TigerTech Interviews: Andrew Yeoman —  (Part 2)

By Andrew Yeoman - April 30, 2018

Here is the piece by Jerad Leigh taken  from www.medium.com/tigertech:

 

Last month we caught up with Andy Yeoman, Cofounder and CEO of Concirrus whose software enables behavioural-based underwriting for marine and motor insurers.

We heard from Andy about why he’s much more interested in the business model that’s enabled by emerging technologies like Blockchain and machine learning, and about where he sees the insurance industry going as well as the biggest challenges the industry faces from his perspective.

Since we last heard from Andy, the Concirrus team have been busy. In particular they’ve announced an agreement with Aon to explore behavioural analytics and connected insurance, and that they’re teaming up with EY to drive the adoption of a behavioural-based approach to Marine underwriting and risk management.

In part 2 Andy talks more about an Amazon-esque future for insurance, with new sources of risk and capital, and where he sees Concirrus fitting into this future.

What do you see is the greatest opportunity for the industry?

Roughly 10% of the world’s risks are currently insured. That is an incredibly low number.

This represents a massive opportunity for the market as a whole. With the emergence of digital placement platforms and real-time, behavioural analysis, we can see that today’s annual policies (with few exclusions) can morph into ‘fractional policies’ that provide continuous coverage. These new policies will also have an impact on the companies that write them.

Instead of large carriers looking to cover risks or journeys in their entirety, the evolution of the business model juxtaposed with ‘fractional policies’ may give rise to increasingly specialised insurers.

Today it might be that one policy covers all your journeys for one year, but in the future a journey may move the risk between many insurers — a specialist for time in port, another for time at sea, specialist insurers for the NorthEast passages, others for war zones, etc. and the data / platform can bid for, and place, based on real-time pricing ensuring continuous coverage and best price / conditions. These new, specialist insurers may in-turn give rise to specialist reinsurers with very specific risk appetites.

This market model would have been logistically infeasible until recently, but the rise of technology offers a whole new world of possibilities in commercial insurance and expands the premiums and transaction volume exponentially.

When I think about the impact of technology like machine learning and blockchain, I don’t think about marginal efficiency gains — I think about the opportunity to significantly increase the amount of risks that can be insured.

How does Concirrus hope to impact the future of the industry?

We’re a technology company at our heart, with a team that’s laser-focused on the marine market and we know that behaviour is a better indicator of risk than demographics. We know this intuitively from the way that we drive. I could fill my meeting room with a dozen people of the same age and demography and we know that someone will be the crazy driver, someone will be very safe and the rest in the middle…we know that risk comes from our behaviour not our demographics.

This theory holds true in commercial marine insurance too — simply put, there are some ports, some captains, and some technical managers that have different ‘behavioural profiles’.

New technology like the internet of things, ubiquitous & near free communication, and cheap computing power, allow Concirrus to access this behavioural data and turn it into real-time, actionable insights.

In any syndicated market, the good risks subsidize the bad and with Concirrus’ solution we believe that a ‘mass customisation’ approach to pricing can be introduced. We hope that this focus and our respectful insertion into the marketplace will demonstrate that adoption of this can unlock the ‘soft market’ by allowing insurers to accurately price each risk.

Do you have a prediction for what the industry looks like in 20 years?

Amazon! But it won’t take 20 years. A marketplace where risks can be placed, underwritten and managed.

Today where we see brokers and risk transfer, in the future we will see risk advisors, risk managers, and the securitisation of risks. This will open the markets to new sources of capital and equally new sources of risks. The ‘immediate’ placement of risks and execution of insurance will be akin to the ‘in game betting’ we see today.

A new world? Perhaps, but maybe just the next chapter in what’s been a fascinating 200-year journey.

About Andy:

Andy co-founded Concirrus in 2012 following a long and successful track record in telematics and extensive experience of fast-growth business strategies, turnarounds, mergers and acquisitions. Prior to Concirrus he worked with Trimble Navigation where, as Managing Director, he expanded the business across Europe, America and Asia.

Andy has spent many years working with insurers across both commercial and personal lines to transform their businesses through technology. As a result, he has established himself as a thought leader in the Internet of Things and is passionate about the new business models that technology can unlock for insurers and their customers.

Concirrus are pioneering a real-time, behavioural approach to underwriting and risk management, made possible by technology like the internet of things, ubiquitous and near free communication, and cheap computing. Concirrus is focused on the commercial marine insurance market and personal lines motor.

As well as being the CEO of Concirrus, Andrew is the Cofounder of Youtoggle, holds non-executive directorships and Chairman roles and regularly advises the VC and PE community.

About Concirrus:

Concirrus is the creator of Quest, real-time behavioural insights software for commercial marine and motor insurers. Quest helps commercial marine and motor insurers understand the behaviour of the insured asset or individual and actively manage their risks in real-time.

Quest, accesses and interprets large sets of data, such as vessel statistics, movements, machinery information and driver behaviour, and combines this with an insurer’s own information to reveal the behaviours that correlate to claims.

This new way of working presents exciting opportunities for marine and motor insurance underwriters to manage the loss ratios of their risk pools, and accurately price new business with or without claims history. As a result, marine insurers can offer enhanced customer-centric products, reduce losses and operating costs, increase profit margins and build more collaborative relationships with their brokers and customers.

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