Profiles in Risk

Tony chats with Zac Townsend, CEO at Meanwhile, the first and only life insurance company denominated in Bitcoin. Built in Bermuda with its entire balance sheet denominated in Bitcoin, and with a worldwide monopoly on Bitcoin life insurance, this is one fascinating conversation you should not miss!Zachary Townsend: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zactownsend/Meanwhile: https://meanwhile.bm/Video Version: https://youtu.be/uVBr-D8-Mvc

Tony chats with Charles Johnson, Head of Product Growth at Insuraviews, they provide strategic insights through advanced analytics of insurance rate filings. They take all the rate fillings through a robust ingestion process and layer on analytics and AI to give you powerful insights. This is a game changer, especially for smaller carriers that don't have a large competitive intelligence team.Charles Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-johnson-actuary/Insuraviews: https://www.insuraviews.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/e4-5n8TPEOc

Tony chats with Andrew Kelly about PLUS, the Professional Liability Underwriting Society. Tony is obsessed with insurance education but has spent his entire career on the P&C side. This is a great introduction to the world of continuing education on the Professional Liability side and why you should dive in! We talk RPLU, CPLP, Exec PLP, and more.Andrew Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjkelly/Video Version: https://youtu.be/hAPRbLjFDKA

Tony chats with award winning innovator Meg Duty, SVP at Puritan Life and Canvas Annuity. Puritan Life is a life carrier started in the 1950s which they have now turned into an all-cloud shop. They built Canvas Annuity, the first all digital annuity platform. An incredible story of true innovation, opening up a product to a whole new market, and all without alienating your existing distribution channels. Lots to learn from this one. A cannot miss episode!Video Version: https://youtu.be/tjh5xgSPbPs

Tony chats with Chak Kolli, PhD, CTO at Magile Software. Insurance companies are struggling to understand the risks of AI and Magile Software is here to help them understand and manage that risk better. A fascinating conversation you cannot miss!Chak Kolli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chak-kolli/Magile Software: https://www.linkedin.com/company/magile-software/Video Version: https://youtu.be/XT0q6dkFT6Q

Tony chats with Tim Lovett, Head of Enterprise Division at Blitz, they are a new fully digital API-enabled commercial lines E&S carrier that can service the entire distribution ecosystem from direct, to retailers, to wholesalers.Tim Lovett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timlovett/Blitz: https://www.blitzinsurance.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/5ttJvASdaJ0

Tony chats with Mel Faxon, Co-Founder & COO at Hey Mirza, they are basically Turbotax for government benefits. Her Mirza is focused on helping lower income people connect with the variety of programs they might qualify for, from their home, in their native language.Mel Faxon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-faxon/Hey Mirza: https://heymirza.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/dg3rZFa-cW4

Tony chats with Rich Benci, CEO at Omega Benefits, they help HR teams communicate benefit information to their employees, a task more complicated than I ever expected.Rich Benci: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbenci/Omega Benefits: https://omegabenefits.net/Video Version: https://youtu.be/iFskLfY1Z0g

Tony chats with Nakita Devlin, CEO & Founder at Ric, the first parametric catastrophe product focused on the employee benefit market! Their parametric managing general agent will host micro parametric products with the first one being a parametric flood product for rain across the US. The plan is for this to be the first of many climate parametric products offered as an employee benefit. A very interesting concept and a conversation you shouldn't miss!Nakita Devlin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nakita-devlin-38155916/Video Version: https://youtu.be/tYxf7MTEhfo

Tony chats with Frano Sain, CEO at Hero Response, they offer a unique monitoring system that improves profitability and lowers waster on all water related claims. It saves the contractors from having to go back every day to see if the equipment has finished drying the loss.Frano Sain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franosain/Hero Response: https://heroresponse.com/homeVideo Version: https://youtu.be/dhwqFws83ls

Tony chats with Mitch Matthews, Success Coach and Creator of the DREAM THINK DO Podcast.Mitch Matthews: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchmatthews/Video Version: https://youtu.be/bRZWIj77y_M

Tony chats with Peter Teresi, Co-Founder & CEO at Certificial, they are a network that sits between insurance and all other verticals focused on the certificate of insurance process from a PDF (that often needs to be made multiple times and only proves the policy was active at the time it got made) to a living document that is a truly smart Certificate of Insurance.Peter Teresi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete/Certificial: https://www.certificial.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/FEaZ2H5NfsA

Tony chats with Paul Vacquier, Founder & CEO at Beagle Services, they provide last mile deployment and expertise of leak detection technology facilitating partnerships with carriers and others needing to prevent water damage. Uniquely they use plumbers they hire as employees, not a contractor network. They provide water damage prevention to carriers in a device agnostic way.Paul Vacquier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulvacquier/Beagle Services: https://www.beagleservices.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/07Rlr73X3CU

Tony chats with Danny Aronson, CEO and Ann Boger, COO at Tuned Care, they are revolutionizing hearing health benefits by helping employers offer full spectrum hearing care for their workers. Currently only 11% of workers have any hearing coverage and historically it's merely a discount on hearing aids. Tuned Care brings a much more comprehensive approach to protecting our hearing throughout our lives. A super fascinating conversation!Danny Aronson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyaronson/Ann Boger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-boger/Tuned Care: https://www.tunedcare.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/n5uymOdMt0c

Tony chats with Sharon Henzler, after about 8 years in the industry Sharon went to her first insurance conference, the Future of Insurance Fest at Santa Monica Pier. They chat about what the conference was like and how it changed her approach to insurance conferences going forward. A great listen for all early career insurance pros.Sharon Henzler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-henzler-000/Video Version: https://youtu.be/xwHH3nl53p4

Tony chats with Paul Prendergast, Co-Founder and CEO at Kayna, they make it easy for vertical SAAS company to do embedded insurance.Paul Prendergast: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulincork/Kayna: https://www.kayna.io/Video Version: https://youtu.be/_OYgTHmXE7I

Tony chats with Nishant Tomar, Chairman and CEO at DigsFact, they are leveraging AI to accelerate virtual inspections both during underwriting and post-loss. They can help with property, vehicles, and toys. In 2 minutes the policyholder can do a guided video or photos and be done while getting the carrier all the info they need.Nishant Tomar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenishanttomar/DigsFact https://digsfact.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/2cR8yllASz4

Tony chats with Emma Corcoran, Strategic Facilitator, Women's Leadership Champion & Consultant. We talk about her career in insurance and her work now as an independent consultant.Emma Corcoran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-corcoran-1b851022/Video Version: https://youtu.be/N_-V_-BJHnU

Tony chats with Love Redin, Co-Founder and CEO at Vantel, they build AI tools for middle market commercial insurance producers to help them process documents, find coverage gaps, compare quotes, review contracts, and more.Love Redin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/love-redin/Vantel: https://vantel.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/V9lqVj8r9uY

Tony chats with Liam Harris, Co-Founder and CEO at ThreadWise, they are a commercial co-pilot for commercial insurance communications starting with email. They believe that while commercial brokering is complex, the tools shouldn't be. Their goal is to clean the data before it gets dirty and allow brokers to do the work they're licensed to do. Their biggest focus to start with is the submission workflow.Liam Harris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-harreys/ThreadWise: https://threadwise.ai/Video Version: https://youtu.be/1AhcQxGlfsw

Tony chats with Gregg Golson about his career in claims, his involvement in CPCU, advice for the next generation, and his consulting endeavors.Gregg Golson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregggolsoncpcu/Video Version: https://youtu.be/ieaJ7VAAbQ8

Tony chats with Jake Tamarkin - Co-Founder & President at Everyday Life Insurance, they are building the premiere life insurance platform for everyday people. They are an independent life insurance agency that caters to people that want to do business online. They use machine learning and other tools to help people find the best fitting Life product for them.Jake Tamarkin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-tamarkin/Everyday Life: https://everydaylifeinsurance.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/pazFw5gARAU

Tony chats with Rose Hall about her fantastic career in insurance and innovation.Rose Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rose-hall-pe/Video Version: https://youtu.be/qnLiXvowv2g

Tony chats with Toby Hung, Co-Founder and COO at 1Fort, they are an all-in-one solution for commercial insurance agents to grow revenue and save time and money. Their AI digs through your book and finds cross-sale opportunities, analyzes the risk exposures based on third party data, and even gives you talking points to make the sale. It can also help submitting on different carrier portals, creating proposals, and much more.Toby Hung: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobyhung/1Fort: https://www.1fort.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/EnbC_xebC6c

Tony chats with Santoash Rajaram, Founder at Stitch Studio, they are building an insurance specific AI platform making AI agents. They believe that in order for AI to be adaptable to insurance organizations have to be able to embed them in the existing value chain of what's happening in the organization already. And you need to create an infrastructure that allows agents to be rooted in the insurance knowledge and the organizational knowledge.Santoash Rajaram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srajara/Stitch Studio: https://stitchstudio.ai/Video Version: https://youtu.be/O1eyE7JjhIo

Tony chats with Todd Hawk, Founder and CEO At Elisa For Life, they are an insurtech in the Life Insurance space solving a difficult issue in that space, the younger generation of buyers don't respond well to cold-calling or mailers. Elisa for Life is an embeddable digital advisor and digital sales assistant. The prospect answers a series of questions, gets scored, educated, and then Elisa makes a broad recommendation leaving the agent a lot of room to work with. Their goal is to help independent agents compete with tech companies in selling Life in a modern way.Todd Hawk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-hawk-b5a99748/Elisa For Life: https://www.elisaforlife.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/N-EDoGGID9Y

Tony chats with Arlind Mucaj, AVP CDO Exchange & Partnerships at Verisk, Chief Experience Officer at Insurtech Hartford about his career and what they're building at Insurtech Hartford.Arlind Mucaj: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arlind-mucaj-mba-scaled-agile-black-belt-831b03b/Video Version: https://youtu.be/4qcRDSYVIwI

Tony chats with Scott Thompson, long-time insurance recruiter. We chat about the insurance industry past and present, especially when it comes to the recruiting environment.Scott Thompson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottthompsontn/Video Version: https://youtu.be/I_SKhJBQ8ZQ

Tony chats with Lars Helgeson, Founder and CEO at Easy Aftercare, they have applied CRM technology to radically improve patient compliance through a series curated personalized text messages and videos leading to 30% better outcomes and 40% reduction in unneeded calls back to the providers office. An amazing example of how existing technology can be reimagined in new and innovative ways!Lars Helgerson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larshelgeson/Easy Aftercare: https://www.easyaftercare.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/i8qliK-9mTE

Tony chats with Patrick Girouard, Founder and CEO at District Cover, they are a small business insurance platform solely focused on broadening insurance access within cities and especially areas where traditional carriers have shied away or struggled to serve. They underwrite at a block by block or even business by business level of granularity allowing them to be much more accurate without needing to use credit. A very interesting approach and conversation!Patrick Girouard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-girouard-84842934/District Cover: https://www.districtcover.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/vt5QVRlrUbc

Tony chats with Matan Slaghter, CEO at Armadillo, the first tech enabled home warranty program. Matan originally talked about Armadillo on Ep. 251 and now returns to give us an update and make an announcement of some unique improvements they have made to their offerings.Matan Slagter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matan-slagter/Armadillo: https://www.armadillo.one/PIR Ep. 251: https://youtu.be/O0o3XPTyOC0?si=X051N_PCORHliowtVidero Version: https://youtu.be/QaiOsi3NmHw

Tony chats with  Alicia Burke, Director of Portfolio and Product Development at The CAS Institute, we chat about ICAS a wholly owned subsidiary of the Casualty Actuarial Society that offers analytics professionals and their employers the opportunity to certify skills specifically as applied to property and casualty insurance. Their Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (CSPA) and the International Society of Catastrophe Managers (ISCM) designations are hands-on and in partnership with The Institutes. A great conversation about continuing education on the analytics side of the industry.Alicia Burque: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciaburke/The CAS Institute:  https://thecasinstitute.org/Video Version: https://youtu.be/hRKkfqejYDw

Tony chats Luis Ricci Maia, Co-Founder and COO at Trag, they are a Brazilian insurtech helping their clients understand climate risk they're facing in agriculture and help mitigate that risk through parametric and weather derivatives. Brazil is the largest exporter of crops in the world and only 10% of those crops have any insurance, so this is massive opportunity.Luis Ricci Maia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisriccimaia/Trag: https://www.trag.agr.br/Video Version: https://youtu.be/kO9aVMSH6O4

Tony chats with Kerry Macca about the Kerry Macca - Women in Insurance Initiative and their live event at the RISE Leadership Summit.Kerry Macca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrymacca/Women in Insurance Initiative: https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-insurance-initiative/posts/?feedView=allVideo Version: https://youtu.be/bsDpdPt2JUo

Tony chats with Niti Jain, Founder & CEO at medml.ai, the first underwriting platform created by actuaries. After 10 years of experience in pricing Life, Health, and P&C she was tired of extremely manual underwriting processes so they set out to create a better underwriting platform.Niti Jain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niti-nj-jain-b6083b73/medml.al: https://medml.ai/Video Version: https://youtu.be/w9hE4ZJn9Ps

Tony chats with Michael Derkacz, Business Development at Ai.Law and Ai.Claims. They are a single claim file application, they generate a claims analysis report that summarizes complicated files and it does very powerful analysis to superpower your claims adjusters. It provides next steps for the claim and helps newer adjusters think like an experienced adjuster!Michael Derkacz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-derkacz-6b4549113/AI.Claims: https://Ai.ClaimsVideo Version: https://youtu.be/-bmz4aBlMLU

Tony chats with Chris Bean, CEO & Co-Founder at Skytree Scientific, they are revolutionizing how insurers assess lightning risk. Their platform analyses property data and delivers a risk score in minutes allowing for faster underwriting, better pricing, and fewer losses. It also generates mitigation strategies for the policyholder. This technology came from an engineering process in Europe and is now available at an affordable cost for the insurance industry. A super interesting conversation you shouldn't miss!Chris Bean: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-bean-tech/Skytree Scientific: https://skytreescientific.ai/Video Version: https://youtu.be/eYwETZkCOMs

I chat with Les Schlesinger, Owner at Auto Insurance Consulting, he has 35 years of experience in all aspects of the Auto Insurance space and is now offering that expertise to carriers, MGAs, etc who need help in Product, Marketing, Claims, Litigation, etc.Les Schlesinger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-schlesinger-039a3510/

Tony chats with Lucas Roberts, Wholesale Broker at Anzen Insurance, they aim to offer the best technology combined with the best wholesale broker offering Cyber, Specialty Commercial, E&O, D&O and EPLI. Their software analyzes submission data and allows sending to various markets in one click while still having a broker that can really walk you through difficult risks.Lucas Roberts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-roberts-a70612a5/Anzen Insurance: https://anzen.com/

Tony Chats with  Dan Hill, National Director of Sales at CarFax, you probably think of CarFax as the people who get you a report on a used car before you buy it but for the insurance world they do a lot more!Dan Price: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danghill/CarFax: https://www.carfaxforinsurers.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/3CepVh9BO7o

I chat with Jeremy Jawish, CEO at Shift Technology, they are a vertical AI company providing solutions for the insurance industry helping us make better decisions. They already serve 70% of the US P&C market for AI fraud detection! They just launched the Insurance Data Network, which will allow carriers to better share claim claims and fraud data with each other. This is a huge deal! A very important episode to listen to!Jeremy Jawish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-jawish/Shift Technology: https://www.shift-technology.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/eOkxvmKNhY8

Tony chats with Murtaza Ali, Co-Founder and CEO at Symphony, they have created a voice AI to build role plays to train insurance professionals. These fully dynamic voice AI agents can provide full conversations for practice, including on really complex conversations. Then it can analyze both the content and the emotional parts of the conversation.Murtaza Ali: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-murtazaali/Symphony: https://www.getsymphony.co/Video Version: https://youtu.be/k6r3X69wdVw

Tony chats with Grace Hanson, Co-Founder and CEO at Elysian, they are an AI native TPA that handles claims end-to-end. They build the best tech and combine it with highly experienced adjusters and it results in better handling of commercial claims. The whole company and their processes are truly based on what adjusters really do and the way they really think.Grace Hanson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-hanson/Elysian: https://elysian.is/Video Version: https://youtu.be/dfSH6G6Mtkc

Tony chats with Joseph Sigona, Head of Business Development at MGM Technology Partners, they bring complex scalable enterprise level applications to production. They can be the one stop shop in all of the pieces to get your application into production. From planning, to building, QA support, all the way through integration. Their Cosmo platform covers the whole value chain of insurance from risk management, through quoting, binding, and all the way through accounting, all in a modular format. Cosmo in built on the A12 platform, the product of 30 years of experience building enterprise level systems allowing you all of the flexibility you need, with less of the work.Joseph Sigona: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesigona/MGM Technology Partners: https://www.mgm-tp.com/Video version: https://youtu.be/Urzj9Nu3LlA

Brian Baughman, CPCU, ARM - ESOP Evangelist and VP of Sales at The Hartwell Corporation. We chat about why it makes sense for agencies to adopt an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and what the advantages are. All employees are automatically owners after roughly a year. This aligns incentives in a way virtually impossible in other types of ownership structures. A very interesting conversation! Brian Baughman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-baughman-cpcu-arm/The Hartwell Corporation: https://www.thehartwellcorp.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/Zwb2At9v-ak

Tony chats with Chris Merideth, Candidate for Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner.Chris Merideth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-merideth-a6b4a255/Video Version: https://youtu.be/xrTdfGMQ4TQ

David Serna Perez, Account Executive at LivePerson, they are an AI native company that has developed two AI agent assistant for the underwriter. They are mainly focused on MGA and underwriting teams. One is focused on MGA underwriting teams and the other one is focused on reinsurance brokers and underwriters. A great conversation with an experienced AI practitioner who really gets insurance.David Serna Perez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-serna-perez-42825689/LivePerson: https://www.liveperson.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/hkgQBYYpob4

Tony chats with Daniel Palacios, Co-Founder and CRO at Sytrex, they are an AI native company that has developed two AI Agents assistants for underwriters. They are mainly focused on helping MGA underwriting teams, basically co-pilots for insurance and reinsurance operations. They place underwriters in the center and take away the manual and boring repetitive work.Daniel Palacios: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpalaciossales/Sytrex: https://www.sytrex.io/Video Version: https://youtu.be/894J0dwi7O8

Tony chats with Charles Merritt, Co-Founder and CEO at Buddy, the insurance gateway for people who build software. They help product teams and developers that are being tasked with integrating insurance APIs and help accelerate distribution of digital insurance products.Charles Merritt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesmerritt/Charles first appearance on Profiles in Risk Ep. 298: https://youtu.be/IWI1zxTT6nM?si=yzwTpPQlDLtDFeKpBuddy: https://www.buddy.insure/teamVideo Version: https://youtu.be/jGAp09-Vhyw

Tony chats with Bill Martin, President & CEO at Plymouth Rock Home Assurance in a friendly debate about the merits of remote vs a full return-to-the-office (RTO).Bill Martin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billmartiniv/

Tony chats with Nadav Interstein, VP of Marketing at Swifter.io, they started as a low-code no-code platform but they have now shifted and have aggressively focused on AI. Now they have created a software development life cycle tool that uses agentic AI to generate the entire software development life cycle process going from project definition all the way through wireframe, processes, actual code in the language you want, automated testing, and deployment. A to Z AI powered creation of enterprise level software for front-end.Nadav Interstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadav-interstein-45118615/Swifter.io: https://Swifter.ioVideo Version: https://youtu.be/S0lqfKwJniY