The Future of Insurance Podcast – Rob Galbraith
Insurance Futurist, Author, Speaker
Season 2, Episode 20, March 15, 2022
Guest Bio
Rob Galbraith is a well-known insurance futurist, industry influencer and international bestselling author. Rob has over 25 years of experience on the carrier side and is a recognized thought leader who has been called “the patron saint of insurtech” and “the most interesting man in insurance”. He is an award-winning keynote speaker and frequent media contributor who has spoken at events around the globe on the topics of innovation, insurtech, and the future of insurance. He is the best-selling author of, The End of Insurance As We Know It, and holds the CPCU, CLU, and ChFC professional designations and co-hosts the InsureTech Geek podcast which is available on all major platforms.
Highlights from the Show
- Rob’s career took him through different functions in insurance after he joined USAA, where he spent nearly 20 years
- In 2005, he joined what would today be called the Advanced Analytics department, doing the earliest work on bringing data-based intelligence to underwriting decision making
- He shared an early insight where USAA realized that the lore of second homes or vacation homes being bad risks was wrong, and that USAA had the product and rating to cover them, so that would be a natural growth area for the company since they were already seeing these risks, but wouldn’t accept them
- When Rob took responsibility for multiple personal property lines, he got his first foray into the world of InsurTech as USAA started various innovation efforts to transform the customer experience across their various product spaces
- Because USAA insured military members and their families, they only had direct relationships with people who may be in the middle of nowhere with limited connectivity, which forced them to think about how to solve really complex CX problems that can lead to a fantastic experience for those not facing such hurdles
- This gave him a great view into the future of what insurance could be like, which lead him to work on his book, The End of Insurance As We Know It
- A few things have held true since Rob wrote the book
- The speed of change has continued to speed up, especially in a number of areas and technologies
- Startups kicking off as tech companies, and then pivoting to being MGAs/MGUs or carriers
- Moving from reactive to proactive protection, including embedding insurance or more parametric coverages
- Catastrophic risk expanding beyond just weather-related risks
- Rob had foreseen an evolution, but still sees that we are generally going about underwriting the same way rather than using data from sensors and more third party sources that present real-time, more reliable and accurate data, but we haven’t gotten there yet
- He sees the use of data and the insights that can come from this as the thing that will lead to players being able to really move forward and participate in the changes the industry faces, whether that’s on CX, product or both
- One of the things that separated who was able to thrive during the demands of the pandemic is those who were already trying, experimenting and innovating, even in smaller ways, because they had already begun shifting their mindset
- You can follow Rob on LinkedIn, or listen to his podcast, The InsurTech Geek Podcast
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Thank you to our sponsor
Special thanks to Crawford (crawco,com) for sponsoring this episode.
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