The Asia InsurTech Podcast genuinely enjoyed speaking with Amit Patel, a Founder at Peachy.
Some of the topics Amit covered in detail include:
- Technology paradigm shifts
- Controlled cannibalization and being brave
- Data-enabled product personalization
- Insurance as a Service
- Splitting Peachy into regulated and unregulated entities
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- Juggling Many Things
- Tech Enablement and Digital Transformation
- They’re Looking for Piece of Mind
- Some of the Patterns Are Still the Same
- Change Costs Money
Please read the best-efforts transcript below:
Michael Waitze 0:00
Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. Today we are joined by Amit Patel. Founder at Peachy. Amit, it’s great to have you on the show. Busy day. Like how are you?
Amit Patel 0:15
I’m good. Lovely to lovely to be on. Thank you so much. Yeah, I’m busy days always juggling many things.
Michael Waitze 0:23
Like as an entrepreneur, people forget, like you don’t leave your home for the most part and go to an office and do things and separate yourself from like your regular life, it really kind of gets intertwined. You know what I mean? Like when you hang up a sales call? You could be like feeding the dog like nobody knows. Right? And you would never do that if you went to an office anyway, I think it keeps us busy at a different level, I think then going to a regular job. Anyway, let’s jump right into this thing. What do you think is the biggest trend from your perspective? In insurance? And InsurTech? Let’s just say globally from your perch? Yeah.
Amit Patel 0:59
Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting question. I think for a while, as you know, tech enablement and digital transformation of an industry that’s been quite dinosaur like, has been going on sort of passively, I guess. And the inshore tech space has now started to really proliferate. And you’ve seen some bigger sized companies gain traction with incumbents and enterprise clients with their technology solutions or data solutions. And, you know, I’m bothered by the fact that the insurance industry has not managed to adopt technology, where it’s businesses all about risk management, and data models and analytics and so forth, to become more efficient. And, you know, we’re seeing that sort of play out more and more as time goes by. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 1:56
So why do you think and a lot of people talk about regulation, right. And I kind of want to move away from that unless you think this is the key here. But why do you think it’s taking longer in the insurance industry longer than let’s say where I was working like in a trading industry, which is also heavily regulated? To do the things you just talked about to have technology solutions to have data solutions? What was the stopping point?
Amit Patel 2:19
Yeah, I think it’s multifactorial, and it changes by line of insurance as well. And by market, frankly, but, you know, firstly, insurance by its sort of mere nature is something that it’s a risk management exercise, and therefore, you know, the default position is to be risk averse, I guess, in general. And I think that, you know, sort of embeds in the hearts and minds of many people and the culture of, you know, staff teams working in these types of companies, I think that sort of kicks it off. I also think, you know, it’s a regulated industry. So there’s quite a moat, you can’t just get into it without some degree of expertise, right. And so, you know, I’ll say this in the nicest of ways, insurance companies are in a privileged but lazy position in that, you know, competition from the outside until over the last, I would say, five to seven years hasn’t really caused them a problem, because they’ve just got such entrenched positions and defensible kind of regulatory status and balance sheets and so forth. I think also the kind of capability required to instigate this type of change, understanding of technology, data, particularly trends in the spaces that are emerging, and having those people as change agents, and giving them the autonomy and organizations, I don’t think that’s really the the kind of modus operandi of the general kind of teams that you find in these insurance companies. But think that’s another issue. And, and, of course, you know, sort of tied with the laziness point. Change costs money. It has a massive overhead when it comes to technology, because, you know, I think these businesses are so encumbered by legacy tech. And it takes time. And that time, I think people are starting to realize that actually, it takes a lot longer than one would think, and therefore, going slow or not doing it at all is sort of like a interesting alternative or an option.
Michael Waitze 4:36
When I walked into Morgan Stanley on my first day, and frankly, when I walked into Goldman Sachs on my first day, if you had seen the state of the technology that was there, particularly at Goldman, I think you would have been appalled. And it did take I would consider myself at the time like the next generations with the next generation of people to come in and say we could do way more with way less if we just had better technology. And it took a little bit of rabble rousing, actually, internally to say, Oh my God, why am I getting in at 530 in the morning when I could be getting in at seven o’clock in the morning, because the tech is just so upside down and backwards. And it took at least in Tokyo alone at Goldman, it took like four or five years to get things up to speed. And that’s with everybody being on board. But boy, if there had been people there who saying no, we can’t do this, it could have taken 10 years or more. Do you think that there’s a generational change taking place as well?
Amit Patel 5:31
Yeah, I think, you know, market needs, customer dynamics, all of these things are changing almost their global base, you know, on a daily basis, hour to hour, minute to minute, second second. And that pace, that the kind of delta between what companies are offering and what market needs and once are, is just getting bigger. And I just, you know, I’m quite bullish about the fact that you can’t, in most instances, trying to transform out of, you know, the sorts of situations digitally, is very, very difficult for many insurance companies. I’m not saying it applies to all sectors, and not in all insurance companies. But it’s a gross generalization. And actually, it’s sort of time to rewrite the proposition and build a new technology stack almost, which resets, you know, the way that the insurance company or industry starts to operate. Because I just think it’ll take too long to like, change it any other way.
Michael Waitze 6:34
So what does that reset look like to you? And again, I want to give you my perspective on this, when we came, when I moved to Goldman Sachs, we changed a lot of the front end systems made them a lot faster, made our interactions with the trading market much better. It was the back end systems that we had were all the data set where we were like, should we even touch that? Because if we do, if we get anything wrong, we call that that was our position management system. But it’s not really different than the policy management system at an insurance company. If you get that wrong, it could be fatal. Right? So the front end can get changed the interactions you have with clients that you know, all that digital transformation is great. But how do you do this transformation that you’re talking about the reset with all these back end legacy systems as well, which is where a lot of the risk stands? No.
Amit Patel 7:21
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think, you know, there’s, there’s kind of different philosophical approaches to this. But what I’ve found is trying to, like move components of technology in the back end, to kind of upgrade them, if you like, yeah, it has not really worked in C optimizes a piece of that backend. But then the other parts that sit around it remain legacy if you like, and so the value that you’re trying to derive doesn’t really work because another part sort of fails you whether it’s from a performance perspective, or data synchronization perspective, or whatever it might be, and obviously takes time, I guess we’ve just had loads of paradigm shifts haven’t been technology like cloud native, you know, infrastructure relative to on prem, massive paradigm shift, the advent of serverless. So dynamically Elastic Compute, on demand, right? massive paradigm shift, the development of AI, and kind of machine learning and other exponential technologies like distributed ledger, yet another paradigm shift. And I think these sorts of shifts, that they they just don’t allow you to kind of change bit by bit, I think you have to do it in a wholesale way. But what I would say is, when you do it in a wholesale way, you create a new baby, if you like, this is a new platform, a new way of operating, it’s got a different, ideally, a more simplified process. It’s not just a digital incarnation of the thing that you used to do before, right? It can I think it’s about it can be Yeah, it can’t be. But the way to de risk that in my view, is to onboard customers are start to operate that new baby, if you like that new technology platform, that new proposition in a low risk way by having only some of the processes or customers or whatever, sort of migrate to that operating model. And an almost is like you have a startup you you get confidence in that operating model, and therefore migrate more of your customers or your processes or whatever over to that new way of operating. And the original platform or systems will start to atrophy in my view. But it’s quite important not to create undue legacy incumbrance and integrations into an old technology stack.
Michael Waitze 9:59
It’s a real Good point. And I like to make analogies for this right? I used to say again, when I was at Goldman it was like taking an engine out of a Formula One car and putting it into a fair, a Ford. Fairmont, it was like, yeah, the engine is great. But the legacy of the terrible tires, a terrible exhaust, the terrible steering in the Ford Fairmont was going to make that engine useless. And this is kind of what you’re saying, If you build these whiz bang systems, and then attach them to legacy, which is just like a shoulder shrug of like, why do we care? In a way? It doesn’t matter? Right?
Amit Patel 10:29
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think that’s absolutely right. And I to extend that analogy, I think of this as, I mean, it could be a Tesla, but it also could be a resto mod. You know, it could be like a Camaro 69. But with a brand new chassis with ABS, you know, whether a fuel injected LS seven, you know, all the mod cons that you could imagine, but still with the classic styling of that, that car from a body perspective. Yeah. And
Michael Waitze 10:58
that’s okay. Right. I mean, you’re right, it’s actually a great extension of that analogy, because the point that I was trying to make was that the internals in the Ford family and connecting it to a fast engine were useless. But you could then take all the internals, which is what you’re suggesting, just going junk them all. But this looks beautiful. And I’d love to be seen in a 69 Camaro, or a 64 in a 64 Corvette, but with all the updated stuff, so I can have my iPod in there and listen to my fancy music, right? So I get it completely. And it’s an interesting concept to write, you could build a brand new system and take none of your legacy clients. But like everybody over 18 signs, a new insurance policy just goes onto the new system and bit by bit by bit, that just becomes the system. Right. But to do that, does it mean you have to go to more Greenfield markets? Or can you do it in a mature market, like in the United States, like in Europe? Or do you have to come to Asia to do that?
Amit Patel 11:54
Well, that’s a very interesting question. I think, where in markets where there is limited infrastructure, and legacy systems, it’s sort of easier to do a greenfield build, if you like, I think in more mature markets, the issue is one of being brave. And and the other issue is one of, I think, controlled cannibalization. So, you know, insurance companies don’t want to create yet another innovative Wizzy division. Yeah, yeah, it’s likely to threaten their current entrenched position, but it’s better that they do it. And they can control the cannibalization from one platform more proposition to another, then someone else come and do it and just eat their, you know, their lunch. And I think that, you know, that should not be a reason not to do it. But it’s certainly easier in in front of Southeast Asia, I think, and and other markets such as that, like Africa, for example.
Michael Waitze 13:03
Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about this as well, right? Obviously, I live in I’ve lived in Asia for the past 30 something years, I’ve lived in Southeast Asia for the past 11 years. And my interest in emerging developing markets called whatever you want is super high. I look at what’s happened in Southeast Asia in the 11 years that I’ve lived here. And I kind of look over and see what’s happening in Africa as well. And I just think I know what’s going to happen. I don’t know the shape it’s going to take, but I kind of understand the pathway. Talk to me about what you think that looks like both in Southeast Asia, and in Africa as well, because I think that’s where the future is, but I’m curious what you think.
Amit Patel 13:42
Yeah, I think, you know, in this a generalization, but in these markets, the infrastructure is not as well developed. There hasn’t been as much investment in the past. And what and obviously, these markets are big, some of them China, India, in various other places, you know, the global population is sort of concentrated in these markets. If you if you think about sheer volume of people, yeah, in at the same time, whilst, you know, there hasn’t been that much kind of investment in infrastructure, yet technology, you know, God rest his soul. Mr. Moore, you know, Moore’s Law has has driven technology to, you know, new heights, dizzy heights, exponential growth, if you like. And so now, you know, you find yourself were in a place where, you know, even people in these economies where the GDP per capita is much lower than the western economies can afford technology such as laptops, mobile phones, smartphones, you know, all these these sorts of things, the types of things that are required to enable the type of futuristic propositions that we’re talking about and technology stacks from a customer customer interaction perspective. And therefore I find these markets you know, super sexy, and I’ve got to Like anecdotes, I guess, you know, a long time ago, I followed em Pacer. And it in Africa, you know, allowing movement of money via mobile phone. And, you know, also in India, fishermen near Goa that used to do, or still do go out fishing, you know, they figure out between each other through mobile communication where the best fishing places along the shoreline, and then to understand where market price along the shoreline is best for them, so that they go sell there because there’s demand. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, as fishermen to be able to leverage technology in such a way. And I know, it’s very simple example. I think that’s great. And, and the adoption curve of the sorts of solutions where you’ve got nothing is really spectacular, I think, relative to, you know, sort of Western more developed nations if you’d like.
Michael Waitze 16:05
Yeah. And you’ve actually just made me think about this in a different way, right. So if we go back 25 years, or 30 years into the Western world and think What did it cost to buy a desktop computer and who could really afford to get one, this may actually help explain why some of these legacy systems still exist. Because for people to interact digitally back then, obviously wasn’t happening on a phone. But computers were expensive for regular people. And while you could have bought an Amiga or a Commodore, once you put a keyboard and and a display with it, it was still expensive. But today, you can literally get like a throwaway smartphone. And you’re right. Even some not the poorest people in the world. But some people with like very low resource is can still get a phone. And it means I can go out fishing with the GPS, and they can communicate with other people in a way that they couldn’t do before. So it means that the things you can build have much bigger impact, but also have to be digital, where 30 years ago, they could have been, but in a way, it wouldn’t have mattered because even people in the middle class or upper middle class couldn’t afford the tools that would have made that possible. And that’s a really interesting thing, particularly in Southeast Asia. And M PESA. has been in Africa for a decade now. Is that right? I can’t I don’t know. But for a while. And that combined with we didn’t talk about this Yep. But UPI in India this ability to move money around frictionlessly means now that those types of products, whether they’re FinTech InsurTech, but anything having to do with money, and investment, and risk management is now available, possibly to anybody that has connectivity. And that’s just different.
Amit Patel 17:42
Yeah, absolutely. It’s fundamentally different. And it’s the volume of people. I mean, it’s yeah, it’s astounding, you know, mobile penetration in India. It’s astounding, you know, it’s it’s It dwarfs, you know, the UK, for example.
Michael Waitze 18:00
Yeah, it dwarfs the United States as well as towards Japan, it towards everywhere, really. And when I look at what’s happening there, and I think about sort of, let’s just say like the amount of data that’s getting accumulated, that was almost impossible to accumulate before, do you look at this as well, because you talked before about these products need to be not just newer and digitally native, but also need to be simpler. Do you think that the access to this mass amount of people that wasn’t possible before, plus all the data that they’re generating, makes it easier to both personalize but also simplify the products as well?
Amit Patel 18:38
Yeah, I think it should do definitely personalization, simplification. You know, that’s an interesting one. Yeah. Whether the data enables you to simplify or not, is a good question, I think, to be honest data, you know, allow, if the data is good quality, got provenance, then it allows you to draw insights. And those insights can help you to drive better customer experience of outcomes. And, and one of those areas is, you know, ask anyone, would you like simple products or complicated products? Everyone before? It’s that simple, right, right. And so I think the data can be weaponized in a way that enables simplicity to be drawn out of it, so you can cut through the noise.
Michael Waitze 19:25
Yeah, look, I was having this conversation this morning, as well with somebody in the insurance industry. I hesitated myself to buy health insurance for a bunch of years. And well, because in a way, right, it didn’t make sense to me. How to buy it because I’ve been given it my whole life. Right. And this is a weird concept. I mean, I worked at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, it doesn’t matter. But I just walked in and on day one, they’re like, sign these forms. You have insurance. Your family has insurance. I didn’t know what it cost. I didn’t care. I didn’t have to. So I didn’t understand the complex. it. But once I had to get insurance myself, it took me a while. And to be fair to the person that actually sold it to me the best was the person that just made it the easiest. She was just like, here are the things you need. Here’s your age, just do this thing. And I was like I’m signing fine. And the price was right. Right. But but it wasn’t the price wasn’t that different from everything else. But it was just so easy for me to understand what she was offering that I just said, done. Right. Does that make sense as well?
Amit Patel 20:28
Yeah, I think it does. And so making the purchase decision more frictionless. Yeah. And enabling checkout faster, if you like. Yeah. And and also almost like a SaaS product, to be able to leave it. If it doesn’t work for you. For whatever reason that might be. It’s almost like a promise from the provider to say, Don’t worry, I’ve got your back. Because if you don’t, if you don’t get what you want from it, you can come out of it. I think that’s those are sort of interesting ways. People think about products these days.
Michael Waitze 21:10
Can we talk about insurance as a service? If you don’t mind? It, you said SAS, right. So software is a service, but we can call it I don’t know how you would pronounce IAS s and I don’t really care. But if insurance, if you can do it as a service, in the same way that I pay for Microsoft Excel monthly, or that I pay for Adobe Creative Suite monthly, should we be making insurance easy enough so that it can be just a monthly payment, right where I don’t have to pay $10,000 up for let’s just say $12,000 up front at the beginning of the year, but I can pay $1,000 A month or $500 a month, whatever it is, and still have the same coverage I have with the expectation that I’ve signed a year long contract or a two year long contracts that I will pay all that money, but that will pay it in pieces. Does that make sense as well?
Amit Patel 21:55
I think it does. I mean, you know, an interesting example, I guess, you see in many markets see here in the UK, income protection, critical illness, life, health insurance, pet insurance. For me, these are all sort of a constellation of protection products, either for you know, my pet, or, or me and my loved ones, yet they’re sold as individual products. And and they have similar question sets for underwriting if you like, but not the same, exactly the same. Yeah. And, and yet, you know, to try and buy these things, it’s a complete nightmare to do it individually. Whereas if someone just said, like, you know, instead of me giving you health insurance, like I’m gonna give you a protection product, right, and they have certain interplays, right, so if you’re off work, and you can’t, you know, walk for whatever reason, income protection kicks in, you get health insurance to be able to get you back to work. So the income protection comes off, you know, if you’re critically ill, and you can’t work, you know, we’ll pay you a lump sum of money or you go back to work at a reduced level, like, some of these things have overlaps as well. So it’s, so I see this move in the future, although you’ve got to get customers used to it brokers used to etc, of sort of just having a protection product, if you like, rather than multiple different products that you buy to cover different eventualities in your life related to protection.
Michael Waitze 23:25
So are you building those products at PG? Because that sounds like a product that I would want? Right? In other words, when I buy health insurance, why is it separate? And it’s a rhetorical question, right? But why is it separate from your right income protection insurance, where if I have a health problem, it’s likely that I can’t go to work, and that I won’t be able to afford my health insurance. But if I have income protection, then that kicks in when I can’t go to work anymore? As long as it’s legitimate, right, which can also then fund my health insurance. And when I go back to work, I don’t need the income protection anymore. This is a product I think that everybody would want. And are you building that and how hard is it to build that type of product, just the product itself? And then you can talk about how hard it is to market and sell their product as well, because it’s different. Yeah.
Amit Patel 24:08
So we’re not building that product at the moment. It’s hard enough to build a a single product? Well, I would say, but, you know, our ambitions and we’re quite we’re an early stage company, our ambitions, you know, there’s a number of avenues to explore in terms of strategic growth for us. And one of those dimensions is to look at how as we’ve just discussed health insurance intertwines with these various other products that are available into the in the market and whether there’s a possibility to create a consolidated protection product with a single premium, if you like, and it’s got some clear benefits in the different scenarios that one might find themselves in. I think that would make it a lot easier, like for companies for example, to cover their employees or individuals, you know, I think there’s there’s a point around individual circumstances, risk selection and individuals wanting to kind of tailor those products a lot more. But for companies, and particularly large ones that may often provide many of these products, albeit there silo products in various guises anywhere, and I just think it would make it much simpler to have them bundled and sold as a as a whole, if you like. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 25:28
I mean, one of the things that I wrote down was, Is this a b2b product, or is it a b2c product? Right? Because if I’m a company, and I have a cohort of employees, that can’t work, but I still need to pay them their salary. If I were insured for that, why would I care? I mean, I would care. Obviously, you don’t I mean, it would make my life a lot easier financially. And I had done that risk mitigation that we talked about at the beginning and the risk management so that that’s okay. And when they come back to work, you’re right, that single premium stops paying for this and starts again paying for their health insurance. But this brings up a bigger question as well. Do you see this merging or intertwining of health, fitness and financial fitness as well, where those two things are just becoming the same thing or they’re so closely related? Now?
Amit Patel 26:15
I think in in certain instances from if you put a customer lens to it, not not everyone jumps immediately to the conclusion that if I’m unwell, then I’m not going to be able to work. And so, you know, I need for ducks that will support me that that kind of articulation, although it’s implied, and you know, it’s quite obvious when someone states it, it’s not the first thing I don’t think customers necessarily just sort of think about what they’re looking for peace of mind that comes in various guises and ways. And I think that that sort of peace of mind should be the way forward, but I think hearts and minds still need to change a bit. Historically, people are used to buying these products in particular ways. And they are seeing, you know, as you say, these kind of sectors are sort of blending a little bit more. But I haven’t seen a killer product yet that that, you know, converges and all of those things together yet,
Michael Waitze 27:14
neither have I. But I do think that again, back to the comment you were making before, we there were so many products that we couldn’t create on the trading desk because of the legacy systems that we had, because there was no way to connect the things that we knew we wanted to connect but couldn’t. But once we started building new systems, we thought to ourselves, hey, wait a second, we can connect that thing to this thing. Well, that alone is a brand new product. So as you go through this digital transformation, right, and you move systems, from the old legacy systems onto brand new kind of Greenfield systems, my guesses, and again, tell me where I’m wrong here is that even just through serendipity, you’ll think I didn’t realize we could connect that thing to this thing. Here’s a brand new product that everyone’s gonna want. Are you thinking about this as well?
Amit Patel 27:58
Yeah, I think you know that that’s very interesting. The interoperability of systems and data flows, starts to unlock new worlds, that you can’t necessarily predict right now. Things are moving so fast that you don’t
Michael Waitze 28:15
know can we have? Can we end this conversation without talking about Chuck GPT. And the artificial intelligence stuff, I don’t like to talk about trendy stuff. But I feel like we’re at the beginning of it, like you said, this a paradigm shift. When I look at all the work that’s getting done in all, frankly, all of the work that we used to do back on the trading desk, using artificial intelligence, using machine learning to look at historically what had traded and how it was going to trade in the future. I see this now seeping into everything, particularly with all the noise around chat TPT, how is all this stuff around artificial intelligence, all these conversations, all this explosion of information, impacting what you’re building or thinking about building?
Amit Patel 28:55
So we like you don’t actually talk about any of that. And the reason why we don’t talk about any of that is our technology stack is AI and machine learning enabled? I think everyone’s is frankly, the reality of life. Any new stack is the reality of life is none of that, that important and good technology can be deployed if you don’t have good quality, high volume data. Yeah, this is the the facts of life. And so where we are at our stage of our company, you know, we don’t have the scale of data that makes deployment of machine learning and you know, AI models meaningful. But our data modeling and data architecture and the technology suite that we use, enables us to be able to deploy those sorts of technologies when we get that scale of data.
Michael Waitze 29:51
It’s such a great answer. You know, most people would give some gobbledygook answer about how everything is artificially intelligence and all this other stuff, but you’re right and again, And I was having this conversation this morning with somebody. To me, it’s just another tool like Linux. So it would be like asking you 15 or 20 years ago, do you use Linux? And going? Oh, we haven’t thought about it yet. But the reality is that everybody’s using it. It’s just there. And it’s just another tool. Talk to me as well about what it’s like being you’re in London. Yeah. Um, yeah, looking at markets outside of that region, as engines for potential growth.
Amit Patel 30:27
Yes. So, as part of our journey with our business, we recently optimized our corporate structure as I would call it. So we created underneath our group entity, we already had a regulated, managing general agent mga business, and what we’ve done is extracted the technology out of that and created a tech subsidiary. And, you know, the reason to do that, you know, there are a few reasons but one, you know, to segregate regulated and unregulated activities, to to preserve the solvency of the regulated entity, because we’re spending, you know, a lot of money on development, and so forth. And three, really, to be able to take that the technology that’s being built in that TEPCO out to others. And what I mean by others is other health insurance that we could effectively deliver them a new digital business, with a digital, by default, if you like operating model, and then I’ll say digital is actually bionic, because not everything is fully digital, there is human in the loop in areas that we can’t digitalize right now, and that some of that is because of scale of data. Others is because we’re just not mature enough yet in our technology evolution to manage and digitize those some of those processes. But I think is a really interesting opportunity to kind of say, you know, we’ve got this digital platform, right, we have a reference installation of that platform in the UK running as an mga already. And that platform could be leveraged to basically re platform existing products that you might have, or a version of those existing products on a new operating model, or to go and do what some of these guys have or and girls have always wanted to do, which is create new products with pace. But the sole difference being relative to other inshore tech platforms is we’ve built this with a domain driven design, specifically around health insurance. So of course, there are a lot of reusable components in there for other types of lines of business. But we understand this business, because this is the sort of business you know, myself and my co founders have been in for many, many years. And we are running an operating on the platform already.
Michael Waitze 32:58
So this is interesting to me, because you know that you know what already works, right? Because you’re using yourself for your own MGA. Right. So if you offer it to somebody else, it’s not like, it’s not like, like, again, a greenfield installation for you. Because you know, the tech already works. Yeah, we talked about Asia, we talked about India as well. You know, every market out here has its own little different market microstructure has its own different regulations, and its own idiosyncrasies. To me, that was always exciting. You know, again, if I had to do a trade in New Zealand, it was definitely different than doing a trade in Greece or doing a trade in India, and I loved the different market. microstructures. Is this interesting and exciting for you as well, you know what I mean, because Indonesia is not Vietnam.
Amit Patel 33:38
Yeah, incredibly, so. I, you know, obviously Lea with the healthy economies, the intertwining between public and private health systems, and penetration of health insurance and the type of products, provider networks, they’re all different around the world, and I think, coined the phrase variety is the spice of life. Right? It keeps it interesting, it does. But some of the patterns, you know, if you just map out a customer journey, some of the patterns are still the same. You know, someone will go look for these types of products, they need a place to discover them and learn about them, right? They need to find a way of modulating the price and picking benefits, if that’s the way the product works. They’ll need a payment gateway, they need a rate, we’d need to have a rate engine built. They need a way to manage the policy when it’s in flight. Whether it’s changes or access providers or access, make a claim those sorts of scenarios. So, in my view, the patterns of there are certain patterns commonality and front end customer experience, which has particular implications for reusable components at the back end. Yeah. And then there are things which you know, will vary dramatically pricing product structure The number of providers and the way they wish to operate with, you know, the insurance company and their tech platform. Those things change.
Michael Waitze 35:10
So before I let you go, just one more thing. I like to say that no one succeeds alone. Right, particularly if you’re entering new markets. And I believe this really strongly I do it for my own business as well. I’m always looking for strong partners, when you expand outside of your own region. And you look to Southeast Asia, you look to Africa to expand, are you also looking for partners that to expand with as well?
Amit Patel 35:32
Absolutely. So we’re looking for, you know, insurers that are already playing in the health vertical, or want to get into the health vertical, who want to be able to have a digital first platform and operating model to service their customers. And this is where we want to, you know, find new partners, create new opportunities for ourselves and our platform to be able to kind of license it out and build the infrastructure, you know, in a particular geography, or multiple geographies.
Michael Waitze 36:09
To be fair, right. Okay. Thank you so much for doing this. Amit Patel, Founder of Peachy. I really appreciate your time today.
Amit Patel 36:17
Thanks a lot, Michael. Really, really good talking.
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