Transcription:
Peilin Corbanese: (
Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for coming to this session. This session is named preparing your workforce for automation in the insurance industry that you have seen in the past that everything is done manually, right? And now with the data and technology, many things have moved in the past few years. So we are here to discuss what happens to the workforce when data and technology continues to invade our world. And there is a McKinsey study that says in 2030, AI and ML will be everywhere in our lives. So what would that look like for us? So thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Peilin Corbanese. I am the VP of analytics with EXL service. We're professional services company. We focus on advanced analytics and digital transformation. We're here to help all the carriers do a better job of automation. So here we are, we have our esteem panelists. We're gonna have them introduce themselves. And quite a few of them are from the inure tech world. There you go, David.
David McFarland: (
All right. Hey everyone. I'm David McFarland, founder, CEO of Cotrie Insurance. We focus on bringing speed, simplicity and service to the commercial insurance space with a heavy focus on small commercial in general. We take this whole idea of automating lots of stuff very seriously, because you know, when you do small commercial, it's mainly an expense ratio game. There's a lost ratio component to it as well. But, there's a lot to improve on that side of things. So excited to chat about it.
Peilin Corbanese: (
Tell us how much money you got recently.
David McFarland: (
We recently raised a series B for 50 million. So...
Peilin Corbanese: (
Applause, please. Tanner your turn.
Tanner Hacket: (
Hi, Tanner Hacket, the CEO of Counterpart Insurance. We are also focused on small businesses, but management liability specifically distributing through brokers. We are backed by Aspen and marque to leading a rated carriers and with investments from some, some really unique venture capital and private equity companies in San Francisco and New York and Chicago.
Peilin Corbanese: (
And how much money did you get?
Tanner Hacket: (
We've raised a total of 40 million.
Peilin Corbanese: (
Thank you. Thank you James.
James Kaufmann: (
Hi everyone. My name's James Kaufmann. I work with the insurance consulting and technology group within Willis Towers Watson now known as WTW. I'm an actuary by trade and my focus is really on commercial lines, pricing, product claims and underwriting, and the interplay between analytics in those space and some the software and technology that we also bring to our carrier partners. So very excited for this conversation today.
Peilin Corbanese: (
James, tell us how you are changing the world.
James Kaufmann: (
We are changing the world by bringing technology solutions to market that increase our carrier partners speed to market when it comes to bringing new rates, new models, new products, which is especially important at a time like now where things are rapidly changing. You want to have that agility to adjust to the changing environments and change the way that you're pricing is working. So that's how we're changing the world right now.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So that's talk about velocity of change for automation. And let's talk about what automation really looks like for the insurance industry. David, can you give us some examples of what you have done and how you see the world?
David McFarland: (
Yeah, absolutely. So when, I think about just like change in the insurance space in general, I like to pull allegories from other areas that have changed, right? Like we can actually look back and see like all, what have other areas done. And that helps us figure out what are the areas that we should focus on in terms of automating good examples are like farming, right? Like farming went through massive efficiency gains over the 200 years. And what has happened is most of farming has gone to just a small set of people where everyone else can focus on other things, right? This enables new types of jobs to emerge because not everyone is focused on purely agrarian society and growing all their own food. Same thing is gonna happen in the insurance base, right?
David McFarland: (
There are things that we are doing today that are not necessarily chaotic or complex or complicated. But there are things that can largely be automated. So when we look, when we take that fin framework and we look at, what's obvious, what's complicated, what's complex, what's chaotic. And we pick out those things. We can say like, all right, these are areas where we can automate and we should automate. And we go forward and automate them accordingly for small commercial. Specifically we really like the idea of automating the underwriting process. We utilize data at Codery and I think that's an area that we do not do a good job at as an insurance space in general. I think a lot of people talk about utilizing data and when they say they utilize data, they end up like throwing it to actuaries in a back room who can create really pretty lift charts, but not actually put it into production cuz taking things and creating lift charts is very different than actually putting into production. And we have to get over that as an industry. We actually have to start using data. So that we can automate a lot of these processes. Not just underwriting, but auditing customer follow up triaging claims, stuff like that. These are things that we can do. And we simply just don't do a good job of as an industry.
Tanner Hacket: (
So when I think of automation, it's really synonymous with value creation and I'm not from insurance. This is actually the first insurance experience I've had in creating the startup. I've created a few really large companies though in eCommerce, in marketing and the expectations of customers in these other industries are different from insurance. It's just that insurance has continued to under deliver relative to those expectations. Let's be honest, like we're sending people to space for fraction of the cost in a matter of a decade, but insurance has had many more decades to evolve and not much has changed. And so when we think about automation is about finally being able to deliver on this process or this, this need of the customers to get more value, that's how you create the value. And so, you know, specific examples that counterpart are there's, there's an underwriter that's involved in most cases management liability.
Tanner Hacket: (
It's a very complex process to actually understand the exposures and we don't try and solve this overnight. You know, we're not saying we're gonna flip the switch and auto underwrite, everything. No, instead we hire really experienced actuaries and underwriters that understand how, what is the exposure for a manufacturer in Cincinnati or a restaurant in California and then train the system and we don't call them underwriters. We call them risk engineers because their function changes. And I think this is really core to a lot of the conversation today around automation is rethinking, what are the roles? What are the responsibilities of the individuals at an organization to help this industry evolve? And you know, what happens when you, when you give this, this goal or this promise, this opportunity to an underwriter is, you know, they look at the system differently and they say, Hey, there's this, this part of my job where I have to look at this, this Excel traditionally or in this dashboard traditionally and try and figure out where the exposure is.
Tanner Hacket: (
Well, they tell us, Hey, if it's a restaurant in California over 50 employees, flag that, show them, this is the exposure that they need to understand. So they can all of a sudden go from having to underwrite the business from bottom up to saying, oh, there's what, 10% of a business I actually need to underwrite. And then there's some clean risk that can just skip through. Don't need to be touched. So how do you make it easier for each of the individuals that have these, these, these roles, whether this is business development, whether this is underwriting, whether this is claims and we can go into more details in each of these cases, but I think, it's utilizing the data that you spoke of, but also pairing this with subject matter experts that can solve problems. So
Peilin Corbanese: (
Tanner let's dig in a little bit more. How do you do that in a large carrier organization? When everything, all the functions are roles are already pretty much set and here we're, we are here talking about talent challenge. So give us a, some of your ideas of how you would do it if you were the CEO of now counterpart, but that's a very large name carrier.
Tanner Hacket: (
This is, I mean a lot of people just, frankly, don't think like this. We don't have many bad words at counterpart. I swear for those of you who know me, I cursed quite a bit. That's not bad. We, we can do that. That's fine. But what is a bad word is when you say that's, this is how it's always been done. That's it conversation over, turn the camera off, turn the phone off. It just doesn't work. This is how it's always been done. That is a bad word. Like we all know things need to change. So yeah, it makes people uncomfortable. Like what's the old book who moved my cheese? Yeah, that was a great book. I remember reading that. I like Phil it's is cute. This is weird, but that's a great starting point.
Tanner Hacket: (
I mean, the world is changing and it's changing faster than ever. It's not gonna stop. It's just going one direction. So I think there's that moment where you gotta look in the mirror and, and are these businesses equipped to change by nature? They're not, I mean, it's the insurance industry. So this is part of the reason there is stability. There's persistence it's because things shouldn't change too rapidly, but I can tell you that the way technology is being applied, the way data is being applied, I would say that there's probably gonna be more change over the last five years than the last 20. And one of our advisors is the chief product officer, the former, excuse me, former chief product officer from Chubb, Evan Rosenberg. And, you know, he loves, he calls himself the chief cold water officer, cuz he loves just to run up and throw cold water on me, metaphorically of course. Ad you know, tell me that things can't be done and I love proving to him that things can be done. And I like it. It is not going to come through technology alone. It is going to come through a culture shift.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So let's talk about a culture shift because we know advancement will come from both the technology and that's data included and people. So how would you manage the people in the organization that's going through such a fast velocity of change, James.
James Kaufmann: (
Yeah. So, I mean, I think the first step is you have to acknowledge that the sort of fear of being replaced, that is associated with automation in the eyes of a lot of employees, that's a valid fear, especially if your role, you know, if you're, if you take a look at if a particular employee takes a look at what they're doing in their day to day and the way that they're graded by how they, how well they do it comes, boils down to speed and accuracy. Well, I can think of, you know, a computer that can do speed and accuracy better than a human, right. And I think, you know, some of the points that were made focused on underwriting and claims there you're actually automating decision making, which is even scarier, right? So if you're so on the back, you have a lot of backend processes that are ripe for automation, things that are recurring processes at quarter end of the quarter, end of the year.
James Kaufmann: (
A lot of the from coming from the actuarial world, helping, working through the reserving and helping to close the books, things like that, there's a ton of backend processes that are ripe for automation and really the successful execution of those processes come down to speed and accuracy. And that's why they're ripe for automation now, even scarier, if you're an employee is they're starting to replace what I perceive as my capacity to make good decisions for the business. And so, I think the first piece is anybody in those sorts of roles, touching those pieces. It's important to recognize that that's a real fear. Now there's also an opportunity that, that exists automation is taking is reducing the importance of certain roles, right? These roles that we're talking about, making maybe more simple decisions running a process that's based on speed and accuracy, but it's increasing the importance of other skill sets that are out there.
James Kaufmann: (
And so automation, the coming wave of automation that we're, I would argue we're more in the middle of, rather than looking forward to really presents opportunities to cross train, right, to move into expand your skillset into things like analytics. Or if you are like myself as an actuary, maybe not reporting so, or focusing so much on reporting and maybe learning how to better tell the story, right. That the data is telling. So really the automation is not a threat only. It's also an opportunity to take advantage of some of the new skill that are of increased importance. And I think David we're, we were talking earlier about how automation is really, especially in the spaces where you're starting to replace decision making, right in underwriting with claims, auto adjudicating claims and things like that. Analytics is really what enables a lot of that automation. You can't just blindly automate these, these decision making frameworks, you need an analytical function. That's going to allow you to, to execute on that automation in a way that doesn't hurt the business.
David McFarland: (
I think what you're saying is right on, and it's like when people think about this idea of like, oh, my job's going to be replaced. That is a little bit rational, but like, it's largely, it can be largely emotional. And just when you manage people, you have to think about the emotional component that they're going through. But if we look at like pragmatically, when industries go through change like this, it benefits everybody like 140 years ago over, like I was saying over 60% of the population was AGR focus. How many of you actually want to go work on a farm 14 hours a day? None of you, right? No one here wants to wake up at 4:00 AM milk cows and like, do the whole farm thing. You may wanna have a hot farm, right?
David McFarland: (
Like we have a garden, but like in general, like people do not want to be farmers anymore. And now it's far less than 10% are actually agrarian base in the United States similarly. Right? Like we have functions now that in 10 to 15 years, we're gonna look back and be like, why in the, like, I'm so glad that I don't have to do that 10 hours a day, but you're not gonna get there. If you just continue to hold on to this bastion of really boring work that you get to do, because it's earning you a paycheck, right? Like you have to actually say, how is the industry changing? And are there components to my job that are actually going to be benefited if I just automate this stuff so that I can focus on higher level things. If we continue just to embrace these really low level, easy things, we're not going to be able to devote time to higher level things and improve the overall macro industry.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So the fear all being layoff is real, right? So I have experience of working with different functional areas in an insurance company, and that as you have advanced analytics and automation, people's jobs change the functional areas change. So let's say an actuary, maybe now you need more of a data scientist and data engineers. So then the current actuaries, how do you start to change? And when it's already given to you and your job gets taken away, what happens Tanner? Can you talk about how you manage that and how again, I'm putting the tough questions on Tanner.
Tanner Hacket: (
Yeah. I'll try and put my carrier hat on. What I can say is a blessing for all of us here, whether you want to change or not, is that this industry's growing, it's not gonna go away. It's gonna be around for a long time. And yeah, there's really no upper bound for this industry because risk exposures keep changing. And so, if you go into that, if you go into the conversation without mindset, or isn't this fixed mindset, this is damning for any company, when they think, oh, we have to fight over the scraps. No, it's about growing into the future. And when you approach a conversation like that, whether it's with your team members or whether, you know, investors or whoever it is, it shifts the mindset to, okay, how can I skate to the puck and this in a lot of cases I mean, this is the doing of the insurance carriers, right?
Tanner Hacket: (
It's creating disciplines upon disciplines and disciplines and shoving people into specific roles where, they're to make the widgets. And so it's changing. I think there was a discussion about that. You had mentioned learning how to read the data, right? This is a trait that everybody needs to know. It is not just doing the work, but understanding what is its value? What is its importance? What does this mean for that product itself? The yeah the risk engineers that we work with when I hire them, I actually try and convince 'em not to join like an underwriter, cuz it's a hard role. I'm telling them, Hey, you're gonna be essentially putting yourself out of a job. Like you're coming here to train the system, to do what you used to do. So that, that thing you don't have to think about it anymore. You can do the stuff that's even more high value, the stuff that has a bigger impact. So it's hard for me to put my lens on how to think of this in a big institution. But then again, that's why age is
Peilin Corbanese: (
50 a plus what's that. And for people who are age 50 and plus yeah.
Tanner Hacket: (
Partner with a great MGA that does this for you and can write very profitable business and can show you to the promise land. But seriously, that's like, that's why we exist. I mean, similar mindset, we use data, we use technology. This is why Markel partner with us. This is why Aspen partner with us because they get a lens into the future. They see what needs to be done because it's really hard to compel, a organization, cold Turkey, start, stop, Hey, start using data. But it's really much easier when you get to point at this company. And it's like, Hey, look at all this stuff that they're doing and start having those dialogues. So if you want to talk about building the future together, there's a quick little plug
James Kaufmann: (
And I loved what you were saying around and then what, right. So you're training a model essentially right within your company to replace your underwriters are tr risk engineers are sorry, was that right? Risk engineers are tr are essentially training a model to replace themselves someday so that they can focus on other more highly value added more interesting work. And I love that because actually very recently, one of the partners that we're working with specifically on automation had done an internal case study where one of the co in the cost benefit, one of the benefits was increased employee retention because employees are gonna be able to focus on more interesting value, added rewarding work in their day to day lives rather than GE getting the next report out by tomorrow, getting the quarter closed, done in time and things like that. So, there is an employee retention play to this. If you're thinking about, how do we sell this to management? That I think a very strong argument for adopting automation and new areas of your business.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So how would you manage that then? How would you communicate in a large organization? Because we all know some, we all know large insurance carriers where they commit to the street, how much millions of dollars those savings are, they're going to produce based on automation. So then it's a higher up decision. And how do you trickle that down to get to the point that you can have the conversation with a quote unquote with manager and say that you are going to manage yourself out of the current job into a different role. How would you communicate that to your organization and how would you ensure different silos would actually hold hands together?
James Kaufmann: (
I mean, I will echo kind of what you said as part of your question which is it needs to come from the top. I mean, one of the biggest, especially on kind of the process automation, but also in the underwriting, small commercial underwriting space, I mean, just convincing people to let go of what they've been doing for so long and kind of trust automation in a way to do things, to make the right decisions, is an extremely difficult challenge. And if it's kind of an order, that's come down from the top. I mean, I think that is something that can help you get over that hurdle, which is essentially business as usual getting in the way. Right. And it's very interesting. I mean, we talk to some carrier partners who they're having so much trouble just keeping up with business as usual. In other words, they need automation in order to free up time to do things, but they're spending so much time just running the process that they can't, they don't have anybody to implement or do. And so, you know, again, it's going to take from the top a decision to add, you know, resources where they're needed in order to do the actual implementation of automation solutions.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So coming from the top, and we have two CEOs sitting right here, two young CEOs of inure tech. So let's think through the companies where the CEOs are 50 plus, how would you tell these CEOs of what they need to do with themselves and also with the talents that they have in their organization to prepare for automation?
David McFarland: (
I think vision from the top is necessary. I also think that you need to have a foundation of a solid culture in order to embrace change. Cause frankly, like not everyone wants to do higher level work. There's something very nice about, you know, just doing wrote things, you know, just kind of applying basic stuff and coming in day in and day out. And some people want to do that. And you've gotta, you need to hire fire and foster based on what you want your company to be. So Codery, we have four core values, intelligence, integrity, humility, passion, we're smart, energetic people who do the right thing and we don't brag about it. And that humility is a big part of our ability to look at what we're doing and say, does this actually make sense?
David McFarland: (
Right? Then we incorporate our intelligence and because we're passionate about our jobs, we actually go in and say like, yep, I'm gonna change it up. I can't just keep doing the same stupid thing over and over again. I'm going to improve this process, right? That type of culture needs to be systemic in your organization. If you want to actually realize change. If you do not have a culture, it doesn't necessarily matter. You know what you dictate from the top. It's not going to be done because organizations are not run by one person at the top who just yells things and people do it, right? All organizations are groups of people, that's it? That it's just groups of people doing things. And if the people who are there don't have a culture to actually do something that's going to improve, you will get no change whatsoever. So foundationally culture must be there if you actually want to see change.
Tanner Hacket: (
So after talking to most of the major carriers in our space, I can say that there's a lot of really smart people at these insurance companies. Lot of very intelligent people. Then as we start to unpack the why and this was an interesting journey for me, cuz again, I'm not from insurance. So I came into this industry thinking, we're gonna revolutionize insurance. And then the more you peel back the layers, you're like, this kind of makes sense. The way things are. And then, you know, it hurts and your timeline, you have to pump the brakes and then start things, start to click humility. What's that humility. Yeah. And so I genuinely appreciate why we are where we're at, but I can also say, you know, conversations with David, like we don't really see incumbent carriers is our competition.
Tanner Hacket: (
It's weird to say that we see other innovative insured techs that are using data and technology. Those are our competitors because yeah, they're building moats and they're applying data. There isn't a carrier that I've spoken to. That's like, oh yeah, we've well, put it this way. I've spoken to lots of carriers and they pound their chest and they say, we got tons of data. We have decades of data. And then after a few follow up questions of, okay, where is it? How do you use it? You know, what have you learned? The conversation goes silent and is really uncomfortable. And, and I can tell you that this being the kernel of our organization, you know, this gives us a massive competitive advantage. So yeah, in relation to how you innovate, there's a practice in a lot of, the big technology companies around jump level discussions. I don't know if anybody knows what those are, but don't talk to your, the person that reports to you, or even the reports person that reports to them, but talk to like people like three or four levels down and understand what they're doing and what they're seeing, because they probably have some pretty good ideas and they're in it. You know, they're, there's no need to justify their own work. They're just slammed with stuff to do. And I can tell you where the real pain points of the organization are
James Kaufmann: (
Just very quick. And, you told us to be very honest. So I have to be very honest about one thing, radical
Peilin Corbanese: (
Candor is what
James Kaufmann: (
We said,
James Kaufmann: (
The everything you're talking about with the culture and being kind of open to change and the humility to admit that there's maybe a better way of doing something agree that that's very important, but there are a lot of legacy carriers out there. And probably some people sitting in the room I've sat in chairs at these companies too that they don't have the benefit of that culture, being able to be built from the ground up right. In recent years. Right. They don't have somebody who's respect
Peilin Corbanese: (
To the carriers.
James Kaufmann: (
So well, so that, I guess my point is that culture let's just admit it, it doesn't always exist. Right. And so in cases where that it doesn't exist, apriori because it's maybe, you know, been designed that way or maybe a long time ago, it was designed that way and it's morphed into something else. There is, I think it's a different challenge I guess, is just the point that I wanted to make where that's not always, that's not a luxury that everybody in this room necessarily has now we're at a digital insurance conference. So in some ways we may, this room may be one big echo chamber. But just if we want to be realistic about who, you know, some of the big carriers that are out there and the cultures that exist, there are pockets of these cultures in these companies, but I would argue that it's not widespread. It's not consistent across any entire organization.
David McFarland: (
And I mean, you don't have to boil the ocean either, right? Like right. As a leader of a company, you can figure out either where these pockets are or all and start there with respect to automation, or you can look at specific components of your business and say, all right, this is where we're gonna benefit from the most, from an ROI perspective, with respect to automation and just start in that area and, you know, changing the culture and foundation there, and then making it more systemic ubiquitous as time goes on. Cultural change is something that is, it takes years and years and years in large carriers.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So we have 10 minutes left to my esteem panelist. So I wanna bring up some points that we have discussed during our prep call. And I would like each one of you to kind of give our audience some take away, they can take back to their organization and implement. And then we would say five minutes for open up for Q and a. So some of the things that we discussed during our prep call is how to shift mindset, being comfortable, then be them being uncomfortable, right? And radical candor saying the right thing done right? In a safe environment. People feel trust, trusted, and safe, and also dealing with fear, the fear to being fired because your job is being automated and hire new adopters, changing their functions, such as a risk engineer versus something else, and set up the right incentive and goal. So people actually want to change and find and hire people who do not look like us. So David, take us home. Talk about what are some takeaways for our audience today they can take away to their organization.
David McFarland: (
Yeah. You know, I, to me, it all starts with people, right. You've gotta focus on culture, higher fire and foster, right. That's the pithy little Saint. And in order to do that, right, like you need to figure out what you value as an organization, right? Like where we want to go with Codery long term. Like, it makes sense for us to focus on our, for cover values of integrity, intelligence, passion, humility, right. That's what we want. That's where we think we're going to be able to, those are the type of people who we want to work with. But, frankly, there's a lot of different types of organizations out there who value different types of things. Right. Some are gonna be more focused on super intelligent people who are very te and you know, not very happy, right?
David McFarland: (
Like they're called actuaries. And, I can say that, cuz I'm a recovery actuary and like define what you want your organization to look like, and you're gonna be able to move in different ways based on how you design your culture. Right. If you want to shoot into space and hit the moon, right? Like you need a rocket ship, but if you want to drive to the supermarket, you need a car, right? Like they are different vehicles. They are shaped different ways because they have different purposes. Define what you want out of your organization and design a culture for that particular purpose. I think that's one thing that people don't think about. They just assume like, oh, they look really good on a cat poster. So we're gonna, say that's our core values and keep going or they let the organization create their core values for them, which is just a case study in entropy. Wouldn't recommend that. So that I'll start off with that. You want me to pass it on to Tanner for the next
Peilin Corbanese: (
Yes. Tanner, please take us home.
Tanner Hacket: (
So you've heard this a few times, the mention of radical candor. Can I see show of hands who has heard this term before? All right, cool. Yeah, this is the philosophy is generally you owe it to your company, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to the other person to give them real feedback. And that's why it's called radical candor because, yeah, it's the belief that there's this, I love this saying, it's like, when someone has spinach in the teeth, their teeth, are you the type of person to just sit there and watch them humiliate themselves? Or are you gonna tell them they have spinach in their teeth and help them fix it? And that's the philosophy, like, just go into a conversation like that and know that, Hey, I'm not trying to diminish you or critique you, but I'm trying to help you grow.
Tanner Hacket: (
So I really recommend this book by Kim Scott it's called radical candor. And then the other thing that I find intriguing about the insurance industry, which is kind of unique is there's no incentive to innovate. If you're at a large carrier, like, what do you get for actually innovating? If you screw up, you're fired. And if you're successful, like, I don't know, maybe you get promoted to senior, senior VP or some, you get a gold star. I don't know what it looks like, but you're in a big organization and you're, you probably get lost. So how do you create mechanisms for people to want to take risks? That this is what we do every day, we take risks, we calculate risks and we innovate and we iterate. And that's why we're able to move so quickly and, you know, raise the funding that we do. But if you're a big carrier, like, yeah, you're moving forward, you have this momentum of lost and change is really hard unless you're able to celebrate when people fail.
Peilin Corbanese: (
James, are you the spinach identifier?
James Kaufmann: (
I would tell if you had spinach in your teeth right now, man. Thank you. I would tell you maybe not in the microphone but no, I mean, I agree with what, what most of everything that's been said and I think maybe what I'll just add to what you were saying, Tanner is there that risk element, right? That risk aversion, the kind of, it, it's a problem out of its agency theory, right? The motivations of the individuals are not necessarily aligned with the Mo what's best for the organization. And so it is very important to set, set up incentives in a way that rewards innovation, that rewards shifting cultures. If you're at a large carrier that's extremely important. Now it's hard to do, right.
James Kaufmann: (
Because you're trying to displace a set of incentives that's been around for probably in some cases, literally hundreds of years. And so, I think that incentive structure is very, very important, but also de-risking it in a way, so start small, right? So when we work with clients in the automation space, we don't try to bite take, bite off an entire, we might identify 15 different opportunities for automation. We're not gonna try to do all of them at once, right. What's the most impactful, what's the quickest speed to value in order to prove the value to the broader organization. And so I got that kind of aligns a little bit with what you were saying, David, about identifying those pockets right. Within, within larger organizations and sort of allowing it to spread from there, but the incentives, the environment for that to be able to happen in my opinion, does need to come from leadership and from the top that support needs to be there.
Peilin Corbanese: (
So this is it. Guys. Do you have any questions for our panelists? I can't see there's one back there, Valerie, I think.
Audience Member 1: (
Thank you. A very interesting conversation. We spoke about changing the culture and changing the mindset of people who have been in insurance for a while to embrace automation. We face also that we are to hire new people coming straight from college in our industry, because if I look at my team, I celebrate more retirement than anything else. Do you think that people will straight from college or prepare for the automation? Do you think that university prepare the workforce to what we try to achieve, especially in insurance today and if you find the right place, can you tell me where
David McFarland: (
So the question is, do I think that people coming outta college are prepared for this type of thing? I don't think people come in now, college are prepared for hardly anything. So I wasn't, I just pretended that I could do basic stuff and then get figured it out along the way. I believe in heavy indoctrination of any new employee, but especially those who haven't really been in the workforce much, just feed them the Koolaid for a while, both in terms of culture and in terms of vision. And you can have a very significant impact for good, I, if your culture is set up right, when you're bringing in people who are right out of college and it will have an impact on the future trajectory of where they go. So I would just always focus heavily on onboarding. But especially with malleable recruits like those right outta college really work on the onboarding side and emphasize of on vision and culture and what you want to do.
Tanner Hacket: (
So we're still relatively small compared to some of my previous companies, but in my previous companies, we actually had quite a bit of success with recruiting people straight outta school. And to David's point, you need to have discipline onboarding, strong culture. But I think as a carrier, it's much more difficult because what they're looking for is to have an impact. And it it's very much in line with everything we're talking about now. It's like, yeah, they don't want to be a line worker and just inputting fields. They want to know how their work ladders up to this greater outcome. And I don't know that many insurance companies can share, show that right now, like how this, how this results in new product or better performance. So I don't know that you're gonna have much success recruiting until you solve this fundamental problem that we've been talking about for the last 40 minutes or so.
James Kaufmann: (
And I guess I'll just add to tie it into specifically the topic of automation as well. It's the, one of the benefits of automation is it frees up, as you said earlier, Tanner, it frees up people to do more interesting and more impactful work. And that includes, you know, you were saying celebrating a lot of retirements and things like that. Every retirement there's a lot of institutional knowledge walking out the door, right? There's a lot of many years of insurance experience just walking out the door and, and having automation in place to free up the time of some of those people that are close to walking out the door to allow them to do things like mentor your new hires, to like, to teach them the ropes, to teach them the things that you're not gonna see in a textbook that you're only going to get on the job, I think is an extremely beneficial aspect of automation and should be one of the motivations one that kind of comes along with adopting it on a wide scale.
James Kaufmann: (
So, yeah, I just wanted to tie it into automation there
Peilin Corbanese: (
We're all the time. And thank you so much. Please get.