own kind of innovation journey as the carrier side. And what are ways that you get exposed to ideas that are impacting the industry through these Insurtech companies. And in the case of the GIA, as I mentioned, it was really early stage. So part of the model was mentorship. And so carriers would find resources internally who would mentor these startups, and it was very much a two-way street. So as much as the mentors were supporting and helping these early Insurtech companies get clear on the problem statement that they're solving because of that subject matter expertise, inherently those folks were learning a lot about what is it like to be a young emerging company who's cash constrained, time constrained, the speed with which they move and make decisions. And so you bring that back into the organization and the loop was through that and that ideation, it elevated the ways that groups and teams and organizations with carriers were working. And so I think that that had the interest around that only continued to grow in a, what was the model at the GIA pre Covid, I was a fully immersive in-person program and then through covid it had to move very virtual, but mentors could be, we were actually able to grow the mentorship more globally because you didn't have to be in Des Moines, Iowa. And so that accelerator model, there's a lot of program, I'm using the GIA because the program I got to run and that was the experience. But for those that saw David Grit speak on Monday on the talent conversation, he runs Insurtech, New York, they're doing wonderful things there in terms of allowing lots of different players in the ecosystem to get engaged with Insurtech companies as a way I think to continue to learn what's going on, validate those ideas together and partner. So that's that. I'll hand it to you Beti. You can talk more about the labs and I think maybe we can unpack that a little bit and then we come back after that and I can share a little bit more also about maybe one other way that we're seeing in the industry for both internal to organizations as well as ways that they're seeking out externally.

Beti Cung (04:10):

Cool. Thanks Nicole. So I actually joined CSAA about four years ago, exactly in May of 2019. So right before covid. And the labs at that time was meant to be a more technology forward organization, very small, about four people total, including myself, just looking at how disruptive emerging technologies would be to the insurance industry, which is obviously true, it's disrupted to any industry. And then more broadly now in my role as innovation in labs, looking at not only just the effect of technology, but also other disruptive factors such as business models, the environment. So where do ideas come from post covid anywhere. In fact, we're running an open idea challenge right now. So have you tried Google Open Audio Climate Resilience Challenge? You'll find it open to anyone including competitors, anyone in the US or outside of the us. Anyone with an idea? Anyone who cares and wants to sponsor it or anyone who wants to vote on good ideas. And the reason I bring this up is because Nicole and I were talking before this and we said, well, has Covid changed you? And I've seen, I've been in the city in San Francisco for about 19 years and the city is changed by this pandemic. And I think kind of conferences have changed. So have each of you changed and has the way you work changed? One of the factors that we thought was we need to be more collaborative, we need to share more, we need to figure out how to solve major in some ways impossible problems such as wildfire, such as flooding, erosion of coastal lands. And it's not enough to say, well, someone should do something about this. We should do something about this. And so I think that's my fundamental pivot or change is that the pandemic required incredible amounts of collaborative energy in order to get to the other side. And this is actually my first in-person conference after covid, believe it or not. And I'm happy to see you guys here. It's obviously not a packed crowd, but still some people braved it. So I don't know. What about you Nicole?

Nicole Gunderson (06:52):

I think I'll build on that with our model at Manchester Story. So we're a venture capital firm, limited partners. We have an opportunity and I guess an expectation to create financial returns. But inherently, because our limited partners are insurance carriers, they're looking to us strategically as well. So we call them strategic partners. And the things that we do as a firm to create value for our carrier partners are things like monthly or quarterly round tables that bring folks from, they might be innovation roles. It really actually kind of depends on the topic, who they will bring into the conversation. But as I was thinking about just this, where do we seek ideas? And I think it goes back internal is one thing, and there's I think processes that companies have in place to invite ideas and teams and the organizations. But being able to also have ways to connect with industry peers, I think essentially was why we're getting folks participating in these virtual events that we're having. Because we literally, a topic was conferences and people just wanted to talk about what are all the, there's all Insurtech or different industry conferences going on and we can't go to all of them. We also have budgets, just like startups have budgets and they're contracting. So how do people think about where they're getting content and meeting people and having conversations. It was an entire hour of folks across, arguably in some cases carriers, but it was a welcomed conversation. So that I was thinking about that relative to pre kind of pre and post pandemic where maybe we went from the intensity of everything in person to the intensity of having to go and live and operate virtually. Now it's kind of no going back, but there is a forward mix. And so I think this balance of in-person online, how you meet and connect with people to then bring those ideas back into the organization is definitely evolving. And those are maybe just a few ways that is, I was thinking about it and Beti and I were talking and hearing each other that we wanted to share. Maybe before we kind of continue, is there anything top of mind for anyone else around that you wanted to hear about or offer? And that's okay.

Beti Cung (10:14):

Yeah. What do you guys care about or what do you want to hear about? Any questions? Do you want your tools or No, I mean guess one thing this is forcing me to do is be way more creative as a person, which is good. I lead an innovation team, but ideation, we throw that word loosely out, but there's a lot of really bad ideas that happen in those sessions where everyone's just like, Hey, I know let's protect our land or something. It's kind of useless and you're trying to be really positive and say, oh great, there are no dumb ideas. But I think focus is really important now because there's a hundred thousand distractions and also a lot of work. And so some of the things that I'm trying to rethink is how do I create sort of open time where let a thousand flowers bloom and then focus time where we are really critical. My boss and I, Debbie Brequin, she's the chief strategy and innovation officer at the company. We looked at a couple of different models. So some is one model that she loved is the Pixar model and they have this whole Pixar studio model. And on some level it's kind of brutal because people say you go through it and you leave broken, but you come back with a much better product. And the idea is that you go in there knowing that you're going to get critiqued in a real deep kind of hurtful way. But at the other side, when you come and you start and you think about it, you come out with a better thing. And so we're trying to figure out something that works for our culture because we have a very community centered culture. What can we do that's similar and when does the in-person matter and when is it better to be external and when is it better to be by yourself? And I have a lot of data scientists in my team and they happen to be introverts. And so it's really forced me to read business psychology and analysis and how to set up teams and all kinds of things in order to really pull stuff out of people. So we will do the ideation session in Miro or mural or whatever and capture ideas and organize them and rank them and prioritize them. But then I also tell people, Hey, go back and start critiquing those ideas and be brutal and then send them to me so that people don't see how mean you are. And then I'll fix it. And then we're going to come back and discuss each of these ideas as if they weren't our own. And then we're going to discuss this idea as if I'm going to take money out of your pocket and invest in this idea. And those kind of different shifts of mindset are kind of what I'm trying to do now because like you said, I think we leave fundamentally changed by these major dramatic events and we shouldn't ignore them and go business as usual. Now we're back. Yeah.

Audience Member 1 (13:31):

So that's very interesting. I don't know, I'll throw this out there. I don't know how on topic, but certainly

Beti Cung (13:36):

Yeah, go for it.

Audience Member 1 (13:37):

Topic I saw headline three carriers and I've seen industry where CEO reversed the decision to be.

Beti Cung (13:46):

Oh yeah, I've seen those.

Audience Member 1 (13:47):

Do you have any opinions whether insurance is atypical or typical every industry on working on site, like a sustainable post?

Beti Cung (13:57):

Yeah.

Nicole Gunderson (14:03):

I'll just repeat the question or the co comment quick was around, in one example was a CEO reversing the decision of a company to be remote and talking more. Is this specific to insurance or we seeing other industries is what the path forward is?

Audience Member 1 (14:24):

And how you feel about it. Workforces in general.

Nicole Gunderson (14:27):

Yeah. I'll share a few thoughts and I think both from, we're as Manchester story, we're an eight person team and it's interesting, fairly in-office culture. And when I joined the firm had gone through a cycle with COVID where people would still come into the office because everyone had a physical space door and all that, and they would be there to have that opportunity. But take meetings still on video in everybody's room. And I joined last year and there were a few times I'm like, why aren't we all getting together? Everybody's here, but everyone's just jumping on a video out of convenience. And you get used to, well, I've got the double screen and I've got all my stuff set up and so I can see the model here and I can do that. And it's funny, I think we're breaking some of those habits now, but there is absolutely a level of flexibility around when do we really have the in-person full team meetings and why we're doing that versus it's fine to be here because that might be convenient for you to have an office versus your home doesn't really work for you. Now more broadly, I feel like I've been asking folks outside of insurance about this actually recently, what are their companies doing of different size and scale? And I think one friend in the large FinTech space just the other day said she is preparing for it's coming that they're going to need to start coming back to the office. And the conversation was, you're never going to come back to the office. And just like I can feel it, the signals are coming that it'll be not full time, not five days a week, but there's going to be a new expectation that even one year ago was that's never going to happen. And so I think time is going to be the indicator of this because I think part of where I've read a lot about this I think is really this topic at hand, which is how do you bring the best of everyone to the company and to their roles? And I think a lot of organizations are still struggling to figure out that appropriate mix and then balanced with maybe polar opinions on it that just doesn't fit an entire organization. So a few of my thoughts and maybe experiences around it.

Beti Cung (17:48):

Yeah, Actually your question I'm really conflicted by, because I own San Francisco real estate, so I would love all the conferences to come back. Yeah, we're underwater, but that's it. I also love work from home. I had a really hard time getting dressed this morning, so it's tricky. And as far as my particular company is concerned, I don't know. We're representative of the typical insurance company, but we are actually proceeding full steam ahead with a distributed workforce and work from home or flex work, and it's going to be hard for us to roll back because our chief risk officer has moved across the country. Our head of commercial has moved to Arkansas. So we've said that was fine and we'll lose talent if we revert. So I think it's going to be a balance. I think it will be more flex, which is cool because when I joined the company in May of 2019, I was in Walnut Creek most of the time and it was like a 95% in office, maybe 99. And people would ask, can we work from home? And it would be like, oh, maybe from, and we're still thinking about it. We're not sure it's possible. Well, I guess the answer is yes, it is possible then. So how do you make the best of both worlds? How do you create synergies? And I think one of the things we will believe in is actually paying to have people come back together in different locations in order to create synergy and then those together points. Because it requires time and money, they'll have to be pretty mindful and planful, if that's a word, which is part of the sort of different ideation things I talked about. You really need to think about it. I made all my team take Strengths Finders. I want to know what they were about so that when I plan these things, I know who's good at what and figure out how to position them.

Audience Member 1 (19:52):

If I could comment. Things that I've learned this week, all I've heard is that we need to find young employees and there's going to be talent. And when I saw this headline, I thought, that's one company that's not going to be getting the talent that you need. I'm a firm believer. Distributed.

Beti Cung (20:08):

Yeah, a hundred percent. You know what? I also read another headline that said older workers yay are in demand for their knowledge and experience. And so we all got a shot here. I think it's good. Let's think forward. Right? Anyone else?

Audience Member 2 (20:29):

Yeah, I'm always curious, one more that setting up these innovation labs and all that from a culture standpoint, how separate are they still carriers are slow to move or change. So in your experience studying, how are you separating creating that wall between the carrier side and the innovation labs?

Beti Cung (21:04):

Yeah, Thank you for the question. So like I said, I joined the insurance company four years ago and I'm not traditionally from insurance. I was at Kimberly Clark in digital insurance. Before that I was at Microsoft in strategic and emerging business. I had two startup companies. So I'm kind of a nomadic person I guess in terms of my career. So I don't want to answer as an insurance executive because I don't know if I am one, but I will say that my experience has been that it depends how motivated people are, how quickly they can work. And also ultimately organizations are people. So if you put the right people in the right seats, you can do things. So CSAA is 108 year old company and they stood up a new line of business, which is their commercial offering called Mobilitas about three years ago. And now the company's doing great. We have partnerships with crews, we have partnerships with Lyft. So it can be done. I think you just need to think about who and what, right? I mean, I don't want to say general things, so build with me.

Nicole Gunderson (22:31):

A slightly different perspective on that question and not from a lab's perspective, but what I have seen, and I'll speak a little bit more to my role at the GIA was there for four years. A large part of what we were helping carriers look at was how do you bring Insurtech ideas into the company and really who's the champion? You can have an innovation leader in an innovation budget, but if there's no business unit alignment, it is probably destined to fail by just saying, oh, we thought this was a really good idea. Now you get to inherit it and commercialize it. So I think that where I've seen that be more successful is still having, I love when I see and I hear, I think innovation is everyone's responsibility at an organization. You certainly can have leaders and I think it has to be a message from the down that it is supported so that people in their roles can raise their hands and say, I think there's a better or different way to do this thing. Otherwise, if it's not coming from the top, that's really hard to feel like it's going to be supported or not a lost, lost cause. But really it's that connecting the dots between the business units who are having the problems or seeking the solutions with who else internally is helping to look outside. I think the other challenge there, and this is as much in my new role as then is there's also a lot of Insurtech companies and it's super overwhelming to be like, okay, we've got a claims problem. Who are all of the solutions out there that we could potentially work with? So having a funnel for that to come in and someone to help champion distilling that down. But you still have to have the business unit alignment.

Beti Cung (24:50):

And Nicole made actually a really important point that I want to double down on, which is the way I created my labs, I thought of it as a microcosm of the larger company. So I want people who have some claims experience, I want people who have some service experience. I want a marketing person in there. It's not just recruiting from Silicon Valley or something. It's actually kind of creating this mini group that can have the same collisions as the larger group. And so then that makes some of the solutions that you come up with more real, right? Yeah, there's a lady with her hand up the back.

Audience Member 3 (25:27):

In terms of products, customers demanding have you are for coverage or maybe not. People worry more and something unexpected and now we see that we're going back to, or there's a sheet of product.

Nicole Gunderson (26:21):

One perspective I have on it is I think employee benefits as a distribution channel has taken and is changing a lot at the moment. And so what used to I think more traditional benefits need to be used by the majority of employees is now a perspective on, okay, we've got a group of people who have this really this need and it's not going to be everyone because it's a part of specific part of their life cycle, but we've got to offer a benefit that meets the need of that cohort of people. And so we're seeing a lot around the Insurtech FinTech companies. I would say even Health tech because it, it's really, there's a mix of solutions there that are meeting the needs of employers for the way that they're now looking at benefits quite differently. And that's, I think really come from Covid. How many more people are caregivers now? And does your company offer you any sort of caregiving solution or paid time off to be a caregiver, not vacation, taking care of a sick and loved one. So those, I think we're seeing a lot of evolution in the employee be employee benefits space.

Beti Cung (28:06):

So I'm going to take a slightly different spin on your question. Well, or maybe not. I don't think Covid has changed the product mix. I think that the product mix will face an incredible amount of change, but it's not driven by much more long-term trends around demography, climate change, the way people drive or don't drive. And I think Covid was an inflection point that was dramatic that let people, it's like you're on this path and then something comes and shuts you out of that path and then you're kind of wobbling back to it. So in that case, I don't think so, but the products are changing. It's not because of Covid, if that makes sense. Like usage based driving. I don't think that's because of Covid, but it's going to be increasing. So you know what Nicole said about caregiving, that will increase because there's, someone recently called it the silver Tsunami, but I'm part of the sandwich generation between elderly parents and then the younger generation and you feel it. So those things are going to change what people need, and that's going to be our reality.

Nicole Gunderson (29:37):

Anybody else? Any more questions or topics to lob out there? No. Anything else? Yeah, I don't know if there is. Yeah, I think we covered a lot of what we had in mind. So Nathan, we'll hand it. Sorry, hand it to you. The mic is yours.

Nathan (30:11):

Thank you. Thank you Beti and Nicole, really appreciate you coming in. That's it for us. We'll be announcing next year's dig in as soon as we are ready. We have women in insurance leadership in November in Chicago, so if you are interested in that program, we'll have there's information for that all over the horizon and dig in websites. On behalf of all of our speakers and all of our staff, actually, I should say personally thank you to Alma in the back there who took this over at the last minute when we had a staffing change. And the rest of our event staff, Patrice, Anisha, Lizette, who else do I have to name? Alma, Megan, Sharon, Kevin and Michael who are handling photography and our AV team as well. Thank you to everyone for all your help. Putting a dig in 2022 together this year. Have a safe trip back to wherever you're going. Thank you.