Training Startups In InsureTech

INTRO

On episode 13 or the InsurTech Geek Podcast, talking about Training, Startups, and InsureTech, with Sabine VanderLinden of Startup Boot Camp.

The InsurTech Geek Podcast powered by JBKnowledge is all about technology that is transforming and disrupting the insurance world. We will be interviewing guests and doing deep dives with our own research and development team in technology that we see changing the industry. We are taking you on a journey through insurance tech, so enjoy the ride and geek out!

INTERVIEW

JAMES: Alright, alright, alright, we are got another International show today. I am so excited, we got two Texans and somebody over in Queens-Country, London, England! So exciting to have an international crew here today. I am James Benham, your InsurTech Geek and we are not going to talk about anything but Tech today. That is right! Now, to reference Harry Potter, we are not going to talk about that what shall not be named, the virus that shall not be named! We are not talking about that! You hear enough about that everywhere else, you are here to Geek out on InsureTech because the world keeps turning and InsureTech keeps building, and that what is were here to discuss today. And with me today, for the first time as a Co-Host, Rob Galbraith from San Antonio Texas. Good to see another Texan! And Rob, how is it going today?

ROB: It is going awesome James, great to see us rocking our casual look in the home office today.

JAMES: Exactly, we are all home officing it. Everybody’s at JBKnowledge, all 213 of our employees are rocking it out at home, we opened a Teams, we use Teams and we opened a Teams Channel and we’re sharing like photos of our home gyms, our home desks, the animals around us, we recognize this can be going on for a while, so we’re getting comfortable, getting set-up, definitely trying to be as comfortable as possible. Joining us from London England, Sabine VanderLinden, how are you doing?

SABINE: I am very well James! Thank you very much for having me! You know it is 1 o’clock here in London, so I cannot wait to have my glass of something at some point!

JAMES: Excellent! Yeah, you know as we say in Texas, and around the US, it is 5 o’clock somewhere, so it does not even matter if it is 5 o clock. If it is time to have a drink, get a drink! It is all good. I respect that. Really-really-excited to have both of you here today. Rob as a co-host. Sabine as our guest. For those of you who do not remember, Rob Galbraith is the most interesting man in Insurance. That is right. He has a wonderful book called The End of Insurance as we know it. Go and check that out! He will be joining me in asking some great questions, and also, a fellow Texa-Michigander, goes from Texas to Michigan. I go from College Station to South Haven, he goes from San Antonio to East Lansing, so we make a similar North–South migration, like giant birds that fly North and South. So, we are going to have a good time talking today. Let us just jump right in. Sabine, you are a CO-Founder of Startup-Boot Camp, and we are going to talk about that in just a minute. But walk me through your life. Where were you born and raised? What did you study? What did you think you were going to do as a career, and how did you end up here?

SABINE: Okay, so I am French, so I was born in Paris, many years ago. I still look quite young, so I am going to keep my age -if I can- hidden.

JAMES: That is fine.

SABINE: But I started. Yes. I am French and so have my little peculiarities. I moved to London though, in 1993. I got a grant to come and study in London and I did 2 combined degrees. Business and Financial Services. And through my Financial Service expertise or experience, I realized I did not like Banking, but the Insurance people were quite nice. So, I ended up working for Lloyd’s of London. I know we all say we fall into Insurance, and I did.

JAMES: Yes, we all do say that!

SABINE: And it was I had a wonderful time. Because Lloyd’s at the time, used to go to Business School and just calls and meet students, and I welcomed them to Lloyd’s to see the build, and talk about this amazing product they insured, and when I started working at Lloyd’s, I worked on fine art. So, I helped insure very expensive people, and very expensive jewels and paintings.

JAMES: Oh

SABINE: And then I went to do my Masters, and I went into Consulting.

JAMES: That is like the Thomas Crown affair, right?

SABINE: Something like that. Yes, I know! Imagine I am French, I had my Hermes bag “-“

JAMES: The City France, Je suis de France… Je suis à qui… I need to talk to you about your artwork, right?

SABINE: Absolument, absolument!

JAMES: I am terrible by the way. I am from South Louisiana

SABINE: Well you should speak French then!

JAMES: Well, I so they make you learn French, I did go through 10 years of French lessons. My grandmother’s whole family is from Provence and so the Pèlegrins from Provence and they came from France through.

SABINE: Tellement merveileux?

JAMES: Yes, yes. They came from France down. So, I was made to learn French and then I started Spanish so I ’m fluent in Spanish, and about 15% in French, but yeah. So, Thomas Crown affair for those who have not seen it, it has been made twice, if I am correct, and it is about an art insurer how tracks down criminals who steal art. So, did you get to do anything interesting like that? Were you tracking down losses?

SABINE: I, you know I did not track down losses, I was more at the underwriting bit, so the risks bit, but I remember seeing one of the biggest blue diamond in my life. I still remember that. It was as big as comparative.

JAMES: That is pretty large, like a basketball!

SABINE: Like a big-big Hermes bag. Like a big Hermes bag. The large version.

JAMES: That is insane.

SABINE: I just could not even believe a diamond–like that existed. And that for me was still today a memory. What I loved, is paintings. The nice thing about Lloyds is that lots of the beautiful paintings which are transiting between countries are being insured Lloyds as well, so I was fortunate to be involved in that world until I had to go and insure big buildings in Korea. And I was less interested.

JAMES: But Lloyds is an interesting place to start, right? It is the parent of modern Insurance, right? I mean Insurance is a very-very-very old business, I mean, you can go back to the ancient Babylonians, right?

SABINE: 330 years. I am I right Rob? Something like that.

JAMES: Yeah.

ROB: That is over 300 for sure. There is not an exact date, so. It started at the Starbucks, right?

JAMES: The coffee shop? The coffee shop?

SABINE: Starbucks version, yes.

JAMES: They may take offense to it being referred to as a Starbucks,

ROB: Yeah so, yeah

JAMES: But it is a, I mean they are an impressive company. But if you look back at the history of insurance, right? The Babylonians and then it rolls into these agreed purchased contracts and Europe and then Lloyds the parent of modern Insurance. So, what took you passed that and to where you are now between looking at giant blue diamonds and insuring this rear art to what you are doing today? What was the path like?

SABINE: So, I guess for probably 15 years after that, I worked for TWC Firecool Pigger, and the interesting thing about all the processes, first I was working in strategy teams, so doing Business Consulting. Strategy Consulting, growth strategy, defying segmentation is, and doing segmentation work. Going into and find new markets, Insurance could go after, so my core competency was still in Insurance and then when you do a lot of type of reports, so I did that for probably 8 years, my core competence as well is value-creations. So, I had to do a lot of financial modeling. You have to realize that at the time a lot of those reports probably stayed on the shelve. So I thought that I’m not so fond of that so I went into Technology Consulting where I started looking at the time predictive analytics and decisioning which now I guess correspond to art and all these great new technologies where you have to take the capabilities and look how this will solve business problems. And that is my frame to Firecool & Pigger where I was in strategy steel innovation.

At the time we, we called it value proposition design, where my goal was to interact between the Customer, the Insurer, and helping them understand what the capabilities could do for them, how the capabilities could drive value for them. Around 5/6 years ago, a group of investors from one of the big banks. Friends of mine had invested a lot of money into Fintech. And they said, you know Sabine, you have given a lot of your time in Corporate environments. Why don’t you now give your time to smaller businesses? Give back. And you know I am lucky not to have children, and I can take risks, so I went to look at a thing called Fintech for a year. The Fintech failed; I will tell you I learned for 1 year what failure means. A lot of it is about people. But then, at the end of it in 2014, I said, this futile thing that is going to come into Insurance. So, I set myself up to help Insurers work with Tech companies that could solve their problem, and one of the first companies I worked was called Trackable

JAMES: Awesome. And what was your experience like, during that?

SABINE: I was fun because the insurer did not know much about innovation, and I think they are still learning what innovation is. I remember reading the first article stating that Insurance was right for innovation and we had you know some articles stating that investors had already invested over 3 billion or 2.9 billion into InsureTech Startup, so everybody got very uncomfortable and realized they needed to do something. The true number now is 14 billion for 2015. Today over 29 billion have been invested into 1.4k Startups, so 1500 startups, but there is a lot of Startups still coming into the market in InsureTech. There’s around 3600, so 70% of the Startups have no funding, they are just still trying to solve problems, for the industry, that is not being solved, and some are not going to develop with the current situation I assume, but that means we are going to see interest in consolidations.

What that means to me is, being part of the industry, Insurance, and having a purpose to help Insurers work with young players, Startups, to solve big problems and potentially smaller problems. That includes Technology, emerging Technology, and help them see how they may be able to design product and services for new and charted segments. See how processes & structures can be enabled and augmented with these technologies. And maybe if you combine, the part for your strategy if you combine a lot of them, maybe you can design a new business model.

JAMES: Hmm.

SABINE: That would be my ultimate goal. Designing a new business model with a lot of this new Tech

JAMES: Yeah, not just digitizing a current process and making it work on a computer but upending the business model. I tell people, you can go paperless, by just scanning in your paper and routing it in the same way you route paper. You can go digital, by starting to re-architect an analog process into a different looking digital process. So, there is a difference between going paperless and going digital. And then you know there is a difference between digitization and a complete process re-engineering, right? And I think you’re seeing in the more progressive, newer Insurance companies that are starting that look a lot like Insurance companies and Software companies got together and had a baby, instead of an insurance company using a software company as a vendor, they merge, and it’s a very exciting time to be around. Rob, I know you got a lot to say on this topic. What are your thoughts or questions for Sabine?

ROB: Yeah, I think Sabine you have left a ton of breadcrumbs there which we do not have time to follow on all of them, so thank you for that and the background history. You mentioned working for many large firms before you started working with some of the small Startups. One difficulty that I experience firsthand, over and over and I hear about from both sides, large companies and small Starts-Ups, is just the challenges, right, even if a Startup has a solution that could be attractive to a large company, obviously there are cultural differences. There’s a difference in speed, I have talked to a Startup vendor and he said when that large company postpones a meeting for 2 weeks because so and so, the 8th person in the meeting is on vacation, they want to wait until that person gets back, they don’t think about it at all. It is no big deal. It is like, the best 2 weeks I have to make payroll, I have to make Data scientist, I have got Programmers Engineers, etc. That is two weeks further out from getting a potential sale so, I am just kind of curious about your thoughts. You have been on the ground and seeing this first-hand, maybe somewhat works and what does not? Or just any thoughts around this kind of big and small kind of more stayed reserved Insurance industries vs these kinds of fast-moving Tech companies and how can they partner together successfully?

SABINE: I think it is an interesting question because the fortunate situation I have been in, in building Startup and Boot Camp InsureTech, the program is a learned result. One thing I did do when I was fortunate to work with amazing Insurance brands, you know other probably across the work I’ve done in London, it started to become InsureTech and the work I’ve done at Hartford with the Hartford InsureTech Hub over 30 Insure brands. One key thing is, you know those guys when they work with me because I am French, I can be sometimes be inflexible. And so, they have to be on the train. I call it you have to be on Sabine’s train. And so that means corporate s which want to be part of the next iterator or part of the Eco–system, we are building need to respect some rules. And I know, a lot of Startups are there and you know in the accelerator, we only select 10 Startups in each for a year, but what that means is that you have for 3 months to potentially stop everything and prioritize these meetings for your Startups, but there’s also education, to be done for large enterprises and their state quarters. To claim that the Startup does not have infinite resources and so not canceling meetings is important. I mean respecting the fact if even if somebody cannot attend, the other parties can attend that meeting, and provide the feedback to the latter person or get that person on the cold line when he or she comes back. It is also respected that those Startup because they do not have financing no POC’s are free.

And so actually, you have to respect the time, and you have to respect the resources, and you have to respect the fact that they are going to work on something. It is also respecting the fact that those big engines certainly are very slow, and we have to help change the culture and the mindset and I was fortunate enough to work with companies that understood that. They had state quarters for who was extremely well respected, and the design separated processes. You know the Startup process, to accurate the timed market. Now, you know there are 5000 Insurance Companies out there. The percentages of Companies that have done that is probably less than 1 percent. And so, there is so much more that can be done. And I do think for instance looking at our current situation, we probably could set up some Webinars, and some level of education, to help large companies understand that they cannot waste people‘s time. It is not allowed anymore, because time is precious for those businesses.

JAMES: Boy, that is the truth. Now, Sabine, I am a 19-year Entrepreneur. To start at JBKnowledge in my dorm room in 2001 at Texas A&M. The world’s finest institute of higher education. I am just got to lay that out. And sorry, that just comes out! You know I am, I did a genetic DNA test, and I already knew my geniality going back about 400 years on every side because I am like an Ancestory.com. Nut and I had a good idea and my genetics confirmed it, and I am about 30 percent French, which now I understand where my intractability comes from. I love it. The Sabine train. I love it. The Sabine train. And I say often in business is not a democracy. Private businesses are benevolent dictatorships, it is just the way they operate. They do not operate like democracies at all. I was a city councilman here in my town for 6 years and found out why democracy is so insufficient because it is designed to be because it is designed to get everybody’s input. It is intentionally inefficient because efficient governments are very scary, because they tend to rule with an iron fist, and so when I look at the business – I am a Bootstrapper, so I did not get funding.

I started building websites, then I started doing custom software for Insurance companies, and then I used the money I made of those custom software Geeks to build the products that I build for Insurance companies. So I bootstrapped my way into Smartbid, Smartcompliance, Terraclaim, our new claims software, we used our funding, but it took so much longer, right, and I understand why people get together and want to raise money because it’s shortcuts, you know years, of having to figure things out. But Bootstrapping does force you, to be very-very–very cost–efficient, because it is always your money. And so, my team, my leadership team, they are always making decisions like it is their money, because it is their money, and so we tend to be extremely cost–efficient like we talked about, no free POC’s, right. No free proofs of concept and these are very-very common concepts to bootstrap entrepreneurs, but to funded companies, they can learn a lot by trying to think like a Bootstrapper because they would be far more efficient with the capital. And that’s what I’ve seen and I would like for you to talk about that, how do you get funded organizations to think more like Bootstrappers, so can be a little more efficient with time, like you said, not accept that 6 meetings reschedule. You do not have the luxury of waiting for 6 meetings. You can go on a business waiting that long, so how are you getting them to that point?

SABINE: So, a lot of it is about re-framing, the problem, and also driving fear. I think. Today, Insurance companies needs not only to be relevant, for their customers, they need also to be responsive and amongst other criteria they need to fulfill and I think the relevance criteria is key because you need to survey your existing customers and try to earn new customer segment, such as answering the needs of the millennial, looking at for example an elderly proposition, which today, needs a lot of support from Insurance Companies, and small and medium enterprises which everybody is going to be reset and become much more resilient. What I have seen with large companies, is that when you start framing the problem, in such a way that it draws urgency, they respond very well. But it is about focusing on things which matter to them. Whether it is an additional team, or in my case the business leaders.

The people with the piano. The people who have to achieve something in a specific year. And Technology can enable them to do that. This could be underwriting or claims, probably Short terms, but when you start with the short-term bids, you can start talking about the long term what we call horizon 2 & 3 type of problems. What we often see with those large companies, also about structure and governance, and so, if you communicate in a language they understand, also, they are more likely to be responsive. And because I have been in Insurance for quite a little bit of time, I can appreciate that understanding

JAMES: Yeah, I have looked at this too. Why do not people get of center-gone on change innovation? You know why am I having to talk about API’s in the year 2020 at Insurance conferences? This is insane. We have had this technology for a decade and a half. Why are they viewing this as progressive when it is behind? I would say comfort, is the enemy of progress. When it happens, a lot of Insurance executives, they fight their way up the ladder at their companies, and you know it is a political, slugfest at Insurance companies.

SABINE: Often, yeah.

JAMES: They fight their way up; they make good money when they get there. They make good money along the way. I mean it is the same thing in the brokerage business. I mean these Producers, have decent earnings and they get to a point where they make more money than what they thought they would ever make in their lives, right? Or that they would hope. And they hit that point, and they like um. I am here. Alright now, how do I just protect this? How do I make sure I do not make less than this ever again, rather than looking at the upside, they look at downside protection? Malcolm Gladwell spends a lot of time analyzing upside vs downside protection and he has some interesting thoughts on hits Podcast, I am not going to spoil, because it is his Podcast, talking about people being very much more focused on downside protection rather than upside potential. And it kind of taps into the basis of the human brain. The way it works right. But it can certainly create a lot of frustration and so you’re right, if you can get them to understand, and look at what disruptive Technology can do, to a traditional business that appears to be bulletproof, it can certainly motivate them to action in a big way. Rob, I know you have had to deal with this, at multiple companies, and you have been at the center of this discussion as well. I would love to year thoughts and any other questions you have for Sabine.

ROB: Yeah, I am curious Sabine in your thoughts about obviously you mentioned some of the players of Pigger and other rather large companies. There’s a ton of others that are used to selling into the Insurance industry, right, so you got Enterprise sales teams, kind of how it goes in terms of working with a large Insurance company, and they have these conversations and they put everybody at ease, and that again it’s not something that these Startups have, right? So, it is not just about the technology, but it is about how is that going to integrate into the full IT Stack, architecture, support, and securities, etc. And you know a lot of Insurance companies of course, again you don’t want to screw up what you already have, right, and there’s a ton of technical data in there and what not so, if you can just talk about like, on the one hand, how do you encourage traditional large insurers to leap, or what do you see is the most common hesitations or concerns, and alternatively, how you get Startups to go beyond just Technology right, to kind of help educate them and position them to where they are successfully able to position their product so that there’s a marriage?

SABINE: So I start with the Startup because I think the biggest problem with Startup right now, and you can put the Insure before Tech, but they often Tech businesses and Tech businesses, unfortunately, I would say, do not always sell, particularly when your client is a business, so, therefore, you need to need to tune into the business problem. And one key thing I have been working with the Startups I am supporting, and I am elevating is let us just talk about the enablers. Techs are just enablers. It is great to talk about AI, machine learning, and blockchain. I do not care. I just want to know. I mean its great capabilities and those capabilities are key to address problems of tomorrow, but if you do not understand the problem we are trying to solve, they are irrelevant. So, let us try to understand the problem we are solving for and let us understand what each corporate are focusing on right now. And so, it is interesting because when I talk to a lot of the Insurance companies I worked with, I am trying to identify new problems with today, they said Sabine you know already my 5 topics, I would guess, no change, but that was 2 weeks ago.

So I think that might have evolved, but just by being aware of that and reading the annual report, reading the articles from some of the key execs, you can have a business theme that you can support your thesis on, and start then aligning you know things that need to be solved for, with Technology to those problems, so I said to the Startups, just read more, align your content accordingly, and just leave the Tech for later. It is going to be important but first, it is about the business case. The business case of change. On the corporate side, I would say that we often get the same questions around security, privacy, I mean I tend to know my gatekeepers. And the gatekeepers will be IT, Legal, Procurement, compliance, and why not be on the checklist? We build a checklist around what is going to happen.

Often the Startup will get to 200 questionnaire questions to respond and they would send it to me and ask me what I should do with that? I said well, let me talk to the insurer because actually, this is for the IBM of this world, so we just need to make sure that we do not treat a young business as we are treating our main vendors as well. So, there’s education for the large enterprises to accurate their ability, find Technologies and to find solutions to big problems much faster, by allowing those young players to come in easier, but also by creating checklists which are straight forward. Day one when we started minus day 1 when we start interacting with those large enterprises, we know what we need to answer for. Now I know those, I have those in my head. It had to be through learning through the past 5 years.

ROB: Yeah, I think that’s so important, that there’s been a maturity, I know, kind of when I started for the 1st time in 2015, I kept them all as a one off and yeah, it was a very painful process right because there was not process, it wasn’t clear and I kept on running into roadblocks and kind of knowing these are the stakeholders that I need to have engaged upfront, these are the questions they’re going to ask, etc. Etc. And formalizing that well sometimes, when you formalize it you feel like you are slowing things down like, you think about Bureaucracy, red tape, etc. right, you can certainly speed up the process because you know exactly these are the questions you are going to have to answer, and you do not have to answer all 200 of them, right? The main concerns and whatnot, so I love that. Thank you for sharing.

JAMES: Yeah that is interesting, you have to, Startups, especially, big funded Startups like the phrase move fast and break stuff. And, that sounds great, like it sounds great, yeah, move fast and break stuff, and then you are working with a carrier whom if you move fast and break things, you might break their entire underwriting model? I mean you could have billion–dollar consequences from moving fast and breaking stuff, and so move fast and break stuff sounds great when you’re talking about a social media website or a consumer add, but when you’re getting into a large business, that was like lesson nr 1 for us, was learning how to balance the careful methodical process that most Insurance companies have arrived at for deploying change because they’ve experienced this problem and particularly when they changed things on underwriting, they make the wrong decision they can end up screwing up the whole market, right?

SABINE: Yeah and reputational risk, often I call it Startup clear theory and I said to my Startups look at whatever you want to do like move fast and all those things and put a D before it. Because insurers would want to de–risks, they will want to manage uncertainties so let us keep it simple, just put a D in front of anything you would want to do, and then they will get you into the insurers‘ mind. And then, start developing approaches, processes, techniques, tools to help Insurance companies see, that you are on their side, to manage their reputation and your risking issues that may happen while working with you. And then you know when everybody is alighted, you end up having amazing relationships. But another thing I think is important with Startups, and I think a lot of this is welcomed from Silicone Valleys, everybody wants to sell very fast and close deals. Actually, at the first meeting please do not try to sell. Just listen. Just listen.

JAMES: Yeah, well they, look, Sabine, it is starting to bite them in the butt. Let us be honest. The growth at all cost mentality from Silicon Valley is a 2 headed snake that is coming back in on itself right now. Because what’s happening is, their hitting public markets with that sell–sell–sell growth at all cost model, and of course their law subsiding, their way on the way to get there, there’s a big company in the construct Tech space right now, there’s other space that we have a lot of experience with it. We got introduced to it at the bonding business. There is a big company, there is a 250mil dollar Tech company, but they are losing 83 mil dollars a year on 250 in revenue, so they are buying their growth and trying to IPO. Let’s just say the price their trying to get is not exactly dovetailing what the market’s willing to pay so, there’s also that the sales–sales–sales growth at all cost you know when we work in Peloton and all these companies are hitting the public markets. They are not responding well

SABINE: Absolutely

JAMES: And look, do not forget a lot of those public markets are controlled by the investment funds from the Insurance companies themselves!

SABINE: Absolutely!

JAMES: Do not forget, that is where I always like to remind people that want to jump into InsureTech, I am like, do not forget, they play on 2 sides of this equation. They are the insurer, the client, and they are also probably part of the fund that is investing in you. Because that is how they make their money, on their money on their loss ratio, but also make their money on what they do on their investments. And so, you have got to understand the big picture if you want to jump into this space, right?

SABINE: Absolutely, absolutely

JAMES: Rob, great discussion, by the way with Sabine. Thank you for that. What, Sabine, what do you think is next? I am mean we are going to, and I told you, we are not going to talk about that which shall not be named today. It is Voldemort.

SABINE: Absolumont

JAMES: It is Voldemort, we are not talking about it. So, let us just say changing market, changing economy, dynamic future, what is the next big thing, where do you think we are racing towards?

SABINE: My personal view is, there is going to be a lot of focus around, I will use the term responsibility, and purpose because from a conversation I’ve had, we are looking at climate change, we are looking at the way we eat, we are looking at electric cars, we are looking at connected homes. You know the things we have heard for the past 5 years. But I think that leads us to understand better, how we play in a sustainable world. What I mean by that, I have been going a lot of study on the SDG system, the System Development goals. And when you start playing with those, you see that we are talking about prevention, we are talking about the things that are going to affect us right now, Autonomous driving, and, if there’s no car to the individual to insure a car for, what is Insurance premium going to be in the future? What is going to be our liability? Is it that insurance company is going to work with big motor manufacturers, and insure directly with them, and therefore we are moving from personal line to flip to commercial lines, or is that going to look differently from an underwriting viewpoint? When we start looking at health care or emerging risk, climate chance I mentioned, let us look at emerging risks, what are the emerging risks of the future we are going to insure? What is the data we need?

I’m having amazing conversations at the moment with several universities who are building a Uni–Data set, not only looking at whether, but you know like I shared this morning, looking at diseases, and so you know the things we are going to be looking at tomorrow are probably not we are looking at today, but will probably be aligned to the fact that we need to do better for and by our customers. Conclusion, serving under serve market. We need to make sure our processes are aligned and much more responsive. Digital transformation is great but actually, potentially we need to innovate better, and then we are going to have to integrate our supply chain into everything we do. So, you know these Insurance things or answering Coal mining providing, ensuring, checking that they are doing 30% renewable energy. Well, I also need to make sure that anyone involved in my supply chain is behaving right. And this is going to be a lot of work. And very exciting actually

JAMES: It is if you like change, it is an exciting time to be alive, if you do not, I think it might be a very painful few years ahead. Change is tough. Any change, right? And, certainly, market condition changes bring about a lot of risk and a lot of opportunities. I am old enough to be through the dot.com busts. 9/11 the 2008 recession as a business owner, of the same business, you know we have had to ride through lots of different changes and certainly, we are going to, all of those events, irrevocably changed the economy and world landscape. I mean the dot.com bust changed everything. And technology, it did. 9/11 changed everything in travel in security. It did. The 2008-bust changed everything in lending and mortgages, and I mean you know it is just we are forever different because of what is going on, we will forever be different, and we have to rethink. Some models did not even contemplate the level of change that the world has gone under in the last 2 weeks. They are it was so far our side of any actuarial model, that they could not possibly account for this level of change.

SABINE: True. You are right. You know what is going to happen, we do not know. But right now I know, the question is around resilience and business continuity and I respect that, but we need to look at the short time needs, and fulfill those needs, but we mustn’t forget there’s a longer visionary, line of sight, we also need to keep in mind.

JAMES: Yeah. That is awesome. Well, we are running up on our time limit. Rob I will love to hear any closing thoughts you have.

ROB: Yeah, so my last question Sabine, you have been kind of a model and mentor to me over the years. One of the first social media influences in the InsureTech space so Yeah, how that kind of become you have done more for that than anything you have done previously, and how do you handle your fame?

SABINE: How I do handle my fame? You know I do not see myself as being famous, to be honest. I just want to do great work; I want to have a great purpose. When I talk to you on Linkedin or Twitter it’s because I’m excited to read what you are sending me when I wake up at 6 o clock in the morning and at the same time I feel like I need to share something. And to me, it is about being connected. And you know a lot of the learning we are going to make in the next few months is how can we be better connected and how can we use Technology better to support each other? So, for me, weather its Linked in or Twitter, it is a platform to sometimes have a smile, sometimes to be beware of the things I do not know. And also share the things that I found that I think you guys may like. I do love being on the stage and doing a little bit of a keynote as but at the end of that, it is always about others. For me, it is about sharing. And being happy and having a part in the world that I am in and I hope I can continue doing that in the next few months and the future!

JAMES: Awesome

ROB: Love it. Thank you so much, Sabine, absolutely, so great to have you on.

JAMES: Yeah.

SABINE: Thank you for having me.

JAMES: Sure, Yeah, and Rob thanks for co-hosting Sabine. I am going to try and break out the French of my origin. Merci beaucoup d’avoir participé à l’émission

SABINE: Merci. Merci de m’avoir aujourd’hui.

JAMES: Très bien, Très bien. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Now we have a funny saying in Louisiana, State motto: Laissez les bons temps rouler

SABINE: Yeah, I have heard that before! That is a bit Créole.

JAMES: It is very Créole and I am Créole so “-”

SABINE: Yeah and my parents probably taught that to me, so that to show the Créole from speaking French in Louisiana, maybe a little bit similar.

JAMES: Yes, exactly so let the good times roll, no matter what happens in your life. Remember there’s fun to have every day, in every circumstance. Stay positive. Focus on what you can do. Both my parents told me that a lot while I was growing up. You cannot worry about the things you cannot control because you do not have any influence over it. So, what you can do, is focus on the tasks you perform every day to influence your outcome. That is, it. That is all you can do. And, so just a big word of encouragement for everybody out there to stay focused on what you can do. Get creative, get innovative, and focus on some fun you can have every day. So, thank you all for listening. Sabine for being on the show.

SABINE: Thank you very much for allowing me, James, and Rob

JAMES: Awesome, yes.

SABINE: Thank you

JAMES: Yes

The InsurTech Geek Podcast powered by JBKnowledge is all about Tech that is transforming and disrupting the Insurance world. I have been your Co-Hosting James Benham along with my other Co-Host, Rob Galbraith, the most interesting man in insurance, you can, of course, read his book and you can go to my website and Jamesbenham.com and check that out. Thanks to Jim Greenlee our Podcast Producer, Kara Dalton-Arro, our Creative Producer, and thank you for joining us today.

I look forward to talking to you soon or taking you on a journey through Insurance Tech so enjoy the ride and keep geeking out. Talk to you all soon!