The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Evan Tanotogono, a co-founder and the CEO of Rey, about his vision to revolutionize healthcare in Indonesia and the reason why seasoned insurance executives are leaving the corporate world to start their own InsurTech.
Michael Waitze
Okay, we are on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. This is the only podcast in Asia focused on insurance that gives amazing entrepreneurs, like the one we have today, thought leaders and investors a platform to discuss how technology is reshaping the insurance industry in Asia. Today, I am honored to have Evan Tanotogono, a co-founder and the CEO of Rey, that’s Rey.id. And I would say, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable InsurTech founders in the region. Evan it’s great to have you back on the show. I don’t know if you remember this but in May of 2019, when I knew very little about insurance, or InsurTech. You were nice enough to be our eighth guest. Episode number eight. Do you remember that at all?
Evan Tanotogono
Of course, yeah. I’ve been twice in the series. Right. So one, alone and then the other one with Hassan.
Michael Waitze
So I think if I remember correctly, Theresa actually came to Indonesia. And you sat in a room and she like passed a microphone around for you guys, right?
Evan Tanotogono
Yeah. It was a good time. Good, good discussion. And I think, you know, like, I could link to that discussion as well. I remember one quote that I said during that episode, as you know, the tipping point for InsurTech in Indonesia is where is the time when all the value chain is integrated and digitized? And I think that’s, that’s the idea that I’m still living on today. And that’s the idea that I’m building with Rey.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I want to get to that in detail. You right, when the entire value chain does get digitized? That’s when that’s the real tipping point. But I want to talk about this because in 2019, like, I feel like the world was a completely different place. Why don’t you tell me? What’s new? I like to laugh when I say that, because I don’t even feel like we’re living on the same planet anymore. Anyway, tell me what’s new?
Evan Tanotogono
Well, a lot of things changed. Right? So I think one, one thing that is apparent is is this pandemic situation, right? It changed the whole understanding of insurance and health care. And I say insurance and health care, because like they are interconnected one to another. And what is very, very visible is that people start being aware about their health situations, they start learning about, you know, health care flow, they start realizing, oh, hospitals is this expensive, for example. And as a matter of fact, you know, I’ve seen, you know, like search patterns for insurance search patterns for, you know, health related keywords or chiropractic. Right. So, I think that’s, that’s one thing that I say it’s got to be, you know, setting a new standard for for InsurTech. I think it’s the same, like, you know, when when people wash their hands right now every couple of minutes, and maybe after the pandemic situation, we don’t need to do that that much anymore. But I think because it’s already familiarized, then people will still do it, right. So it’s the same way with with insurance concept. People already know about insurance, at least a very basic understanding health and healthcare. So after the pandemic situation, I think they are now has a new level of awareness.
Michael Waitze
Could you feel this happening in real time? I was talking to somebody else about this, right. So I’ve been involved in sort of the digital transformation of businesses for 20 something years. And I remember back in 1990, and 1995, and 2000, as things were changing. And I believe strongly now that things are accelerating. So that this acceleration of digital transformation, particularly along the insurance value chain, as you mentioned, is happening so rapidly, can you feel it? You know what I mean?
Evan Tanotogono
Yeah, yeah, I can feel it. And, and especially now, it’s not only pushed by insurance and InsurTech players, but there are also healthcare players, health tech players that, you know, just go into the game as well. And basically, it’s going to be more aligning, going forward. And it’s going to be more interlinking. Where, you know, like, one, one segment, one sector of insurance can realize the value of having digital health and so the other way around as well, right. So I think it’s because you know, so many things are coming into the game, plus this recently, pandemic situations that force people to do what they need to do right now. And people start realizing a new way of living. So I think that’s why it becomes even faster. Unbelievable,
Michael Waitze
right? So we have we, we have audio at our disposal to explain this to people. If you and I are in a room together, we could draw this different model on a whiteboard, but create this visual image for me of how it’s not just It’s an InsurTech business, but it’s insurance into health care and wellness, and how you see that flowing right? Because there is a big value chain there, it’s not just one piece anymore, how do those pieces fit together in your mind?
Evan Tanotogono
Right. So, in my mind, right I think the way I would like to to picture it to you is actually right now, you know, insurance companies you know, beforehand insurance company, when they do pricing or design of products, they try to imagine that healthcare is something else wellness, typically non existent, you know, they assume that people are living in the same way everybody’s living the same way all diabetics persons are bad for example, right. But basically, what what what the insurance company is trying to do when they design a product and the pricing is they take this, I would say, macro statistics, right? Okay, I assume that claim flow will do like this, the morbidity, the prevalence of NCDs are like that, and etc. Now, this is the pricing. Now, with, with the presence of healthcare, and especially integrated health care, one thing that we can do is actually, you know, we can guide the people into the right path of healthcare in the most efficient way possible, right. Now, you can get in contact with this members or disposal holders more frequently, you have digital, everything is from your fingertips, you have access to everywhere and you know, like you can be in the more driving seat, you know, like you can you can guide this people to to pursue the healthcare, and then you track the data to medical history and so on, right. So, having said, so, I think going forward, the claim flow and everything will be more optimized, and then that needs to link with the pricing and design of the product. So then, you know, people can enjoy better benefits, cheaper pricing, because you know, declaim will be optimized digitally. Wellness is also the same thing, right. So when we talk about wellness there, you know, like, from the other part of the world, there, there has been research, saying that, you know, if you have better attention to your well being, your chance of getting admitted to hospitals will be will be lower, and even if you get admitted to the hospital, the number of days, the amount of medication that you need will also be lower. So this definitely, you know, a long term game, you know, like, I think now there’s this players are including Rey, we’re looking at how we could incentivize this people, we could reward these people to take healthier lifestyle, so that in the long run, it’s gonna, you know, it’s gonna save us a lot of a lot of costs.
Michael Waitze
So how does that work? In other words, how does it look to a user. I wake up, you know, on a Friday morning? And how do I use Rey, to improve my well being or my wellness, make sure that my health is better? And limit or lower than necessity for me to need to go to the hospital? And hence my claim? Yeah, how does that work?
Evan Tanotogono
Right. So I think, from the from the customer point of view, I’d like to start with Rey is, is a dedicated health, life, critical illness insurance, right? So basically, we we dedicate ourselves in that vertical, we don’t, we don’t want to look ourselves as, as a distributor or as a broker. Right, but right there, we look at ourselves as an end to end disruptor we take, you know, perspective from a payer point of view, and we have end to end integration, right with health and wellness ecosystem. So how does it look like from customer point of view is, you know, the, the customers will see a cheaper insurance basically. So, you know, like, for example, if you purchase 100, from from typical insurance today, you can purchase Rey with maybe 15 20%, cheaper, but at the same time, you know, the components of it is is different, you know, what we want to do is actually we want to reposition insurance into something that is easier to sell with the health and wellness, so you get a cheaper, cheaper premium products. But on top of it, you know, we we give you access 24/7 to our health ecosystem, it feels like you have a doctor’s clinics, from your fingertips unlimited that you can access anytime. And then when it goes to claims as well. We we transform the experience from very, very transactional trading documents kind of activities into a more personal journey, where our care team will guide you to in the offline situations we have, we are designing faster claims in offline situation to any provider of your choice. Unlike today, you know, you need to check whether something is inside or outside of your network. So you can claim to any provider of choice, the process will be faster. And then there’s also a component of wellness right so you can connect with your wearables. For example, tracking your steps, tracking your body conditions. There’s also a reminder for your hydration for your drinks, and then, you know, like we give you we give you a target to basically right. So it’s, it’s combining this wellness features into behavioral economics, that actually makes you being healthy and you can exchange that with tangible rewards. And also discount of premium, right? So you know, now from the customer point of view, you can decide, you know, you go 100, to today’s insurance, or like 80, or 85, with Rey, but then you get all this positioning. And that’s actually something that, you know, you will be happy to use, it will engage you more and make you actually be healthy.
Michael Waitze
Can we dig a little bit deeper into these incentives? What are these incentives are the rewards that I get? And how does technology enable that?
Evan Tanotogono
Sure. So basically, the incentive is, what we want to do is actually we, we exchange something, right, so you live healthier, you achieve your steps, and etc, and then we give something that actually makes you happy, like, there is, for example, Ovo points, GoPay wallet points, we can also give a discount of premium, so that we appreciate if you live healthier, you pay a lower premium than anybody else. That’s what we are trying to do. How technology helps us definitely, you know, in the short term, of course, you can track the activity of each individual, right, so we know each and every individual very, very closely. And then actually, you can also connect up right later on when we have the data when we when we also look at the behavior of the claims, medical activities, etc, then you can make this connections. So you can, you can see the correlations between living healthier, and the propensity for somebody to go to the hospitals and etc. And from there, you can calculate the cost, right? And then and then you can think, okay, better if I bird money this much, right, then this guy will cost me way larger in the future, right. So that’s, that’s in the short term. In the in the longer term, what we imagined to do is, you know, this enables Rey, to create proprietary specialty critical illness products that never been imagined in the market before. So as I said before, right, insurance today, they feel that all diabetics, persons are the same, they’re terrible, hypertension person should be rejected, etc. And even if they do provide such products, they need to bundle with a unit laying or something or the price will be very, very expensive. But then now, because we are taking technology to actually track 360 degrees of medical histories and wellness activities, now we can we can create a product because now we know exactly who we are insuring, right, and we can create a personalized plans, personalized products, that supports this specific members. On top of that, we know that, you know, when we provide those kinds of protections, we can also actively drive them to digital therapeutics or something. And and actually, again, raising the level of well being that this members will have.
Michael Waitze
This sounds like a really data heavy operation. Are you also building out your your own sort of machine learning operations and your own data science team?
Evan Tanotogono
Yeah, so basically, in fact, we are, we have very close relationship with Kata.AI, right. So they are the number one.
Michael Waitze
You know that I know them. What’s the name of the founder of Kata.ai? What’s his name? Irzan Raditya. We had him on one of my other shows on eCommerce Undercover, had a great conversation with him. The Kata.ai is a really great business. So you’re basically working with them to do some of the personalization stuff, like how does that work?
Evan Tanotogono
Technically, we share the same investors? Right. So like, we are sister companies, right? So I think, you know, like that’s, that’s one technology that that we leverage a lot for this right. And and we, you know, like we we also work with with Google Health, right to try to enable us to have 360 degrees of electronic health records. And again, it’s not just capturing the data, but how we will be able to use the data back to support the doctors, for example, so that they can give a faster, more accurate diagnosis, for example, right? Because because it’s needed, you know, when you want to optimize the claim, then then the members need to feel comfort they need to trust the system. And in order to do so the doctors also need to be supported by the presence of AI and machine learning.
Michael Waitze
Is Rey intending to be, I don’t want to call it a marketplace. But it’s sort of a multi sided piece of technology where the end users like I am or like you are, have an app or some technology they can use, but then that connects directly to doctors, and to other healthcare providers as well. So that everybody’s sharing the same sort of view on the same data, if that makes sense. In other words, like when I was a trader before, right, I had a trading system. And somebody else who had the same trading system could literally watch everything that I was doing, because it was just a view on a database. Are you building the same type of thing so that your care providers can have access to the same data with permissions, obviously, that your users have?
Evan Tanotogono
Eventually will be like that. Right. But I think like, again, I think just to revise on the statement, right, our spirit and vision is not to become an aggregator. Right, so we want to strategically partner with different components of this ecosystem. And we try to see ourselves as a, as a platform of technology, powered by data and analytics, right? So right, that you say, you know, the doctors, online pharmacies, the quantity of services and everything, you know, everything will have access to the data as per required. But you know, also we have some some limitations. For example, for doctors, when we provide a proper primary care, of course, you don’t want to get doctors in the platform, when you will you want to doctors that that you can put a certain rules and protocols.
Michael Waitze
Absolutely. Is there. How long have you been at this? Like, how long has Rey been around now?
Evan Tanotogono
Well, we started building in May, right. So a couple months ago, we will launch last month, our MVP is like a prototype, we want to demonstrate that this is this is Rey. Going forward, even though we still have constraints working with you know, any off the shelf products that we can take. We have primary care right now already in the platform. But again, that still can be improved, you know, like they they need to onboard more cost savings mindset. We have online pharmacy, we have pharmacy reimbursement as well, we have wellness. So pretty much we will launch in September with that, with that situation. In terms of in terms of timeline we are right now. We just We just signed a long term deal right with with AXA global reinsurance to create our proprietary life and health and critical illness product. So they commit to starting next year two, we are we are in designing phase right now. So they are they’re committing to provide all the products in our portfolio going forward.
Michael Waitze
Very interesting. Do you want to talk more about this partnership? What does it take for a company like yours, particularly at the early stages to be able to build a partnership with such a large global player?
Evan Tanotogono
Ah, yeah, sure. So, um, I think, you know, the point of view that we have at that moment was, you know, we don’t want to be a brokerage, or we want to take a standpoint and challenging the status quo of an insurance carrier, right and to end so that we think, okay, let’s elevate ourselves and talk directly with somebody who can create a product that’s never been designed in the market before. So then we talked to multiple reinsurers and AXA reinsurance, you know, pick this really, really nicely. And they say that, well, this is a model that we believe could work with this integration with this model. So basically, what we do with them is we leverage their data and analytics, operational expertise as well. And they will, they will create the product which is tailored to the health ecosystem and flow that we have. In the same way the fluid ecosystem that we built, will also take feedbacks and inputs from them to optimize for the risk of the product. I think one one of the factor why we can score this partnership is because also we have a strong team at the back, right? So I think when we talk about being a challenger, to an insurance carrier as a whole, we have team that we have an actuary, we have a claim specialist. And basically, our our sets of directors are also amazing that we have David Nugroho, the guy who built alternative channel of Prudential in Indonesia, we have Stephanie Simoni as well as CEO of Prudential from Cambodia. So we have all these people, but I think the common thing that that we have and that we share together is is you know it’s not that that we love insurance, right? It’s because you know, we will know everything that is painful about this industry in this market. And then basically we just shared that with AXA and says that look, this is what want to change. We’ve been doing this since many, many years. We have some new ideas and they buy in for that.
Michael Waitze
I completely understand. There’s a I want to switch gears just a little bit. There’s a blog on your website. What is the goal? Or the strategy around creating your own content? And you know, that there are some other sort of early ish not so early stage insurance companies in Indonesia, who have like 4 million visitors a month to their blog and about 500,000 people following their, their Instagram account, right? Tell Benny I said, Hi, by the way. But so what’s the strategy for you as a team?
Evan Tanotogono
So I think it relates more on the marketing side, like so, in my previous experience, with Sequis, so I built their digital channel, right, I experimented many things, including the marketing, different tactics in b2b as well, different types of partners. So we realized a couple of couple of things. Right. And and the conclusion for that is, is that content is really, really important. So one of the thing is that, you know, insurance is not like ecommerce, right? So in insurance, I find that each individual, they have different driver, right? So, you know, like, it depends on on where your stage of life, it depends on why are you buying insurance, maybe you’re a gig worker, for example, and you don’t have insurance from your company. So it’s totally different driver for everyone. And secondly, it’s a it’s a product that, you know, it just has different triggers for people to purchase, right? So it really links with how you how you see the content. And sometimes the timeline is not instant, right? So you read some content now. And then you think about it. And then next month, you remember about that content that you read? And then you start, again, browsing about insurance. So based on that, right, I think one thing that that we are trying to do is actually leverage content as much as possible, because like, search engine is one of the working channel for insurance. And then second, by content, we can track, you know, basically the driver of each individual. And then you know, we look at that, right. So as a result, you know, back in my day with Sequis, I left Sequis with them, I would say, with the condition that that digital business unit already profitable, only from selling insurance digitally. And, you know, I like to prove people wrong, right? People say that, Oh, yeah, maybe maybe you can sell insurance digitally, but then the return will be terrible. Or, or maybe you cannot sell at all, because it’s a difficult product to sell. So I was like, no, no, no, if if you have one product that is right. And then second, marketing that is done properly, and you know, leverage content as a part of it, then, you know, we can be profitable, we can sell this product.
Michael Waitze
I like this idea of trying to prove people wrong. And it segues nicely into something else that I’d like to ask you. So you have worked in startups before. And you’ve worked at big institutions. And with all of the resources that these big institutions have? What are some of the challenges there for them to build these innovative products and services inside there? I guess is the first question. What are some of the challenges there?
Evan Tanotogono
Oh, one challenge is, of course, you know, about the agility, right. And when we talk about agility, it’s, it’s many things, right? One, maybe it’s because of, you know, rules, you know, like a lot of rules, including KPIs. Right. So I find that in some institutions, KPIs are actually making negative impact, right? It restricts people from collaboration.
Michael Waitze
Can I just can I just jump in here for a second? Cuz I think you make a really interesting point. Right, so KPIs, it feels like they’re a great thing, right? And let’s just say what a KPI is, right? Cuz I think people throw around the term KPI. And I don’t think a lot of people know what it knows what it means. Key Performance Indicators, right. And I think you’re right, if I tell you have to reach this thing by a certain date, it feels in a way a little bit arbitrary. Which means that if you don’t, then you have a problem. But what it also means is that you set up KPIs that you can meet, so that deters you from innovation. So you’re like, Oh, I’ll get 17 of these by December. And it’s easy to do or slightly hard, but you know, you can do it. So you’ve met your KPI. Whereas if you say, I want to create an entirely new business model, because I think this is going to be better. First of all, what’s the KPI there and second of all, your boss is happy, but you’re like, Yeah, but what if it doesn’t work? Like can I really do this experiment? Let me just get a better KPI so that I can actually meet it. Is that fair?
Evan Tanotogono
Yeah, so Well, I think like in another analogy, right. What I often find in the in the corporate is that you know, like, we should take KPI as our speedometer right when you try. So basically it tells you how fast you go. It tells you like, do you have enough fuel left and etc, right? But what is sometimes wrong in corporate data, they take too much effort in making the details of it, right? So like you’re you’re driving and then you look at your dashboard all the time. So as a result, you cannot go into full speed because like, Okay, I need to look at this, right. So that’s, that’s that’s one thing, right? Then the second thing? Well, what happens is by you know, if you make very, very detailed KPI, it disturbs the interface between between teams, because now you start thinking, Is this my KPIs that your KPI, if I do this, that what happens to my capacity of the team, right? So then imagine, imagine a really run, and people start thinking just about in the braking, individual speed record is not going to happen, right.
Michael Waitze
Really interesting. I guess the follow on is, why does some of the best founders and the reason why I’m asking this is because, you know, I’ve done 100, and who knows how many of these conversations, right? And what’s happened over the past two and a half years, as we’ve been doing this is it feels to me, like, more and more people are leaving big institutions. Whereas before, they were just technologists that said, Oh, this is ripe for disruption, so I’m going to change it. But what I think is happening now, or at least in the last year or so is that people that come from these big institutions are saying, I’ve been trying to do this. But again, I’m spending so much time looking at the speedometer that I can’t speed. And I want to have speed. And again, that’s just an analogy. It’s not the only thing that people want to have. And then they’re leaving is that like, Is that the reason why we see a lot of the best founders coming now out of these big incumbent insurance companies?
Evan Tanotogono
I think that could be true, right? Well, recently, I had a discussion with one of the executives of this insurance in Indonesia. And he said to me, you know, I’m really tired, and then considering to make something on my own right. Like, I think like, one good thing is that all of us coming from the big corporations, we have the experience, and we have the knowledge about this industry. Yeah, I think the the, the thing that, including that guy didn’t have was actually the the freedom to actually just go you know, if you have an idea, just just make it happen. And then we want to see the impact of it. We just do trials and that cetera. And again, you know, if you link this with a KPI, if you do trials, then people start thinking about how does it impact to my KPI or, like the company KPI or something. Right? So that’s, that’s one thing. The second I think, is more personal. Because, you know, we start seeing, I think, like, these days, we start seeing, you know, young people making something and we got inspired by it, right? So, including my friends who become founders, etc. And then one day, I also thought about, you know, my friends are already making impact, you know, how can I make impact like these guys? So that’s, that’s one of the factor, I decided that, okay, let me just, you know, build something on my own and actually make an impact for Indonesia.
Michael Waitze
If you succeed, the way you expect to? What is the impact you expect to have over the next like, three to five years? And what does Rey look like as a success to you?
Evan Tanotogono
So I think, to two answers, right, I think one if Rey is a big success, I expect that, you know, next 50 or 100 million people, Indonesians in the middle part of the pyramid will be insured. And they will be insured, you know, very, very willingly to be insured. And because because, you know, I know it’s gonna be successful, because, you know, this reach done, right, and they use it because they feel the benefits of it, it’s something that they will be happy to use, and how Rey will look like going forward is I think, you know, qualitatively I would say, Rey will become, you know, top of mine, tip of tongue of this people, you know, and being considered along with other insurance brand and, and we hear people say that I’ll just just rate depth fits me with myself. I mean, like, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna topple big brands, and it’s not gonna topple the public insurance, for example, but I think if it becomes a choice, you know, we work with a very large market, if it becomes a choice that people would would like to have, and people will enjoy to use, people willingly explore, purchase and persist with an insurance plan. I think I would be really happy because you know, then my dream of bringing back the hazards of insurance as a protector of people’s economy and lifestyle is achieved.
Michael Waitze
Evan Tanotogono, a co founder and the CEO of rey.id. That was awesome. And that was a great answer. By the way, thank you so much for doing this.
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