Making Driving Safer by Measuring More of the Risk with Carey Anne Nadeau from Ometry

James BenhamOn episode 19 of the Insured Tech Geek podcast talking about making driving safer by measuring more of the risk with Carey Anne Nadeau from Ometry. The InsurTech Geek podcast powered by JBKnowledge is all about technology is transforming and disrupting the business world. We'll be interviewing guests and doing deep dives into specific technologies that we see changing the industry. We're taking you on a journey through insurance tech. So enjoy the ride and geek out. Another week. Another week in the books. Man, what a time it's been.

It's been a little bit a busy bit of time. We've got these hard markets out there now in insurance, premium dollars going up. I was actually running some quotes the other day, Rob. Premiums are they're going up into the right right now.

Rob GalbraithUp into the right. It's good for our industry.

James BenhamExactly. Right? It's It's hard harder markets. Got some markets dropping out. There's a it's interesting. I I'm a I'm a pilot, so I was running some aviation policy quotes and three markets three markets dropped out this year out of aviation insurance. There were only 12. So it's not like there's a lot of markets that write aviation anyway. And so the the markets there are hardening up. Premiums up 30 to 40% just over in aviation. And certainly seeing some harder markets in comp and general liability, and it's happening quickly.

So some crazy stuff and stock stock market is doing some crazy things. Right? It almost feels like it's disconnected from reality at some point. It's kind of a kind of a wild time. But with us from from the hot seat, from the hotbed of activity, Washington DC, where it seems like everything happens every day. It's almost like an episode if you remember the show Baywatch where, like, they would have, like, a shark attack, and then there would be, like, a lost kid, and there would be, like, something else, like, something three really bad things or, like, Grey's Anatomy.

That was probably another a better modern analogy. You know how in Grey, Carrie Ann, you know how in Grey's Anatomy, like, just, like, three really bad things happened every day? Mhmm. It feels like like Washington DC for the last few years has been an episode of Grey's Anatomy every day. Yeah. It feels like I'm on the front lines of a few fights. That's for sure. I know. It's like it's it's wild. So, you know, our listeners have gotten somewhat used to this. This is a tech show, so we're gonna stick to tech.

We're gonna talk about InsurTech insurance and technology. We'll have a little bit of policy discussion towards the end of the show today. We know you guys have have certainly had your fill of policy talks on on on day to all the t TV shows and news media and print media. So we're gonna give you a bit of a tech break, and we're gonna talk about policy at the end. But we got we got Carrie Ann Nido here, and we're gonna talk all about telematics and all kinds of fun, super geeky topics here in just a minute.

We're gonna get right back to her. Just a reminder out there, if you want more information on the show, you can go to insurtechgeek.com, which is a really easy way to to get information on, like, the show, the show notes. We have a weekly emailer there that you can sign up for. And I promise we don't spam you. InsurTech Geek.com. It's I n s u r e, InsurTech, t e c h, geek. So it's exactly like it's actually spelled. InsurTech Geek.com. That's where we have our episode guide show notes.

Sign up for the weekly emailer. We don't spam you. Just one email a week with the we talk about. Rob and I have all kinds of fun. Again, with me, Rob Galbraith, the most interesting man in insurance. We have all kinds of fun. He has a really, really, really great book that I am almost done reading, Rob. I I Oh, nice. Oh, man. I have really I've really enjoyed it. I'm I'm now making all of my employees in insurance our insurance division read it because you do such a wonderful job.

What I really like is that you speak to people like me who've been in insurance for a decade and a half or two decades, but you also speak to people who have not, and you help educate them along the way. Like, you do a really it's a really good primer on just how insurance works. So if you haven't read his book, go read it. It's totally worth the read. We've had some other authors on the show, and they they have great books as well. You know, you're never done with one book.

Right? I mean, college, you read a bunch of them. So so make sure you you have a nice breadth and depth of of stuff there. Now Rob's over in San Antonio today. Yours truly, your InsurTech Geek host, James Benham. I am in Florida today. Came over here to get a little social distancing on the beach. Everyone's doing a good job of it too. They're staying away from each other. They're renting their own place, staying with their family, distancing at the beach. They they've shut down. There's no events really going on.

It's just kind of like distance it into your condo and go to the beach, you know? So it's been a good social distancing activity. So and then and then Carrie Ann's over there in the heat of it all in Washington, DC, so we're excited to have her with us. So, Carrie Ann, let's talk about you for a minute. Let's let's let's talk about how you got into insurance. Insurance is a funny thing because back in the day, which was a Wednesday, we all went to some type of schooling.

And when we were children, we didn't say, Mom, dad, I want to be in insurance when I grow up. You know, like, you say, I want to be an astronaut or a firefighter or a police person or, you know, whatever it is, but you don't say insurance. So when you were a kid, what'd you think you wanted to be? And then what'd you go to school for? And then how'd you wind up here? Great questions. Well, thanks for having me first and foremost, and it is super hot here in DC for The swamp?

Carey Anne NadeauYeah.

James BenhamFor a variety of political political and temperate It's an actual swamp, though. Like, it was built in an actual swamp. So

Carey Anne NadeauIt's built in. But now we're draining the swamp with, like, a alligator, you know, with some sort of radioactive material. So things are definitely different nowadays. Now my background, where it all began, where all the magic happened, I grew up in Hartford. My parents were not in insurance, which is sort of a rare, if if you're from the Hartford area, feels like everybody knows somebody in insurance. But my parents worked very blue collar jobs to put me through really great universities and educate me. They prioritize education.

And what I was always super fascinated about, would watch sun well, first, would watch Sunday morning news, and then I would watch the repeat of Saturday Night Live from the night before I had taped every Saturday Night Live. So I fell somewhere between either becoming a comedian or a political commentator as a kid. Maybe there's still a future there. Right? We need more comedy and political commentary. But I was always really fascinated with the political commentary that people could make their opinions into facts by selectively bringing together different data.

And that's even worse now than it was in the early 90s, We see that manifest on a grander scale. But I thought to myself, there has to be an absolute truth. If we could measure all of the data in the world and not just cherry pick what we wanted to know, could we measure everything? I was like little baby Elon Musk, right? Like trying to know a lot about the universe. So that actually led me to what I initially thought I would go to school for, which was astronomy.

I wanted to become an astronomer. And I think there's still a small part of me that would love to love physics, but calculus, I wasn't very good at. I came to find out very quickly that I was more of a statistician at heart and probability theory just made me excited in a way. So when I went to undergraduate at the George Washington University, I thought I would win in for one thing, but definitely pivot hard towards what my heart was directing me to do. And so I ended up graduating with a degree.

At the time, only seven people got this degree, which is somewhat comical because it was a degree in public policy from GW, which is in DC. Now it's the most popular degree fifteen years later. It really started to grow. I think as people recognize the importance of bringing data to bear in policy, understanding how to interpret voting patterns, but even more than that, how to make policy, how to make decisions informed by data. That's sort of a recent trend. So I found myself very much in the right place at the right time with the right interests.

And I didn't come back to insurance until 2015, when I founded my company, Ometry. In between there, I got a graduate degree from MIT. I worked for Brookings. I worked for Urban. I flexed all that nerd muscle building statistical models about urban poverty and geospatial clustering statistics. I have all those chops so we can nerd out pretty hard on the math. But I decided to found Ometry to take this sort of fundamental understanding about measuring more of things using new data, in our case, data that's sourced from state and local governments, to make better decisions.

And insurance is great for that. I'm super stoked on insurance because that's what we do fundamentally. We place bets on data driven decisions. And the more data we can collect, the more measurement we can do, the better informed we can be about underwriting risk, about informing our clients or our customers about how they should safely navigate the world. And I think that that deeply respects the tradition of insurance. But what we may want to talk about is how we sort of lost our way, how we don't quite return to the revisiting measures.

We think, oh, insurance is such a traditional, old, awful, ugly, difficult thing. And we don't ask, how can we make it better? So that's really what we're focused on at Ometry is using more data, creating better measurements to measure, in particular, auto risk. So the risk of the road and where we drive. We wanna know, are you driving on unsafe roads and how are you behaving on those roads? We help insurance carriers know that too. Very cool. And road assessment was something that I did. I was a city councilor in College Station, Texas for six years, and we had a 117,000

James Benhamcitizens driving on our roads every day, and we didn't know what condition they were in. So we deployed a boatload of technology after I got on because, of course, can imagine the data nerd gets on. We also didn't know how many buildings we owned and what condition they were in, and so we fixed all of that with data and our GIS system. I got super deep in our in ArcGIS and our GIS system, and we started quantifying all that, and then we started quantifying our road condition, and it had a huge impact on our budgeting process because I ran the budget committee, and I authorized $2,000,000,000 of spending over six years because we spent about $360,000,000

Carey Anne Nadeaua year, and it had a huge impact on how we spent money. That's really where we started, man. We started by going to state and local governments and saying, hey. You have very limited resources to spend on road safety. And right now, you're spreading everything super thin. Only 3% of the roads cause all the crashes in Washington, DC. So why aren't we focused on those? Putting all of our resources in, go all in, sort of on the biggest problems. So I I deeply empathize with that.

You know, in Texas, where College Station is, you have 40,000 crashes a month. A month. Yeah. We might intuitively know, this intersection's unsafe or that is unsafe, but a team driver might not, truck driver, all these new at home deliveries that are happening. People are going into areas they've never been before, and quite frankly, they're flying blind. They're, you know, driving with one eye closed if we don't give them this information about, hey. You're riding into an intersection that had 29 crashes last month. Maybe drive a little greater awareness.

Slow down. Drive a little bit more defensively.

James BenhamSlow down. Yeah. You know, text dot Texas Department of Transportation has been really awesome to to observe because they're so aggressive about data and research. They they use the Texas Transportation Institute, which is housed at Texas A and M, And they've done some crazy stuff, you know, the diverging the the diverging star and the diverging diamond intersections they've implemented where we are are just insane to look at, but they drive flow way up and they drive accidents way down. And and they're insane to think about because you actually end up crossing and driving on the left side of the road than crossing back and driving on the right.

And and it's it's it's wild, but it works really, really, really well. And, you know, some other things, they really looked at their accident data, and and they there were the the section South of College Station between College Station and Navasota. Just called it the Bloody Mile because there were so many fatalities because it was four lane, 74 75 mile an hour speed limit, no divided no divider. Right? And so the unit with these violent bloody accidents, and so they divided them. They put all kinds of they put just every safety measure they know, and it plummeted the number of fatalities on those roads by fixing them.

And, of course, there's the other side that I like that you're tackling, which is the data side. I'm still hung up on this analogy instead of a baby Elon Musk because I'm picturing a six pound eight ounce little baby baby Elon just all wrapped in a swaddling. You know? And I so I'm just I'm sorry. I'm having to get past the Bailey baby Elon Musk analogy. And by the way, can we just stop for just a second? Let's take a time out for just a second and acknowledge one of the greatest moments in human history that happened this week that a private space company put astronauts onto the space station and launched them from Cape Canaveral, and they did it safely and successfully.

They got them in the space station. Holy crap. That actually happened.

Carey Anne NadeauRight? I mean, that happened. And In addition to, like, COVID nineteen, so drastically. Right? We have a global pandemic.

James BenhamYeah. Massive social unrest. And then in the middle of all of this, Elon's like, we're going to the space station. And it's like and it happened. And it happened. Nice to nice to put one on the win column for 2020. Oh, it's a win. It's a huge win. And then right on the heels of that, he did a fifth use for he's launching more Starlink satellites, which are going to enable your technology, Carrie Anne. Starlink is gonna be over 20,000 satellites that'll provide low Earth orbit multi gig broadband everywhere in the planet.

He he launched another, I wanted to say, 30 or 40 satellites right afterwards with the fifth flight of this rocket that had been reused. So amazing stuff there. So let's wind back for a second. I know, Rob, I know you've got some questions. Let's go back to you. Carrie Anne, I wanna go a little bit deeper on what you were kinda describing and I've heard you pitch several times and you're amazing.

Rob GalbraithBut every time I hear you pitch, it kind of, I always felt like I learned something new aboutometry and my very simple mind. I guess I shouldn't say that since I wrote a book. Right. But, but I don't know why it's been like really hard for me to kind of fully grasp, I guess the power of what you guys are doing. The simple thing that I finally came up with. So I want you to either say, you got it. Or like, nope, hey, let me, let me correct you.

We focus a lot on telematics, right? We focus a lot on the driver and we kind of look at like, okay, are you speeding or doing excessive braking or whatnot, and we kind of like almost assume that every bad thing that happens in the car is because of the driver, And whatometry does in a nutshell, I know I'm grossly simplifying, so I'm going to give you a chance in a second, but is to kind of say, you know, there's a there's another part of this equation that insurance carriers have never been looking at, and that's the roads.

And so when we look at you talked about the the Bloody Mile James, we would talk about, you know, hey, this road is notorious for it has this kind of sudden, you know, lane just ends and people have to merge over and they're causing crashes or whatnot. So we've never thought about it. Like we always look at the vehicles, right? What type of vehicle are you driving and how many miles and who are you and your age and gender, mental status and all this stuff. Right.

So we're looking at the driver, we're looking at the vehicle, but we have never looked at the roads before as an insurance carrier. It just it took me a while to figure that out. And it's like not to say that you don't need to understand that stuff, but it's an incomplete picture. You really need

Carey Anne Nadeauthis data to have a full picture of why these accidents are happening so that you can hopefully reduce and prevent them. Yeah, nailed it. We should take that and put that on the top of our website so that everybody gets that message. That's exactly right. And I think we're respecting in many ways the tradition of insurance in continuing to advance the measurement of risk. We see it in homeowners already, right? We have flood insurance, we have hail maps, we have fire maps. We know that the environment in which we exist affects our claims, our likelihood of claims.

Why don't we do that for auto? Well, it's been a hard problem to solve. It took frankly me and Omotry to be able to start to answer some of those questions. So I don't want to criticize insurance so much so much as say, right now, in this moment, we have the machine learning, we have the data, and we have the intelligence and the capability to identify a problem that we can actually solve right now. And that is a moment to modernize insurance, right? That's a moment where we could talk about innovation, and we could talk about cool new InsurTechs, but what we're saying is, hey, those insurance textbooks you read, chapter one says we are here to measure the risk to keep people safe and pool risk so that we can care for one another.

We're evolving that, adding more to, adding the next chapter to that. And I think it will fundamentally change the way we think about not just auto risk, but mobility, right? This happens on scooters, if you're walking, if you're biking. It's not just homeowners insurance where environmental hazards matter. It's everywhere we go. And it's really fascinating to me that telematics is adopted and we haven't used it for this purpose yet. That there are millions of dollars of premium out there. The technology is already in millions of cars.

Like, why aren't we leveraging it if there is no technological hurdle to actually using this data for this purpose? I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy, Carrie, and

Rob Galbraiththis is again, an analogy, but, you know, I used to be a property underwriter. Right. And I remember looking at Hail Maps as you just kind of talked about, and we would look at a really bad hailstorm that hit the Denver area. And what we did was we looked at, you know, where it affected the properties that we had homeowners claims on and where we had the auto claims. And what was crazy was all the auto claims were in Downtown Denver. But then, like all the hail, like property claims were kind of in the suburban area, whatever is much more spread out.

And it was because all the cars had driven downtown to go to work. And we basically were were, you know, had them at their like a garaging location. Right. But the risk of the hail wasn't where they lived because they were driving them every day to work. Right. And so it's the same type of thing here, Carian, where we have these rating territories and we kind of look at where people's grouching location is. Hey, you know, where you drive to work and the route you take is very different where I drive to work and my route and is different than James.

And so those things factor into independent of other variables of our relative risk. Right. It's not just about you. It's about where you're going, not just where you live, but where you're going as well. That's exactly,

Carey Anne Nadeauexactly our theory of change is that it matters where you are. Right? And, you know, if we can bring the math to bear to help insurance carriers understand the dynamism of risk as you move, that's the that's the slot we fit right into. We're excited to be in that space. But like, how far are we gonna take this?

James BenhamKnow, let's talk about like the crazy or maybe not so crazy future. Let's say we're paying by the mile for our insurance, right? Sure. A good case could be made that insurance should be paid by the mile and not by the not by the, month or year. So let's say we're paying by the mile for insurance. Are we gonna rate every mile of road differently and alter their premium depending on which roads they pick? And then integrate with their navigation and encourage them to drive on lower rated roads?

Yeah, we're already doing that. You're charging them less per mile for specific routes?

Carey Anne NadeauYeah, let's talk about that. So usage based insurance today is no better traditional insurer if they are pricing solely off of vehicle miles traveled. Why do I know that's the truth? During COVID, you know, awful global pandemic that has affected a lot of people in a really negative way but has been an awesome social experiment and mathematical experiment for auto insurance. 50% to 75% reduction in vehicle miles traveled, 20% to 40% reduction in crashes, fantastic. Fatality rates are spiking everywhere. We have a website called crashometry.com, and it breaks it down by state.

We're seeing, I think it's the state of Connecticut, 5x over the previous April when it comes to fatality rates. What's happening is that people are speeding on open roads. People are distracted because of all of the anxiety in the air these days. And people are driving quite aggressively, right? They're cooped up. And so the crashes that used to happen that were just a little bit less severe are now moving into the fatal category. You can't come back from that. So when we think about usage based insurance, we're translating what we see in the data and in the map happening in every state across The United States.

Is usage based insurance better? Or are they equipped to answer the question of frequency and severity? And they're not equipped to answer severity because then we wouldn't see fatal crashes spiking during COVID-nineteen. So we need to get to that point where we have rated every single road, which is what Ometry has done. We gather telematics data, attach them to the roadway segment, and tell you, Hey, your route was this exposed. You went through roads ahead of. Probability of a crash on average about 75%. You were speeding for 40% of that time, or you were speeding on the most dangerous road in Texas.

Here are the ways that you can change your behaviors to actually reduce your premium. Here's how we'd like you to behave, and if you don't, we're going to charge you. It happens on commercial lines today because we can direct routes, right? We can tell a fleet manager, Here's how to manage the risk better, and we can tell a driver, Here are the roads we absolutely don't want you to go on. It technically can be quite complex, right? We can integrate this into routing optimization algorithms to route for time, distance, and safety.

But a lot of our customers, frankly, print these maps out and say, If you're a soda distribution company, don't park behind home plate at Wrigley Field. Don't park near the loading dock at National Stadium. Why? Because those places are where we see major spikes, majorly dangerous roads, and those very simple sort of maps that you highlight like an Atlas in the back of your car are significantly reducing the risk exposure for those businesses. So captive fleets are jumping all over this. Usage based insurers are jumping all over this.

And we think it's the way of the future. Yeah. I would say this probably rolls out first in commercial fleets because they can

James Benhamliterally factor this into their route planning software. Like, it's gonna be a lot harder to get consumers to change their behavior because time, perceivably, is so valuable to them that they won't wanna take slower routes theoretically. I mean,

Carey Anne NadeauI mean, I still eat at Chipotle even though I know that they've had, like, multiple salmonella outbreaks. So I still think I'm a bad driver, right? There's definitely a section of society that will say, I'm going to speed because I want to speed. But the fundamentals of insurance say that you should pay for the risk that you cause or that the risk you represent in society. And so if you're one of those people that wanna be operating poorly, you wanna be behaving badly on a very dangerous roads, again, fundamentals of insurance, your premium should reflect the risk that you post to society.

Yeah. Theoretically. Right? It's like you have you have business theory and then what happens when business theory collides with the real world of consumers and their preferences and like that. I just think that's true. But the way we're doing it isn't working right now either. Right? Having telematics is a device that is big brother that tells me like, you're speeding and you're gonna get in trouble because you're speeding. Oh, can I have a cookie? That's amazing. Yeah, I think the way we do it today is not the right way to do it either.

So I'm proposing an alternative that says, hey, instead of being big brother that's going to criticize and is going to score minus five points, right? Instead, I'm saying, here's the way you can make better choices. And I actually think the behavioral economics are on my side here to say, if you have the option to drive your family home from home from soccer practice on a safer route, you might take it. If I tell you you're a bad speeder, you're gonna be like, F you buddy, get out of my way, right?

So I think it's a better mousetrap in a way to actually positively reinforce behaviors rather than only have the option to negatively, you know, hit someone with a stick. The flip side though.

Rob GalbraithIt's interesting, Carrie Anne, because you're starting to see this like with the whole State Farm, right? The discount double check the commercial there at Rogers and the guy wants to like whatever speed at the red light is like, don't listen to my discount. I know Allstate has a driver rights program where you actually see, right? You're driving translated into this dollar amount of savings, right? And that certainly doesn't get us all the way there. But companies are starting to make this very explicit rather than, hey, if you do a good job, your renewal might be cheaper, right, six months from now.

So, just kind of fascinating. I think what the possibilities are.

James BenhamRob, you forgot you forgot to do the hand motion discount double check. You gotta do some Yeah. Double check. I know. Discount double check. Okay.

Carey Anne NadeauFor a second too. If there are folks that are deeply ing rained with telematics, I think there's some obvious questions that we should dive deeper down here. One is the pool of drivers who drive today who use telematics tend to be better drivers overall. And this is part of the problem Self selecting. They're self selecting, right? Because they think they can qualify for the discount. Problem is, you're in a school with all A students, somebody's got to get a C if everything's graded on a curve, right?

So those customers that are great drivers in comparison to the population overall lose their discount. You could be getting all positive, you know, you're doing great, you're driving under the speed limit, you're full three second stops, you never heartbreak, you could still lose your discount because the pool is so small and they're all really great drivers. So part of the challenge when it comes to telematics and achieving the loss lift that a lot of folks want to get out of these programs is they need to enroll a lot more people in these programs to be able to make them viable, to be able to have external validity from the data that they're getting and from customers.

So first order of business is acquire more customers. Second order of business is keep customers on telematics because a good percentage of them will say deuces and bye bye when they see their discount go away, even though they're great drivers. So if we solve both of those problems, how we solve them, we think, is with positive reinforcement versus negative criticism, then we can get to this really cool next level, next phase, which is let's introduce us into actuarial rating models. Let's actually go to state regulators and say, hey, this is a way, instead of rating people based on where they live, let's rate them based on where they drive.

And this is a way to qualify far more people for more affordable insurance because the roads tend to be way more diversified, way more randomized than where you live. So people of color, people with low incomes, actually, if we rate them based on where they drive rather than where they live, this represents a very big business opportunity for those insurance carriers that are early telematics adopters to go out and grow the market by pricing the insurance for those folks a lot more accurately. Sorry to geek out a hot second, but you said geek out.

I did say geek Absolutely.

James BenhamIt's a geek out. So let's let's isn't the real solution to fix the roads? So, like, all of this is great, but, like, shouldn't we just be, like like, express lining mainlining this data to the to to TxDOT and every other state agency and saying, here's where everybody's dying. Can we fix it? Yeah. So folks look at me sideways when I tell them that insurance carriers should be sponsoring light poles and speed bumps all around The United States. This speed hump brought to you by MetLife.

This light was brought to you by Liberty Mutual. Why?

Carey Anne NadeauBecause it's going to benefit their book of business, especially if they make those investments very strategically on the 3% of roads that are causing all these crash or have all these crashes. Problem is with government, and we've worked with government, the city of Chicago, the Washington DC, 38 cities and states around The United States from Anchorage, Alaska to Miami, Florida, we've done this work to try to get governments to do something about the fundamental underpinning, the problem that we are only seeing the consequences of when people die and crashes on the road.

The challenge is that governments do not have the financial resources or the incentives in place to actually do the work. So they don't want to know they have a problem if they cannot fix it. There are different incentives in insurance. Knowing you have a problem helps you direct resources to be able to mitigate that risk, And so insurance is just a better spot for this to fit, but hell yeah, I think they should be investing as well, building partnerships much like USAA has done to do safest driver programs in Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

The next step for that is actually making actual physical investments in the infrastructure where they know there is a problem. Yeah. I mean, I I would have loved to have seen

James Benhama heat map of College Station when I was in the city government just saying, here's everybody who's dying on your roads. Like, we never saw that. I'll be honest. Like, there was never a presentation on here's where here's where all the here's where all the accidents are. That certainly but, look, government is always gonna lag on infrastructure. Always. My dad told me that when I got into politics because remember, infrastructure always lags demand no matter what a government wants to do. So you'll you'll never fix it fast enough.

And and at the end of the day, insurance rates so insurance rates come up all the time at city governments when they're talking about their ISO rating with home homeowners insurance. They talk about it constantly. And to be honest, the fire departments use it on a regular basis to justify heavier investment in fire stations because, like, hey. We can get a ISO rating bump. It drops everybody's homeowners insurance, and that that comes up constantly. And and the firefighters should use that because it is a real thing.

Like, insurers do really look at how close you are to a fire fire station. If this can impact their rates, then it will elevate by proxy, it will elevate the discussion at at city hall. Because if people start paying a higher rates because the roads are more dangerous, they'll bring you up as much as they bring up the ISO rate because I that am I saying that right? It is the ISO. Right? Like Yeah. No. You're spot on. Yeah. Yeah. James. I've had the conversation with many fire departments.

Yeah. Yeah. So if we so if we change the rating if we change the rating structure and we make it a part of the criteria and then we educate the carrier educates the insured on why their rates are higher because their commute happens to be on a lower rated road, then by proxy, they will bring it up at City Hall. It'll happen. I promise. Yeah.

Carey Anne NadeauWe're coming straight at the throats of LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk ISO. They've I been sitting on this opportunity for far too long. So we're stepping in and saying, hey, we've done the math, we've done the hard work, we've done it nationwide, and we're ready to go to market. And we're finding folks that are very excited about this technology, we're the next generation of those companies. And I think they're leaving the door open for us to walk right through it. Yeah, evidently.

James BenhamBecause I, you know, certainly with all the analysis that Rob and I have done, we haven't seen other other companies really tackling this in the same way. We're we're competitors. You know, there's always competitors in the world. But I think one of the really important differentiators

Carey Anne Nadeauin the modern insure tech scene. And I would actually qualify ourselves as risk tech, which I know is like the new insurtech. There's always a new tech, but it's an important differentiation because we don't sell insurance nor do we over capitalize through Silicon Valley investors. We take money when we need it, and we build a sustainable viable business that measures risk to support the insurance industry and not to compete directly with it. So risk tech, I think, is a really interesting evolving space for this very reason, that there's a lot that we can be doing to measure that we aren't measuring today within the industry.

We're not the only ones that have realized that there's new evolving data sets, means of measurement, machine learning, and data storage capabilities to be able to improve the way we measure and monitor environmental hazards. That's evolving incredibly fast. The way we leverage public data records, the way we price new products, new insurance, for new mobility, like car sharing and scooters, There's a big open, you know, Greenfield for this industry to grow. Maryann, I wanna

Rob Galbraithkind of ask you, right, as a female founder, I saw you on the road a lot when conferences were still a thing, right, and all that. I think at one point it might have been like four weeks in a row we saw each other at the same event, different cities or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So which is great coming in a different name back then ODN. So congratulations on the name change to Omotry. But my question is, obviously we've got the pandemic going on, right? A lot of these events dried up or gone virtual.

You've won competitions in the past. You know, I think you have really built some some terrific relationships. You've got a deep network. So how do you keep the momentum during this time? I mean, you've got a great product, huge opportunities we've discussed. I'm just kind of curious, like how you've had to pivot during this time. Yeah, I mean, just posted to social media

Carey Anne Nadeauminutes before I jumped on this podcast because folks are lauding this moment as separating the wheat from the chaff, that Insurtech was totally overhyped and that the businesses that don't survive this moment are the ones that are valuable. And I really don't think that's true. I've talked to so many fantastic founders that before this were growing businesses. Like, I don't want to name names because a lot of them have shuttered privately. Right? A lot of them have said, We're shutting down the business for now, going dark, nobody has to know, but I've had that conversation multiple times within my community of founders that you'd be surprised, you'd be floored that they're closing down the business.

So I want to make the very direct plea that supporting small businesses is going to include risk techs and insure techs that are up and coming. Like the conversation on innovation and insurance in 2021 is not going to exist if we don't spend money right now on these businesses. Now, auto is such a weird use case. We're doing okay because we're sort of, we were just in the right place at the right time. Usage based insurance is booming, so we're adding usage based insurance customers. They're enrolling more folks in telematics to monitor speed because traffic severity of crashes is increasing.

We're seeing consumers demand. So, of our existing customers are also growing. Fleets are growing. Commercial insurance is actually booming right now because everybody's picking up the second job delivering food to all of these businesses that need at home delivery that didn't need them before, And the number of crashes are going down, so the loss ratios are great in commercial insurance right now. So we were just super lucky that the confluence of all of those things made our business a viable and sustainable business through this period, but that is pure luck.

I've heard other founders who are in the middle of raising their lead investors dropped out. So it's not just customers, it's also investors in this space that are getting a little bit nervous. And frankly, most businesses are going to need to raise capital to be able to survive not just COVID, but the extensive sales cycle that's required to sell into insurance. It takes a long time, takes three to five years of building relationships to be able to have the trust to be able to sell something into insurance.

So I very much worry about going to raise capital soon in 2020. Any business that needs to do that, and we are very much in that position, is going to struggle because our sales numbers are not hitting the targets that we would have expected if the economy was normal and if businesses weren't open. It's really hard to sell a new customer you have never met before in person. Like Zoom's great and all, but investors have told me this. It's hard to invest in a business, a founder you've never met in person.

It's hard to buy a product that you can't actually say, is this person, do I trust this person? Are they trustworthy? Are they cool? Are we good? In addition to all of the internal protocols that are now delayed or otherwise modified because still got to go through IT. You still got to go through legal, but everybody's working from home and nobody has access to core systems and everything's delayed. So I'm very nervous about the InsurTech and the RiskTech community and just from speaking personally, and I don't want to speak on behalf of anybody, but I would encourage those with the means.

You know, if you're returning 15% of premium to drivers right now, you can be putting a little bit of money into the risk tech and the InsurTech scene to just keep it moving forward, to keep gas in the engine because, man, they are struggling. Or you can let them fail and buy their assets. There's two ways to look at that. Right? I mean, it it could be a buyer's market on tech on IP in the next next coming months. It's it's a it it it'll it'll it'll break both ways.

Right? The economy,

James Benhamit might be v shaped. It might be u shaped. It might recover fast enough. The stock market, I don't think is a good indicator on how the actual real economy is doing because we have 40,000,000 people unemployed and the stock market's in the ceiling. I'm like, I really would like to see unemployment numbers trend going down before I really believe that the market should go up. But, you know, I'm a militant self fund, you know, run with your own capital, build with your own capital guy.

And mainly because of situations like this, I've been in business twenty years and I've written out three major downturns. And this is when yeah, you could say wheat from the chaff, but this is really just when companies that can't self fund go away because they run out of capital. And the fortunate reality, I think, of what you're seeing, and the fortunate and unfortunate, there's still a ton of cash being parked on the sidelines waiting to be invested. Now it's making absolutely no return because treasuries are at zero, municipality are at zero, and corporate triple a corporate debt is at zero.

So they'll be looking to deploy, but what they've done and what we've heard of because I run two podcasts, this and a construction tech podcast, I and I advise a lot of startups out there. Largely, I advise startups on how to become profitable because that's something that evidently they don't teach at all Yeah. In in venture capital funded businesses. And so we we I've done a lot of education on them of how to actually turn a profit because what's going on right now that I'm seeing and I'm hearing is that term sheets are being ripped up.

And they're saying, okay, we'll still offer the same amount of money, but now we want double the equity. And so they're leveraging this very savvy, and I call them silicon snakes, very savvy silicon snakes are going out there and saying, you know what? I know we were gonna do, you know, $2,000,000 for 20% at a blah blah blah, you know, this much pre money valuation. They're saying, okay. Forget it. Tear it up. We want double the amount of equity. And so, of course, they're pushing the founders into an untenable situation that's really quite manipulative.

Seen I've seen funding companies, venture cap companies coming out and down rounding their own investments right after closing a round. They'll down round their own investment, and and it's like, wow. I mean, that's heavy. And of course, SoftBank is one of the more interesting ones to look at because they're, you know, it's a dumpster fire. And they're going out and they've reneged, and they're gonna get sued out the wazoo for doing this. But they've reneged on their asset purchases and on their buyback purchases and on the stock purchase from the founder in order to get Adam Newman out.

And Newman and WeWork were the number one tenant in New York City. They were the number one tenant in London. And so you're gonna have these massive sweeping consequences that have yet to none of this has even consequences yet. We haven't had long enough for all these consequences to take place. So it's fascinating. I'm not reveling in it at all. I I want what I want is I want all these companies to figure out how to grind down and turn a profit or at least break even and and survive long enough.

You know? Yeah. Let's start with that because I think we're totally on the same page. And frankly, as a female founder,

Carey Anne NadeauI don't have the ability to walk in with the bravado of Adam Newman and walk out with that deal. So it's just not gonna happen for that's and that was such a BS deal too. I mean, come on.

James BenhamLike, the deal he struck where he he gets the name aboard. They get the name that's happens all the time, though. It just depends,

Carey Anne Nadeaufrankly, like, what you're able to get, what the market is willing to give. So no fault to, you know, being able to strike an amazing deal as a founder. I'm pro founder friendly deals myself as a founder. But as a female founder, I'm not in a position to rely on Silicon Valley to be able to finance my company into perpetuity. So putting that option sort of off the table for us, we absolutely need to figure out a way to become revenue positive. We also need to figure out a way to get insurance carriers to take that parked money and start spending it because it's not just on the business owner to be able to build a profitable business.

You need customers. Yep. Right? You need customers. So I can't tell you how many, you know, deals that we started in maybe November or December that we'd expect to be maturing now that our internal advocate was furloughed or fired. Does that mean that I'm not a good business owner, that I can't bring in revenue for my business? No. It means that No. It means your deal got reset.

James BenhamIt's terrible. It's a terrible feeling.

Carey Anne NadeauAnd it happens all the time and it happens a lot in insurance if you could believe it even without COVID, you know, that you have start over from scratch.

James BenhamCarrie Anne, it happened to me. There was a major multi billion dollar broker that will not be named who came to me and said, we want to build a specific solution. I'm going to be really generic here because it would be easy to figure out who this is. And we want you to build this specific solution. We're going to build it on spec. We're going to share transaction revenue. Okay? So it was a revenue share deal. They weren't licensing the software for me. We were entering a JV.

And the people I were dealing with were fantastic, amazing. None of them turned over. But evidently, there was a producer up here that had the majority of the book of business for this particular line of business that this JV was around. And about halfway through the project, he left and took the book with him, and they didn't tell me. So I finished out the job. I you know, and and this was hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing out the door in development. I finished out the job, and then we get to it, and then the transaction volume carried.

It was terrible. It was like we went live, like, okay, we told all of our customers. It was like one order. Dot dot dot. Next day, three days later, one order. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, where is the transaction volume you guys committed? And they're like, well, that guy that had the book of business, he went to another broker and he took the book with him. I'm like, when did that happen? I mean, it's because insurance is that way. Right? You get these internal champions and you have like these people, these producers that own the accounts, you know, like personally, and they walk with their accounts.

They walk with their book. And the same thing with underwriters. Right? They walk with their book. It is such an intensely personal business. And then they don't tell the tech companies. They don't tell us what's going on. Correct.

Carey Anne NadeauAnd I think, you know, we're comrades in that that it is not easy to sell into insurance. The next business I start, I'm going to sell coral in The Caribbean and go park my ass at the Hilton in Bermuda and just sell from there because it is not easy to sell into insurance. But one thing that insurance carriers can do now is recognize that supporting small businesses, it means in their industry as well. Like it's not just buying an extra cup of coffee from the local community.

It's saying, hey, we do want more diversity of ideas. We do want to see the next generation of insurance products emerge either from within our organization or mature to a point where we can acquire them. That the IP is mature enough and the geographic coverage is large enough that that makes sense. But I'm very nervous for twenty twenty one when we go back to those conferences that it's going to be a lot of people and they're going to be looking around for all of the women and all of the people of color and all of the new Insurtech products that we have fun criticizing

James Benhamor promoting or figuring out, you know, how's insurance gonna we're not gonna be there anymore if you don't start Yeah. Paying up. Yeah. You gotta well, you gotta you gotta you gotta invest your budgets. And so you can't, you know, you can't just just lock up and freeze up. And I think it's been really interesting because we actively work as service providers for some really large insurance companies, and we have amazing client, like really amazing clients on our service business. And they have been so calm, cool, collected, and steady Eddie.

I mean, so steady. And I know of others that are just so freaked out right now. Like, they're just it's like they're having they there's they it it's it's really remarkable, and it's all about the executive team and how how well they deal with adversity. Right? It's really, really, really can be really tough for some to adjust to this. Rob, in the interest of time, you have a really, really great closing

Rob Galbraithquestion. I wanna provide us some space to talk about that. Yeah, we're recording this in a week where we've had a lot of, protests. You know, we've had some, some high profile killings in the news. And again, I don't, this is not a political show or anything like that. So I'll just kind of leave it at that. But, you know, I know for me, I've been kind of reflecting on people of color and specifically black people that have really helped me along my career. And I've had just some amazing folks that have really supported me both in my career from the very beginning all the way through that have supported me when I launched my book last year.

And so I know, again, this is a personal kind of, you know, broad thing. I'm thinking about you guys. I want to say thank you. And I know this is a really difficult time for all of us as a country. I think it's important to have conversations about race relations and racial injustice. So again, not a political show at all. And I know both of you are very kind of passionate about this topic. And again, we'll turn to that. Karianna, I did want to kind of have you maybe reflect and we touched on this a little bit before about things like credit score that are used in insurance rating.

And certainly there's a correlation with losses. But I mean, a lot of questions about like, you know, why does it work? How does it work, etcetera? And there are some of those factors that can, disproportionately people, fewer means, people of color, etcetera. We've talked a little bit about, you know, the driving in the road. So maybe just, I don't know, any thoughts that you have on this topic of just,

Carey Anne Nadeauyeah, kind of in our industry and the impact that it's had and kind of Yeah, I'd be remiss not to talk about it, Rob, because I think apathy is one thing, but like, avoidance is another. It's really important to shine light in the darkness, right? To put light on roaches so that they run. I feel like, you know, look, we're on a conversation that's for white people. But as a white woman, specifically, I feel like I my voice should be the absolute loudest. Right? Like, I should be the one that is the most vocal and turned up to 11.

Because in some way, there is some intersectionality between the disadvantages that people experience every day. It is hard to experience if you are not of that. If you are not a Black person, it is very hard to know what that feels like. But I do think white women in particular have a great moment to be advocates for people who are similarly faced with adversity or difficulty. And insurance specifically, I mean, we look at, we talk about institutionalized racism in quotes, and we throw that word around a lot.

I think institutionalized racism is not just in police forces. It's in financial services. It is in the way we extend and lend credit, and as a consequence, bled into the way that we extend insurance as well. So I think back to my own experience and my own privilege, which is that my mom did accounting for a local grocery store. So she counted money all the time. She was very financially conscious. She understood that when I went to college, it was an important time for me to open up a credit card at 17.

And she co signed that credit card. And she helped me start building credit so that today, I'm able to put some of my business on my credit cards if I need to during a difficult time. My counterparts, people of color who came from communities where they did not have the same financial education, they did not have the same access to banking, they did not live in communities that weren't red lined and weren't otherwise disadvantaged historically, they're starting from a very different starting point than I started from.

So first, recognizing my privilege is really important, but then to be able to say, institutionalized racism is part of our industry, and it is part of our what are we going to do about it? Because it's one thing to talk about it, and it's another thing to act. And I think this moment, the racial injustice, the global pandemic, and the exploration into space, sort of together, let's bring all three of those things together. What we're saying is look here's a great opportunity to modernize to take this moment and act differently so what one way that I think insurance carriers can think about this problem, can invest some mental energy if not financial energy, is to explore alternative measures of risk.

I'll speak to the profitability first. It is super important that anytime a insurance carrier invests in a technology or a new business or even invests in D and I, diversity and inclusion, that they think about the bottom line. They still have shareholders. They still have profitability that they need to hit certain thresholds. This is also a profitable market to move into. There are people who are overpriced. If we can more accurately price their insurance, we can seize, we can acquire customers. There are immigrants, people of color, people who speak Spanish, people who don't speak English or speak other languages, women, there are plenty of customers if we try to get them.

Now we cannot use the traditional measures of risk to be able to qualify some of those people, but I'll give a very quick example of how Progressive did this ten years ago. They said they looked at their data, and they have a lot of data, so they're able to do this. They said, Let's look at our customers. We found that dads with two DUIs would never commit a third DUI. They segmented that portion of the market, and they said every other carrier is gonna give them an extremely egregious price.

We're gonna undercut those carriers, give them an egregious price because they still did have two DUIs, right? They're not getting the discount, but we're going be able to undercut that market, grab those customers, and acquire a lot of people. And guess what? They did that profitably. So it's not just a racial injustice. I think there's an opportunity if we think about this from a profitability perspective, and the important sort of constraints that executives have to expand their book of business. This is an op there's opportunity in crisis as well.

But secondarily, let's talk about the social justice component of this. Like we look at D and I as if it's hiring more people of color into our business and that is part of it. That we do need to hire more people of color straight up like there aren't enough. But I think you have to ask the question about why aren't they coming to me to begin with? Why is it that our efforts to we've put a lot of resources into reaching these communities of color. Why aren't they working at such extreme volumes that, like, you know, we see some wave of minorities in insurance.

We don't. We barely see women in insurance. I mean, Intritech founders, women are less than 5% of CEOs or of the founding group. So a C suite executive in the founding executive team, less than 5% are women. So whatever we're doing isn't working that well. I mean, we all can admit that. It's not working great. So my question is why? Okay, let's get to the fundamental underpinning sitting underneath our D and I problem, is that our foundations are cracked. Our foundations are crumbling. We need to revisit the purpose and the tradition of insurance, which is to care for everybody and make sure that no person is sort of left behind, that we all sort of move forward together.

If something bad happens to one person, we all care for them. I think we have lost our way a little bit trying to get a sugar high of profitability only. And if we came back to that fundamental of insurance and said, how are we not serving these people specifically? How can we take the risk measures we use today and throw out the ones that aren't working or throw out the ones that are working but not for that group of people and swap them out? Try new risk measures.

Ometry is not the only one you should try. There are plenty. Bob Frady over at Hazard Hub will tell you all about the numbers that he has for homeowners insurance. I think there are all types of alternative measures to risk that could help insurance carriers identify new, very strategic opportunities in this moment. Takes investment, it takes intentionality, it takes action. But again, as a white woman, I am okay being on the pedestal with the light shine on me to be the advocate for the people that this will benefit who are not in the conversation, who are not in the executive suite.

Because even if my business, even if people come out of my business for it, and they do, you should read some of the trash on my LinkedIn, right? It happens. I will die a happy person knowing that I tried my best to make sure everybody was taken care of, and that is why I'm such a good insurance professional, right? That is the thread that unites all of us. So in this moment, we need to return to that and what can we do? How can we actually turn inwards like you are, Rob, and question, am I doing good for everybody?

Like, could I be doing more? Could I invest in alternative measures of risk to qualify some folks that I normally might turn away? I hope that this is an action forcing event. You know, a lot of folks get on TV and they ask a lot of black people like, do you think this will change? And a lot say, no, or I don't know, or I hope so, but I'm not sure. And I think it's a real travesty to see George Floyd's funeral and have celebrities sit in the front row, but there will be no Black financial service executives in the front row, no Black insurance executives in the first row, because if we think about fundamental change and the fundamental change that needs to happen to transform our society, it is not TI and Kevin Hart that is going to change the fundamental institutional racism.

It is people in our industry that can lead that charge. So I'll get off my high horse and my pedestal, but this is something that I've dedicated my career and my passion to. I began my career in criminal justice, actually learned that I didn't like working in jails at 22 years old, and here I ended up fifteen years later. So I've seen it, and I feel like it's an important thing to be an advocate for people that don't have that voice. So I'll get off my soapbox, but, you know, if folks have questions about it or wanna know what they can do, they should reach out and we can have that conversation.

James BenhamSaw a good movie called The Banker that Apple payrolled and put on Apple TV. Have you seen it yet? No, Yeah. Absolutely worth every minute of watching it. It was about the first black owned bank in the country. It was actually in Texas, in a little town right near my house in Montgomery, Texas. And it was two Black gentlemen from LA that came out. One was from Montgomery, and they came out and bought a white owned bank that wasn't doing really well. And they very quietly bought it through a kind of a straw, a white guy that was their their public partner.

And they discovered very quickly, and they knew this already, that one of the reasons that they're the the the the man who was from Montgomery that his families and their neighborhoods couldn't really get out of the situation they were in is they couldn't get any credit. The the the black owned businesses couldn't get credit to expand because the banks would say, well, the valuations in your neighborhood are too low, and they wouldn't lend them any money. So they used the the low value as a as a way of denying them credit.

They used pretty much any excuse they could to deny them credit. And then because they denied them credit, they could never expand the businesses, and people homeowners couldn't get home line credits to improve their homes. And so it was literally it was very quiet but very active suppression.

Carey Anne NadeauRacism is what you were defining.

James BenhamRight? Yeah. Yeah. It's in but but what's interesting is that we still live with the that legacy, and we don't even think about it every day. You know, when you're using credit scores and credit scores are based on home credit and home credit won't happen because of home values, the we're we're you know, the some people who are very insensitive are saying that, well, this was fifty years ago or sixty years ago. I went to a really wonderful high school called Scotlandville Magnet High School. It was in a very bad neighborhood in Baton Rouge.

It was a public high school in a in a black neighborhood about a mile from Southern University, which is the the largest historical black college university in the country. And we were partnered with Southern, and so about half of my friends went to Southern after school or Morehouse or or Grambling, and the other half went to LSU, and then I was the outlier. I I left and went to Texas, went to Texas A and M. But the I I called some of my friends and I said, just talk to me.

Like, you know, we've been friends for thirty years now, right, or twenty twenty six years. I met them I met most of my friends from high school in 1994 when I was a freshman. And I said, you know, we really had we had this really amazing high school experience. Half the school was black and half the school was was non black. We had, you know, kinda mostly white and then some Hispanic Asian contingent as well, but we really had a very reflective of the population of Baton Baton Rouge is about half and half, and our school was half and half.

And I said, am I crazy, or did we actually have a really amazing experience in school racially? And he said, actually, James, we really did have an amazing experience. He goes, I'm he he said as a he goes, I'm speaking as a as a as my friend. I'm not gonna name him because I don't wanna I had I didn't ask him permission to tell a story. But he said, we had an amazing experience. It really was a racial you could call it a racial utopia or something like it because we had we didn't have people yelling slurs at each other.

We didn't have fights. We actually all got along. We did hang out and have friends of different colors, and we it was an amazing four years, and it really reshaped my my entire life. And I said, well, talk talk to me about what's going on. Tell me what this is really about. Like, you know, you've walked you've walked in these shoes for so long. Just tell me help me understand. I'm a white guy. I don't I I haven't lived this like you have. And he said he said, James, he's 40.

He's gonna be 41 just like me. He said, James, I'm the first person in my family to to go to an integrated school. You know, I was the first person. Right? I mean, my father went to a segregated school, and his dad went to a segregated he goes, so He goes, So people say that it was 80 ago that the civil rights movement started. He goes, But for my family, and I'm speaking for my friend, he said, For my family, this is the first generation that we've even had integrated schools.

It was my generation as a 40 year old. And so it was interesting because he said it's not as long ago as people would like it to be. It's much more recent, it's much more current. And the institutional racism that takes place is it can be very challenging to identify because it's been established for so long that you accept it as common business practice instead of understanding the roots. Then and the same thing happened. Of course, I'm from the South. When you talk about the statues and you and everybody gets really upset that they're tearing down statues of civil war generals.

And then you when you actually dig into when the statues were erected, they were actually put up in the nineteen fifties and sixties to to thumb in the eye of the civil rights movement. And then you go, well, tell take them down. I mean, like, if if it was put there with good intents right after that person died to honor some good things. I mean, you know, this is where you gotta be careful in statues. Right? You can't just erase all of history. You have to be careful to not erase all of history.

At the same time, you have to be careful to not idealize significant evil. It's like you have to walk you have to understand context, and you have to understand the body of work that someone did. And really, if you expect perfection from your from your forefathers, you are bound for disappointment. So you can't expect your forefathers to have been perfect, but you also cannot idealize fundamentally evil people. And so you have to you have to you have to identify their their body of work, them as a human being.

And then and then when when stuff like this happens and, you know, I I I did. I called my friends from from high school. I called and by the way, this is a people of color issue, a really good friend of mine who's been on one of my other podcasts, who is not a he he he was he was an immigrant into the Caribbean Islands, and he is a man of color, but he does not identify as black because he has he has a very diverse lineage.

He said and he had a very passionate post this week on LinkedIn. He said this is not a just a black issue. He goes, people of color all experience this, and so I wanna I wanna acknowledge what he said. He said it publicly, so I don't mind saying it was Rick Khan. It was my friend. He posted it on LinkedIn. And Rick is absolutely correct. He has personally experienced identical experiences like this from being arrested falsely, being persecuted falsely, being detained without just cause, and he is a man of color.

And so I also wanna say that I think in InsurTech, what we can do in technology is we can first try to identify in the software that we build what I what I have called for a long time creator's bias. I think we like to pretend that software is unbiased and it's not. Software is a reflection of its creator, and so we have to look for institutional racism that has creeped into the algorithms that power our software, and we have to really look at that. Like, okay, where's the creator's bias in this software so that we can help identify that and bring it if we control the development of our software, we can directly influence that.

If our clients control the development of the software, we can bring it to their attention and try to affect change that way. Then secondarily, that we really, really try to identify this. And of course, personally, I'm a big man, like this big man of action. Like, let's just take action. If you wanna take action, then hire people of color. If you wanna take action, then stop discriminating against your customers if they are color. I mean, that's direct action. It's way better than a letter from the CEO or a letter from the chairman on your social media channel is take action directly.

But also in technology perspective, start looking through your code and look through your stored procedures and look through your filtering criteria on your SQL query statements and ask the here's the question he asked. Ask the question, why? Why is that conditional statement on there? Why are we looking at that credit score if it doesn't actually help us find it how much risk there actually is? Rob, Rob, I want to hear from you too because you've been very patiently waiting for us to finish our soapboxes. I'm sorry.

Rob GalbraithNo. I appreciate both of your comments, and I do want to be respectful of your time, Carrie Ann. So, you know, I think for me, we talked this week, right? It's not Okay to be silent on the topic. So I'm glad that we are addressing it here. And I've been fortunate that actually my best friend in preschool was a black boy and his family was actually of means. So they drove around in BMWs. They would invite me over to his house, get to play with a bunch of toys.

They would just kind of like occasionally, you know, go to a fancy hotel and be able to use a pool and all that. They would invite me over as a friend and be able to do that. And so that was kind of my first experience. So like that, I guess I've kind of, know, it obviously took a while to kind of understand, like, that is not the norm and that is not what many black Americans experience. And so I don't know. I was kind of go back to that.

Right. And we drifted apart. But when I see, you know, obviously some of the items that have been in the news, I think about like, what happened to Travis? Like, is he would this happen? You know, what experiences he had as a as a black boy, now a black man growing up? And I'm sure it is very different. Right. We've got a part, so I'm not in touch with him. But I just think his reality is probably very different than mine. And we started out obviously in the same place in the same preschool.

So there's so many people I get and I have too many people to thank. But, I've just been supported just tremendously by black people all throughout my career, particularly with the launch of the book and whatnot. It's, they've just been givers. Right. And so it just didn't feel right to not, you know, kind of talks. I didn't want to be one of those people that was just silent this week. So I think with that, I really appreciate you guys, your comments on that. I do want to end on a happy note and Carrie Ann, you mentioned that your parents anniversary is actually tonight on the day that we're recording this.

I believe you told me there's a thirty ninth year anniversary.

Carey Anne NadeauSo congrats. Any big plans for mom and dad? They are sheltering in place given COVID, but I shipped them some AC Peterson homemade ice cream. If you're in the Hartford area, you'll know AC Peterson's. They're the local ice cream shop, and they're enjoying some hot fudge sundaes on their anniversary. I think thank you for acknowledging that. I know my mom listens and comments on all of our podcasts and all of our LinkedIn posts, so I'm sure she'll appreciate this little Easter egg. So hi, mom.

James BenhamHappy anniversary.

Rob GalbraithCongrats, guys. Happy anniversary.

James BenhamCongrats on surviving. Yeah. That's a long time to married somebody.

Carey Anne NadeauCommitment. And if I can close on that, I think that that's a nice kind of round out thing is that just like Kathy and Ricky committed to each other through the long haul, through thick and thin, through difficult times, it ain't easy. But if we're committed to each other, we're gonna end up with ice cream sundaes all together that we can enjoy at the end of the day. That's a good analogy.

James BenhamThat kind does wrap it up, doesn't it? The greatest of the two commandments: love God, love others. You know, helps a lot. If you just love other people, it certainly goes a long way in your life and certainly builds a lot of friendships. I tell this to my 10 year old daughter. You saw the 10 year old came in and gave me a cookie. We say tell it. Oh, it's delicious too. And I'll tell you this. She and I say this to each other a lot because she always wants to go and meet new people.

And I say, why do we wanna meet new people? She goes, because life is better with friends. And I said, yes, honey. Life is better with friends. And we we talk about that a lot. And she has such a oh, she has such a friend's heart. You know? She's she shows compassion and friendship every day. Hopefully, she'll become an executive in insurance I hope I would love it. And she would be she would be a riot. You know? She's she's amazing. She loves to hike. She loves to she's like me.

She has FOMO. She has fear of missing out. So she wants to do something every second of the day. So we do guitar together. We do hiking together. We do flying trips together. We do dog rescue trips together. Like, we we like, she's, like, attached to my heaven. We're always doing something, and so she's she would be a riot as an insurance executive, and she would do a great job. Guys, look, Thank you so much. Carrie Ann Nado, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your comments, your insight.

Thank you for risking capital and risking your time in creating a business that the industry needs. Thank you for your comments. You are absolutely right. Insurance companies have to recognize as well that if they want innovation, they have to support innovation and supporting innovation. Best way to do it is to do business with people. It's not not not handouts. You're not asking for handouts. You're asking you're asking for contracts. And and so that that is absolutely a such such a great point. And Rob Galbraith, Rob, thank you so much for your time as always.

It's so good to to do this with you, and I really appreciate it. So We love you, Rob. I was saying, oh, thank you very much. Carrie Anne, where can people find you? Yeah. That's the link. Theometry.com

Carey Anne Nadeauis our website or crashometry.com, which is where we're tracking crashes during COVID COVID-nineteen. The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn of course,

Speakerbut also during this very interesting conference free time we've launched a text message line so they can text me at (203) 633-7697, and we'll communicate directly by text. Because I really miss having informal,

James Benhamfrequent touch points sort of impromptu. You think of us and wanna send us a note. So get on our text message chain, and we can start chatting directly. Oh, super fun. Awesome. So you heard it here. Go and check it out. Again, this has been the InsurTech Geek podcast powered by Jimmy Knowledge. It's all about technology that is transforming and disrupting. We had a big discussion around that word disrupting last week. Disrupting the insurance world. I've been your host James Bennett with my cohost Rob Galbraith.

That's endofinsurance.com. Thanks to Jim Greenlee, our producer, and Cara Dalton, our creative producer. And thank you for joining us today. We're, taking you on a journey through insurance tech. So enjoy the ride and geek out. See you next time.