Bridging Innovation and Insurance with AI, Startups, and the Future of InsurTech

Speaker A: Welcome to Champions and Challengers, discussions on the legal Edge of FinTech, hosted by Greg Listini and other attorneys from Bricker Graydon, a full service law firm with more than 200 attorneys with expertise in financial services, insurance and insurance tech law and clients across the country where we feature CEOs, founders, legal advisors and industry professionals exploring business technology, regulatory trends and legal trends that are reshaping the financial services industry.

Speaker B: Welcome to Champions and Challengers, a Fintech legal review. I'm Greg Listini, an attorney working in the government relations and insurance regulatory spaces. I have the pleasure of leading our regulated industries group here at Bricker Graden. We have a really exciting guest today. Chris Louise is the newly named CEO of Scout insurtech. Scout insurtech is the leading community for carriers, brokers and agencies to find the talent, services and or technology they need to sustain their impact on the insurance industry. I've known Chris for a while now and although he was just recently named CEO of Scout, he's been intimately involved in the insurtech ecosystem for quite a while. Chris, it's great to have you on. Welcome and thank you.

Speaker C: Thanks a lot, Greg. Great to be here.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let's start. Um, why don't you describe for everyone who may not be familiar with Scout what it is and kind of what you know, your vision is. We talked a little bit about uh, the services you provide and hope to provide and I think that would help lay the groundwork.

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks Greg. So I see Scout as an ecosystem partner within the insurance and insurance technology world broadly. So we have a number of things that we do, including a private paid membership community that we operate in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit and uh, hopefully soon we'll be announcing Chicago. We have an event series uh, that we run in each one of those Cities. We have 100 to 150 person events. You throw in every one of those cities. Every year we have a conference in Columbus, Ohio. It'll be the 17th and 18th of June this year. So anybody listening, please reach out if you're interested. We run a bunch of allied things that support the conference. So the one that I think is really most exciting to me and I think we're getting my background a little bit. And why is the is uh, a startup program. So we have a free program for earlier stage companies. Uh, there's no real definition there on stage or funding, but within the US we think it's up to about series A and then companies that may be a little bit further along entering the US market where we assist them in Getting in front of potential partners from a carrier and brokerage perspective, we interview them and categorize the companies, help our carrier and brokerage partners understand how they may valuably use that technology and, uh, put them on stage, both virtually in a series of events all year, and then ultimately at the conference where they get to meet their potential partners. The, uh, I guess the third part is we, as I alluded to there, we, uh, help our corporate partners understand the insurance and insurance technology markets and how they can use the resources effectively to really move the needle and not spend money on innovation. Uh, that really doesn't result in an roi.

Speaker B: Um, I was at a conference recently and they talked about sort of insurtech and AI specifically, but insurtech really being about embedded technology. Right. And so the partners that you have seems like are they looking for pure investments or are they looking for tech to bring in and own and be part of, um, their offerings?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. So we're not terribly prescriptive on the needs we try and address. Uh, there's sort of a broad variety here. The folks that I most interact with at, uh, carriers and brokerages are going to be your innovation folks. Corporate development, corporate strategy, corporate venture. So each one of those groups has different needs. If you're innovation, you're looking for something perhaps to either bring into the company presently or keeping an eye on the market and understanding what's out there. Uh, corporate development, you might be looking at acquisition, venture investment.

Speaker B: The.

Speaker C: We serve all of those, those groups because when we're talking to the earlier stage companies and we're discovering these companies, we want to understand what their needs are holistically across a number of years, to be able to present those to our partners at the right moment.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you're just how long in the position of CEO now?

Speaker C: Yeah. So you've announced the beginning of this year? Um, I've been acting since uh, about September. I've been working with the group intimately for a number of years.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And uh, we founded, uh, we rebranded from InsurTech Ohio to Scout.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: As co founders last year.

Speaker B: Okay. And I know you've got really aggressive goals and what you want to accomplish, but you could talk about those as much as you want. Um, but what's the most sort of exciting thing about what you're doing, given your history with the sector and understanding the value that Scout's going to bring? I think that would be interesting for people to hear.

Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So I had a, my most recent role at Progressive when I Was there a number of years ago, was working as an internal consultant essentially like I did some other things. It was mostly around machine learning and AI, but I was an internal consultant. I got to look into the company, find places where they had interesting problems and bring novel solutions to those problems. Now if we translate that into what I'm doing now, it is really what I'm most excited about. I'm not interested in driving innovation or for the sake of doing it. What I want to see is find ways to connect partners to really valuable ends where they see really high roi. And I believe this is completely possible, but it takes a rethinking of a lot of what is presently done in standard corporate innovation. So how are you addressing really, uh, you know, one by one, like what are your goals? How are you addressing them? How are you doing it in such a way that supports the business at a whole versus a smaller agenda? Being able to help carriers, particularly midsize carriers, in doing that and building a strong uh, innovation pipeline is something that I'm really excited about.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. So you know, we try to focus as much as we can here on some of the legal and regulatory issues. That's a lot of what I deal with. From your perspective, both for the company's, I guess all the companies you're working with, whether they're partners of Scout or the startups that are looking, you know, for partnerships and then maybe just for your job, what are the biggest sort of obstacles and things from maybe a regulatory standpoint that you see that are challenging, that, you know, could use adaptation in some way.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love that question because I referencing a conversation we had before this, Greg is, and I've never been a very good employee. Uh, when I see or something is presented to me as an obstacle, I think of it as an opportunity.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I think that the biggest opportunity right now from a regulatory perspective is getting in front of and understanding how to effectively use AI within, from a carrier perspective within your core business in a way that is responsible, you understand what it's doing and you're not going to get in the way of emerging regulatory frameworks or laws. There's a lot that goes into doing that, but I believe that the carriers that are going to do this effectively are going to far and away outcompete those that do not. Yeah, I think there is like a really, like a sea change right now. There's an opportunity for people that adopt this technology or companies that adopt the technology quickly and responsibly to really accelerate Their growth. And in a way that was only possible through a huge headcount that isn't necessarily true anymore.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, so it, I don't want to say level the playing field, but it makes it, it creates more opportunity for more types of businesses than could have been possible before.

Speaker C: Absolutely. And I think that the um, you're going to take smaller groups that are exceptionally good at figuring out how to use technology to just totally out compete groups with far more resources.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And, and to me that, I mean that is the story of startups and entrepreneurship, which is uh, super exciting for me. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So understanding that we had Commissioner Godfrey on the show, so we have to, you know, this is not a dig in any way at naic, but the, the AI bulletin, the model bulletin that they've put out. Where does that stand in your view from you know, efficacy and sort of trying to get where you think the businesses need to be from a regulatory standpoint.

Speaker C: The information that's. Well the way the model bulletin is laid out is asking for proof of best practice for a, uh, some things that should be best practice that in, in my opinion and uh, and I've seen a lot of this are often not done. Um, and this isn't strictly within insurance or any industry necessarily, but we are a highly regulated industry and there are very real impacts to people if we get things wrong. So we need to be responsible about where we're using models. I think there's two pieces here. So there's the model bulletin and the proposed regulatory framework that some states have taken up and will continue to do and some will modify and continue to do. The idea that you need uh, policies around what you do with your models, how they're put together, what questions you ask, how they're constructed and how you evaluate them over time. This is the only way like that is necessary to building good models. It isn't just about regulatory pressure. That is something that is going to drive greater innovation and better ends. So from that perspective I think it's quite good and I think it's going to drive an understanding of how to build well for those uh, folks that it's going to apply to and that um, it's going to build a better understanding better or like this pressure to create better models which will be more effective for the business. So I don't know if I directly answered your question there. I think ah, that's overall it will be a net benefit even if it's not enforced strongly at any one place because companies are going to ask the right Questions?

Speaker B: Yeah, well and you know you said not just insurance, I mean all this has to start somewhere. And so I think to a large degree the model is not a bad place to start. The model. You know, when I was preparing for this I had, I had a question that talked about the ecosystem for insurtech in Ohio. But as we talked your footprint and your impact is much broader than that. So maybe if you can talk about the ecosystem for Insurtech generally that you've seen and um, the positive pieces and maybe things that could be done to make it even better.

Speaker C: Yeah, so I'm of course very well connected within the Ohio community. But you're right, uh, the footprint of Scout and part of our rebrand is very intentionally about us reaching outside of the state and being present on the national stage and beyond. I think that as far as challenges recently, and I guess I'll define insurtech as not just MGAs, right? Not just folks that are selling insurance, but also technology providers that specifically have products that sell into the environment. And I think the challenges are slightly different on the MGA side. It is capacity. And um, while there's a great report recently written by uh, co produced by resource Pro and InsurTech New York that brings to light some things that I think would surprise perhaps some listeners in that Most of these MGAs, ah, are not burning through reinsurers and uh, fronting carriers money. They're actually doing quite well. Now that's not everybody but I think the perception, there's a perception there about uh, companies selling a new product in a new way like oh, what a risk. And I think that restating that, using data and saying of course there's a risk, what is the risk, what is the degree of failure is something that would benefit all of us. On the technology side there's, there's a few challenges that I see pretty regularly. One of them recently has certainly been the funding environment. So I'm hoping that that opens up and I think that that is right now. So I think that's changing. Hopefully it's more than just whatever it is that you're building that you tack AI onto. Right. Um, which there's plenty of money around.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's going to be a lot of that. Right.

Speaker C: But I think and self servingly this is something that we really much, very much try to help with. Part of my background is enterprise B2B SaaS within insurance and AI. So I'm niche down pretty hard. I understand those things pretty well when I talk to founders that don't understand what it is to sell into the insurance market. Like you're talking to an innovation person and you're expecting to close next quarter. That's probably not going to happen. Yeah, you need to understand what the buying cycles are. You need to understand, or have somebody, particularly on the sales go to market side, understand what buying cycles are. Understanding the budgeting cycle understands how to navigate, uh, how carrier navigated internally and is something that I think is, uh, an ongoing challenge for those of us that are creating companies for this industry, but not from this industry.

Speaker B: Yeah, you might, you may have answered this kind of in, in some of the things that you've said earlier. So we'll just cut the question later if not. But, you know, it might be interesting for people to hear your ideal scenario for what Scout is going to do for a company. Can you walk through like you get a call. Right. And then start from there and kind of what that looks like?

Speaker C: Sure. Do you want to do the tech vendor side or do you want to do the carrier side?

Speaker B: Uh, uh, let's do the carrier side.

Speaker C: So on the carrier side, I am engaged with somebody who's looking out into the industry. They're incentivized to look out into the industry to understand technology for investment, acquisition, something. Yeah, we'll generalize on that side right now. Yeah. So ideally they have a conversation with me and um, we say, well, what are, what are we going to work on this year? What are your goals this year? We talk about whatever those goals are, whether that's investment, whether that's seeing so many companies, whether it's innovation, they interact with us, uh, pretty regularly. So I have a, uh, number of virtual showcases where we put companies on stage virtually, uh, just about every month. Some of those are technology vendors, some of those are MGAs. We're going out of our way to find new and interesting companies that we believe are going to drive real ROI for our partners, uh, and exposing them to them. That comes with the ability to see recorded materials from those companies. So you're looking at a, uh, recorded pitch, a recorded demo, you're looking over their deck. You have a lot of context going into the virtual showcase to be able to ask very intelligent questions about what their product is, how it fits into your company and how you might use it. Now there, there may be three or four goals that you have. Let's say there's one. Let's focus on one technology problem. Maybe you're trying to look for, as an example, better technology for your call centers. So you're looking at Voice analytics software. You're looking at um, AI driven assistant, like assistants that make those calls for you. You're looking at just like back house automation stuff. And now there's one budget for these things. You don't know exactly what you want, but this, you would come to us at Scout and say, okay, I need to solve this problem. I need to find a way to reduce costs, reduce expenses in my call centers. Yeah, what do you have? And I say I've got eight companies that I'm talking to right now. Two of those are seed and probably too early. Two of those are ah, about to close, um, you know, their b. And one of those is working with your direct competitor. And I know how you feel about that, so we can talk about that later. And I really love these founders and what they're doing is probably going to be the easiest thing for you to implement of all the things we've talked about. And I think we should make an introduction. You guys should have that conversation right now. Yeah, now that could be done. Async or some of those conversations can also happen at the conference in June. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, I mean from your perspective, that's got to take an incredible amount of work and deep dive into those, those optional startups to be able to provide that level of confidence to the carrier. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah. I'm meeting in the range directly speaking with, interviewing, characterizing about 600 companies this year. I did about 150. That's personally. Yeah, but 150 last year. I'm building a database of these companies that is available to, for search and access to my partners. And um, my goal over the next several years, and this is something that I have to work through and earn is, uh, is to be able to characterize and be the expert in the insurance and insurance technology market in the United States. Yeah, I think there's an opportunity here to do it and I think that there is ample value in having that information and being able to distill it down for our partners that there be. There'll be demand for it.

Speaker B: Yeah, we uh, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but we interviewed Doug Kelly with the American Edge Project, who's talking about protecting and encouraging the tech industry in, in the US and you're, you, you've got to be right at the core of that because you're making these connections and I would imagine that it saves your partners an enormous amount of time in, in the legwork that you're doing on the front end for some of these, uh, potential partners.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So because of our focus, we were a small team, but we're doing the work that in most cases an entire team cannot do.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And we're able to provide context and understanding at a depth that sometimes is not going to be as easily shared with a direct customer opportunity. Uh, so we're going to know things that they don't, including stage, and when they might be raising funding again and where exactly they are. And not to use this insidiously or say that I'm taking advantage of founders at all. I want to make sure that I'm matching them appropriately with the right companies that can do business with them immediately. Because as much value as there is in understanding and distilling what a company is and how they can help understanding topically, like right now is the time that you can get into a company versus waiting for that next buying cycle, that next budgeting cycle is so important. And that can be the difference in an early stage company of succeeding or not.

Speaker B: Yeah. Is there anything particular that you know, if, uh, a startup, a founder comes to you, is there a thing or a series of things that they have done that makes it infinitely easier for you to connect them with the right people? Sort of a best practice that you would recommend to them either before they come to you or simultaneously with, you know, coming to you and talking to Scout?

Speaker C: That's a good question. The. I think broadly I want to talk to people that are building interesting things. So I don't want to dissuade people from coming and speaking to me because they don't feel like they're ready or whatever they be. I, I could be very honest. Like if they, they're like, hey, we have a slide deck. I'm not putting you in front of a Fortune 500 carrier. It's not happening.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Right. You need a product.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: Because that's wasting their time. And my entire job is to distill down what is going to be important for them. Let me rescope that just a little bit in that if you are prepared, like what does it take to be prepared to sell to a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 carrier? Because when people are looking, or companies founders are.

Speaker B: That's a much better way to ask the question I was trying to ask you.

Speaker C: But go ahead and yeah, it's a broad industry, so there is to get at different pieces of it. But getting into a TPA is very different from getting into Nationwide, uh, or Progressive or Liberty Mutual or whatever it may be. They're going to ask who else are you selling to? How Long have you been here? They're going to want to play with your product. Are you ready for that? Do not demo in wireframes to a enterprise. Don't do that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Because that's not what they're interested in. I think that, and this is something that comes out of the uh, the accelerator program. So like look for a design partner. There's a very different feel from going to an innovation person and saying at a big company and saying, I'm looking for a design partner. Saying, I have an enterprise grade product that I'd like to sell you.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: This is an entirely different conversation. You should be completely aware of what path that that takes you down now. Not to say the design partner thing will not end in um, in success down the road, but is very, very different, different expectations. And some, with some of these companies you're only going to get so many shots.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So you want to make sure that you're ready and appropriate. So I would, I would say that if you're going to sell two major enterprises in insurance, make sure you have somebody on your side, whether that's a mentor, an advisor or whatever it may be that can give you contextually what it is like to sell to. Because it's different to sell to Progressive, to Nationwide, to Amphib, to Liberty Mutual. These are different sales.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And um, characterizing them is one, one thing or even like I'm having a hard time saying like what are the things you should do? Yeah.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Seek understanding and make sure that you're ready to really sell to the biggest companies in the uh, conservative companies.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: In the United States.

Speaker B: I mean I get the sense that from everything you're saying, you guys are in large part technology agnostic in that you want to see everything that people have to offer and then you'll figure out what, where that fits with the partners that you work with. But are there trends that you're seeing, you know, certain things that are really important right now? AI obviously has to be a big, big part of this answer. But pieces of technology or solutions that are really important to big carriers right now.

Speaker C: Yeah. So there's um, there's always a little bit of a pendulum and this is something that, um, you may know my friend Alan Demers, I've talked to him recently. X Nation Live. Yeah, he uh, he and I spoke about this the other day. You can only take rate so much and so long to increase your um, uh, revenue.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And there becomes a point where the way to improve uh, the operation of a carrier is to also Reduce expenses. So we've been taking rate for some period of time now. I suspect that there's going to be a way back to reducing expenses. When you talk about expense reductions and expense ratio, there's two pieces that immediately look at. Number one is claims. Number two is how you're dealing with your customers around call centers, things like that. Things that are very labor heavy. So in as much as that that will be true and I believe that it will. I don't know if that's, you know, it's swinging right now but um. And AI in here. So AI being a person that's built things and using machine learning and artificial intelligence for a number of years and I don't necessarily do that right now, but I'm familiar with how it's done. If we put that aside and we say software, uh, all the software right now is going to have AI in it at some point.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: We're looking for things, uh, many carriers are looking for things that are going to reduce the burden of bringing in very low skilled people in high volume for better or worse. Yeah. So call centers is a number, number one thing here that I'm seeing a lot of automation around. That is what I brought it up before. Um, I think that that's an area that there is a lot of opportunity claims is so messy. There's always opportunity there and there's a lot of places plays across the claims value chain. So uh, I think the, the important part is to make sure that um, if you're working on the claim side, particularly if you're working on the like the repair beyond that, that whatever you're doing and presenting fits very well with how they're already doing business versus implement or trying to implement something that's going to totally change how business is being done on the claim side. This is a, these are folks that know their business very well that have done it very for a long time. How do we help them go faster, do the things that they're doing faster versus completely changing their workflow. So it's one suggestion but I've seen a lot of exciting things. There's, there's tons there just in the amount of money that you can save. Going faster from first notice of loss to closing a claim and there, there's a million pieces there that one can work on that not there's not great products for all of them. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

Speaker B: Well, I mean it feels like the, maybe the best way to say it is claim severity seems to be more and more out of carrier's control in as much as it was in their control in the first place. Right. But the predictability of what's happening, I mean, just, just the LA fires alone. Right. So if they can't control that, this is some of the stuff that they can control. And I think that's just fascinating for companies that are. They're innovating and looking to, you know, provide value to, to these partners.

Speaker C: That's well stated. Yeah. It's hard to, um, it's hard to keep severity and my background is more pl. Auto under control when every year they're pumping more sensors into everything.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: More. You know, every time you touch a car, it's more expensive to touch it again.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And um, it's out of control.

Speaker B: Yeah. This might be an unfair question, but we talked about a little bit prior to the recording on the Life side. We do a lot of work on the Life side and I think, you know, the statement you made is you're not seeing as much in that space from an innovation perspective. Um, can you talk more about that or what, you know, what you'd love to see people bringing to you based on, you know, your partners and what you think is available out there?

Speaker C: Yeah. Ah, you bet. And I actually have a, I have a great example of a company that, that I discovered more or less by luck. I didn't mean to say that the innovation on the life side is lagging. It's more that, um, you're just not seeing it. My focus is more. It has been historically more pnc and I'm trying to bring more life and health, uh, into, into my sphere. So please reach out if you.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker C: So one thing that. So with life. What is it? What's the first thing you start with? Underwriting. Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. Yep.

Speaker C: How are we doing underwriting? Better.

Speaker B: How are we taking my favorite phrase? Mortality tables.

Speaker C: Mortality tables. Right. Uh, so there's a lot of underwriting stuff and the underwriting stuff, they're packing AI into it, whether AI is happening or not. But that's how they're packaging and presenting it. And not to say that some of these products aren't more effective than what's happening, but you know, they're. Than what's historically been happening. But that's, that's something that I see a lot of digitization. So using something like some folks that were MGA's, I think like Bestow is doing this now, they're selling their platform and there's a lot of companies, uh, that were sort of digital first life insurers that are now selling their platform to make it easier for other insurers to. To do business. Which is great. Like that's the modernization is super important. Now a really exciting one is um. So picture this. I'm a life insurer. I've used a mortality table and an underwriting process to make one. One tiny point in time. Observation of a person.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: And now I have somewhere between a 20 and forever year term.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: On them. What are they?

Speaker B: You hope you were right and you hope you're right.

Speaker C: Yeah. So in 10 years, what are they doing? And how do I know that my reserving is appropriate across my entire book of business? The answer is well, you over reserve. Right. And that's been the answer. Let's see, what are you wearing? You're not wearing one.

Speaker B: Yes. I'm not wearing a smartwatch.

Speaker C: But m. Many people are wearing smartwatches. Most people are carrying smartphones. They have some sort of trackers and things on them. So imagine 5, 10, 15 years into a policy life cycle of um, a life per life, uh, customer. You're evaluating your entire book based on additional set of inputs that are coming from real time measurements of like health trackers, fitness trackers. And you're seeing as an example, so 50% of your book has literally been on the couch since you wrote them.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And the other 50% is in the gym four or five days a week and they're all 55 years old. You have two very different risk profiles.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So how do you understand that and what does that mean for you? And then how. Because in life your, your uh, profitability and over a long time of course is going to be very driven by how well you're underwriting.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: How can you affect the present expected mortality of that first segment now? What can you do for them?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Now there's ways to take interventions to improve your profitability. I think that is fascinating. And whoever is interested in hearing about this, you should reach out to the company. Navier. I will put you in touch with Moose Mustafa. He's got a super cool company that's doing things just like this.

Speaker B: That's really cool.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And so you're like you said, I mean you can't, you know, I think everybody puckers when they hear, you know, oh yeah, I've been on the couch, you know my rate's going to go up. Right. It's not like that. Right. You're not changing the rate, but you can as a company. First of all, like you said Reserve better. Right. Be smarter about how you're reserving. But then you could potentially change outcomes because you have the data.

Speaker C: You know, that's the long term place.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: You go to the CFO and say, I'm going to improve reserving. That's great.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Uh, now you go to the operational people like, hey, you care about the people that you're covering, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: What do we do? How can we help them? Helping them helps the company. Yeah. So particularly for. There's so many, uh, life mutuals and fraternals like their goals are to help their population. How do we help them live longer, healthier, more full lives? This is within the scope of the, I mean this is the, the oldest version of insurance there is. How do you, how do you support the community in times where they need support?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, let's, uh, maybe start wrapping up here. Talk about, we talked a little bit about areas that you'd like to target. Um, and, and have companies be more involved, particularly fraternals. We talked about that. So if you want to highlight that, but then talk about how people find you, you know, how companies get into your ecosystem and, and get involved.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, we have a, we were very Ohio centric as insurance like Ohio. And we're going more broadly now. So most of our partners are within Ohio are very close to our, have major operations here. There is no requirement for that certainly at all. We have virtual events all the time and we do a lot of this virtually the, uh, to, to reach out. I mean, you can drop me a note on LinkedIn or. Um. Well, there'll probably be something within. Yep.

Speaker B: Yeah, we'll have a link. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: To reach out to me and um, uh, for a conversation. And Greg, this is what we were talking about earlier. So I have some very large partners and they have many groups that do similar things to me. I think that there is a huge opportunity for us to affect, to have an outsized effect on the outcomes of the technology usage at midsize mutuals in particular. So if you're in a situation where your company knows that it can do better from a technology perspective and you don't quite have the resources to do that, you didn't get the headcount to do that. Maybe you're a cto, maybe you're an innovation officer, maybe that's your side gig. It's your second or third act. We can, we can help you with that. We can help build your innovation program. We can help you find opportunities to really drive Real roi, using technology at your company in a way that's unobtrusive and that, uh, you know, we can decide year to year how much of it makes sense to do. I love doing this. I really do. Like, this is an amazingly perfect job for what I like to do.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I'd love to have conversations with folks that are in their situation. Um, so very light to start. Be happy to have folks come on and join a virtual showcase. Just see what we do and have a conversation. Come to the conference.

Speaker B: That's great. You, you know, we talked about earlier that we don't video this podcast. It's audio only. But if everyone could see how excited Chris gets about this stuff, you know that uh, that he's serious about his offer. So.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: We call this champions and challengers. So we always try to ask our guests to name a champion that you had, had or have in life, uh, that has helped you get where you are and then a challenge that's sort of helped to find you.

Speaker C: Yeah. Greg. So we talked about this a little bit earlier and um, I. My champion, uh, Greg is my wife.

Speaker B: Always a good answer.

Speaker C: But yeah, I'm going to make her listen to this for sure.

Speaker B: The whole thing. She's got to wait till the end. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah. Right. So I am a. It's funny because I say failed, but being a failed entrepreneur, what does that mean? I don't even know what that means. Right. So I've started several companies. I've closed several companies. I've been, I've been in the situation where I had to walk into my staff and so say you. Everyone's going home, the entire company, we're closing it down now and sitting there with a bottle of whiskey and saying goodbye. Literally I did that. Uh, and I have been part of a couple of early stage companies and we get to a point where my wife and I started our family and I closed my company. I was working closely with a friend, but his company wasn't, was. There wasn't a full time opportunity and we had three kids. I needed to reskill. I had to go back to that actual job. So, um, the goal was to, to become a data scientist, spend a couple years in the trenches and start another company. It took me a little bit longer, but what led me to, is her support and me leaving my job. We had zero income, three kids.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, being able to reskill, moving across the country. Eventually to. I was relocated by Progressive, um, to get into an industry that I now love and then make another transition. I joined an early stage startup. After I left Progressive, she supported me in that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Then I left that early stage startup, as they are now a series A startup to become CEO of another startup. So she's. There's been a lot of support happening there. Uh, now I have four children and we have expenses as one does, but she's been incredibly supportive. And, um, the corollary here is what has been my challenge is, uh, I admit to being a terrible employee. So I have a really hard time not doing things the best possible way that I could. See, I am not a big fan of folks telling me to stay in my lane, and that has been really hard in any sort of segmented role I've had for my entire life. So, uh, you know, could I work under somebody in like a COO or chief of staff role? Yeah, right, right. Because you have broad scope special projects, you're doing new stuff. But I'm just not very good at doing one role.

Speaker B: What makes you perfect for your role at Scout? And I can't thank you enough for spending time with us, um, giving your insights, uh, for everybody out there. You know, like we said, Chris's information will be available both where the podcast is published and then on social media. So keep an eye out. As always, subscribe and follow our podcast. And, uh, Chris, thanks again. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker C: Thanks Greg. This has been great.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to Champions and Challengers, produced by Bricker Graden. Join Greg Listini and other Bricker Graden attorneys for our next podcast covering the latest fintech related legal topics. The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not reflect the views of Brick or Grayton. None, um, of the content included in this podcast is intended to be legal advice and does not create or imply an attorney client relationship.