The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Mohandeep Singh, a co-founder and the CEO of Agiliux, about the evolution of InsurTech and why InsurTechs might disappear in the next 10 years.
Here is the transcript of our conversation.
Michael Waitze 0:05
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Mohandeep Singh, a co-founder and the CEO of Agiliux. I mean, I tried so hard. I made notes to myself. Okay. Well, Mohandeep, it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks for correcting me, by the way, and how are you doing?
Mohandeep Singh 0:30
I’m good. Really, really feeling proud to be on your show. I’ve heard so many stories about this show. And finally, I’m here.
Michael Waitze 0:36
Yikes. Can you hear me? Okay? Yeah, everything is good. Yeah, super duper. Look, before we get into the main part of this conversation, how would you describe the state of insurance and InsurTech innovation in Malaysia, Southeast Asia and by extension globally?
Mohandeep Singh 0:52
Okay, I’ll answer this question in two parts, right. One is what I see what’s going on? And what is that I feel? So I’ll give you two. Right, right. The first one, definitely, there’s no question about it. No need to even talk more about it is the digitalization, everything is going digital online offline, whichever word digitalization is happening. But the second trend, which I’m seeing, actually, which is picking up very well in last couple of years is the variety in the insurance. I mean, I don’t know in few years back whether we ever heard what pet insurance and you know, those kinds of stuff. We always used to have this motor insurance, life, health and that’s what it’s but now you see the variation. So these are the two things. digitalization is like a given. Yeah, things are changing. But the second aspect of variation in insurance is also one thing, which I feel is picking up very well.
Michael Waitze 1:43
Do you think this variation matters? Do you know what I mean? Like this pet insurance matter? Like I get the fact that we used to just have motor insurance, health insurance, life insurance, I get that. But do we need pet insurance? And even if we do, does it then make us branch out into other things that maybe we hadn’t considered before? You know what I mean? That like pet insurance is just the first step into other things as well, that makes sense.
Mohandeep Singh 2:06
See, what I feel is this is something like an evolution of this industry, right? When when it started, probably at that time, the life and those things were like the really needed probably motor car insurance came in because of the accidents happening on the road. You know, it’s as per we require, and the industry is growing. Pets is becoming bigger and bigger chunk, you know, you’ll see hundreds of other businesses coming out of pet food. And I don’t remember, you know, 20 years back when I had used to have my pets ever bought a pet food, you know, we feel so things are changing, actually is the same thing. Insurance will change another 5-10 years, we will see many other types of varieties much weirder than pet insurance, actually.
Michael Waitze 2:47
So this is also really interesting to me. And I didn’t anticipate talking about this, but just you kind of jogged something in my mind. You know, we’ve had motor insurance for a long time, right? And if everything just to go back to the first thing you said, if everything is getting digitalized, right, you now have cars, and definitely cities like Singapore, which is part of what your business is, California, but Singapore is perfect for this right just because of all of the technology they’ve put on the streets. And a great testbed for autonomous vehicles. When you look forward, right? If pet insurance is a thing, and insurances getting more creative, and branching out and becoming more varied, have more variances. Will we lose things like auto insurance in its current form? If cars get so digitalized, that they start driving themselves? Do you know what I mean?
Mohandeep Singh 3:37
As I said, right, it’s evolution definitely you lose something I you know, personally, what I feel these cars, autonomous cars probably will be run by insurance companies. They themselves are the insurance companies, right? Rather than somebody else does the insurance for that. Whether it’s really the insurance companies rang the car or the car companies actually becoming an insurance company, either could be questionable, right? But the thing is, definitely you going out and buying an insurance for your car could be the thing of the past. It just comes with it. I think one more trend, which probably you can we can also discuss is the embedded. Embedded is changing the way you buy the insurance. So I don’t think you will actually go out and every year renew your car insurance, definitely those things will not be there. I don’t know how many years down the line, but at least few years down the line.
Michael Waitze 4:27
Okay, so now you’ve walked into like one of my favorite topics. And it’s not just this idea of embedded insurance, right? Because everybody’s talking about it. And the more people talk about it, the less I’m interested in it to be fair. But if platform companies, right, like the E commerce companies can do insurance distribution, and if ride hailing companies can do insurance distribution and even product creation because of their access to end customers right on the b2c side and if Tesla can become an insurance company. Because you’re right, if I don’t have to buy insurance, but the company buys insurance, because now they’re kind of responsible for the driving. What’s stopping an insurance company? Except for in Australia, right? There were very specific regulations about embedded, but in the rest of the world, and even in Malaysia, and the rest of Southeast Asia from starting an E commerce company, so that instead of outsourcing the embedding to some other entity, they are the entity that embedded they become even more vertically integrated.
Mohandeep Singh 5:34
Michael, now you are in my territory, I want to talk about something here. This is my personal thing, right? Some people agree some people don’t agree, I always say this sentence. And I’ve said this at a lot of public places as well. In next 10 years, the InsurTechs will die, they won’t remain anymore. Not saying that in short texts are not needed, or whatever, right? They are the need insurance guys are like, yeah, like stocks and don’t know how many years back and you need somebody to kind of push them and nudge them. And that is what insurtechs are doing, right. But you know, what will happen in next 10 years, I feel insurtechs are a transient thing. In next 10 years, either they will grow huge, which is possible, right? They will grow huge, and they’ll buy the insurance companies or the insurance companies will buy them. But at the end what will happen is there will not be any more InsurTech’s there will be the traditional insurance companies, probably brokers agency, everything will still remain, but they are all digitally transformed. So it’s not something you will still see an InsurTech in the market probably another 10 years. Now, this is what I feel. And if you see this holding the question which you asked, it actually well works very well in that scenario, things will change, Tesla will be there or those platform guys will be there who are offering something as part of their offering, you know, in offering insurance as part of their offering, there won’t be a separate, but that platform could be an insurance company itself, or that could be an insurer tech, who have also acquired an insurance company so that they are also an insurance company. I hope you are getting what I’m trying to say right.
Michael Waitze 7:07
Completely. But I disagree. And I’ll tell you why. And I’ll tell you why. When I was at Goldman Sachs. And even at Morgan Stanley, we would outsource the development of some of our trading systems or back office systems or some of the other systems in part of the value chain where the technology was just changing so fast, that even a company that we bought, right so at Goldman Sachs, I think we bought a company called Hall automated trading, integrated into Goldman, created what we call Goldman Sachs algorithmic trading around it. And yet, Halls technology when it was purchased was awesome, but getting older. And this thing is cyclical, as you know. And if it goes in five to seven year cycles are called 10 to 12, I don’t really care. But at some point that tech is going to get old, but the embedded and the legacy systems that sit inside any big company, even if they used to be an InsurTech now need to look outside, which is where this cycle of like new InsurTechs, we may not call them that, right. But I mean, we bought trading technology from other companies after that, and then integrated it back in or bought that as well. But I think you make a really good point that those companies that do grow big, will buy insurance companies almost by definition, but then what’s going to happen is now they’re going to be now the purchaser is probably not going to become the purchased. But they’ll now go oh, there’s us 10 years ago, we need to buy them fast, because what they’re doing with the new technology that we don’t understand, is what we did to insurance company or incumbent Insurance Company A 10 years ago, we didn’t want the same thing to happen to us. So I don’t think they go away. But
Mohandeep Singh 8:48
I’ll tell you, they’re still I got my point to cannot really do counter but I’ll tell you what has happened in other industries as well. Right? When I said the InsurTech’s right InsurTech doesn’t mean the IT service providers. So that one segment we haven’t talked about, right? There are tons of SI companies, IT companies who build software, we are one of them actually, we call ourself as InsurTech. But we are not like a normal InsurTech we don’t sell insurance policy, right. So that segment, I don’t want to I mean, I hate this investment led subsidized selling policies and then die after a few years. I mean, I’m not I’m not into it, but what I am into it is I love this whole concept of digital transformation and that is what is going to happen. These guys who will either acquire InsurTech or whatever digital transport definitely after a few years, they need more technology, new stuff and all those things, they will not go and look for another InsurTech, they will go and look for a normal traditional IT company who will help them and keep updating their insurance software not really and InsurTech. So that component of outsourcing the concept of the whole cloud and the SAS and all those things will remain and rather they will grow a lot in this industry as well, but not somebody, I’m superduper in IT. And I say I can sell policies because I know how the digitalization works. That thing is a very short lived thing, and it will die, it will die.
Michael Waitze 10:12
And do you think it’s just there to poke the bear and then that now the bear has been pulled to the big insurance companies like okay, I get it, we’ve been moving too slowly, blah, blah, blah, if heard that before, but now like, it’s a new year and a new time, and you’re right, so now we’re gonna buy you because we’ve got 185 years of experience in selling insurance, and you’ve got zero. And even if you’re good at building software, we can go to companies like Agiliux cloud insurance that had been building software anyway, and now build software for us. So we don’t need insurtechs per se, but what we do need is people that understand software development at scale. Does that make sense?
Mohandeep Singh 10:46
Yep, definitely. But I’ll give you one, you know, when when we see ourselves, at some places we do compete with insurtechs. The reason for that, I’ll tell you that also, especially it’s attached to the embedded thing, right. I’m a partner who’s looking for another guy who has the technology to help me to sell, for example, I don’t know, whatever, some some insurance, right. So these guys prefer not to work with us at that point of time. Because we don’t have license to sell insurance policy. There are other we’ll go with an insurtech who has a license to sell policies in that country. So that’s where we lose it out. But this is like a very temporary and short term kind of a thing. But that kind of scenario is there. But as an insurance company, I have all the licenses I don’t need actually InsurTech what probably I need is technology, or maybe the creativity, maybe that mindset of digital first and cloud first and those kind of things, which probably InsurTech companies can provide them the insurance. So that is the reason why they’ll buy. But after a while. That’s what I say another five to 10 years, this thing is transient, it will go away. And yeah, I know a lot of people will scold me after hearing this. But that is what I feel, actually.
Michael Waitze 11:54
But will they really? Are they just afraid that that’s actually what’s going to happen? In other words, do you because you said this, if you said this earlier, you’re like you don’t like this investment led selling at a loss, right. And if I go out and look at some of the most successful InsurTech companies that have actually become sustainable businesses, they’ve stopped doing this selling stuff at a loss. They’ve not gone out and raised outside capital. And they’ve basically built a sustainable business, meaning something that can be around for the next 50 or 60 years, based on real unit economics, and real expertise in a particular vertical space. Does that make sense?
Mohandeep Singh 12:37
To some extent, but you can count those companies on your fingers that are not much
Michael Waitze 12:41
Correct. But that’s the point. But that’s why those are the ones that are successful.
Mohandeep Singh 12:46
Sure, I’m with you. But that’s what I’m saying. Some guys will become successful and big, and they will acquire insurance companies. So that in the end, that is what is going to happen. They won’t remain InsurTech clear or biller InsurTech kind of a player, they will be insurance company at some point of time. I’ll tell you one more which resale heard again, no. Nothing on the record kind of thing, right. Some of the bigger players, some of the bigger InsurTech players, they have secret deals with insurance companies, secret deals in a kind of volume discount kind of thing, right? They can give better discounts to their customers. So all the new InsurTech companies, they actually can’t even beat them because they are in such a different state. Volume is not there, I can’t get the best prices from the insurance company, I can’t actually even fight with those guys. So those kind of scenario, these small guys. The only option for them is to keep funding that thing. Probably they won’t make it. The guy is somebody who are established already with the relationship with the volumes with whatever contracts, whatever, right? They still can do things, but not everybody. And this is scary for this industry where you don’t have that kind of a moat. The only thing you have is I have technology I can sell you better. And that’s about it, which is very short lived. People can just copy it.
Michael Waitze 14:08
What is the Agiliux do then? And what is the cloud part of it?
Mohandeep Singh 14:12
Sure, sure. See what Agiliux started with as is we are helping companies to sell insurance, serve insurance, whether it’s a claims or endorsements or whatever, everything to do it in a better possible way. That’s how we started. We started working with the company who was a small startup, roughly six, seven years back. And now that small startup is part of the huge bolttech guys? So that’s the journey which we have taken. What was the company? The company was in Malaysia called Tech pro tech, okay? And they were selling the devices insurance working with the telcos and all kinds of stuff in Malaysia. And these guys if you want to go back a bit of history, right, so these guys were acquired by AmTrust from US, Europe, the big guys came to Asia Pacific, it became AmTrust mobile solutions. And then after time, which is two years back, they got merged into the bolttech. So we are working with them. We are working with them on five, six different countries. So we have done tons of work. Of course, right now things are different, because bolttech is bolttech. They are doing it their way. Right. So that’s where we started with this whole insurance thing. And we were pure tech guys, we were not doing anything. But while working with them, we realize that this is something which is I won’t say goldmine. But why not close to that? Because there is a need, there is a need and not many people are neither you have a lot of IT companies only focus on this insurance other than the top Accenture, kind of guys. There’s a second level second tier, they’re almost nobody. Secondly, there is a need not just an insurance companies, the whole value chain, the insurance and the brokers and the agencies. Nobody has good solutions. We feel that is a pretty good opportunity for us. We launched Agiliux in May 2020. And we of course, we talked to hundreds and hundreds of people in the industry and what we realize that b2c is already big tons of insurtechs are working on b2c area, but b2b is an area where almost nobody is doing nothing.
Michael Waitze 16:16
B2B means what?
Mohandeep Singh 16:19
Commercial insurance, when you sell, you know, this all marine and constructors, all risk and all that kind of stuff, which there’s almost no automation in there. And it’s a trillion dollar business, you know, it’s a huge all run manually by brokers. So that become that becomes actually our niche, two years back, that we started focusing on b2b commercial insurance. How do we help brokers to automate to digitalize this whole process. Broker sits in the middle. One side is the big corporates and One side is multiple insurance company? How do you kind of do this whole transaction to make it better, with automated systems to scan document, tons of documents, still, you know, comparisons and this and that getting the best option for the customer. That is where Agiliux works. And we work in the distribution, automation, or whatever you want to call it. Basically, it’s a software for distribution of commercial insurance. Main key player is the brokers.
Michael Waitze 17:20
So who do you compete with them? In other words, when you walk into a bar, if a broker is your client, and you’re trying to automate the stuff that they’re doing when you walk into their office? Who are you walking past in the lobby? Since the previous meeting? No, you cannot be walking past the status quo?
Mohandeep Singh 17:36
I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, as a small startup, right, we right now are not focusing on the tier one brokers like the Aon, Marsh and those guys, we are not really even trying to talk to those guys. Right, we are one level down because that’s where we think we can make a difference, at least at this point of time. Of course, in the future, I would like to work with those big guys. But right now that’s that’s our focus. I have talked to I mean, I have a count, right, and Asia Pacific, nine countries where we are 2187 brokers, I have the count, I’ve talked to probably 100 brokers from there, maybe 120 brokers from there. 99% brokers are running an accounting software, a customized accounting software, because brokerage business is very different from the normal business because they are brokers, they don’t really sell, there’s no income, they do debit notes. So it’s a very customized accounting software for them. And they are using it for last 20 years no more supported, it’s not cloud when when there was locked, locked down, they couldn’t work from home, all those things are and that is with 99% of the brokers. I don’t walk past any competitors.
Michael Waitze 18:43
That are just some dead guy in the lobby. Um, what do you learn, though, in the second tear, if there because if they’re all using software that is no longer supported, right? That is super legacy that’s not cloud based, not even cloud, it’s obviously can’t be cloud native. But what do you learn from the second tier so that you can then aspirationally get up to the first tier? Or do you have to then go back and relearn all the stuff that they’re doing at scale? Or can you scale the stuff that the second tier teams are doing to get into the first tier? Do you know what I mean?
Mohandeep Singh 19:11
Got it. Actually, the brokerage business is pretty much similar. So it’s whatever the smaller guys are doing. They’re probably are doing smaller deals and bigger guys do bigger deals, but the process is not that different, actually, processes are still pretty much the same. I don’t think we will have that issue. But just to tell you about the scale, right? We actually have kind of came down to work with these brokers, you know, the smaller brokers were doing like, I don’t know, 10-20 deals a month at I mean, I don’t know can’t tell that right but in bolttech at the peak. I don’t know hundreds and 1000s of policies you’re selling every month. So that is a huge scale which we already have tested. Rather, we are feeling this probably last two years is for us as a product development stage. We got few customers but that is not what we think. In call what we got a customer, right? What we are working upon is, what is the value we can add to these brokers? How do we make them do better, and the same better and the value thing is actually a value for even bigger guys also, actually, just to tell you, I already got one bigger customer, I don’t want to take the name yet but I already got one bigger customer not that big as Aon, Marsh but we got it and the only reason is not that whether we can do it or not, but when we show them that this is what we are working upon, or this is what we have done for the smaller guys. They feel excited because even at the bigger level also a lot of things they are not really doing, which make them excited and you know, if we work together, we actually can do much more together with with their knowledge because that knowledge is definitely is needed. We sell IT guys, right? So their knowledge and our IT skills, putting together actually, we can make a lot of difference even for the big guys as well.
Michael Waitze 20:52
There’s an excitement, right, particularly from a software development perspective that you can have transformational change on a business by installing software that scales. And yet, it must be difficult in the second tear, to convince these businesses that may not have a level of CapEx that’s necessary to do this. I’m always curious, like what the sales experience is like for you and your team, even if you have a great product for them to discover, oh, we’ve been doing it like this for 25 years, right? Some of these are family businesses, they’ve had licenses, maybe for generation and a half, particularly in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam is probably a little bit newer, right? So slightly different. Singapore is a different animal, because its GDP per capita, 45 to $50,000 per person, right? It’s different. But how do you convince them to just like, drop everything? And is it just the pandemic that says, Look, you couldn’t even work from home before? Do you know what I mean? Like, what’s the first step in? What’s the first thing they want?
Mohandeep Singh 21:52
you to spot on? You know, these are like my problems, you know, as a business, you know, how do I do this? Because this is the thing, two three things. I’ll say over here, what we are trying to do, right? The first one is definitely cloud cloud helps. Cloud doesn’t ask you to actually spend millions in capex to put things in place. It’s a SAAS kind of thing. So you actually don’t really say, oh, here is a million dollar bill, the thing for me, you don’t really do it for every customer, you do it once. And actually, you use it for all our customers. So definitely that part is there. But one thing which which
Michael Waitze 22:27
That I understand, yeah, how do you explain it to them?
Mohandeep Singh 22:31
Not easy? Definitely not easy. I’m fully with you. Definitely not easy. I mean, these guys who are using an accounting software for last 20 years, probably haven’t paid anything other than maybe I don’t know, Google or office 360, right. Other than that they haven’t paid anything for any software in last 20 years. Right? Not an easy job. So what we did specifically is we started from Singapore, we already got four customers in Singapore, two benefits of doing these kinds of things in Singapore. The first one is, as you rightly mentioned GDP but actually that doesn’t help because of not having a habit of buying software, right, that kind of thing is there, but the biggest benefit, which we got why we started from Singapore is the government support. Government pays them to buy the software, they give them subsidies and all that which other countries, almost no other country does that. So actually, that’s the reason why we started from Singapore, we’ve got three four customers, there we are building the software. Last year we started we’re not started last year, we entered India market. And definitely it’s it’s one of the lowest, you know, the in, in case of how much people would like to pay for a software. It is tech country, right? Who will buy the software. But, but we are kind of now ready to even drop the pricing and do all of that what is needed for India, because we have reached that stage. Again, not yet fully there. But we have reached that stage where our software is very close to maturity after working with four or five big guys, and we already have built it. And when we go and show the software is good, we are ok to reduce the price. We can give them transactional based volume volume based or something that kind of thing we can do to make it work for many other countries where probably people are not ready to pay big upfront.
Michael Waitze 24:07
Do you see generational changes in the sales cycle? In other words, if you walk into a business that was started by somebody’s grandmother and grandfather, and the second generation is running it in that, you know, Guy and gal haven’t bought software in 20 years, but their daughter just graduated from you know, Stanford. Do you see the daughter then saying Look Mom and Dad, we gotta buy this software, otherwise, we’re going to be dinosaurs. Do you see that sort of generational change taking place as well?
Mohandeep Singh 24:38
Actually, this is very common we have seen it but I’ll tell you the negative side also which we have seen, which feels a bit hurting right, but it is also true. This part what you have seen is at least I think five six guys we are talking to his like that where we are we are talking to their second generation or third generation guys. Who who we are now talking they want to do digitalization, definitely this I think this is not very uncommon. This is quite common, but I’m seeing there’s one other aspect which is little bit painful, right? This mainly is in Singapore majority of brokerages are family run kind of businesses whereby the children have refused to work in that brokerage. It’s not that I want to bring IT, I don’t want to work in this, at least at least, at this point of know, probably 10-20 brokers or such who are just waiting for somebody to come in buy us at whatever price, we want to exit this business because our kids are not interested in this business anymore. This is like a painful thing and there, but definitely both sides are there. I mean, kids coming in and want to do technology and all is very common as well. But the other negative side or sad side also is there were by kids don’t want to get in. And I mean, probably that is the reason right? You never had any transformation for last probably 50 years in this industry, commercial insurance. And that’s why there is almost no fun for the kids to actually get into that they see their parents, what are they doing? You know, I don’t like this. But if this business is transformed and done in a better way, probably these guys will actually say Hey, this is fun, too.
Michael Waitze 26:12
But in a way this is the story of Sunday, right? Cindy Kua is the daughter of the KSK insurance founders. Right. And that’s, that’s that whole story. Not the whole thing. But this idea of like, Y’all come into this business. But we need to have like a few more computers to do this really well. But what do you think about? Because you said cloud, right. But you there’s this whole revolution taking place? And I’m curious about your opinion on this. And I’ve asked him, I’ve been asking a lot of people about this recently. I had somebody on one of my other shows who runs this thing called the MACH Alliance, right? MACH. That’s how they pronounce it. MACH. Yeah. And you know, Mac is this thing that stands for microservices, API, first cloud native, yeah. And then headless. And their idea is that all software is going to get built this way. Right. So individual services, micro services, right API API first, which means that you build all these API’s. And you don’t have to use all of our services, you can connect to them via an API. They’re cloud native, which means that they’re much easier and much less expensive to deploy. So you don’t have to do these million dollar builds. And they’re headless as well, which means you don’t like my front end, build your own front end, but still use my back end stuff. What’s your view on that?
Mohandeep Singh 27:30
I think this is very common now in almost every industry, nothing to do with insurance. Yeah, yeah, everybody’s doing that. But one thing, which I feel which is missing in this whole thing is actually the front end applications. Majority of these guys only focus on the back end, which is definitely you need all of that also. But you still need to have front ends to give a good experience customer experience to your customers, right. And everybody have different view of that experience. You can’t run away from that part. like we do a lot of that work, we work with some of our partners, or you must be knowing that guys eBao tech, InsureMo, right? So we work very closely with them, whereby they have the whole back end with this API’s and all that kind of stuff. But they don’t go out and sell the whole applications to their customers. What they do is they work with partners like us, hey, Deep come we got this particular guy’s was interested in this building something right. So we have the one who actually will talk to that customer and say, How can what kind of experience you’re looking for? What do you want to do? Per Web? Or there’s a combination? Yes, this back end is there which is kind of given you know, people don’t now say that, Oh, what will be the backend, it’s like given but they are curious about or they are worried about how my front end will look like. So that part will not go away will remain. But this back end, what the way you’re saying is definitely that is the way and that will happen in every industry over the time all the legacy will go away and slowly, slowly will be replaced by this. But definitely in another five years, something new will come you know not not just the microservices. Now we got this, what is this? I don’t know what this. Yeah, this will change. But the front end things right will always be there where people want to give a unique experience or something. And building an application mobile app or whatever will always will have that traditional way of the flows and wire diagrams and this and that. All this no code, low code is only for the backend, not for your front end. Drag and drop can’t give you that kind of an experience, which actually people want to want to do, you will always have that personal touch kind of a thing in your front end applications where you want to give that kind of experience. I just wait I feel
Michael Waitze 29:35
Interesting for me that you get to work with Rajat Sharma and the InsureMo team. These are great people as well. And I agree with you that like this no code, low code stuff for the front end is just so hard because like I can build a front end that’s good for me, but I can’t build it for the gal sitting next to me. Exactly. And I just don’t think that first of all, I don’t think that internal support for IT systems or technologies systems is ever gonna go away because people are still gonna sit there and just go hey, this thing doesn’t work and at some point you’re gonna have to Ctrl Alt Delete it to get into stores. That may be an inside joke just for you and me. I’m curious though, because it sounds to me like you can also build things, right? Like, Agiliux. Did I get it right this time?
Mohandeep Singh 30:24
Yep. Agiliux, Agile UX.
Michael Waitze 30:28
I got it. Oh, I like it. I got it. I got Agiliux cloud, you could remove the insurance right? And then make this software that you’re building relevant to kind of any finance or FinTech business. And I guess the question for me is, is insurance part of FinTech is FinTech part of inshore tech, and the fintechs in your mind go away as well, in the same way that insurtechs go away. You don’t I mean?
Mohandeep Singh 30:56
It’s a pretty, pretty interesting question. Actually. Definitely, Fintech is way bigger than InsurTech at this point of time, right? Because FinTech probably started earlier, it covers much more areas, starting from the payments and lending and now they’re going everywhere and doing everything right. Till I think last two, three years. And still some of the VCs and especially those guys that they consider InsurTech as part of the FinTech, they don’t give them as a separate thing. So so. But what is happening is with this evolution of this industry like that, like what I say the digitalization, then the new varieties, right now you’re getting insurance for so many different things embedded and this one. So because of this whole lot of things. Right. So insurtech is coming up on its own. It’s no more subset of FinTech, which probably earlier people used to assume right, but now it’s not now it’s definitely becoming much more on its own that yes, there is a category called InsurTech, which is different from women. But the question which you asked is whether that whether it will happen, whereby insurtechs No more there, I think, generally is the same thing, right? Digital banks. Now what will happen digital banks will not be somebody who is totally different from the normal one you won’t see after 10 years, or this is a digital bank. And this is a traditional one you won’t because both will be same. And the same same logic which I gave earlier right? The digital banks will learn the banking side of it acquire bank so what I think recently there was one Indonesian use where they acquired traditional bank, right? So something like exactly that thing will happen in the banking as well. After 10 years, you will not have somebody which is this is FinTech or this is digital. You don’t go out nowadays and buy a color TV, right? You buy a TV, you same way you will not buy a hybrid or EV car, you know, after 10 years, you will just buy a car. And that is what is going to happen in here. Right? The FinTech InsurTech probably will not be something hey, this is FinTech or this is InsurTech. Actually, it’s same because that’s evolution. And that is what’s going to happen in both FinTech as well as ensure this is what I feel again.
Michael Waitze 33:08
Yeah, you’re right. Aku lako, I think is the name of the company. And William Lee and his partners bought an Indonesian bank. And for the same reason, right, they wanted to get some of the assets that were there. But they also wanted to get some of the licenses that went along with the bank, and they were able to acquire bank in a way that made sense. Yeah, I don’t think you’re wrong. Actually. I do think though, some of the big banks are going to go away, because I don’t think that there’s so complex what’s going on inside their back end systems that at some point, people are just going to say, I kind of just want the services that a bank offers, but I want to make sure that I manage my own money because if that bank shuts down, or it exists in some country that I don’t trust or the regulations that are changed, or the government goes berserk. I want to make sure that I’m not beholden to them. And I’d rather have my money in a way that I can control it. It’s almost like self sovereign data ownership or self sovereign identity ownership. I want to have like self sovereign money ownership.
Mohandeep Singh 34:00
I mean, there’s a whole crypto thing and you know, decentralization a lot of those things also will come in play with this whole thing. But yes, yes, I’m with you on this. Definitely this this will be needed.
Michael Waitze 34:10
Yeah. I don’t want to spend a whole time going down the crypto rabbit hole just because yeah, we can do that for days and we agree on half this stuff and disagree on the other half of this stuff. Okay, look, I think this was awesome. This is the way I love to have conversations and hopefully you enjoyed this as much as I did. I’m going to deep yeah, Deep Singh, a co-founder and the CEO of Agiliux cloud insurance. Thank you so much for doing this today.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS
