As a carrier on the forefront of embedded insurance with a mature set of capabilities, Nationwide will delve into the challenges and opportunities presented by embedded insurance and provide insights on how to successfully navigate the rapidly evolving landscape and stay ahead of the curve. Attendees will learn about the latest technology advancements, best practices, and case studies on how to successfully create an embedded insurance platform.
Key Takeaways:
- How to leverage technology to offer innovative protection solutions
- Best Practices and Technological Advancements
- Thinking Outside-In & Beyond Distribution
Michael Shashoua (00:11):
Welcome everyone to unleashing the Power of Embedded Insurance, navigating the Future of Insurance. I am Michael Shashoua, Senior Editor at Digital Insurance, and I am here today with Brian Disbrow, Associate Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships Technology, and Rebecca Nickoll, Assistant Vice President, Strategic Partnerships Digital Platform. So we will jump right in since we have 30 minutes. How do you define embedded insurance?
Brian Disbrow (00:42):
Yeah, I will start with that. When we think about embedded insurance, it is about how do you really place protection products you inside places and ecosystems where members and our customers are working and living every day. Really it is about adding that extra context for that particular partner so that whether they are that the member is buying a house or buying a car or performing some other transaction, that is a moment that matters, that needs protection. That protection is just there along for the ride at a time where they might not be thinking about it. Okay. Would you add,
Rebecca Nickoll (01:19):
And I would say we talk about it in a range of levels of embeddedness. So it could be as simple as a person is buying a car and they link out to another website to go complete an insurance quote and find a policy. It could be something that is so seamlessly integrated into that partner's customer experience that they do not even know that they are executing another transaction while they are buying their car. And then the other dimension I would add is when we talk about embedded insurance, a lot of times we think about distribution, quoting and buying a policy. We think of it in a broader view of the insurance value chain. So thinking about how customers can access their policy to perform servicing tasks or how they can start a claim or see a status of a claim.
Michael Shashoua (02:17):
How did Nationwide develop its embedded insurance offering?
Rebecca Nickoll (02:23):
Sure. We started, this was a business strategy to go to market through partnerships because the value of embedded insurance is as a carrier you can access customers who are executing, like Brian said, other things that are meaningful to them. I always say no one wakes up saying, I want to go buy an insurance policy today, but people do wake up saying, I want to buy a car or I want to go look for a new home. And those are the things that people want to be, they are interested there. There is a lot of consumer stickiness to brands. And so it was a business strategy to say we can reach a different type of consumer through partnering with companies who are in industries adjacent to insurance. So we started with a couple of potential partnerships thinking about what technologies we needed to build and how we needed to think about creating the merging of our customer experience with that partner's customer experience and built those solutions in a way that they could scale to multiple partners. And so I think the core tenant that we have developed our solutions with is flexibility that we can build once, but reuse the components with multiple partners.
Brian Disbrow (03:54):
I would just add to that as Rebecca's Technology partner, this also started back at Nationwide, we, we have spent many years modernizing our core, a lot of our core systems. And in doing so from a Technology perspective, that meant API enabling our value chain across the board. And that was specifically started as a Technology initiative in order to get speed, efficiency, Dev Ops and all of the things that comes with it. But quickly, what we are able to determine is that APIs are not in integration strategy, they are a business strategy when you can open up that value chain in such a way that you can create partnerships that you might not have dreamed of before. And so that is, I would say that is how also the incarnation of what partnerships look like at Nationwide is we had or have an API development portal and API gateway and on top of that became the foundation of how partnerships occur like Rebecca mentioned.
Michael Shashoua (04:59):
So on that foundation, how do you continue to develop what you offer in embedded insurance?
Brian Disbrow (05:04):
Yeah, maybe I will start by saying that if I think about how we keep developing it clearly on the technical side to continue that thought, is it is well beyond API? I think the trouble is, there is no good word in the Technology world unless you want to say API and streams and blockchain, but we normally just use the word API and we are meaning all of these general ways folks can integrate, but we are looking at and working with partners, using blockchain, using streams, etcetera. We have partnerships with those enabled. When I think about what is beyond, it is what Rebecca said from a business concept outside of Technology, it is thinking beyond distribution to servicing. And when I think about servicing, we have the ability with an open value chain to really disrupt the industry rethinking about how some of these member moments actually occur.
(06:03)
You get in an accident, it no longer has to feel like you call and make a transaction to file a claim. With the proper partnerships and the Technology enablement, you could be in a crash, your car is the one that files the claim, your car could have the tow truck on the way instead of the hassle of finding a rental car. The rental car shows up to you. It could be your smart home is contextually aware of your protection and is actively working with your carrier and multiple sets of partners in order to keep you an umbrella protected. So that is kind of where we are aimed and where we are working next.
Rebecca Nickoll (06:44):
And I think by the very nature of it, embedded insurance can not be done by a carrier alone. It has to be through a partner. And so I think the key is looking for those partners who can help. The examples Brian gave bring something new to the insurance experience. that is where the magic is. The partner can bring the data or the prevention of water issues for a customer that adds something to that experience to make it not just, in our case, nationwide experience and a partner ecosystem. It can be a brand new experience that couldn't have been created by that partner or by nationwide alone.
Brian Disbrow (07:34):
It is probably worthwhile, actually, just based on some of the other talks that have happened over the last few days is when Rebecca and I use the word partner, we are usually in this context, we are always meaning a company that is having an ecosystem members, customers is performing some service industry adjacent, not meaning a vendor in the sense of someone that wants to sell or own sensors. we are talking about folks that are living inside of an ecosystem, have a working and thriving ecosystem, and then we put our ecosystems together.
Rebecca Nickoll (08:14):
So some examples would be like auto manufacturers, it could be banks, mortgage lenders, nationwide has a broad array of products. It could be those in the pet insurance space,
Brian Disbrow (08:28):
Retail, Pharmacy, retail. Yeah.
Michael Shashoua (08:31):
So partnership really is key. What are the latest advances that you are seeing in embedded insurance out there?
Rebecca Nickoll (08:41):
I think there is a lot. It is definitely a hot topic. If you go to any conference, it is going to be on the agenda at some point. I think the people who are winning are going to that embedded experience that I mentioned earlier where the insurance part of the transaction is so seamlessly integrated. I mean on the very extreme side of embedded insurance, you have the product, the insurance product is actually sold with the other product. So a good example is travel insurance. If you book a flight, you can add trip protection while you are buying your flight. You do not go through another process. It is all kind of bundled together. There is a little bit of, I think I have one example of that in the auto insurance space, but not much. But then if you are talking about the insurance experience, I think where people are winning is when the experiences are so combined that it makes it easier. It is just an improvement for the customer to complete whatever purchase they are trying to make.
Brian Disbrow (09:54):
Really just having a relentless focus on customer experience. Because the reason why nationwide is in the business of partnerships is you to improve that member experience. that is job one. And if we do not have a partner that has an equal mindset, then it is not necessarily a partner that we are interested in doing business with. We are we are really trying to set a new bar for how you disrupt the user experience.
Michael Shashoua (10:21):
Brian, what would you say are the best practices for embedded insurance?
Brian Disbrow (10:24):
Well, I mean I think there is a few, but what I would say is num number one, I, I would love to hear what Rebecca said, but I would say number one, I always say it is placement placement, placement placement. You, you have really got to focus on how that member is going to experience that embedded nature. And if you place wrong, it provides no value, what would you add?
Rebecca Nickoll (10:48):
And we have definitely seen that. I mean we have had examples where we did not get the results we wanted because the placement was not good. I think the thing I would add, definitely customer experience is the key to success, but right behind that is the partner's experience. And so we have invested quite a bit in how we support the customer, the partner, and how we make it easy for the partner to work with us as a carrier from things like how they get access to information about our APIs, having a dedicated technical and business team that they can consult with during and after launch when there are issues that come up. Building self-service capabilities so that if there is a technical issue, they do not always have to call someone. It is really thinking about from that partner's perspective, what do their developers expect from us as a partner and building those capabilities. So there is how we can offer embedded insurance, but equally how do we support the partner who to make them want to work with us as a carrier?
Brian Disbrow (12:01):
I like to call out on the partner experience because you, you are right, we do at Nationwide, we have you staffed people that not only you have that are the corporate development business enablement typical sales team, but we have a Technical Sales Team as well, a Technical Support Team. It is important to remember that these partners, you often have no idea how insurance works. They are industry adjacent and we need to ensure you that we are staffing them with experts that can help them get started very easily. And we are not at ground one. you are trying to help them through these massive hurdles of how to make a quote or file a claim or why certain regulation or is in place or why for California, if California then ask question X. All of this stuff needs to be as pre-canned and as seamless as possible so that the partner can feel like they are picking up a widget and going rather than having a code in all of these rules.
Rebecca Nickoll (13:01):
And I think just from our experience, finding people from a business standpoint who can be technical enough and from a technical standpoint can be that kind of partner sales mindset. Those folks are not easy to find.
Brian Disbrow (13:18):
I grow unicorn.
Michael Shashoua (13:24):
Do you have a case study example of when nationwide embedded its insurance that turned out successfully?
Rebecca Nickoll (13:31):
Sure, go for it. Okay. So I will give one. We have got several we could talk about, but the one I will talk about is not in the distribution part of the insurance value chain, but it is kind of more of the backend processing that happens with insurance to confirm coverage. So we have a digital product that we call insurance verification and it enables Mortgage Servicers, Loan Servicers, even rental property companies who need to confirm that their tenant or the mortgage holder continues to have homeowners or renter's insurance. We built an API that they can call to do that electronically and it allows the mortgage servicer or the property management company to not have to call nationwide, to not have to verify things kind of on a one by one basis, makes it a better experience for the customer in that their loan make get processed more quickly. And we have the set of our personal lines and pet products available for this. So if it is a larger mortgage servicing company, they can call the API and confirm any product they want. So that is a good example. We have done that with a number of companies that is kind of in the servicing processing part of insurance. What would you add?
Brian Disbrow (15:02):
Yeah, I was thinking that it, it is hard to pick who my favorite one is. We have over 80 strategic partners live, but if I were pick one, that is a really good example of embedded, it is a partnership we have done with Rivian, the electric vehicle manufacturer. And what is really interesting about this is when you get a partner like Rivian who equally obsessive about the customer experience, equally obsessive with ensuring that we are laser focused on providing intrinsic value to the member, you get an experience kind of like this where number one inside Rivian's mobile application, that is how you can actually purchase, acquire, do the financing for and to get insurance for that particular vehicle. It is contextually aware through the course of all of those steps so that if you are putting in information about your financial information for a lease, you might also just be able to use that same information without user entry again into insurance.
(16:09)
Likewise post-purchase the vehicle is you sharing telemetric data in this case nationwide so that we can offer as you drive experiences or discounts based on driving behavior or a discount based on being electric vehicle. Likewise there is an equal mindset around how do we get beyond the point of sale and into service. Clearly when you think about an electric vehicle like Rivian, there is much more sensors on the car that can be used not just to detect the ability for a claim but to also just revolutionize the way you think about service. So I think Rivian is a really great example of one of the things we have done.
Rebecca Nickoll (16:59):
Alright.
Michael Shashoua (17:00):
Rebecca, what is what part of Embedded Insurance is most dependent on Digital Technology for functioning?
Rebecca Nickoll (17:11):
All of it. I was trying to think of a part that was not all dependent on our model is we do partnerships where we connect digitally with the partners customers, there is a phone option and depending on the product, customers may want support, but our model is a digital model. And I guess I should say the other thing that is really important in this because we have talked about all kinds of examples of using sensor data or data that the partner might have to prefill a quote or whatever. It is all done with the consumer's consent. And so placing the consent, getting their consent to share the data can be is equally important. And you have to think about where to put that in the flow.
Brian Disbrow (18:03):
Yeah, I would just add that I have said it a little earlier, but Technology is at the core of this. While it is technically not the Tech that we are selling, it is the Tech that enables this particular business model. And without a really strong emphasis on the tech it is difficult to make the model work. And specifically I know there are companies and carriers that attempt to put a veneer on the front of their legacy backend and try and automate or integrate that way. Usually what it causes is a handful of delays of data propagation through the environment. What we are actually privileged is how much modernization actually occurred that this partnership and this openness that we are experiencing is directly plugged into our backend, which gives that real time feedback not just to the member but to the partner. So tech is making all of it happen.
Rebecca Nickoll (19:03):
And a couple things I would add, one of the things you really have to think about plugged into core systems is how you are going to track that partner's business separately. So if anyone is thinking about embedded insurance, the tracking of the business as unglamorous as that sounds, is a key to it being successful and something that we have had to help. I sit in a kind of enterprise organization and we have even helped our businesses accelerate some of the work so that we could enable that tracking.
Michael Shashoua (19:46):
So what is the customer journey in embedded insurance? And actually I should say is the customer your partner? Is it the end user, is it both?
Rebecca Nickoll (19:56):
The customer is definitely, I mean from my perspective, the end consumer, but the partner is equally important. And so we think about both, but we design the experience with the customer in mind. And I think what Brian was saying earlier, the tech enables, it absolutely does. And the Technology can make your options for creating experiences flexible or not because even if you have kind of standard Technology, every partner's customer experience is different. And so you need flexibility in how you can integrate. But the designing, co-designing that customer experience with the partner is what makes the opportunity successful or not. And I think people kind of rush right to the APIs and the Technology breeze over, okay, how is the customer going to get to this? How will the partner activate it with their consumers? Even with an embedded experience, if customers do not know about it, if the messaging is not clear, you just won't see any results.
Brian Disbrow (21:12):
And if done using the Technology and skipping over those parts, you basically just have an affiliate you strategy where you are placing things disparately across industry adjacent. It is another form of marketing. But if I think about the secret sauce from the customer journey, it is thinking about what are they going through at the time that they are experiencing this embedded concept. If they are really just going onto a website to reading articles, they are not necessarily in the right mindset that that is just a marketing experience. What we are looking for is moments that protection matters and like we were calling out, this is buying a car, having a new baby, getting married, certain life events that are occurring along the way and there are transactions, ecosystems, partnerships that we can merge together with both a carrier and a partner together in order to capitalize on that moment and ensure that is the education time where we can help both the partner and us coming together in order to help that member.
Michael Shashoua (22:24):
Let us look at the partner side a little more closely. What kinds of businesses are partners with embedded with Nationwide?
Rebecca Nickoll (22:33):
So Brian mentioned Rivian. We have a partnership with Ford, so auto manufacturers, OEMs in general. It is a big category with our pet offerings. We have partnerships with retail online and brick and mortar retail companies who have sell things related to pets. We have done banks auto or sorry, loan companies. So I think auto manufacturers, things related to homes, retail is what we have done.
Brian Disbrow (23:21):
Yeah, I am trying to think if there is any categories you missed. I think you hit, I know we were, we have been thinking and looking at health and wellness. I know we have been thinking about how you expand mobility beyond OEMs, but yeah, I think you I you hit.
Michael Shashoua (23:35):
Is there any particular type of experience that a partner company should have or is helpful going in?
Rebecca Nickoll (23:44):
I think they need to, I mean it is very helpful if they are digitally savvy. And so where partnerships have taken longer is where they are not as digitally savvy as some of our capabilities. It might just take longer to execute the partnership and the focus on the customer. The other thing is we need to, with any partnership, you want to make sure your goals for the partnership are aligned if one is trying to grow and the other is using the opportunity as a retention. I mean you can get kind of misaligned goals pretty easily. And so we spend time at the beginning of a partnership trying to crystallize what we are trying to hit, what metrics we are trying to hit and how we are going to measure success. But I think the digital capability because of how we are trying to integrate is most important.
Brian Disbrow (24:49):
And I like where you went because really understanding the partner and what their needs are is paramount as well. And that are they looking to get further and further and further into the industry where they want to stand up an agency get licensed, are they moving in that direction? Do they want to stay in an arm's length? Do they want to enter it into a joint venture together and build something that we offer nationwide offers, cornucopia of options like that? All of the above. And it is a question of placing them not just where they want to be now but maybe where they want to go.
Rebecca Nickoll (25:27):
And some partners are, they want the revenue stream from the business, they want compensation versus others. This is something else they can add to their customer experience. It is an additional benefit they provide their customers. So it is important to understand exactly what value they are looking for the opportunity to bring to their company.
Michael Shashoua (25:53):
I think we have about four or five minutes left for questions. So if we can take your question. I think someone is going to come around with a mic if you do not mind waiting. Yeah, Sarah. Okay.
Audience Member 1 (26:11):
You ended on the compensation topic and that is actually what my question was. What are you finding in terms of what partners are expecting in terms of compensation and as an insurance product, what are you capable of doing for unlicensed partners?
Rebecca Nickoll (26:29):
For unlicensed? Unlicensed? Yeah, for unlicensed we offer a marketing fee. So based on ranges of business and we have different levels we can offer the partner based on what deal we end up with. Many partners are wanting to become licensed agents, whether they staff the agency or they are just licensed. And we provide the sales and fulfillment support, in which case we have different commission options.
Brian Disbrow (27:10):
I would say it runs the gamut. I mean some partners just want to pass all the value onto to their member. Some want to retain the revenue, we offer the whole mix.
Michael Shashoua (27:23):
We have another.
Audience Member 2 (27:24):
So in terms of once you acquire a new customer, do you try to cross sell them against all of their home? How do you think about that? And then number two, do you look at all at your current base and say, based upon what we know about the Rivian population, your current folks might be good customers for Rivian to try and drive your current client base kind of in a symbiotic relationship?
Brian Disbrow (27:59):
You want me to take that? Yeah, go ahead.
Rebecca Nickoll (28:01):
So for the last question, we do not do the cross marketing to our current customers, mainly because they are the customers of independent agents. that is primarily how we distribute and there are rule operating rules by which we can contact them or not. So that part not as much. And your first question was on cross cross selling? Yes. So if we do the sales and fulfillment for that partner, whether they are licensed or not, we use our existing approaches to cross sell. If the partner staffs their own agency, then they would take that on and we might help with some best practices.
Brian Disbrow (28:52):
We are. It also makes me think that Nationwide is in a lot of different businesses and segments and we do think of some of our other businesses as partners that we can cross reference. So if you, are you a public sector employee with a retirement plan that we could be offering you similar discounts that we do if we were to offer a partnership with Rivian. So we are doing that. I do not know if that is what you were referring to.
Michael Shashoua (29:22):
I think we have time for one more. We have got some there.
Audience Member 3 (29:30):
Hey there. Could you speak a little bit to the benefits you have seen from the cost of acquisition standpoint going embedded versus a traditional agency model?
Brian Disbrow (29:41):
Yeah, do you want to do it? Want me? I would just say cost of acquisition is much lower there. There is a lot more straight through would see on the web channel. Mainly because if you think about what we are offering, especially when the partnership is you tipping the maximum embeddedness, and what I mean by that is there is data being passed is part of the embedded transaction. It, once you are at a point where you are purchasing, like I mentioned before, a rivian vehicle and all you need to do is click the button and you are on a buy now screen, that is where the sticky factor really, really is. And you are not losing people through this massive data entry set that you normally see across an insurance play. So yes, we are seeing the stickiness is high and therefore the retention is high. And because we do not have all of the middle part of the equation, the cost of acquisition is a lot lower too. So
Michael Shashoua (30:50):
We do not have anyone else. So one more. It looks like, oh,
Brian Disbrow (30:52):
Another
Michael Shashoua (30:52):
Looks like
Brian Disbrow (30:53):
There is one there. Yeah. So
Audience Member 4 (30:54):
How do you actually deal with claims when it comes through? Does it go through the party and then comes to you with all the data that you
Brian Disbrow (31:03):
Yeah,
Rebecca Nickoll (31:04):
So if we acquire a customer through a partner, the Rivian customer purchases a policy. The nationwide claims, they would still call it still ours, our claims number. They get the nationwide claims experience. Yeah, have not starting to think about how we can, like I said, work on ways to improve the claims experience through partnerships. But that is early days.
Michael Shashoua (31:37):
Alright, I think we have to finish there. Our next panel is ready to come in. So thank you all for listening and thanks Rebecca and Brian.
Brian Disbrow (31:43):
Yeah, thank you.