Ep 07 – Otbert de Jong – CEO Insurance Market Group – The Data, The Participants, and The Processes

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Michael Waitze worked in Global Finance for more than 20 years, employed by firms like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, primarily in Tokyo.  Michael lived and worked in Tokyo from February 1990 until December 2011.  Michael always maintained a particular focus on how technology could be used to make businesses more efficient and to drive P/L growth. Michael is a leader in the digital media space, building one of the biggest and fastest-growing podcast listener bases in the region.  His AsiaTechPodcast.com show has listeners in more than 170 countries and his company, Michael Waitze Media produces some of Asia’s most popular podcasts.

Otbert de Jong is the CEO at Insurance Market Group, a licensed online insurance broker in Singapore, and CEO and Co-founder of Inmediate, an InsurTech using Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) which has raised USD 5 million in an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) just prior to the ICO bubble bursting.

Otbert has a background in risk consulting in the banking industry and after having some bad experience with insurance he decided to enter the insurance industry and fix some of the issues. First with Insurance Market Group and now with Inmediate, which is essentially an extension of the online brokerage. The goal of Inmediate is to create structure and clarity for insurance buying customers, leveraging DLT. The company is looking at three components, Data, Participants and Processes and tries to automate standardized elements, incorporating smart contracts.

As a proof of concept, Immediate has developed a dengue policy. It’s a new policy type that is designed to run on DLT. The Company is using information on Dengue clusters that is provided by the National Environment Agency of Singapore and enriching this data with weather data on rain and water levels as well as humidity to determine alert levels and validate claims.  

Otbert also shares his experience dealing with insurers. In his experience, even if C-level is interested and sees potential in the concept, talks often fail when it goes to discuss compliance and implementation within the organization.

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