Episode 23: From Incumbent To Unicorn CEO, And Where Insurance Goes Next, A Conversation with Rob Schimek, Founder and Group CEO at bolttech

Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome to Oliver Wayman's Reinventing Insurance podcast. I'm um, your host, Paul Ricard. Welcome to Reinventing Insurance. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Rob Chimek, founder and group CEO of Boltech. Welcome Rob.

Speaker B: Paul, thanks for having me. It's great to be here today.

Speaker A: For the benefit of our listeners, why don't you give us a quick intro about yourself.

Speaker B: I have a long career these days, it feels like too long of a career in insurance. But uh, I'm from the US I spent uh, 18 years with Deloitte and Touche and my main clients were insurance clients. So I helped to take MetLife public the back in 2000. So that was really my primary insurance client. But I couldn't wait to get my hands on the steering wheel and actually get into the action. So I left Deloitte and went uh, into a really interesting company, AIG in 2005 after 18 years at Deloitte, then did a 12 year tour of duty at AIG. Loved it, had a great experience, great company, great people. Um, 12 years, but boy did I see a lot in 12 years. As you know, um, from M 20055 until 2017. And in 2017 I decided that it would be time for me to try to do something, uh, on my own. And I wanted to take all those lessons from the things that I saw in those years at AIG and in Deloitte and I wanted to try to do them myself, um, as the founder of a business, which is how boltech comes to be.

Speaker A: So you went from essentially consulting to the very much leadership positions at an incumbent to now the startup life. I'm curious, what does a day in the life of Rob look like nowadays?

Speaker B: It's very interesting when you are the founder and you're the CEO of a startup, your mind is always racing about what could it be that you have to be looking for. Because the entire team's counting on me to make sure that I'm thinking around what's coming around the next corner, what's ahead. So I have to be honest and say, uh, usually I don't need an alarm to work, wake up in the mornings, just my mind is already racing, I'm already have ideas, there's things I want to get to. So today, no alarm, just woke up now. Of course I knew I would be here with you. So maybe that was, maybe it was the great anticipation of that opportunity. I try to spend as much of my time focused on my team and supporting them. Ah, as well as focused on really Setting the course for the future, strategy and the big picture things that team depends on me to do. I don't want to do their job. I want to set the future so that they can do their job and feel really good that the things that they're doing will have a, have uh, an outcome that will make a difference.

Speaker A: What about outside of work? I believe you're quite an active person outside of, uh, running one of the largest intra techs in the world.

Speaker B: I do have a somewhat adventurous physical calendar also. So my wife is a great partner for me. She's my training partner and one of the things that we do a lot of together is training for big races. She, I think she likes to push me to what is your next goal? And so right now we are training for seven marathons on seven continents, um, in seven consecutive days. So it's called the World Marathon Challenge 777. That is what occupies me outside of work.

Speaker A: You had me already at seven marathons on, um, seven continents. The seven consecutive days is definitely taking it to the next level. Well, good luck with that for sure. And diving in talking about the evolution of insurance, we'd love to get your take on some of the big shifts that you've seen in the last few years that have been impacting the insurance industry and that you're still seeing impacting the industry. What are the big things that come to mind for you?

Speaker B: I think the thing that always jumps out at me whenever I talk about what's happening in the industry is, is I like to uh, ground myself in the big driver of what really makes me get up every day. And that is you're seeing this growing protection gap. You know, imagine it being like you're swimming in a swimming pool and it's one of those pools where the um, where they have the tide going against you, you're swimming m against it, and no matter how fast you swim, it seems like you're losing ground. And that is actually true. Right. The global protection gap is getting bigger and it's not like it's a new trend. Yeah, it's just an interesting observation that as many companies that focus on this and as many resources as get poured into it, um, the further behind it seems as though we get as an industry.

Speaker A: Where do you see the biggest challenge both in terms of what are some of the, the biggest needs, if you will, that are, that are kind of making up this growing protection gap? What do you think is the biggest cause for that gap increasing on the industry end?

Speaker B: I typically think about the protection gap Maybe in three pieces of the pie. The first one is, I would say it evolves because of the evolution of the population of the world. We're getting bigger, there are more of us. 100 years ago there were 2 billion people on the planet Earth. Today there's 8 billion. Um, we're getting older is the other thing. As a, as a overall global population, um, you, you have this aging effect that we're seeing. And as a result of that, there's just more stuff and there's this growing um, divide between how many years you'll live to be chronologically and how long your body will hold up biologically. So I'd say that's one of three, um, ah, drivers. The second big driver of the protection gap in my view is um, is the climate, the world, the globe itself. Um, it's very hard to deny that there is global warming, that there is climate change. You're getting a increased level of natural catastrophes. Those natural catastrophes drive real problems for people who have, um, homes in the areas to protect their homes. And that's a big challenge. And then the third driver that I look to is technology. Technology is such an amazing positive influence on the world for us today. It also comes with so many big challenges that get caused. And cyber, of course, is one of the great examples of where you've got a risk that is continuing to grow and the needs of that risk are not being met. We didn't even think about AI in the same way that we think about it today, just a few years ago.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And so the pace of evolution of that is so fast. The risks associated with it are moving so fast and it's really hard for the industry to keep up, to provide solutions at the pace that the, that technology is evolving.

Speaker A: Totally agree with the three points you, you brought up. Whether we're talking about property and casualty risks, life insurance, health insurance, that protection gap is, is being impacted across all of these and then really across all three of the elements you mentioned. But especially as you talk about climate, natural catastrophes, technology, it's not just individuals, it's also corporates, uh, that are getting impacted. And it's interesting because obviously you have the big, that get bigger, but resilience is not something that is in infinite supply. So they need to become more and more and more resilient because we all depend on them. You also have a flurry of small businesses that also have needs and have only so much budget and time for all these things. And so two challenges that I see on the, on the insurance Industry side one is you're now asking insurers to play so many different roles because it's not just about, oh, here's a loss, let me pay a check. There's an element of, okay, now we need to provide support, we need to predict and we need to prevent a lot of the risks that you mentioned. It's all about prevention.

Speaker B: 100% correct.

Speaker A: And so there's an element of, how do you actually play in that ecosystem? What role does the insurer play versus others? So I think that's one big challenge that I'm seeing. We're almost in between two times where the entire ecosystem has not yet figured out how these different pieces come together.

Speaker B: I love the point that you made, and I think that it is a big picture comment that I make is when I think about Boltec, the company that we've created, we don't come here with a hubris that says, we're here to disrupt all of you incumbents because you don't know what you're doing. Yes, they do. Trust me. I've been in the industry. When you live in the problem. Yeah. Uh, for as long as you do, you can see how hard everyone's working to try to solve the problem is that it's impossible to run your existing business, take care of all the things you've got to take care of, and morph into what will it take to survive and to thrive and to help the world in the future. That's really hard. And so we have a view that we are an enabling capability, not a disrupting capability. And it's very much the mindset that we take. I also really like your point about the evolution of change from being a event happens and we pay your claim, and maybe we pay your claim super fast. But, you know, take an example of how the customer expectations are even evolving. If you, uh, for example, got locked out of your Airbnb and you had your sleeping child on your shoulder and it's midnight and everyone's tired, do you really think that it excites you to know that you're going to get a claim payment really fast? That does nothing for me. Actually. What I would rather have is I would rather have a solution. I'd rather have someone come unlock the door, let me in, let me put the kid to bed, and then we can have a really good experience that would be more meaningful. So the nature of what these solutions are don't just simply become, hey, I'm going to pay your claim and I'm going to pay it fast. But it is, I'm going to actually provide a service element to what I do. And then as you said, if you go back even further, what if I could actually stop that event from happening in the first place? Uh, and boy, that concept of prediction prevention is really, uh, such an important element of where the world is going. Very hard for all of the incumbent players to suddenly become prediction and prevention experts at the exact same time. They're pretty well suited for it because they understand a lot about where the claims come from, what's the source of the problem, but coming up with a way to predict it and prevent it, um, now that's even a different skill set. And we all should be open minded to are there great ideas, great technologies, great ways to predict and prevent that complement what we as an existing industry are already doing?

Speaker A: So uh, I want to, I want to ask you a bit also maybe to tell us a little bit about, uh, Baltek and just share a little bit about what you do. And before I do this, I just want to tell you a funny, uh, anecdote building on top of this. One of my colleagues actually was describing his experience of breaking his iPhone in the middle of a trip overseas and rushing, uh, to try to find an Apple store and get all these things figured, uh, out. And uh, the phone got changed relatively fast. It was okay. But what he was telling me, back to your point and I love your Airbnb anecdote, it was not so much about the phone broke down. It was he broke down. Because nowadays if you don't have your phone, suddenly you can't contact anybody, you can't orient yourself, you can't pay for anything, you can't order a car, you can't do anything right. And so back to the job to be done and the problem. It's like, how do you orient yourself around solving that end to end customer need versus just this loss happened. Let me pay something.

Speaker B: Exactly. Maybe I should do exactly as you just said. I'll rewind for a moment. What is it at Boltec that we're doing in the first place? Uh, I think if I summarized it for you, I'd say we are the world's most internationally scaled insurtech focused on distribution. M. We operate at the intersection of technology and insurance distribution. And our uh, real mission is to create the world's leading technology enabled ecosystems. So we're an ecosystem player for protection and insurance in the US we operate one of the most robust insurance exchanges in the country. We quote US$75 billion of premium every 12 months on behalf of our ecosystem partners. Meaning we're B2B 2C. So it's some distribution partner who's asking for a premium quote. We're getting that quote from the incumbent insurance carriers. And so our technology is helping to facilitate that, to keep it in context. We quote $150 million of property insurance, homeowners or renters insurance every day, 365 days a year. We quote $50 million of auto insurance every day, 365 days a Year. And we do that through really big ecosystem partners. Now the US has 330 plus million people. So it's a big ecosystem, it's a very sophisticated insurance market. But our view is that this global protection gap is exactly, as I say, global. So it extends well beyond the us. So when we go to take some of what we have learned how to do in America and bring it to Asia and bring it to Europe, the question is, how does that fit? Can you really just pick something up from the US and magically descend it Europe or on Asia? And hey, it works. Um, no, it requires you to have a somewhat different approach in Asia in particular. And I live day to day today in Singapore. And so this is a great place where you can see what's happening in the world and where the future of the world is headed. The real connection point, back to the point you made earlier, is how do the human beings in Asia relate to their day to day life in their most important way and usually that tends to be through their electronic device, through their cell phone. So you'll see us in the U.S. uh, begin with an insurance exchange where maybe the first product we'll offer is property insurance, homeowners insurance or automobile insurance. But in Europe or in Asia, maybe that's not the protection at all. Here in Asia somebody really has a cell phone. That might be the most important connection point that they have to the world. All the points you made that it's how I pay payments, it's how I stay close to my family, it's how I'm connected to the world, it's where my entire life is. And if anything happens to that, we need to be able to get you back online immediately. And so in my description of who we are, I say we provide um, this ecosystem for protection and insurance.

Speaker A: It's been great seeing Baltic, uh, uh, growing. On your latest fundraising you were valued over $2 billion. I think that makes you the largest intra tech in the world. So congratulations on that. It's been interesting where the first wave almost was tech, first insurance Second, and was missing some of the fundamentals, either as direct carriers or solution providers that were not quite achieving what they were supposed to do. I think now there's a lot more of a blend between the insurance and protection expertise and the technology expertise that's achieving everything. You're mentioning insurers are definitely not the only members of that ecosystem. You were mentioning other solution providers. And what I'm also seeing is there's plenty more assistance and services type solutions that are circumventing all of this altogether. Where do you see that going? Do you see insurers almost doubling down on their role in the value chain? Do you see the ecosystem just becoming a lot more diversified, uh, with uh, players like Baltech?

Speaker B: It's a great question and you're correct when you think about it from the perspective of this evolution where you're seeing services and the protection come together. Think about it, um, even from a simplistic example of auto insurance. So there's the auto accident, you know that when there's the auto accident that someone then has to potentially get the car towed, then you need a ride home from where you are. There's other things that have to happen besides just getting your claim paid right and getting your car repaired. And there are some really great examples in the insurance industry where the incumbents have done a great job of building service capabilities. I think, uh, you would see that with Allianz partners providing, uh, assistance capabilities that complement their insurance capabilities. You see that with Generali, uh, doing something in very similar matter with uh, Europe assistance. So there's great examples of where this assistance capability is complementing the traditional insurance. I just think that that will continue to really expand. So as an example, when we think about personal cyber, we actually refer to it as online safety. If you really wanted to get it right, you would actually stop someone from getting hacked in the first place. There's great companies that already specialize in that.

Speaker A: And it.

Speaker B: There's not a need in the marketplace for someone to recreate it. Why would I try to recreate what McAfee does, what Norton Utilities does? It doesn't make any sense. But we should try to partner with capabilities, uh, like that to stop the attack from happening in the first place. But if it happens, or if it wasn't even quite that, which was your risk? What if, for example, you provide a cell phone to your young child? But if I give my kid a phone, lord knows what's going to happen when they get access to that phone. And all the devious things that can happen in the market, there's also companies that help with monitoring your child, monitoring what their activity has been preventing them from getting access to things that you don't want them to have access for, sensing, actually using technology to observe. Do we see the signs of cyberbullying? And so what if you could take a capability that prevents an issue, again like Ah, McAfee, Norton Utilities, put it together with something like um, monitoring of your child's behavior, Put that together with an assistance capability that says in the event that you did get hacked, maybe we need to restore your social media pages, et cetera. And then maybe there is some sort of a monetary need in the event that you made some mistake and someone got access to one of your accounts. But it's that combination, it's not just any one element that is the solution. The customers these days have greater expectations for what our capabilities are. And that range of capabilities includes things that no one was thinking about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more, but just starting to think of them five years ago, but they're becoming the real life expectation today.

Speaker A: Yeah. And uh, by the way, I, I love that you're calling it online safety rather than personal cyber, because if you take 10 people in the street and, and talk to them about personal cyber, I don't think anybody would understand what that means.

Speaker B: I agree, they would not.

Speaker A: It's also interesting because the combination of all the elements you mentioned from a customer standpoint makes a lot of sense, but also from a risk provider and a risk backer standpoint, uh, also means that I have a, um, much deeper and broader understanding of the risk so I can actually underwrite it a lot more accurately, uh, and consciously than just providing the coverage without having, uh, all these peripherals.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And you can think of it for sure as there is no insurance company that just wants you to have a law so that they can pay your claim. I think they're quite happy to pay the claim. They're very good at it. Certainly everyone benefits if you can avoid the claim. And so there's getting to be many, many, many more advancements in how technologically savvy we can be to help avoid a claim from happening in the first place.

Speaker A: I want to talk about your playbook and your hard earned lessons learned through the years. So you've been in the insurance industry for a long time, you've been in many different leadership seats. You're now leading a, uh, global intra tech. What are some of the biggest forks in the road, uh, for you? What are some of the things that, um, either you had to unlearn through the years or things that have really, uh, become part of your day to day nowadays from all these years in the industry, what's the biggest kind of tricks of the trade of, uh, Rob Schemeck?

Speaker B: It's hard to say any one thing. You're right, it's tricks, plural of the trade or experiences. But some of these experiences just remind you that in your lifetime, it's important to learn all the time, learn things that you want to repeat and learn things also that you don't want to.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So when I left New York and I moved out here to Singapore because that's where the capital came that attracted me to create Boltec, it came from here in Asia. I was really proud to have the opportunity to say, okay, I've had so many experiences, I can't wait to deploy them. But I had to ask myself, which lessons do I want to repeat and which lessons do I not want to repeat? So there are some lessons that I felt were really useful for me to repeat. One of them, for example, having worked, uh, in a large incumbent, was the power of this international footprint to try to provide my solution to the global protection gap. But focus on a single geography didn't resonate with me. So, number one, I would say I fell in love with the idea of this global footprint, footprint and a global problem and a global solution. Uh, it also became very clear to me, by the way, to never lose track of what it is that you set out to do. Like the old Yogi Berra, uh, analogy. If you don't know where you're going, be careful because you might just get there. Right. So you had to be super clear on your North Star. We understand at Baltech what it is we're trying to do. We're here to help to close a global protection gap. We focus on six very clear distribution channels. Not seven, not 10, not 100, um, but six. And we do that because we want to not lose track of that North Star. And we're thinking always about is everything we're doing really helping to address this global protection gap. One of the things I had to unlearn, maybe two things I had to unlearn. One was the DIY mentality. Do it yourself mentality.

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker B: That exists many times in established players and by the way, maybe sometimes in players who have, uh, resources that are greater than what a little, uh, insurtech startup like Boltec would have had. And so we didn't have the ability to have a DIY mentality. Instead, ours Was ecosystem, collaboration, partnership. Because I don't have time. I want to die of old age. I just don't want to die of old age building voltech. Right? And so you have to do it at pace and you have to be able to do it at scale. And it means you're going to have to work with others who will help you to do that. In my previous experience, way too much, I have to do it myself. The only solution is that we build it ourselves, um, that we're the best provider. Insurance companies are great at understanding risk, protecting risk, handling the claims. They are not the best technology providers in the world. Right. You know that, you know that, that, that is true. So we try to be at that place where they could use some help to enable what they're trying to do happen better, faster, smarter than it otherwise would have happened on its own. Um, over time, if we're successful together. I'm fine with, once you've proven the concept and you're ready to build it yourself, then go ahead and build it yourself. But why should a customer wait for years for us to do everything over and over again as an industry, when in fact we could collaborate different as an industry and make everything happen faster? And so really this DIY mentality, do it yourself mentality is one thing I really had to overcome. The other thing is just the bureaucracy, uh, of not being agile. I think that the concept of agility is so important in today's environment. And when you do everything yourself, where you have a big bureaucratic environment where you can't get decisions made, then you can't get from decision to execution and implementation and that's just too long for the customer to wait. Who wants to hear, I've got a problem? Okay, no problem, I'll be back. I'll solve your problem for you. Come back in a few years. Nobody wants to be told, come back in a few years. They want it solved yesterday.

Speaker A: Um, I'm sure if we put a bunch of large incumbent executives in this room, they would probably all say that they do want to partner and they do want to be more agile. These companies are 100 plus years old. So it's, uh, a DNA and a culture built over time with a lot of really great things, but now things are accelerating exponentially. That cultural change is really important. And it is interesting what you were saying about the technology. There's been a lot of trial and error. A lot of insurance companies also have looked at what big tech companies have done. Okay, how can we emulate this? And there's been big tech investments and all these other things, but these haven't necessarily panned out the way they should. Uh, but now there seems to be more appetite for, okay, maybe let's rethink the way we operate. So uh, especially now in the age of AI, uh, is there an opportunity for these companies to do things differently? And what I would love to ask you is what do you think if you were to wind back the clock, what would you potentially do differently to kind of accelerate that journey?

Speaker B: If I had one item that I could choose for what I would do differently and I wish that I was smarter about this earlier in my career, it would be become an expert in the problem before trying to implement the solution. So we encounter this all the time. For example, in conversations regarding AI today. People, uh, there are AI solutions for almost everything you can imagine. The only problem is do those solutions really address the problem? The most important piece of advice I would give to anyone is become a real student of the problem. If you understand the problem, I guarantee you can find a solution. The uh, problem is that people tend to go backwards. They start with I've got a great solution or I have the answer. Now let me figure out, did that actually fit the problem? I think that's the big mistake.

Speaker A: This is not unique to the insurance industry for sure. In a way, insurance companies are product manufacturers and so you have assembly lines around different types of products. And to your point, there's the element of how do we incrementally innovate around what we've done versus let's try to create a breakthrough market defining innovation. So I appreciate very much the challenge that you're saying. We talked a lot about partnerships and you've developed a flurry of partnerships uh, as part of uh, BoldTech. What are the ingredients that are really, really making the difference? And not just between a good and a bad partnership, but also bringing, but, but between a good and a really great category defining partnership.

Speaker B: I, I love the question. The, the very first thing that I would say is at Baltech we are a B2B to C player, right? So everything we do is about partnerships. We, we access the end customer through a distribution partnership. So by definition it is that partnership that is the starting point for how we're even going to come to market in the first place. And so this is actually in the lifeblood we do. We have a really interesting example of what I think it has taken to be super successful with a partnership. We have a uh, partnership in Korea with LGU plus. So everyone would know LG Electronics, a fantastic organization. We began working with LGU plus even though they already were working with an incumbent insurer. So we're not the first player to come in. But the very first thing that we did was we came in with an innovative solution. And the innovative solution was different than a typical insurance solution because what we wanted was an answer that was always going to be, yes, we can solve your problem, not let me evaluate the claim and if it met the claim, we'll solve or not solve. So he came to Korea where they first ever kind of solution. It requires a lot of homework, a lot of hard work, a lot of research, a lot of regulatory compliance because we're in a highly regulated, uh, industry. But that was the starting point. Every period since then we continue to raise the bar on ourselves with that partner. So that wasn't the innovation. And now we sit back and always good, because other players see that and will emulate it. And by the way, I welcome that because that's how the whole industry will get better. But as they emulate it, you then have to think about but what's next and always be innovating. So constant innovation, not day one, but all the time. The second thing is shared goals. So it is not enough for me to have KPIs or for my partner to have KPIs, we need to have joint, joint KPIs. If we have joint KPIs, their success is my success, my success is their success. That's win, win, win. And that's how you're going to really make this work. And then the third thing that I'll say is that you said this earlier, Paul, and you're quite right, and that is many times we think of ourselves as an industry from the product first lens. It should be I start with the customer in mind and I work backward to what is the product that I need. And so we have done that exceptionally well. So we are always focused on providing tailored, which means we started at the customer and said, what do you need? And then we'll work backward to what is the supply that's out there and do we have to cobble a few things together to create a very specific, very tailored solution for the marketplace. But we like tailored. We need it to be affordable. I can have a solution, but if you can't afford to buy it, then it doesn't matter. And then it has to be hyper accessible. So at the exact point that you need it, I wanted that capability to be at your fingertips. You don't even have to Think that's this concept of embedded insurance. Sometimes people throw all these words together like they're one thing. They'll sometimes talk about, um, embedded insurance like it's buying the pack of chewing gum at the checkout counter at that very end. Um, no. Sometimes buying embedded insurance for us is homeowners insurance or auto insurance. That's embedded into the journey. But that's not a low ticket item like buying your chewing gum. But when you think about making those partners succeed, I think it is about those three primary drivers. Keep raising the bar on yourself. Innovate, innovate, Innovate this joint KPI and work backward from the client needs.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. That point on shared KPIs and shared alignment, on how crucial a priority that is. Something that's not lost on me. But I find oftentimes it might be lost on people that these things are actually hard and they're almost hard by design. Again, I'm not saying everything about it is hard, but really cracking that challenge is not something that, that, you know, happens without much effort.

Speaker B: There's so many things that we really, really, really believe in, but making that happen overnight, it's not fantasy land. This is real life. So I'll use an example that everyone, especially here in Asia, you're familiar with the concept of bank assurance. Um, so the banks are a great distribution channel for protection products, life insurance, health insurance, et cetera. Uh, I believe that you'll continue to see the emergence of, of other classes that are very similar. So an example is, I think you'll see telco assurance really emerge. You pay them for the access to your WI fi, you pay them for access to your broadband. They're in the perfect trusted position. And they also know information about you and about the right time. So they know if you've changed your address, that's the right time to offer you renters insurance or homeowner's insurance. They know that if you, uh, bought your broadband that that's the right time to offer you this online safety protection. They know, um, that if you put your roaming on that you're going to be traveling. So there are things that they know and if it's used smartly, it creates the future. But that concept is something we've believed in since for the entire existence of Boltec. Did it happen overnight? Is it happening overnight?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Again, this is real life. This is not fantasy land. And so is it happening today in front of our eyes? Yes, in a really big way. There's some great players that are really sophisticated with this, I think of um, Mass Orange in Spain as a great example of a company. They get it, they're on it, they're sophisticated, they're smart, they're paving the way. But someone had to be the pioneer. They're more of an example of a pioneer. Many people had figured out years before that you can work with a telco to provide protection for the cell phone itself. Okay, that's true, it's quite important. But if that's starting position and your end destination, this is not going to be a great long term solution.

Speaker A: Interestingly, the point you just made reminds uh, me, all these Silicon Valley companies see the gamut of exactly what you said. So I'll share a bad example. First, Theranos. Theranos. It was like the vision was, yeah, we want all these tests and everything happened with a drop of blood. That's a fantastic vision, that's a beautiful vision. And by the way, that should be the vision for the entire lab testing industry, for a lot of the healthcare industry. But it's almost like they went for the starting point to be that vision. And as we know, it's all unraveled in a very dramatic way. And I think, and in a way that probably slowed down a lot of things along the way because probably a lot of startups in that ecosystem that would have marched towards a similar vision have been blocked, uh, from fundings and all these other things for a long period of time. Time. And then on the flip side of this, you have the SpaceX where the vision is, we want to colonize other planets. Colonize Mars. Great, you're not going to do this day one. But what do you need to do first? Yes, you need to build the rockets. You need the rocket to be able to uh, lift off and land back. And they're marching towards this step after step after step, which I think is a much more interesting way. And to your point, it doesn't happen overnight. I like the relentless focus on achieving uh, that vision. So if you fast forward 5, 10 plus years, how will it feel to a customer? There is also a lot of companies that are trying to, I don't like that word, but to own the customer or uh, to be the primary relationship with the customer. AI is opening new front doors as well. I know you said you're enabling more than disrupting, but this is potentially disrupting the way we think about advice. So my question is, with all of this, how do you see five, ten years from now? How could this look like?

Speaker B: I, uh, love the point that you made about not trying to make day one fit to what is that long term vision. Because the fact of life is it will be a journey, it will be an evolution. Let's keep it for a moment to AI and I'll make a couple of observations. When I think about the insurance industry, the first thing that we both know is that AI will affect every element of the value stream. Right from the way that we take the original customer information and understand the risk to the way that we underwrite the risk, to the way that we service the client, that put out uh, all of the policy documentation is necessary for the client and then ultimately to the way that we adjudicate the claim. So the very first thing I'm going to say is big picture, everything is going to change and they'll all be enabled by AI. But I think that people who think about the demise of the agent or the, the end of the people being involved, I think they're again talking as though day one is that end game. Yeah, I think it's, you know, not a realistic or practical element. Um, as a matter of fact it's, I don't think it's even the desirable element. What I think is that you're going to see so much more enablement by even an agent. You know, as you say, like uh, do I need a full robo advisor or do I need a, an AI enabled and assisted agent? And have I got the combination of those two, will that really work? So I think in the next five years we'll really begin to perfect this AI enabled agent in a much, much, much better way. Better trained, better answers, faster take more of the administration away from that agent than let the agent become a real problem solver and working with the customer. That's one. Uh, another one is that we'll have a 24, seven, um, customer service. You know, I live in Asia but I, they contact the US to try to get customer service on anything. Oh my gosh, it's, it's a nightmare, right? Uh, very hard to do when I'm 12 hours ahead of you or 13 hours ahead of you sitting in Singapore versus in New York City. Um, but there will be this whole change to where that is real time 24, 7 better than ever. And it will be AI enabled but it will not be a full out replacement of the human being. It will be an enablement or complement the capability of the human. That's what I think we all want to see the science fiction movie of. I quickly jump past the human and it's just all AI don't believe that that's really what will happen.

Speaker A: I completely agree with you on this. It's often discussed, as, you know, AI is almost reduced to a, uh, you know, automation device and cost reduction device, which I think is way too narrow compared to the augment or the enable that we're talking about. And, uh, looking at players today, there's two clear paths where, you know, we're very strong somewhere, let's build scale. From a balance sheet standpoint, having scale matters. But then the other path is that specialization path, right? Where it's like, I'm very, very good at solving these problems, are understanding this population, uh, whether it's individuals or corporates, et cetera. And I think we see a lot of this in the insurance industry. How can you continuously build your competitive mode to really continue augmenting your expertise? And I think that's a lot of what we'll see. And the other point I was going to say, when you were talking about agents or individuals that could engage with customers, what was going through my head is again, the shift from product pushing or product selling to problem solving as well, which is what we were discussing earlier. And I think there is a shift towards that generally in the financial advice industry. And that's something that, as AI has more and more capabilities and there's that focus on specialization and enablement, that's also the shift that can happen for these individuals. And there's a great potential for this talent, to your point, to become great, increasingly better problem solvers and solve a broader set of customer needs rather than just insurance or banking, et cetera. The question I have is one on talent. Where do you see things, uh, going in the industry from a talent standpoint? What advice would you have for the next generation on what to focus on?

Speaker B: Again, this is really such a great question because it's very much around where is the world headed? And this is just the world headed in my view. I believe that the future workforce doesn't have to be an expert in how to do what it is that AI does. You had to be an expert in how to use AI to make sure that you're doing things as efficiently and as effectively as possible. And so my advice to anyone coming into the industry, if you were in school today, I would say, you know, thinking about how do I program these things or how do I actually build the AI solution, I wouldn't make that my number one priority. I would make it that I understood how to use all of these tools, uh, and I could use them so smartly. And so efficiently that whenever the new ones come out, I'm able to experiment with them, I'm able to implement them, I'm able to augment my capability with that. And so I think it's a little bit like the kids soccer game, uh, football for those of you who, uh, would be from, uh, the non North American side of the house. Um, but when you think about the kid's soccer game, everyone has a tendency to go one direction or maybe they go the other direction because that's where the ball is today. Don't think about where the ball is today, think about where the ball's going to be. And if you go there, then where I think the ball is going to be is that I didn't follow that this was today's trend around AI, but instead I was a student of how to absorb all of the things that were going on around me and be able to use what I see to make myself as important on that playing field as possible. And I think you can do that if you really observe the entire game. If you get mesmerized in one little part of the game, you're going to

Speaker A: get lost theoretically or in practice over the next five years. Where would you personally invest, uh, your chips? Uh, in the industry. What are you really backing? What would you love to help accelerate in the industry?

Speaker B: I really believe in following what are the key problems that we have as society and then who's really solving those problems? So you used earlier SpaceX. I love it because I'm not a great science expert, but here's what I know, that eventually mankind depends on something besides the planet Earth. And so there has to be solutions that are looking to what is that next chapter? I love the companies that are focused on the big problems.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, there is no question that I would put my chips on things like this. Closing of the gap between your chronological age and your biological age. I love these longevity places. So I think solutions for the Earth, solutions for mankind, humanity in the aging and the growing population needs. And then I think solutions for helping to address the challenges that come along with technology. And if you think of it as there's the great side and the challenging side of technology, we know that the great side is all the things that we're seeing with AI. We know that that's going to create a mirror image of challenging problems that happen at the same time. So fall in love with the problem. Really understand these three or four, my three are very clear here. The human race, the earth and technology. Those are 1, 2, 3 for me, but it doesn't matter. Choose anything that you believe is really the driver. But get back to, did I really understand the root cause? And if you focus on things that solve the root cause or focus on being a part of the future of the root cause, it's going to go great. If you're just out there with solutions and saying, I don't know, I better figure out what this solution applies to, I think it will be a unfortunate crash and burn for your ship.

Speaker A: Robin, it's been super, um, uh, inspiring discussing these themes with you before we wrap. As we go into this new year, what final words of wisdom would you have for our audience?

Speaker B: I love what I do for a living. I'm very much dedicated to what we're doing at baltec, and I love this insurance industry. I love to be a part of it. But, um, my wife is always reminding me of this need for balance. And I would remind everybody, uh, that exercise your body like you exercise your mind, exercise your devotion to family the same way you exercise your devotion to your career. It's like being a bodybuilder and having just a strong left bicep. That looks strange. Don't do that. Have balance. Have a strong left and right bicep, which means, you know, balance your brain and your body or your family and your work. But if you don't do those things, you will have an outcome that I think is a, uh, very suboptimal outcome. Find that balance. Find happiness in that balance. And that's my wish for everyone.

Speaker A: I'm definitely taking, uh, taking these words away myself, for sure. Well, Rob, thank you so much for, for joining us. It's been really a pleasure and a privilege, uh, discussing these, uh, themes with you today.

Speaker B: Paul, thanks for having me. I loved it. And, uh, look forward to getting a chance to get more time with you in the future. M on maybe a future episode.

Speaker A: Thank you everyone, for listening. That was Rob Schimek, founder and group CEO of BoldTech. Uh, that was the Reinventing Insurance podcast, and I'll, uh, speak to you next time. For more information about our Reinventing Insurance series, you can find everything on our website@olivier myman.com Reinventing Insurance. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.