The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari, about how insurers can innovate down to the core and the constraints the industry is facing.
Michael Waitze 0:03
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari and a non-executive director at InsurTech Australia. Daniel, it is super duper, to have you on the show. How are you doing?
Daniel Fogarty 0:20
Thank you, Michael, thank you very much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I look forward to our conversation.
Michael Waitze 0:25
So do I. Look, let’s just jump right into this. What do you think is the biggest trend or emerging trend given both right and insurance and InsurTech? Let’s start in Australia, and then by extension into the rest of the world? What do you see?
Daniel Fogarty 0:36
I think for me, what I’m seeing is I’m seeing sort of a waking up to innovation, sort of a realisation. That, you know, the large insurers and all insurance businesses have to act, they can’t just do POCs anymore, or small projects, or they have to work out a way to get this innovation into the core part of what we do. And I would say within that there are a lot of constraints that the industry is is challenged with at the moment, which is stifling some of that. And some of those constraints are particularly if I speak from an Australian point of view, which I think are very similar elsewhere in the world. So in the environment of increasing compliance and environment of increasing natural catastrophe, challenges around affordability, challenges around finding skilled resources. And, you know, within within that environment, people are then push being pushing digital innovation to the background. But I think more and more people are realising that, wow, innovation is the way to solve all of these issues. And so there are these issues within the industry. And then some of your other people spoke about on your podcast, and there’s a host of other things coming in, like embedded insurance and elsewhere that are really pushing people, but I actually think it’s realisation is the mood of the moment that we need to move and change.
Michael Waitze 1:47
Do you think something changed, like was it just COVID coming out of COVID, a lot of people were saying back in 21, and sort of the beginnings of 22, that, you know, the digital transformation of the insurance industry was heavily impacted by what happened during COVID. And that because people had a lot more time to just think about stuff and all the remote work. And the lack of human contact, that would normally would have taken five to seven years took like six months or eight months to do. But you’re just suggesting here that digital transformation is moving towards the back end of this and the people are more focused on what drove all this.
Daniel Fogarty 2:20
Good thing that COVID did was help us work remotely. We wouldn’t be doing this podcast in the same way three years ago as we do it now. But now you’re there, we’re just used to being on a small screen and talking to people on the other side of the world, which is which I think is great. And so we’re seeing much more innovation shared across the world because of that. But as we’ve come out of other events and macroeconomic challenges that are facing the industry, and what I fear is that some of those are slowing people down. But I really think the ones who are going to win are the ones who they’re going, Wow, I need to actually move quicker, I was able to move quicker. While we’re all working from home, that can I move quicker now. Can I deal with my compliance issues? Can I deal with my environmental challenges? And I think it’s good resources. I think definitely you can do that with innovation. So I think there’s been a whole lot of new issues that have come out of the back of COVID. We sort of put put away for a while. And now the world’s come back and go Well, we actually did regress all these things and pressures is on.
Michael Waitze 3:22
I want to start with the compliance side of this. Can we dig a little bit deeper into like, what’s changed in the regulatory environment or the compliance environment? That’s starting to push this back? Like, is this a GDPR thing? Is it a data privacy thing? Is it a fear of cyberattacks? Like what’s going on here that’s driving that?
Daniel Fogarty 3:38
Yeah. So I’d say some of this has been individual country driven. Particularly in our country, there was a financial services review that uncovered some behaviour in the banks. That wasn’t what the public thought it should be. We always feel like insurance and be more changed on the insurance side than there has been on the banking side. But then GDPR, and data privacy cyber attacks, people are very worried about about compliance and shipping. So our customers getting the right products and things like that. But also, is their data being protected.
Michael Waitze 4:11
Do you see compliance itself. I asked this a lot, right? Because I’m super curious about it. It feels like the regulators are like one of the last bastions of what’s the right word, non consolidation. In other words, you know, I wonder in the US is the perfect example this like 50 Different insurance Commission’s in every state or whoever many, you know, there are, but every country is also different as well. But insurance itself is fundamentally not that different, unless it’s takaful style insurance. Like do you think that there’s going to be with everything else being more connected? Do you think regulations normalise across jurisdictions and across geographies more so than they have up until today? Does that make sense? You don’t I mean?
Daniel Fogarty 4:51
I think there are always going to be locally driven issues depending on what’s happening in a particular jurisdiction. That’s why there are 50 regulators in the US because As you know, what happens in California isn’t necessarily what happens in Florida. And, and there are Thailand based versus Singapore based versus Australia based. But I think regulators want, what they want to listen to business. You know, one of the things I do, Michael, that is I mean, mentioned in our debrief in our briefing, I sit on Australia’s it’s called ASIC, which is the one of the regulators here. So ASIC has a digital finance advisory panel. And I’m the advisor on that, right? Well, I’m the member on that from the insurance space. And at that meeting, which we have every quarter, there are eight different regulatory bodies in Australia and attend that. And I love the forum, because you know, the regulators are going well, we want to listen to business, we want to understand what’s happening, but they have a each different regulator has a fiduciary duty to do whatever they need to do like ASIC needs to make sure that the policyholders in Australia, they need to act in that way. But when you see this in other countries, as well, and you actually see the regulator’s talking to each other across the world. Yeah, you know, in which ITC, you probably know, a lot of the local commissioners go, I was fortunate to meet with a whole lot of the commissioners on one trip, and so that they’re wanting to see what’s happening in innovation, and they’re wanting to work out how they can modernise regulation, but the compliance will always follow innovations, there’s not gonna it’s not gonna, I don’t think it’s going to lead innovation, it’s going to help help create an environment where innovation can emerge and flourish, but it’s not going to necessarily lead compliance isn’t going to lead innovation.
Michael Waitze 6:31
I’ve always thought that there’s a way to automate the compliance part of this as well, right that somebody should write an API. And again, tell me what you think about this, that somebody should write an API for every regulator in the world, and then feed those via API, those regulations into whatever other platform needs them. So that you don’t always have to wonder like, am I compliant with? Do you know what I mean? Like you can almost build like a real time monitor for that feed into what you’re doing. And you’d sell that as a service onto other insurance companies that don’t want to run gigantic compliance department because they don’t want to have to understand what all the regs are. I don’t know. It just seemed like an interesting thing to me. That part hasn’t been automated yet at all or has it?
Daniel Fogarty 7:12
Avlot of people tackling that challenge. I mean, that the reg tech? I think there probably gets compliance wrong, you know, people running companies should do the right thing by their policyholders, because it’s the right thing to do, for sure. And then work out, you know, make sure that that’s compliant with the local rules, but it should be if you do it, well, then you leave with that, yeah, well, we are a compliant company, we have to be a compliant industry. So it’s like, it’s just a ticket to fly. That’s the way we have to operate. And so I agree that there is the opportunity for innovation to absolutely help and technology to help in this process. But so much of this comes down to what human behaviour and how humans interact with other humans. It’s a challenging area. But I really do think that it’s a great place for innovation with well structured innovation, you can deal with the compliance and the customer’s needs at the same time for sure.
Michael Waitze 8:04
When did you found Evari?
Daniel Fogarty 8:05
We started in June 2016?
Michael Waitze 8:07
Oh, wow, that’s a while ago, right? What’s the impetus there? What takes somebody who I’m presuming has been in the insurance industry for their whole life and just say, nevermind, I’m gonna just gonna do this on my own.
Daniel Fogarty 8:20
The role I had before I started a Evari. I was the CEO for Zurich, insurance for Australia, New Zealand. So I was the heart of the challenges that the industry faces. And we were fortunate at Zurich, we had some pretty good technology, but not meeting our customers need as much as they needed to. The very first thing that started me off on this journey, Michael was really about customer’s needs, when you’re a senior executive, the best time to go and say hello to customers is to go to a natural disaster, because you’ve got a lot of customers who are having claims at the same time where they’re desperate. Yeah, that’s when we’re really at the point of truth. Right? After a major flood, I was meeting with clients. And we had this one call was irate with our product that they had, and I was going with it at the time. So it was the only one that provided flood coverage standard to small businesses, what’s going wrong here. And as I looked into it, we sent our assessor out there, and the client was insured for half a million dollars worth of stock, right? And the assessor came back said, look, there’s at least $1.6 million where the stock has been destroyed. And you go, and this is a small business, and I don’t know what it’s like to run a small business. You know, that’s a million dollars is a lot of money. And it is real money. And you go, that number is sitting in their cloud accounting systems nowadays. So we said when we started the company, we go, how do we get the data out of the cloud accounting systems to drive the whole insurance process and make sure that people are covered all the time because that that’s the way it should work for customers is just like, my business goes up and my coverage goes up, my business goes down, my coverage goes down.
Michael Waitze 9:50
So this is really interesting. And you just jog something in my memory. You have these companies right to do financing and you’ll hopefully you’ll see where this is going right? They do financing for E commerce Companies, right. So I’m an E commerce company, I’m growing, I got 20% 30% sales growth, but I’m on a 90 day payment schedule, which means I don’t get my money until 90 days after I make my sale, there are a whole bunch of different things here. And these companies just say, okay, look, we’ll fund out of your accounts receivable or just out of your revenue, which we know is coming, and then you’ll just pay us back. But the way they do this is by what you’re suggesting, is by connecting their analysis systems directly to the balance sheet, right, and the income statement and the bank accounts of the companies to which they’re presumed to be lending to. And actually, insurance companies could do this as well for their SME businesses, and even some of their bigger businesses, give them the right to have access to your data so that your coverage is not, as you said, $500,000, when you’ve got 1.6 million in stock, now you can make a decision to only insure a third of it, I’m rounding if that’s what you’d like. But you should at least know what your coverage is in relation to what your stock is. So that you know that whether you’re covered in order, to what extent you are I wrote this down, right, you keep talking about technology and serving customers better. Like that’s just one example of how installing the right technology in a way that’s compliant with the regulations, particularly on the data side, will really help not just the customer, but the insurance companies serve the customer better. Does that make sense?
Daniel Fogarty 11:21
Yeah, that’s right. And that’s why we set up a Evari. So that we can bring data from other sources to the benefit of the customer. And in doing that, it’s to the benefit of the insurance companies, if the insurance company and the customer had a conversation, as you said about, you know, you’re only covered for half a million, you’ve actually got to make the numbers easy, $1.5 million worth of stock. And if you’ve made a decision as a customer to only insure a third of your stock, let’s find you know, when when when are the only two That’s right, went $200,000 with your stock is damaged, we will insure you know, $66,000, whether that or wherever the policy says so that you can have a much better conversation with your customer. And I think I’m passionate about him and he can add challenges the industry is we need to move all the underwriting and all that all that dialogue back to the point of sale. The customer knows what they’re buying, when they buy when you get to claim time, you don’t have an argument. So the customer knows they’re only going to be a third, you know, but how do you work it out? I mean, I’d like most people, I find it hard to hard to buy insurance. My son’s getting a couple of weeks, we were comparing, comparing snow sports and under travel insurance. And it’s actually complicated here. I’m a professional. And it’s quite complicated to cover paste or off pace doesn’t come easy if someone takes them if they rent. And you go, Well, you know you’re looking for and it took me a while to get through a few policies, how do we make that easy for the customer, you know, the customers should be able to go, this is what I’m going to do. And I want to know whether I’m right, I’m going to be covered for these things I’m gonna do.
Michael Waitze 13:00
So this is my question to you. So what is Evari really doing to solve this problem? And is it serving the buyers of insurance by not convincing, but by enabling them to then share their data with the big either incumbent insurance companies or within short texts that are dealing with their data? Or are you working with the incumbent insurers to say you should really use this data on the actuarial side to bring that to the point of sale? Right? As opposed to putting it back? Like which side are you serving? Are you serving both?
Daniel Fogarty 13:35
When we started in business, we started offering insurance Australian market to do that built the technology for the insurance stack ourselves. And now we’re no longer selling insurance. We’re in the technology business. And what we’ve done is we’ve made our platform flexible to me that’s the key word we’re flexible. So I can accept data from any way except unstructured data, you can use that data in real time, at the point of sale, or wherever in the process, that an insurer wants to use it. So we work with insurers who say, right, I know I’ve got some data I can get hold off, I want to I want to observe how my clients operating I want to be able to bring more things to the way they work. I want to I want to continually improve my process. So really, we’re our clients, our insurance mgas Mainly and increasingly brokers, people who are servicing customers, and making sure they provide a better experience but in doing so they also they get their own needs met as well.
Michael Waitze 14:32
But how like, I’m always curious what the sales process is like, particularly for a guy like you who’s come out of like a CEO role at a big company like Zurich, right has tonnes of resources, great technology, all that stuff. But this gets back to this innovation you were talking about right before you would think not you but one always talked about this disrupting the whole business and now it feels to me more like Value Chain Innovation where along the value chain can I innovate, and then insert myself into the processes of either big inch or ers or big insurtechs? Then take that little piece of the value chain or big piece of the value chain, right? Is that the way you’re looking at this as well.
Daniel Fogarty 15:07
We’ve really stepped back redevelop their technology in a way that enabled us to step back and say, what is what is the big problem we’re solving. And really, the big problem we’re solving is that technology is built to do a particular task in a particular way. And the challenge with that, is that the world quickly, and it is really hard to change the technology once it’s already. So how do you how do you and that and that is a really big, hairy, hairy, audacious goal, it’s a really wicked problem to solve. So that’s the problem we’ve gone after. And we’ve done that in, you know, in a technology way, where we’ve used a different sort of technology. So we’ve used the Venturi or what we, which is really how we bring data, you know, real time data, all the way across our platforms. And the second thing we’ve done is made our use of event streaming, event driven. Go ahead. Yep, mainstreaming technology. And a lot of people are using event streaming technology systems. They’re not using technology to create applications. And so we’ve used event streaming technology to create applications to make them fully flexible. And then on top of that, we’ve got a configuration layer that enables insurers, brokers, whoever’s using our system to be able to easily change the way that offerings from our pipe. So it’s really that flexibility of how do you bring all this data to bear? And then how do you make the process flexible, when still have fast technology you need for insurance?
Michael Waitze 16:41
What is event driven technology is this parametric technology, just taking real, not just but like taking real time data, processing it constantly in real time, like what does that mean?
Daniel Fogarty 16:50
So this is a bit of a bit of a techie word, but it’s it’s, it’s used, it’s really data streaming. And the reason why it’s called Event Stream, is because the data is from such an event, triggers data that is then able to flow and that might be holding on, there might be an IoT device, sending data in, and those sort of things. So if you’re not familiar with event streaming, it was made. It’s been around for decades, but it was made beloved by LinkedIn. And so LinkedIn, started event streaming. And then a lot of people think of Apache Kafka as event streaming. And there’s a company called float, which came out of the tech people at LinkedIn, and confluent, implement event streaming in organisations. And now there’s over 100,000 organisations in the world with events in the organisation. But generally, the use cases are the league system rather than create core applications.
Michael Waitze 17:49
Got it? Look, I’ve just been through so many tech development cycles, right? Building multiple different trading systems when I was at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, and you know, whether it was.net Or a whole bunch of you know, ex windows, viewers and stuff, like we used a tonne of different technology, but it always seemed like we had to change it, how do you future proof this stuff, right, using event streaming, and this configuration layer so that it remains, you maintain the flexibility, but you also maintain the usability as well going forward, right, so that somebody else can come along in seven years and just say, yeah, there’s something better and bigger.
Daniel Fogarty 18:23
To do that for I mean, there’s no way we’re offering it isn’t SaaS product, because then the pressure is always on us to make sure that it’s updated. So if someone’s using these techniques, one of the one of the challenges that insurance companies have and you know, you’ve you’ve seen this challenge, so many insurance companies still haven’t gone out of the basement. So they’re still, you know, they, they need to get out of the basement into the cloud. And then they start with just be just the basement in the cloud, then in the in the second step from going from the cloud is is how do you go to SaaS, so you’re actually outsourcing your, your, your Sim to someone else. And that’s a much better approach, because then then the pressure moves from the insurance companies, to the tech providers to go where you have to keep us up to date. And, and then portability between Sass will be the next thing that happens, you know, so that you can go, how do I swap one Sass out for another? If they’re not me. So I think that this trend of event streaming has been so it’s been around for decades, but it’s just in the last couple of decades. I firmly believe that this is going to change the end from our point of view using event streaming rather than rather than the traditional way of doing it.
Michael Waitze 19:40
What’s the again just to go back to the sales thing? What’s the response you get from both incumbent insurance companies but also smaller companies that are trying to use this product on both sides when you because event streaming sure has been around forever. And if you’re a technologist and understand like, what an event is, from a technology standpoint, you know, this has been around forever, but now incorporating this into the way you’re building your own tech stack? What is it? Like when you’re having that conversation? And you just ignore it and just say like, this stuff just works and work? Because you want to tell them you’re doing something differently? Right?
Daniel Fogarty 20:09
Well it really depends on who we talked to in your organisation, you know, so we find that when we talk to the tech people, they just go, wow, you’ve done this. That’s great. How did you do this? Yeah. And then they can see the benefit of it, because I’ve seen the benefit of advanced training in their organisations already. And the view from or from Product Managers going, Look, I’ve got a problem. I’ve usually, you know, you’ve got an underwriter wants to use data in a certain way. But they can’t, that’s a great customer for us. Because you go, Well, you’ve got this data, but you can’t actually use it in a certain way, where you can’t be flexible enough in the way you’re going to do that, or you want to use real time data, using more and more real time data, we are definitely looking for the people who want to drive the change, because they’re going well, how do I do something different? And a different muscle? We don’t always use in the insurance industry. And when the insurance industry does move very slowly, unfortunately. And there’s a good reason for that. There’s two good reasons for that. One, we do actually want the executives insurance companies to be somewhat conservative, because we want them to conserve the capital tomorrow, the declines. And the second reason is that, you know, it’s we’re not like a payments business where you make payments every day, you know, people, people interact with their with their insurance only once or twice a year, so and then that’s the reason for the slower takeout. But what we’re finding is that people who want to drive change, then, you know, were looking for them, then for us, where do we find each other often offered it in short tech conferences, often listen to podcasts, you know, that’s what you want to see change are the ones listening to your podcast. So and we go, Well, this is a different way to do it. And you can you can do it yourself, you can do the configuration, you’re going to have more control. That’s the same control we have in other uses of technology.
Michael Waitze 22:03
Do you miss being an mga in a way, right? Because it’s actually doing the mechanics of the real like buying and selling and actually doing the insurance business? And what was the impetus for just switching into being a tech company was that just like, oh, wait a second, we need to focus on this full time, because this is really going to be the game changer for the whole industry.
Daniel Fogarty 22:20
When we said about this, we wanted to make a difference to as much of the industry as began, we were driven by how do we how do we get the right insurance in the hands of as many end customers as possible. And really, that’s that that’s what drove us at the start. Because if a customer has the right insurance, then the industry is very good at turning up and paying the client. The problem occurs where the customer has the wrong insurance. Because then it claims time, the policy doesn’t respond, because because they bought the wrong policy. So you know, our passion comes from that. How do we help as many customers as we can get the right insurance. And what happened in our journey is we decided when we set up in Australia first, we were going to set up in the UAE and but as we launched our first technology, we had Lloyd’s syndicate supporting us those syndicates and other people looking at our technology said, Oh, I like your technology, can we licence your technology. And really, that’s how we went down the sastra and was really driven by insurer demand. And we also realised we can have a much bigger impact. And the issues are different to when you’re running an insurance business. You know, the issues of running an insurance business are very different to the issues of running a technology business, even though you’re you’re sort of urgent, but the issues are quite different. So yeah, a big challenge for me who hasn’t? Who hasn’t run a technology company before, but fortunately, my co founders have more experienced together we’re running with?
Michael Waitze 23:46
Boy, none of it’s easy, though, for sure. Talk to me a little bit about how all of these things you’re doing because in Australia, like insurance penetration is pretty high. How does this impact the affordability and accessibility particularly not just in Australia, but as you expand outside of that market into markets that are closer?
Daniel Fogarty 24:02
This is where technology I think is going to take off in Asia more quickly than in some of the developed countries. Because there there is already a very set way to buy insurance, you know, somewhere like Australia, you know, we’ve we’ve, we’ve been a country, you know, out we’ve been our insurance has been direct bought for pretty much all my lifetime. But you know, we’ve been buying, you know, had a funny circumstance, you know, sort of 20 years ago, I’m I moved to the US I was living in California for a while. And I went there with my Australian experience to run a border collie with the witch and what number do I ring to buy my insurance? And they said no, you don’t see an agent is gonna say like, that’s what my parents did you know, or maybe maybe even their grandparents. We’ve been direct here in this country for a long time. But you look into into all the Asian countries is that they they’re going to they’re going to they’re going to skip some some of the some of the things Was that more developed countries? And as you know, the the take up rate of mobile phones is I mean, that’s the whole life of many people. How do we, you know, I feel the affordability issues are going to be so major, almost before the shift in the more developed countries, and then people are going to bring that understanding into the more developed countries, because how do we have smaller insurance? How do we? How do we give people cover for just parts of what they need? Because they can’t buy the whole thing? Because they can’t afford it, right? Or
Michael Waitze 25:31
how do we make it monthly payments, as opposed to upfront payments? Like, all this kind of stuff is gonna change? I think, yeah,
Daniel Fogarty 25:36
Technology is gonna help them in a big why, because it’s kind of, it just lowers the cost of delivery, it gives greater flexibility in the hands of the customer. And so sorry, market like ours, you know, affordability has become a big issue for those people in high risk. Because what’s happened is, data has Yeah, another thing that Australia was sort of one of the leading countries on was was risk address pricing, and they’re driven by natural catastrophe. So you know, the houses that are in the higher risk zones, get a higher price, so they’re just getting more and more unaffordable to insure, which is then how do we then go the next step and say, Are we Gosh, mitigation and insurance pricing? Again, you need that you need that, you know, technology to do that? So, so the next phase of things are going to be how do you understand what a what a retail customer does for mitigation in their own property? Have they cleared all the trees around their house? Before the fire season? Right? All the all the ads on TV at the moment? Number of the ads on TV, around around Christmas time dryer? Is the fire ready? Because, you know, the fire season starts about now. And you have you cleared the trees around your block? Have you cut the grass? You know, these are all mitigation things, you know, similarly for for flood, you know, you should house built on stilts, have you built in under your house? All these local real property mitigation things are things that I that really we built our platform to do that, how do you bring that data into what customers you know, what customers are doing, and then reward the ones who are good at mitigation. And you can do that, because you can get photos of provenance, for example, we know whether people are looking after their property because you can get you know, there’s a service here that takes a photograph of every property from three directions, every month. So you can get and you know, zeros ever work out how to use that data to go wow, who are the people looking after their properties? Have they clear the trees around their house? How have they got flood ready, and you got all those things you got to lead to better insurance outcomes for Well, for the for the insurance. But that definitely shouldn’t be
Michael Waitze 27:44
Doesn’t mean that like the landscaping companies, the ones that are actually cleaning the trees and cutting your grass and maybe setting up your the way your flowers look should also be deliverers of insurance products, because they know the status of your property. And if they can somehow connect to the date of like when they clean up your property, this gets back to what you were talking about before, right? Making sure you have the right insurance, connecting that data then back to the insurance database that the actuaries can see that along with the other data that they’re seeing, could then help them price the policies better. This is how technology works in this way. No,
Daniel Fogarty 28:19
Yeah, that’s right. Well, it does so but you don’t think about it from your point. You think about it from a customer point of view. Well, if an insurer I could identify that there are problems with your property, and they advise you on that, and then say, you know, if you want to get a lower price, do you put these mitigations in place? Yeah, we’ve detected that you have three trees over your property, depending on what you can do within local, local, local government laws, and all those sort of things about what you can move or what you can do. Right? Yeah. But you can see that people were the people set up for these things. And they’ve got a pool have they have they set it up? So they can be easily used? Do they have a generator on their block, ready to go when the power goes out, and they want to use water in the pool the fire?
Michael Waitze 29:02
This is this is where we are. This is the way I was thinking about it. Like from an ecosystem standpoint, you mentioned that there was a company that takes pictures of your of your house from like three different angles. And all I could think of was, okay, that’s super cool. Somebody has the right to do that. So then they can also take that data, and then sell it to the landscaping company because they can go look this, this family never cleans up and then the landscaping company thinks well, if they’re not cleaning up, well, then it’s more of a fire hazard. And because it’s around Christmas, and it’s fire season, well then we should let the insurance company know and let that person know and hook everybody up so that they have the right insurance, that their property is properly being cleaned. And they have a generator on there. Like all this kind of stuff that you could do just because someone’s taking three photos of your property was what I was thinking yeah.
Daniel Fogarty 29:46
Well and really wait where should insurance go or what should it should do in the next couple of decades what we should get to a point of helping, helping insurance mitigate because the better mitigation I mean, people don’t want to call I’m wondering, no, yeah, I don’t want to climb up. I don’t want to have an insurance event. I want to I want to have my insurance there’s a catastrophe happens then. Good, right? You know, but really what I want to do is I want to mitigate all my risk, I want to I want to drive better. So I want data on data data on my driving. So I know your data or by car, you know, is that a hassle? Or what data on my house so that, you know, I know whether I’m protecting things correct or flood zone or are the flood zone changing the sea levels and are higher and this is this is what’s happened here in my server, we had a fairly major flooding earlier in the year because the sealant receptacles have changed and changed. And, you know, and a whole lot of houses been planted that were like, Oh, my God, I didn’t realise, thank God, I looked at the flood maps before I bought my house.
Michael Waitze 30:47
But not everybody does.
Daniel Fogarty 30:48
Not everybody. Yeah, it’s an occupational hazard, isn’t it? So
Michael Waitze 30:53
I just thought it was funny when you were telling the story earlier about your son buying insurance. And dad was just like, I don’t I don’t know what to do here. It’s just way too complicated. Like ruining your whole rap with your kid.
Daniel Fogarty 31:03
It was actually he’s my son spending a year overseas. He’s in Canada, doing doing a year of university. That’s awesome. And he’s, he’s spending, he’s spending his Christmas in California. So he’s with some family, friends of ours. So he’s, we’re sort of also comparing well, like, what happens between the two countries? And what’s different here? And what’s different there? What is, what is the university? You know, it says it is a little bit complicated would be great. I was just looking, it would be great to have some device, I could just go in and say to the hates doing these things, and how do I make sure it’s protected? It’d be if he has a bad accident on a ski field. them has to be airlifted. But
Michael Waitze 31:43
you shouldn’t be able to do that, right? Because you should if because this gets back to this idea of open insurance, right? In other words, if you have all these data points, even as a different insurer, right, but it’s all anonymized. And you can then go out and access that data, whether it’s through an API, whether it’s headless, like any way you want to do it. And then say, here’s a cohort of people that are doing exactly what my son is doing using technology, getting access to that open insurance data, and then pricing it up. Like you said, Sorry, at the point of sale, you would love that.
Daniel Fogarty 32:11
You’d love that you put this information in and up comes all the things going be wary of this, you know, it Maitri is particularly for the for the uninitiated, we will get I mean, we we build technology that can do that. Right? Well, we’re just got to we’ve just got to the people who are dealing with the clients who could do that. And that’s our challenge is competitive, where’s the business? Find those right people? Which is why some products like embedded insurance are becoming more talked about because that’s customers doing another transaction. Right. And going in as insurance trends. Can you at the same time, right, but are they getting the right advice at that time that that that’s the thing that I would be questioning, you know, because if it’s just an add on, you know, the word discussion of insurance, I’m sure you had lots of those in the podcast. But it’s really just using data and being in the right place at the right time. But to make tomate about mitigation, and getting getting customers getting, making sure customers buy the right insurance there by then, unfortunately, we all know that for 234 5% of the population, things go wrong every year, right? And for for those people when the things go wrong, which is what we just want them to be financially in the same position they were before it happened. That’s what we do so well as the industry. We’ve got to help them mitigate and we’ve got to help make sure they get the right one. I’m passionate about what I’m doing. That’s why That’s why I left big business and I’ve been small business trying to go on to solve this problem and do it in multiple countries, which is a bit of a challenge.
Michael Waitze 33:41
That that’s the perfect way to end Daniel Fogarty, the founder and CEO at Evari and a non-executive director at InsurTech Australia. We have to have you back. Thank you so much for doing this today.
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