The Asia InsurTech Podcast was catching up with Kamesh Goyal, a founder and Chairman of Digit Insurance, to talk about the massive volatility we are experiencing at the moment and what this means for risk assessment. The course of COVID has proven to be hard to predict, the same applies to weather patterns due to climate change. What does this uncertainty mean for the insurance industry and its risk assessment and pricing models?
Find the transcript of our conversation here:
Michael Waitze
Hello, again, this is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought leaders and investors a platform to discuss how technology is reshaping the insurance industry, in Asia and frankly, in the rest of the world. Today, I’m joined by Kamesh Goyal, a founder and chairman of Digit Insurance. Still, Kamesh, it’s great to have you back on the show again, how are you doing today?
Kamesh Goyal
I’m doing very well, Michael, and thanks for having me back.
Michael Waitze
It is completely my pleasure. You may remember the last time as we ended the recording, I think we did this in January of this year, we covered a ton of ground. And, you know, for the greatest guests, I always say to them, we want to follow up with you in six months just to see what’s changed. And to be fair, I cannot believe that six months has passed already. And I don’t know it just feels like this year is running by. We wanted to follow up with you on how things are kind of progressing and changing. And from your perspective. What do you think are some of the things that have changed the most in the past six months?
Kamesh Goyal
I think Michael, for me personally, and I think for Digit, one big change, we have realized is that predicting the course of this pandemic in Corona virus covid 19 is a bit of a loser’s game. All of us like certainty. But I think Corona teaches us that the more comfortable we get in our decision making, in our thought process, and knowing that we don’t know how this will plan out, is one of the biggest learning. Secondly, I think in insurance, and this is true for both life and P&C. And the last 10 years or 15 years across the world, insurance company professionals have always said that look, interest rates will revert to the mean. And I think the similar tendency, I thought we saw in case of COVID, that things will go back to normal. So I would say this, this probably has been the biggest learning. The second is that, every crisis, and this is I think both of us know, this is a overused cliche. That crisis also offers the opportunity to meet customer demands, to improve positioning, where you are compared to your competition. So these are the two learnings I would say, for us and Digit.
Michael Waitze
I want to ask you why you brought up the interest rate question? And I’ll tell you, I’ll give you a little bit of context for me. You know, I lived in worked in Japan for 20 something years, right. And I was mostly trading in the financial markets. And for years, people said that the low interest rate environment in Japan was gonna change. And they just kept shorting JGB’s, if you know what that means, right? So they were selling them, because they expected interest rates to rise and bond prices to go down. And for 20 years, people just kept coming in and doing the same thing and it never reverted to the mean, it’s just a really interesting concept. Right. And again, I was having the same conversation with somebody yesterday or the day before. I don’t think we thought back even in January, I don’t think we thought that we’d still be in COVID. And yet, I know in Thailand, it’s just gotten worse. And from the news that I hear about in India, it’s just gotten worse as well. Right?
Kamesh Goyal
So well, I think I brought this issue of interest rate, because what you said about Japan is true, I think, in Europe, where I spent, say from 2012 to 2016, five years, even European insurers and 2012 and 13, were actually thinking that the interest rates, what was happening in Japan, that scenario will not actually happen in Europe. And then we saw that Germany, actually the interest rates went lower than Japan. So not only what replicated it became even worse. And then sometime in 2015-16, people said, look, there’ll be a catastrophic, then 10 year yield in the US go below 1%, it has never happened. And then it actually went below 1%. So my senses, I think we are seeing a lot of things happening around us. And instead of trying to accept that we don’t know about them, and we don’t know the future cause I think maybe the human behavior or the tendency is to try and find a way to say look, this will go back to what we consider as normal is because that that is more comforting. I think the fact that we don’t know, and living in this uncertainity I think is very stressful for most people. And when I look at COVID, again, I think we saw this in India where people felt it was gone completely, then it came back in a very, very vicious way. Then you look at Spain today, you look at UK seeing more cases than they have seen in the past. Taiwan, Korea, Israel, US. So I think every country with saw first wave, second wave, third wave. Now some are seeing the fourth wave. And my senses, I think we have to try and change our behavior. We have to try and adapt ourselves to what is happening and what could happen, draw more scenarios, then only go by the scenario of reverting to the mean.
Michael Waitze
Right. I mean, look, trading strategy has long been a reverting to the mean strategy, right? That’s what a long short trading strategy is all about. So talking about mean reversion is something that’s very familiar to me. But I tend to agree with you, again, talking to somebody about COVID, a couple of days ago, I don’t know when we’re going to come out of this. And I think there are a lot of really interesting things that are going to that are going to happen. And you’re right, we used to say again, on the trading desk, that market dislocation is just an opportunity, as is market volatility. And I think we’re seeing both of those things kind of in the insurance market, but also in the things that insurance tries to cover. There is a lot of volatility, right? Like, it seems like COVID is fine, and it’s not fine. And it’s fine. It’s not fine. How do you, you know, how do you manage through that process, I think is going to become really, really important. But if it is an opportunity, right? Where do you think the biggest of those opportunities lie? In other words, we talked last time about some specific products. But do you think like protection products, term insurance products, what do you think about the product growth? It’s going to happen because of this?
Kamesh Goyal
So I think now I will give a more specific answer, because in countries like Europe, etc, health insurance coverage is very comprehensive, everyone is covered under the Social Security. So in India, I think the need for protection has dramatically gone up. Just to give one example, when you hire young people, people, 30 years, 28 years old, 32 years old, what sort of insurance policy you have either on the life side on the group health insurance scheme, which companies offering, this was never ever on the agenda, people would actually say, Look, I’m too young for this to be meaningful for me. I think that has substantially changed. And secondly, I think, for customers for corporates. Now, suddenly, I think these sort of HR policies are absolutely on the top of the agenda. So I think that is one big change, I would say we have seen. I think for my insurance companies perspective, the big changes that last year in India, when the COVID happened due to the lockdown, accidents went down substantially, non COVID hospitalizations came down substantially. And the COVID case hence, did not really increase as much as was anticipated. So last year, the health loss list was was suddenly looking actually way better than they had in the last four or five years. And then September onwards, August, September 20 onwards, we saw a bit of an aggressive game being played in pricing by the insurance companies. And then April quarter came April, May, June of 21. And as all of us know, India saw a big spike in the COVID cases due to the delta variant, which we, which we know now. And the loss ratios would look horrible in health in the first quarter. So in less than nine months, we went from the lowest ever held loss ratio to the highest ever loss, health loss ratio in a quarter, right. All in a period of nine months. And my senses going forward, again, based on what little I read and try and comprehend that what the impact of COVID will be in the long term on people who have suffered from COVID on their health is completely uncertain today. We don’t. Yeah, nobody knows.
Michael Waitze
It’s not enough data points, we just don’t know. That’s, that’s what scares me the most right. In other words, I’m not afraid I’m going to die at all. Yeah. But I don’t know what happens 10 years out, 15 years out, right.
Kamesh Goyal
Yeah. And then the second thing is obviously, with all these variants are coming. And as until 70-80% of world’s population gets vaccinated. A Virus will keep mutating that is the nature of a virus. And then we actually don’t know how effective the vaccinations will be against them. So I think we are anyone who is in the area of health insurance or life insurance has to keep all this in mind. While you are actually still underwriting business, you cannot stay away. And my sense is every crisis Michael and I think both of us have been I much longer than you you are much younger than me.
Michael Waitze
I highly doubt that but anyway, go ahead.
UnKamesh Goyal
2001, 2008, 2012-13 euro crisis. Every time I think a crisis has come and no pandemic of COVID, we know that the risk models actually don’t really play a role, end of the day risk assessment is a lot more qualitative also. And this, too much reliance on these models, has always been counterproductive. So my sense is that we have to really, really go into details to understand and say, look, this is my risk appetite. And if things develop this way, or that way, is it beyond my risk appetite? Or is it within my risk appetite? And we should not pretend that we know what we’re doing.
Michael Waitze
But what is the impact then on it on InsurTech companies or just on insurance companies that have automated a lot of the pricing processes, right, that have created algorithms that presume that the past is prelude, and that their risk appetite is the same throughout? We know that doesn’t make any sense? You even said it nine months ago, everybody was writing protection insurance, because their loss ratios were the lowest ever. And then they kept doing the same thing. And then their loss ratios within nine months were the highest ever. So what is the impact on some of these companies that are just writing algos, for short, right to try to manage this risk assessment and pricing process? They can’t just keep rewriting those algorithms right? Or just to people stop? Do they go back to having a more qualitative assessment? Or to slowly but surely technology take over that process? What do you think?
Kamesh Goyal
My sense, Michael is that people will have to, in the algorithms, put some qualitative parameters, where based on whatever assessment, risk assessment you are doing, that you actually try and build a coefficient to set it goes up or goes down by so much based on the circumstances. And then one will have to again revisit every three or five years to say whether COVID was a one time event, and then things like morbidity or mortality rates have gone back to their long term average. Or this has been something which, which is like a permanent shift for the next 10, 20, 30 years.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, the flu is never gone away. Right? The flu is a virus. And I’m not saying that they’re equivalent, but it’s still out there. And every year people get it and die from it, right? Yeah, and this is just much more powerful. The mutations are faster and more dangerous. So I don’t think this is really ever gonna go away, right?
Kamesh Goyal
No, I’m betting on the other hand, if you look at what is happening in the US, and a lot of other countries in terms of heat, temperatures, or an all time high, 50 degrees, 54 degree Celsius, and like, I’ve never heard these temperatures before. So I would say whether this capital market, where the asset prices are an all time high, but the volatility is in a very, very low level, extreme change in temperatures, hurricanes, etc. And like in India, we never used to see hurricanes or cyclones on the western side. Last year, we saw one this year, again, we saw one. Now, if yearly cyclones on the western side, in India becomes a normal, a new normal, when most of the big industries on the western side. Now for insurance companies, this will be a humongous change.
Michael Waitze
It’s a disaster, right, or potential disaster
Kamesh Goyal
Potential. So we have to be prepared, I think protection can still be given. But you cannot again, assume because we never saw cyclones in the last 40 years. So it will not happen. Last two years. two cyclones.
Michael Waitze
Right. And this gets back to the concept we were talking about earlier about mean reversion. There’s at least in my mind, there’s this indisputable idea that climate change is real. And if it is real, and if we’re in the middle of sort of tipping point where it’s changing, we don’t know what the at the end game, but we don’t know what the result or our lifetime is going to be for climate change. And this is another thing that’s going to be really hard to price, particularly because a lot of companies now are employing sort of parametric insurance, right? If there is a cyclone you get paid this amount of money. But with the presumption that as you said, just India specific on the west coast, that’s not going to happen. So our loss ratios, again, are going to be low. But if it has one this year to next year three, then what do we do to our pricing mechanism? What happens to all that parametric insurance that we wrote with the expectation that we were just going to take premium and not have to make payouts. Is that fair?
Kamesh Goyal
So I think in insurance capacities for some risk can come in fast, but they can go out even faster.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, for sure. It’s just like a trading market. Right?
Kamesh Goyal
So I think every industry see some fad. Right now I think the fad is parametrics. So people on one side the same insurance companies on one side will say look, there’s huge amount of climate changes happening and we have to become carbon neutral, etc. And on the other hand they come and say, look, we want to sell parametric insurance. To me, I actually don’t understand that how you can say whether it’s changing dramatically, and on the other hand, say, look, we know how to price a parametric model because we have crunched data for 20 years. I was just saying that, to me, it sounds like completely contradictory. But we have been here before where companies say something, do something else. And they have been quite contradictory in directions.
Michael Waitze
So again, we see equivalence in the trading markets, right? In other words, if I’m trading every day, if I’m running a blackbox trading model that’s based on 20 years, or 30 years of data that I’ve back tested, it’s meaningless. If, again, interest rates stay at zero forever, because that didn’t happen in the past. So right away, you have one of the parameters or one of the coefficients that’s different. Secondly, if some massive black swan event like we saw in what 2007 and 2008, with the housing crisis and the derivative crisis, right, which led to the GFC, the global financial crisis, well, then you can’t price that into your models, either. And I’ve traded some blackbox models, and on the days where you’re right. In other words, where markets go crazy, but your position is right, based on what happened in the past, you can make a fortune. We had days like that. But the reverse can also be true. And in insurance, it’s the same. It’s the same kind of story, I think, right.
Kamesh Goyal
Absolutely. So I would say that the risk is going up substantially, whether you look at cyber, I think they are again, some large company that keeps getting hacked. Yeah. So the I would say the cost of cyber insurance and the cyber assess going up dramatically. I don’t think we understand that fully, as an industry. Events have completely changed due to pandemic. So how one would actually price events insurance and entertainment, again, is something which is becoming very, very uncertain. And lastly, I would say this investment market and which matters a lot to insurance companies, this again is becoming more and more difficult to comprehend. And I think all of us know what’s happening with Bitcoin or Dodgecoin. It can go up to 60,000, it can lose 20% in a day. A joke can become a 80 billion words, joke in a Dodgecoin, and then it can just fall by 50%. So my senses, I think, at least whatever, when I see these things around me, I may feel that I have never been here before.
Michael Waitze
Because we haven’t been here before I was again having the same conversation with somebody today about Bitcoin. It was at $60,000. What 2, 3, 4 months ago? Was it USD 30- 40,000 today, and someone said to me, Oh, it’s so expensive. And I was like, based on what comeback comparison in comparison to what? Like maybe a high number. But it could be super cheap today, it could be really, you just don’t know. But I think, again, you make a really good point. We may or may not have spoken about this the last time we recorded but insurance companies also run big investment businesses because they have to hedge their liabilities or hedge their assets, depending on the way you look at it. But if asset prices are at all time highs, because interest rates are at all time, low interest rates are at all time lows. There is a fear out there that if interest rates start to edge up or if there’s any kind of inflation in the world, right? And physical assets actually have not gone up that much. But boy, digital assets have gone up a lot like stocks and bonds and stuff like that, which is why interest rates are low and stock prices are super high. But we’ve seen that bubble get pricked before. And if that bubble explodes, just the reverberations throughout the financial markets, including the insurance business could be quite severe.
Kamesh Goyal
Absolutely. So I think here maybe I can say with Digit, since we started almost two and a half years back. We have consciously been saying that we are an insurance company, we will take underwriting risk. On the investment side, our portfolio is very conservative. 97% is fixed income that to very high, highly rated and high quality and equities only 3%. So because we are living in a situation where and we have been introducing, as I spoke last time, our COVID health insurance products, etc. So we said we are anyway taking a lot of underwriting on our health insurance portfolio. The last thing we do is not double it up with the investment. If things go well, then you will look like a champion. But the problem is if it goes bad, then you’ll take a big hit. So we have consciously been saying that you cannot double down on this on both investment and underwriting side.
Michael Waitze
Do you think there are insurance companies out there that take big risk on their investment portfolios?
Kamesh Goyal
so I think this again, Michael is difficult to answer because somebody might say, look, 10% of my portfolio in equity is not really.
Michael Waitze
I understand. It’s three point something times more than 3%, though, right?
Kamesh Goyal
Absolutly. And the issue is that if you get into a slightly bad year from loss ratios, and if inflation goes up, etc, you will definitely see equities going down a bit. Then the question is, Can you can you live with that sort of risk appetite, right. And so you have to everyone has to define their own risk appetite, you cannot look at another company in hindsight and say, look, we should have done that. But we should not have done that you have to just define your own risk appetite and say, look, this is what I can live with. Good, bad, ugly, but I’m not going to exceed my risk appetite.
Michael Waitze
Right. But I mean, there’s a part of me that thinks that the investment portfolios of insurance companies should not be there to generate revenue, but should be there to sort of hedge liabilities, right? or potential payouts, in the same way that I was disappointed. And this is just my opinion, to see Glass Steagall drop, when JP Morgan could get out of the just pure lending business and be a bank and turn into an investment bank. Because the conflicts of interest are so high. And we saw the result of that, I think, coming out of the 90s into the 2000s just what happened when Glass Steagall was basically disbanded. And then every bank could then become an investment bank. And it meant that their main way of making money was no longer just making loans and trying to make a profit on that. But trying to trade along with some of the other bigger trading houses. It just became a nightmare.
Kamesh Goyal
So I would say I think every company and you absolutely. Said it correctly, insurance are liability based asset managers. Nobody comes to an insurance company as money manager or to say, look, you manage my money, give me the highest return. I think no investor comes to an insurance company for that. So I think at Digit we always say that recently, we have risk. We just signed some agreements to raise $200 million of capital, Michael, about two weeks back. And one of the discussions with one of our investors with whom we had is to say, look, you have a very conservative investment portfolio. Why is it so? So I said, Look, today we are raising capital, because we say we will be able to do more business. I said, Would you be comfortable? If I come to you and say, Look, we lost a lot of money on our equity portfolio. Please give us more capital. So I said the as our capital position improves as profitability improves, there will be some change in the asset allocation. But we will always see us as a taking underwriting risk than taking too much of an investment risk. Everyone cannot be Warren Buffett.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I could not agree with you more. I think it’s interesting that most laymen don’t understand exactly the where payouts come from for insurance companies, they think there’s just a premium gets paid. And then there’s this pooling of premium, you take that premium, you put it in a bank or put it into your pillow or under a mattress. And then when somebody dies, if it’s a life policy, or somebody gets into an accident, if it’s a motor policy, you take the money out of the pool, and then you give it to them, they don’t understand that there’s a massive investment policy on the other side or investment arm on the other side. But if you can invest, if I have 30 years left in my life, and you know this, right, but if I have 30 years less than my life, you buy a 30 year bond from General Electric, that’s triple A rated, you put it off to the side, it’s not that simple but it’s kind of like that, and you run a traditional investment policy or conservative one. When it’s time to make that payout. that money’s there.
Kamesh Goyal
As I said, everyone has a very different risk appetite, no Michael. We can define it for ourselves. Everyone has to define it for themselves.
Michael Waitze
I think conservative in this case is probably the best Avenue. Are there things at Digit that you’ve wanted to build over the past six months, but just couldn’t because some of your existing business lines are just growing too fast?
Kamesh Goyal
So Michael, I think what COVID taught us is that a lot of this time in April to June, because our assumption was also that COVID will not come back, like everyone else. So we were actually focused on doing some things in terms of developing some new products and some new interfaces for selling those products. And then comment came in, I think, around seventh or eighth of April, we felt that we have to set all of this aside and go back to focusing on changing some of our COVID health insurance products. So first quarter really went into that. I think the good thing in the first quarter was that because the long term was not very severe and on all India business. It was more like locations by locations. So the motor business did not suffer as much. Yeah. So overall, I think we will we have been very fortunate that in the first quarter, almost all lines of business for Digit have actually.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I mean, fair enough. 2020 was also a really good year for Digit. So it’s not surprising, right. But it’s interesting that you pulled back a little bit. I’m curious how you feel about, particularly as just COVID continues, how important is engaging with your customers? You know, from an overall company perspective? And how does that manifest itself? How does that engagement take place if it does?
Kamesh Goyal
So I think, I don’t know if they’re related or not. But one thing which we saw that the number of calls go up substantially, whenever there is a bit of a lockdown from customers. So either they start looking at to their insurance policies, checking if they are in place, renewing them, or there’s a mistake getting it corrected. So I think that is definitely one. Second is, I think, with corporates now, as I said earlier, I think every day, even somebody like me, I’m doing at least two to three calls with the corporate customers, because they want to understand and explore what more can they do in terms of health insurance, etc, for their employees. So I think this is really a time to, to engage on this front. And the last, I think, is what we have been thinking internally more, we don’t have a great solution yet, is to say that when things go wrong, like pandemic, etc, anything to related with health, people want good information, people want the easy accessibility to doctors, etc, and all of this from their phones. So what is it that we can do? So we tried to do a couple of podcasts with some very senior doctors. We also did couple of podcasts on the mental health and stuff like that. But now we are seriously thinking that, should we invest a bit more, and try and develop this on something which we don’t do in a pandemic, but even on a regular basis? So I think this is something which we are exploring,
Michael Waitze
You definitely should.
Kamesh Goyal
So, but I think we still have to find what what exactly is the right way. But good thing is some of our brightest people are working on it. I am sure in the next couple of months, two to three months, they will try and give us
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I mean, we can talk to you forever about the power of this medium, and just its ability to reach people, but also its ability to connect people this type of engagement to me is like the best type of engagement, you can get bar none. It’s frictionless. You can listen to it at any time, you can go back to it. It’s really, really amazing, as you know. I’ll let you after this, but like as you continue to grow rapidly, right? How do you maintain internally, these sort of high levels of service? I mean, if the CEO or the chairman is calling customers, that’s awesome. But as you grow, how do you kind of maintain that culture and that high level of service?
Kamesh Goyal
So Michael, I think that is one way I would say is that the culture of very high service level is actually been built in Digit. And the two things I feel will keep us on track. One is that every six months, we go to our distribution partners for a fairly detailed feedback on our services. Last time, we took it to he got 1100 suggestions, or areas of improvement, 1100. Every single suggestion is evaluated, implementable, not implementable. And then we go back to the partner to say, look, what we are doing. Second is, I think, even on customers, every month, I personally but our team goes through this every week, where every customer complaint is analyzed. And then they actually classify it whether we we wanted for our customer was having a like a non-payable claim and things like that was customer is more, I would not say at fault, but maybe customer expectation wasn’t fair. I understand. And wherever we are, and even now, I was almost half of the complaints are coming where we are at for Digital is at fault, right, which gives us an opportunity to improve our process and the product or the communication. My sense is I think as long as we keep doing these two things, Michael, we will always keep a very high culture of service because all of us know that, there is always scope for improvement.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, for sure.
Kamesh Goyal
So and I think our customers rated us, six months back five out of five on Facebook. We have slipped to 4.9. So what can say that we still have to go to five out of five. So there will always be scope for improvement. I think that is what human beings have always been known for. I hope they stay on this track by continuously taking feedback. I think that’s the only way.
Michael Waitze
The joke we used to have in high school was if you went home with a 98, and you were really proud of it, your parents would say instead of saying congratulations, they would say what happened to the other two points?
Kamesh Goyal
Yeah. I’ve been there, my kids always tell me this that you are never happy.
Michael Waitze
I love it. Okay. Um, you know, the, the one thing that I came away with the last time, or the most important thing that I came away with last time we talked was just your practicality. We talked about it a lot. He just had this very practical view of like, how the insurance business should work, how Digit you should work in it, that’s just never gonna change. And I think as part of the culture and as part of culture building, if people see the practicality of the chairman, of the CEO, of the founder, it’s definitely going to filter down to people who just say, we’re just gonna do the practically right thing. Anyway,
Kamesh Goyal
No, absolutely. I mean, insurance, as we know, Michael is a low IQ business. So we don’t need geniuses. Guys like me will do pretty well.
Michael Waitze
As long as we’re both laughing and I said to you remember when we before we started recording, I love having people on the show that have a great sense of humor, you definitely have a great sense of humor on top of being very practical. Anyway, I really don’t want to take up more of your time. I really want to thank you again. This was another great episode. Kamesh Goyal, a founder and chairman of Digit insurance. Thank you so much for doing this today.
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