Rebuilding Insurance in India: From Fragmentation to Foundational Platforms

Speaker A: Insurance is no longer just about policies and claims. It's about data, intelligence and experience. Hello and welcome to the Insurance Story podcast. The podcast where we decode how technology is reshaping the future of insurance. I'm your host Surya Saha. And in each of our episodes we bring new conversations with industry leaders, innovators and disruptors who are redefining insurance as we know it. In today's episode, we are diving into the topic of revenue rebuilding insurance in India from fragmentation to foundational platforms to set the context. India's insurance ecosystem has long operated in fragmented layers, but today we are seeing a shift towards platform driven models that promise to unify data decisions and stakeholder interactions, raising the question of what's truly transformative versus just, just hype. And joining us today is Josh Everett, who is the chief Executive officer of Xenia India. At Xenia, Josh is leading the company's expansion in one of the most, you know, dynamic and rapidly transforming insurance markets, which is India. With over 25 years of experience across technology, insuring and global leadership, Josh is known for diving innovation that redefines how insurance is built, delivered and experienced. He is at the forefront of advancing Xenia's growth in India, scaling talent, accelerating digital innovation and building strategic partnerships to unlock new market opportunities. Under his leadership, India is emerging as a critical hub for shaping global platforms and next generation insurance solutions. Josh brings a global perspective and a strong belief in the power of technology to simplify and modernize insurance, making it more accessible, efficient and customer centric. With that, welcome to the show Josh and let's dive in to today's discussion.

Speaker B: Great, thanks Siri, I appreciate it. Uh, looking forward to the conversation today.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Josh, you know, my first um, question to you is, you know, India's insurance market has been, you know, have seen a massive growth but infrastructure hasn't kept that pace. Where do you see the biggest gap? Uh, you know, that's today we are seeing between distribution strength and back end system readiness.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. Uh, you know, the infrastructure hasn't kept up and there's a fundamental imbalance right now between the modernized distribution capabilities that, that, that are existing here and what really delivers the outcome that not only insurers, distributors, but most importantly consumers are after. So what creates this mismatch and what it really comes down to is a speed mismatch across the value chain. Um, when you look at the biggest gaps, uh, in the infrastructure versus the growth that we've seen, product innovation is significantly accelerating. But the systems and Capabilities to deploy those products is not there yet. Insurers can design new products quickly, uh, meet partner needs, create, you know, fulfill segment needs. But getting those products deployed, approved, configured, tested and launched through the network, it's resource heavy and that lag directly impacts the competitiveness. If it takes 12 or 18 months to launch a product, you're likely going to miss the opportunity in the market. And, and that really speaks to my next point. Markets expect real time. Uh, all of us as consumers expect real time. But in many cases the service or the operations that are behind these systems and these capabilities in the insurance landscape are still batch driven. Uh whether it's the issuance, whether it's, it's updates or servicing, partners expect instant responses. That's what we expect here in India, quick instant responses, high quality deliver as I expected. But many insurers today are still operating on overnight processes, uh, fragmented workflows, passing the workflow from one person to the next person, with the next person, which causes quality issues and much much more. We know that APIs are absolutely growing but they're not necessarily always helping scale the business. Yes there's lots of carriers and insurers that have APIs but they're integrated in this layered and complex ecosystem. So every partner, every opportunity, every edge case becomes a custom effort instead of a scalable plug and play connection. The other thing that I think is, is key here is there's we have a lot of data and it is all over the place but the insight to that data is scarce. Whether that's insight to consumers, whether that's insight for distributors to the consumers and the products, uh, whether that's insights for insurers to understand what that next product uh fit may be in the market. Uh, generally speaking insurers are generating massive amounts of data across all the channels and all the capabilities but it's captured in these silos, uh, systems and limits cross sell it even uh impacts basic uh, customer understanding of the product and offerings within such as ah, importantly sales feels digital but the fulfillment and servicing doesn't feel digital. Uh, you know the buying journey is incredibly smooth here. The amount of friction has significantly reduced over the last couple years with uh, various different marketplaces and embedded insurance and much much more. But when you don't have digital fulfillment or servicing on the back end, especially in things like claims or uh, you know those minor changes like change of address, change of name, uh, all of those should be self serviced and be able to flow through the entire ecosystem at a carrier and add a distributor to make sure the experience feels, feels, uh, digitally enabled. It's nearly instant and it produces the quality results that we all expect. The bottom line here in India is that we have a very modern distribution engine. But the operating system or the ecosystem around those distributors and including the consumer or in the carrier, really the friction start to show, sir. Yeah,

Speaker A: absolutely Josh. I think, you know, you rightly pointed out that you know, while the, you know, the front end or the, you know, the sales people there or the system out there, how they are generating volumes in minutes, you know, because of the rapid distribution channels, getting involved with the embedded systems, digital applications and etc. But in comparison, the backend system is still operating in the old fashioned way with siloed architectures which somehow taking days or even weeks to process, say for example policies or claims or even updating a simple data. So that kind of is an operational bottleneck. And how do we really combat that? How do we really overcome that would be the question. Next four to five years, uh, that will really define the way insurance industry functions, at least in this country. Yeah, you're absolutely with that, Josh.

Speaker B: It's really about where are we going next? Right? Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. It's about where, where does the industry go next to resolve some of that friction that we're seeing in the environment.

Speaker A: Correct. Yeah, yeah. And of course, I mean there should be uh, you know, uh, top down approach to this problem, uh, statement. I mean technology will always be there, but uh, the leadership zeal is most important. Right. Um, with that, with that Josh, you know, if we stay back selling the policy is just the beginning, uh, the real customer experience and frankly the real test of an insurer happens across the lifestyle. And most critical inflection point is the claims process because that's where the most losses occurs. So where are insurers in India still falling short? Is it underwriting, is it servicing, is it claims or any other aspect of the value chain? And where do you see the biggest opportunity to create real differentiation?

Speaker B: I love that. You're absolutely right. Point of sale is fairly smooth and frictionless at this point. Life cycle execution, end to end life cycle execution is still needing, uh, advanced and we can talk about a few of those. Um, I think underwriting is improving but not intelligent yet. Um, there is an opportunity to progress with deeper rules, engines with more automation. Especially when you look at some of these simplified products. Underwriting in most carriers today, based on those static rules and frankly speaking, limited data sets, I know that's expanding every single day, but we're still a little bit limited on the data we leverage. Uh, the next leap in underwriting really comes in the form of what I would term dynamic underwriting. Using various different alternative datas, behavior signals and real time risk assessment to make sure that uh, the insurers place in the right, uh, you know, the right, uh, consumer with the right product. So I think underwriting is an opportunity. I think yet one of the biggest opportunities here in India is really the servicing, uh, the servicing of that in force policy all the way through claims. You mentioned claims, uh, at the beginning of this, uh, that it's really where the rubber hits the road. Uh, I think most important here is how do you bring together these fragmented systems, these fragmented capabilities to really drive frictionless, automated, digital and nearly instant outcomes, uh, in that servicing layer, as we all know, if servicing, it doesn't matter how good the buying process is, if the servicing and the claim process is not optimized, it erodes trust and it drives a significant amount of higher operational cost. When you go to scale that, uh, manual processes don't scale well. They require people, they require touches. The more touches you have, the more quality issues you have. So I would say, you know, underwriting is a big one, but I think servicing is a big piece of this that uh, insurers can really focus on if they truly modernize that servicing of the life cycle, make it faster, more automated, less touches, more transparent, which is critical here and more predictable. That becomes a competitive advantage for those insurance, those insurance carriers. It's not just an operational improvement, it is a way to capture the industry and capture those consumers.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think if you really zoom out, um, the Indian insurance story is actually quite paradoxical. In one hand we see high growth, improving penetration, but on the other hand, deteriorating trust, where you say the moment of truth, which is claims. Right. And uh, like you mentioned, the servicing element. So that's where is really the, you know, game changing. Even though underwriting really, you know, kind of walks on the both side of it. Like you know, the front end where the sales comes in or the claims where the moment of truth is right. But servicing really plays the uh, important factor there in making a difference. Uh, with that, Josh, my last point to you is India's insurance ecosystem has evolved quickly, but often in a very fragmented way. Different tools for different problems. Now as the market scales, do you think that model still holds or are we moving to a future where a few foundational plants become the backbone of the industry?

Speaker B: I love this question. I spent a bunch of time in the insurance tech space and thinking about how do we help insurance carriers uh scale, how do we help distributors uh uh, distribute and how do we help consumers have the experience that we want uh at scale. Fragmentation across uh, point solutions doesn't age well, takes a ton of maintenance, requires a whole bunch of bau work that people have to maintain. Uh, it really becomes technology debt that very quickly. And so point solutions are useful. I don't, I don't want to uh, you know, overshadow the fact that point solutions have their place. They help insurers move fast, they help insurers experience uh, and experience uh, experiment in different capabilities and they can plug immediate gaps or risks. But over time they have created that technology debt. It's integrated its operational complexity, it's disconnected data and of course you always come back to that rising cost to maintain all of that. As you look to go see distribution scale, uh, the advantage, yes the advantage is shifting to those organizations that have uh, a core platform LED architecture. But it's important to clarify it isn't about going back to huge monolithic platforms that solve all problems. It's really about having uh, the future is really about having a foundational platform at the core with flexibility around the edges leveraging those point solutions, the insurate tech capabilities that, that are coming up. So think of it as this, a unified backbone um for underwriting, policy admin, claims servicing. Even if you look at product, uh delivery to the market, unified backbone product and deploying that product across the ecosystem but yet still engaging and incorporating modular capabilities that allow to allow them to plug in partners and allow them to adapt quickly and address the market.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know um, I have been walking in the intersection where I advise both m the service providers such as say yours in the insurance field as well as the insurance companies who are typically you know falling under the bias category. Right. Um, so I, while my discussion with the insurance companies goes there's a frequent um element or a sense of feeling that they say you know we often feel like a system integrator rather than a product company and Right. You like you rightly pointed the current fragmented model which is you know in India is breaking where you have a legacy system where core policy admin systems still exist, the TPS for health claims, a separate distribution tech, say an aggregator or a bank insurance and etc. Appoint AI tools which is we are working on say underwriting or even on the fraud element and a different partner ecosystem where we are working with hospitals in place of health care, uh uh, automobile company in case of motor insurance, etc. Etc. And what really happened is, or rather if you compare, what really worked then was because the volume was low. Right. And they were very similar, uh, simpler products. Regulation wasn't that evolved as it is today. Right. And what you really, uh, uh, um, pointed out right now is what would happen when we scale. Right. So say in a, uh, customer journey which is disjointed, uh, a data silo ecosystem, cost of operation goes high, innovation that is not picking up. So how do insurers feel? And that's where they feel as integrated rather than a product company, what they're really actually doing. And that's when a lot of insurance companies ask, you know, help us and how do we really, you know, come, uh, or rather close this gap, if not fully, but in partnership with, uh, a service provider where we can really not just improve on the bottom line, but also create this, or rather close this disjointed, uh, areas of operations. I think this is a very interesting and very growing issue. And even though we want to talk about improving penetration, but we also have to talk about how we can really close this gap when it comes to legacy systems. Right. So any, you know, closing thought, um, on that, Josh?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're spot on. Right. Uh, the insurance industry in India is really in a, you know, defining phase of what the next five to ten years looks like. The next wave of winners in the industry aren't just going to be those that can distribute the fastest. It's really going to be those that can launch products quickly, operate seamlessly and efficient, absolutely effectively, and then of course deliver with speed and consistency across the life cycle. You know, I think it's important to know that, you know, the future isn't really all of these fragmented systems, but it's not also this rigid core. It's about the combination of a platform that combines scalability with flexibility, simplify the core, allow the edges to remain agile. That's going to drive sustainable growth here in India.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Um, thank you Josh, and thank you for sharing your insights with us today and it was a pleasure having you on the show.

Speaker B: Thank you, Siri. I appreciate being here and I'm looking forward to many more podcasts with you.

Speaker A: Absolutely. With, you know, all pleasure is us and to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to follow in short, X story podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcast and Amazon Music and share it with your network. Until next time, stay safe and take care. Goodbye for now. Well, we are off the record. Um, Any feedback? Josh Etty?

Speaker B: I thought that went well. How did you feel about it, Surya?

Speaker A: But I think it was, um, great. And I was love when it's a two way conversation which is interesting for the listeners as well and not like, you know, the moderator is asking questions and the speaker is answering.

Speaker B: So I agree.

Speaker A: That was great. Um, and thank you for those great examples bringing in and you know, fantastic growth opportunities that we have spoken about. Um, great points that you've highlighted.

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker B: Really well. Yeah, I thought it went really well. Questions were well framed and I liked the dialogue. These always go better when it's dialogue. And uh, I have to say I love your enthusiasm. Very few people that I get on the phone with match my enthusiasm and you have it, my friend. So, uh, love your enthusiasm and we'd love to get to know you much, much better.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Thank you. Um, um, 80, just one question to you. Um, so you have sent zinnias logo. So if you wish, um, you want me to put the uh, logo on the podcast banner as well as um, under the knowledge partnership, um, on the Internet? Yes, you can add podcast website. Yeah, that would be nice. Great. Yes, great. I will, um, share, uh, an email with you when all, all are done.

Speaker B: Okay, great.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I think with that we are, uh, good. Thank you both of you for joining in. And I'm hoping to get this published by this weekend, if not Monday.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So I will Tag you on LinkedIn and of course I tag Xenia.

Speaker B: You bet.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I'll go repost it and share it and help. Hopefully we'll get a whole bunch of views.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you very much. And Josh, in future, if you want to increase your 1900 employees to 1901 employee, do let me know when I look out you.

Speaker B: I, I will do that. I will do that. And you never know, there may be an opportunity there. So, um, when you start to look again, reach out to me and let me know that you're back in the market. Okay?

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: All right, great talking to you.

Speaker A: Thanks for the time today. Thank you.

Speaker B: Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

Speaker A: Insurance is no longer just about policies and claims. It's about data, intelligence and experience. Hello and welcome to the Insurance Story podcast. The podcast where we decode how technology is reshaping the future of insurance. I'm your host, Surya Saha, and in each of our episode, we bring you conversations with industry leaders, innovators and disruptors who are redefining insurance as we know it. In today's episode, we are diving into the topic of rebuilding insurance in India from fragmentation to foundational platforms to set the context. India's insurance ecosystem has long operated in fragmented layers, but today we are seeing a shift towards platform driven models that promise to unify data decisions and stakeholder interactions, raising the question of what's truly transformative versus just hype. And joining us today is Josh Everett who is the chief Executive officer of Xenia India. At Xenia, Josh is leading the company's expansion in one of the most dynamic and rapidly transforming insurance markets, which is India. With over 25 years of experience across technology, insurance and global leadership, Josh is known for diving innovation that redefines how insurance is built, delivered and experienced. He is at the forefront of advancing Xenia's growth in India, uh, scaling talent, accelerating digital innovation and building strategic partnerships to unlock new market opportunities. Under his leadership, India is emerging as a critical hub for shaping global platforms and next generation insurance solutions. Josh brings a global perspective and a strong belief in the power of technology to simplify and modernize insurance, making it more accessible, efficient and customer centric. With that, welcome to the show Josh and let's dive in to today's discussion.

Speaker B: Great, thanks Siri, I appreciate it. Uh, looking forward to the conversation today.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Josh. You know my first um, question to raise, you know India's insurance market has been, you know, have seen a massive growth but infrastructure hasn't kept that pace. Where do you see the biggest gap? Um, you know that's today we are seeing between distribution strength and back end system readiness.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. Uh, you know the infrastructure hasn't kept up and there's a fundamental imbalance right now between uh, the modernized distribution capabilities that, that, that are, are existing here and what really delivers the outcome that not only insurers, distributors but most importantly consumers are after. So what creates this mismatch and, and what it really comes down to is a speed mismatch across the value chain. Um, when you look at the biggest gaps uh, in the infrastructure versus the growth that we've seen, product innovation is significantly accelerating but the systems and capabilities to deploy those products is not there yet. Insurers can design new products quickly, uh, meet uh, partner needs, create you know, fulfill segment needs. But getting those products deployed, approved, configured, tested and launched through the network of lake, it's resource heavy and that lag directly impacts the competitiveness. If it takes 12 or 18 months, ah to launch a product, you're likely going to miss the opportunity in the market and, and that really speaks to My next point, markets expect real time. Uh, all of us as consumers expect real time. But in many cases the service or the operations that are behind these systems and these capabilities in the insurance landscape are still batch driven. Uh, whether it's policy issuance, whether it's, it's updates or servicing, partners expect instant responses. That's what we expect here in India. Quick instant responses, high quality deliver as I expected. But many insurers, they are still operating on overnight processes, uh, fragmented workflows, passing uh, the workflow from one person to the next person, with the next person, which causes quality issues and much, much more. We know that APIs are absolutely growing, but they're not necessarily always helping scale the business. Yes, there's lots of carriers and insurers that have APIs, but they're integrated in this layered and complex ecosystem. So every partner, every opportunity, every edge case becomes a custom effort instead of a scalable plug and play connection. The other thing that I think is, is key here is there's, we have a lot of data and it is all over the place but the insight to that data is scarce. Whether that's insight to consumers, whether that's insight for distributors to the consumers and the products, uh, whether that's uh, insights for insurers to understand what that next product fit may be in the market. Uh, generally speaking insurers are generating massive amounts of data across all the channels and all the capabilities. But it's captured in these silos, uh, systems and cap or limits cross sell. It even uh, impacts base, uh, customer understanding of the product and, and offerings within such as importantly sales feels digital but the fulfillment and servicing doesn't feel digital. Uh, you know the buying journey is incredibly smooth here. It's the uh, amount of friction has significantly reduced over the last couple years with uh, various different marketplaces and embedded in insurance and much, much more. But when you don't have uh, digital fulfillment or servicing on the back end, especially in things like claims or uh, you know those minor changes like change of address, change of name, uh, all of those should be self serviced and be able to flow through the entire ecosystem at a carrier and add a distributor to make sure the experience feels, feels uh, digitally enabled. It's nearly instant and it produces the quality results that we all expect. The bottom line here in India is that we have a very modern distribution engine. But the operating system or the ecosystem around those distributors, including the consumer and the carrier, really the friction start to show, sir? Yeah,

Speaker A: absolutely. Josh, I think you know, you rightly pointed out that you Know while the front end or the salespeople there or the system out there, how they are generating volumes in minutes because of the rapid distribution channels, getting involved with embedded systems, digital applications and etc. But in comparison the backend system is still operating in the old fashioned way with siloed architectures which somehow taking days or even weeks to process, say for example policies or claims or even updating a simple data. Right. So that kind of is an operational bottleneck. And how do we really combat that, how do we really overcome that? Is would be the question next four to five years. Uh, that will really define the way insurance industry functions at least in this country. Yeah, you're absolutely with that Josh.

Speaker B: It's really about where are we going next, Right? Yeah, you're exactly right. It's about where, where does the industry go next to resolve some of that friction that we're seeing in the environment.

Speaker A: Correct. Yeah, yeah. And of course, I mean there should be uh, you know, uh, top down approach to this problem, uh statement. I mean technology will always be there but uh, the leadership zeal is most important. Right. Um, with that, with that Josh, you know, if we stay back selling the policy is just the beginning. Uh, the real customer experience and frankly the real test of an insurer happens across the lifestyle and most critical inflection point is the claims process because that's where the most losses occurs. So where are insurers in India still falling short? Is it underwriting, is it servicing, is it claims or any other aspect of the value chain? And where do you see the biggest opportunity to create real differentiation?

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. You're absolutely right. Point of sale is fairly smooth and frictionless at this point. Life cycle execution, end to end life cycle execution is still uh, needing advanced and we can talk about a few of those. Um, I think underwriting is improving but not intelligent yet. Uh, there is an opportunity to progress with deeper rules, engines with more automation. Especially when you look at some of these simplified products, uh, underwriting in most carriers today, based on those static rules and frankly speaking limited data sets, I know that's expanding every single day, but we're still a little bit limited on the data we leverage. Uh, the next leap in underwriting really comes in the form of what I would term dynamic underwriting using various different alternative data, behavior signals and real time risk assessment to make sure that uh, the insurers place in the right, uh, you know, the right uh, consumer with the right product. So I think underwriting is an opportunity. I think yet one of the biggest Opportunities here in India is really the servicing, uh, the servicing of that in force policy all the way through claims. You mentioned claims, uh, at, at the beginning of this, uh, that it's really where the rubber hits the road. Uh, I think most important here is how do you bring together these fragmented systems, these fragmented capabilities to really drive frictionless, automated, digital and nearly instant outcomes, uh, in that servicing layer. As we all know, if servicing, it doesn't matter how good the buying process is. If the servicing and the claim process is not optimized, it erodes trust and it drives a significant amount of higher operational cost. When you go to scale that, uh, manual processes don't scale well. They require people, they require touches. The more touches you have, the more quality issues you have. So I would say, you know, underwriting is a big one, but I think servicing is a big piece of this that, that insurers can, can really focus on if they truly modernize that servicing of the life cycle, make it faster, more automated, less touches, more transparent, which is critical here and more predictable, that becomes a competitive advantage for those insurance.

Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. Absolutely fantastic. Um, thank you Josh and thank you for sharing your insights with us today and it was a pleasure having you on the show.

Speaker B: Thank you, Siri. I appreciate being here and I'm looking forward to many more podcasts with you.

Speaker A: Absolutely. With. You know, all pleasure is ours. And to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to follow Inshotak story podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcast and Amazon Music and share it with your network. Until next time, stay safe and take care. Goodbye for now.