Greatest Hits 2026: Masterclass in Risk, Tech, and Human Behavior

Speaker A: Hello, my name is Jason Reichel, and you're listening to Risk Management Brick by brick. I'm fascinated with people who are helping build and maintain the physical world around us. On each episode of this podcast, we'll dive in with a risk manager, speak to them about how technology plays a role in this process.

Speaker B: I think the overall advice is just get real world experience. Step out of academia, uh, as quickly as you can. I did take 2 degrees to say that, but real, uh, world experience really matters here. When I look at hiring people, when I look at partners, I always look at them. What did you actually do? Did you build something? If you're in a place that is productive, that you can think and you can build things and you have the mandate to think independently, that's good. That's a great start. Get that experience five years, six years, and then look out and see if there's something broken you want to fix.

Speaker C: You need to understand the problem before you can solve the problem for sure. Yeah.

Speaker B: And admittedly, what seems to be the problem in the first place may not

Speaker C: be the real problem at, ah, the Tibetan bergamot Profit.

Speaker B: Right. Definitely, uh, we.

Speaker C: That's my advice. Be patient, get in there, get your hands dirty, be useful to the people around you. And I think a lot of bars, you'll find the bar just open. No one's even guarding them. The best thing about this industry to me is everybody wants everyone else to be successful. People say it's relationship business, but in order for the insurance sector to work, there's a lot of small, different businesses connected together. Right. And I find that to be tremendously relieving coming from the big tech, like the Salesforce system below, things like that, other than San Franciscans. So it's a very different environment.

Speaker B: I agree.

Speaker D: I've done a lot of studying for, uh, human behavior. But I will say for anyone that's like, new in this industry and wants to understand that very early on in my life, I would just sit on benches and watch people. And that's where I really started to pay attention to how everyone kind of does the same thing the same way. So even just going into a facility, let's say going into a theme park, sit on a bench for 15 minutes and watch the same thing happen over and over again. Regardless of who the person is, what their background is, their family makeup or whatever, you'll see that there's common behaviors that happen. Yeah.

Speaker C: Number one thing you'll see is someone

Speaker A: go up to a cast member and

Speaker C: say, well, where's the bathroom? While they're standing right in front of it.

Speaker D: Right, exactly. Yep. Everyone's gonna ask when the 3 o' clock parade is.

Speaker C: Don't have. You have blinders on in that situation.

Speaker D: But that's where that instinct, I think, has come from, is that observation piece. And you gain a lot from the observation piece.

Speaker E: There are a number of misconceptions about SMBs. In some cases, the SMBs say, hey, you know, we're too small to even matter. But the sad part of the story is that many attackers often use SMB vendors as gateways to the larger organization. If I can give an example, this isn't just theory. We've actually seen it play out. Take the target breach, I think it was in 2013, don't quote me on this. This was where the giant retailer Target was compromised through a much smaller H Vac vendor. Who would have thought? It shows that even the largest corporations can be brought down by the weakest link in their vendor chains. Proliferation of tech through everything. Basically every operator uses some form of tech. Really makes, um, the vulnerability of the larger organization so much more. So this is why vendor teams are now saying, hey, things are changing so frequently. One questionnaire isn't enough. It's not enough to ask them the questions and get them in the door. We need to have monitoring because risk can remain invisible if we don't ensure that we have an eye on things.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Uh, yeah, definitely. What I see too is it's often small vendor. It's a subs on subs on subs sort of situation. It's a, uh, property management company getting grounds work. And then everyone on the grounds is their own independent business. And you lose that continuity, you lose the visibility down into those other organizations. And that's usually then when something happens and the job site gets shut down, the property management thing as a whole other thing to deal with whatever those cases might be. So it is not feasible that being a small business these days in big industries means that you can't, ah, take care of these things or that you need to watch these things. In fact, it's almost more imperative than ever before because it's almost easier than it's ever been before to spin up a business. And so you really need to protect yourself. I really appreciate the work you're doing there. I often get asked when I do panels and things in the insurance industry that there is a gap of young talent coming into the industry. And so one thing I want to do is ask questions. Why insurance? Why risk management? What's cool about it how do you jazz yourself up every morning to be solving this problem? And why should other people give a damn?

Speaker E: Yeah, because Jason, I saw it personally. I saw the impact of uh, a lack of risk management personally on a small business within my own family. The story that I told, right, uh, it was a personal story. It was a family owned business and without a business continuity plan, a uh, disruption essentially more or less sidelined the business for quite some time. So this is actually one of the reasons why I took a step away from my corporate career to focus on this because I recognized that smaller businesses were quite vulnerable. I also recognized that business continuity planning actually is a way that they can proactively protect themselves or insulate themselves from disruptions. And it's not about predicting every disruption and completely insulating themselves from every disruption. It's about preparing so that they can adapt quickly.

Speaker F: So for years and years in the small commercial space, agents that I've known for decades would come to me and say small business average premium $1500, sometimes 1000, sometimes 500. I can't make money on this if I have to touch it more than once. And I don't understand why the big name traditional carriers still refer to a human underwriter half the time. Because then all of a sudden my, my model, my financial model is blown. I can't do this. And so next solved that problem by identifying there was a massive need there. And being a 100% fully digital sales and service carrier allows the agent to within seconds, no follow up forms, no underwriting referral can ever occur with us. And they can actually be finished in five minutes, go to the next account and create revenue. The breadth of, like I said, a very small one person retail shop all the way to a national broker. Our system is designed as a technology company first that sells insurance. So the model is super efficient. That's where the value is in my opinion of the agent interaction, not so much being administrative.

Speaker G: I think that one of the biggest shifts, and this was just spoken about at Adobe Max, was that they believe the entire small studio model may go away in favor of in house models using AI instead of external agency. I think all large, medium and small size agency formats will be challenged. You know, when I started my company we worked remotely all over the world, which is an impediment to owners. Prior to Covid, um, I think what we'll see now is the ability for smaller teams to be more nimble. Uh, the challenge will be like bonding and delivering. Like, you know, even if I were not to carry the number of employees I do now, I would still carry liability insurance to work in the space like this, but the construct of the team would work differently. And I envision it's going to work differently as a result of that going forward.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So someone coming into the industry right

Speaker C: now, what's a piece of advice you would give them? Someone coming into the industry and young,

Speaker G: I would say, become fluent in these AI programs. I would say be a generalist, I think. And we're at the beginning of this technology curve, so being a generalist right now is incredibly valuable. But this is a, uh, very rapidly changing cycle. Every hour something new is happening in this space. I think in three to five years, it'll also become more dynamic, where specialists will be critical. I also think there's a great value into going back to analog in many ways. AI and robotics aren't going to get rid of the tradespeople that are necessary to deliver these objects. And there's a huge value in finding your way into having both skill sets. Uh, right now, I think in the industry, there's this sense like they don't touch real material, they don't integrate with it. I think in some ways, AI is going to create an even greater value in some of those traditional skills because it won't be replaced by that technology.

Speaker A: Risk Management Brick by Brick is brought to you by Trust Layer. Find out how trustlayer manages risk so that people can build the physical world around us. Head over to Trustlayer I.O. and then make sure to subscribe to Risk Management Brick by Brick on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. On behalf of the Trust Layer team, thank you for listening.