Welcome to our very first
broker tech ventures and leader's edge
webinar series
for our very first episode of this
series we thought it'd be a good idea
to bring the founders of broker tech
ventures all together
i think we might be across four
different time zones
today so bring everybody together to
talk with the founders of broker tech
ventures so my very first question
actually before we get to any questions
why don't we do it around the room
and have everybody introduce yourself
maybe your your name
who you work for and where you're at at
this specific moment
ellen do you want to kick us off Ellen Willadsen
i work for holmes murphy and i'm
currently in waukee iowa
all right mike how about you mike
victorson m3 insurance
madison wisconsin sarah
sarah walsh payne west insurance and i'm
in helena montana
terry terry tracy i'm with connor strong
and buckler and i'm in beautiful camden
new jersey
it is beautiful and brian why don't you
round us out
hi i'm brian hetherington i'm chairman
of abd and i'm currently
wrapping up a vacation in tahoe
not a bad little rundown so welcome
thank you everybody for joining us on
this call today
my very first question it's going to go
to mike victorson here mike
you are the co-ceo of broker tech
ventures what was the very
first original concept of btv
btv had a beginning in
a desire and a hope to not just keep up
but set the pace in our industry
the insurtech space was off and running
some people think maybe that was 2015
maybe 2013 kind of spinning out of
fintech
and we just noticed a complete absence
of the broker voice and the broker
participation
and a lot of those early and sure tech
dollars going toward things that were
either
direct to consumer so maybe the retail
consumer in a home and auto setting
or insurance companies trying to make
their operation better
internally and we thought that we could
be a part of a bigger and better
solution that would shape an industry
because when you get us involved you get
as brokers
you get the end customer involved and
when the end customer is involved we
always think
it's not speaking for all my colleagues
on the panel but we think the best
solutions happen that way
that's right and and brian i know you
are on the west coast you're out in
tahoe right now and you've been involved
in the insurtech space
out in silicon valley out in california
when you first heard about broker tech
ventures what did you think
made btv unique in the insuretech space
i really think that the collaboration
between like-minded firms to go help
other interested in suretex grow quicker
have access to the right resources and
get direct feedback
for the collective good of the brokerage
distribution
sector and sarah when you first heard
about the concept of
brokers competing brokers coming
together
on a project what did you think of that
idea of
you know partnering with your
competition
you know we were fine with it um
everybody that our our owner partners
are um have been partners and such
well-respected um
you know businesses in the industry and
we we respect everybody on here as well
so for us it was a a no-brainer uh for
sure there was
uh you know just with so much noise and
intra-tech space it was
it was a breath of fresh air to
have the opportunity to collaborate with
others um that are trying to cut through
the noise just like we were
what do you mean by noise in the
intertext face oh just there was so much
i mean it was like every you know think
of it it still is there's still a little
bit of noise but i think this is
cut down on that a little bit because
we're able to
um we're fully uh listen to others and
see what they're doing what what sounds
good to them
um you know rather than uh trying to go
through that ourselves
um and then with project ventures even
narrowing that down
even more with all the different um
components of broker tech ventures as
well so
there's still noise but i think it just
is it's more manageable
partnering and collaborating with our
partner firms here
yeah and terry you're out in
on the northeast out in new jersey right
now we can see that wonderful skyline
behind you insure tech has been one of
these buzzwords in our industry for
you know i think brian mentioned it
seven eight years now and sarah just
mentioned the noise
so how have you been able to cut through
that noise
in the intertech space to know you know
which direction to go with it yeah tim i
would tell you just to expand on what
sarah said i think it's a great point is
that
you know for us doing this alone if we
went
so we have an interior tech practice
group and by doing it alone we make
this much progress when we're working
with broker tech venture we're making
this much progress we're changing the
industry so for us
and we looked at it and there is a lot
of noise there's thousands
of these technology companies that have
they're going to solve all our problems
well quite frankly
not many of them really do so working
with
13 other or five now 13 other um
strong regional brokers for us made all
the sense in the world and it helped us
become more focused
on what technology we want to work on
and then what companies we want to work
with
thanks terry so ellen terry just
mentioned it there
five founding members that are all
represented today
but now we have 13 partners at btv
so ellen your role has been in that
capital tower and partnerships as btv
has continued to grow
especially over this last year what have
you been looking for
as far as how to evaluate strategic
partnerships over the last 12 months
with btv
well from a innovation perspective i
think we're looking
primarily for things not only that can
make our own agencies efficient
but also anything that can help our
our end customers and also our partners
being insurance carriers so anything
along the value chain
are the opportunities that we're really
looking for
sarah you've you've had a lot of
different roles in your career
a lot of different hats that you've worn
what
areas of insurance do you think are ripe
for technology
i can't think of an area that's not ripe
for technology
in the business sorry i kind of but i
really can't i think they're everywhere
there is but
you know i think some of the more
obvious couple the more obvious areas
would be
personal insurance and small business um
you know those
are our customers is changing
um change has changed and is changing
and so as an industry we have to um
somehow be able to figure that out to
make it a more streamlined process than
it is right now and there's been things
along the way
that have you know it's better than it
was 10 years ago and 20 years ago for
sure
um but there's still a lot of areas
especially in those two areas um to
improve upon that
again it goes down i think mike said it
and evelyn said it everybody has said it
it goes down to what's best for the
customer and so any technology that we
can bring on
um that helps us help our customers and
gives them a better experience
in our industry um because we're not
known as the coolest are we
even though we are very cool but
anything we can do
um you know to help with that i think is
is uh
you know is his tops but really there's
i'll say it again there's not an
area that um couldn't use a little bit
of
technology help in our business yeah you
bring it up the customer experience or
putting customers first and i think that
gets back to
mike's original statement about why btv
mattered why
why it happened or why it makes sense
for brokers to lead
this innovation brian in your time out
west
um in your involvement in insurtech have
you seen most of the solutions that
you've seen
be more carrier-driven than
broker-driven
oh not not necessarily i think um
you know and insure tech is such a broad
swath so you can think about health care
and property and casualty
right now the money has been about 55
into health care and 45
in property casualty so if you think
about the distribution of
those components there are some
solutions that are really broker-centric
trying to figure out how to go make them
more effective on the front-end
underwriting or managing claims on the
healthcare side and suretech is such a
broad swath like i'm wearing this
aura ring which all the nba players have
to wear going back in now measures
your temperature your sleep your steps
these are kind of things that will help
the carriers that we hope they'll pay
for
things like this for our clients when
they're going back to the office to know
in this time of covid
technology is going to help have a safer
workplace so that's both in the property
and casually side and on the employee
benefit side
and that works from a carrier
perspective to a direct distributor or
to a broker perspective
i was gonna say one other you know quick
comment that uh you know sarah's comment
on the noise in the industry reminds me
of
like one of the most famous insurer
techs out here was
zenefits and they raised four you know
500 million dollars at a 4.5 billion
dollar evaluation
and their ceo parker conrad had an
expression we're going to drink the
broker's milkshake we're going to put
the brokers
out of business and i think one of the
things that just showed is that the
naivete
of not understanding the broad swath of
what insurance brokers do
and they had a really nice front end and
no back office
and i do think that's one of the things
here with broker tech ventures is we
have all the back office here we know
how to go service our clients
and we're trying to figure out how to go
build this front end to connect to make
sure we're doing the underwriting best
way paying claims the right way
and preventing accidents yeah and it's
amazing
how far btv has gone in just a short
amount of time and a lot of the credit
goes to
you know the founding members that are
on this call ellen
you've been involved every step of the
way what's been that biggest
hurdle that you've had to get over in
the last 12 months with btv
i think just the pace of getting up and
going was very fast
when you think we started the
accelerator just months after
bringing this group together and kicking
it off but
you know unfortunately we were able to
hire john jacobin
as the leak to lead the accelerator
which helped a lot
but you know i've been just really
pleasantly surprised
with the contribution of everyone from
the group here to the partners to the
carriers that have been involved
have really devoted the energy to help
make it
make it a true success in a very short
period of time
well the insurance industry is not known
for being nimble
and speed and efficiency and being
nimble is not
one of the hallmarks of the insurance
industry so how do you
how do you take this industry that you
know these companies that are
represented here have been in the
industry for a long time and all of a
sudden
try to match the speed and efficiency of
the technology space
well don't you think and maybe kick it
to some other members on the panel here
too
it's part of us changing the culture and
for too long the the business insurance
industry and even the benefits industry
it's kind of been a lockdown because of
an insurance company trying to find a
proprietary advantage
and they they want to create in us even
though even though we're independent
producers and brokers as much of a
captive
relationship as they can that's one of
their challenges and
often the systems with which they
operate
would lend themselves to accomplishing
that goal i don't know who else i would
kick it to but
doesn't it feel like when we all get
together and talk that we're talking
about how we
democratize it that information much
like what's happened with the internet
over the years
and allow our insurance companies to
compete on the stuff that really matters
not the artificial roadblocks
that that ruin the customer experience
yeah
hey mike i would i would add to mike's
comments tim that
i think his point is a great one what
what we have so then
it's almost which comes towards the
chicken of the egg and the insurance
companies have been looking at this
various technology but have been
reluctant to push some
because with the brokers accepted what
they're getting with us is they're
getting scale they're getting over 2
billion dollars of revenue
billions in premium and if we sign on to
something it's 13
super regional brokers buying in as
opposed to them knocking on door by door
sarah i see you nodding your head a lot
too anything to add there
you know i think both mike and terry
covered it a lot it just i mean it just
kind of boggles the mind
um when you think of what we are doing
here and the volume that we have and i
think that it will be
um it will make a difference and make
changes someone mentioned i think it was
you might just mention just
internally culture and i'm sure almost
obviously just speak for our company uh
payne west but i
suspect others feel the same way too
just just in technology in general it is
such a
culture shift and i think um over the
years
that uh brokers have been more tentative
to
try new things um you know we kind of
get comfortable and well this has worked
for a long time it's worked really
really well
um so you know why change that and so i
think with with all of our firms that
you know if we can change and we are
changing that that culture inside to say
hey we have to try um and something
might not be perfect
might not you know hit a to z on what we
wanted to hit but
if it hits most of that you know let's
try and try to move forward with that
and in in conjunction with their carrier
partners because uh you know we
we need them as much as they need us and
so i think as we're doing this that's
such an important component
um as well so
yeah but go ahead one quick thing too i
think um i want to give a quick shout
out to travelers because
they started something about three years
ago called the agency of the future
and as we were going through this
process with some other kind of
like-minded
competitors travelers came back and said
we're not doing this just for travelers
we're doing this for the whole industry
and i think when you look at the flip
side of you know if abd goes to
travelers and say i need an unfair
competitive advantage over
m3 like that doesn't help the whole
industry
but the way that we're all looking at
this saying okay let's make travelers
life easier to trade with us and vice
versa
that helps everyone and that kind of
cooperation i don't think it existed
previously
and so i think that kind of opened up
our eyes to saying okay travelers really
is
investing to the whole industry not just
for travelers benefit
and i think that's our whole approach
for vtv too if any one of our firms was
doing something siloed
and had a technology piece i think the
skepticism of the rest of the industry
of using something that was an abd
product like nobody would want to use
that but putting that into the
btv vernacular i think this kind of
makes everything a little bit agnostic
and people are more willing to adopt it
great point and i think we've seen kind
of that message
not only spread across the united states
but also around the world in a really
short time i've heard
stories of we already have calls with
btvs calls with
india and israel and so how are the how
did the word get
across the ocean to these other
countries about broker tech ventures in
just a short amount of time
i don't know if you all are like me but
is your linkedin just blown up
yeah it's great i mean
that's one of the things i i don't know
maybe it's connected to the conversation
too though that
you know the world is so small now and
it's we all work
so much together and it it would be i
think pretty
we've learned it would be pretty
small-minded for us to think that the
united states is the epicenter of
innovation and technology
it was really fun you know ellen and dan
uh were calling us you know because the
homes murphy folks you know you've been
in the original question
i mean we've sure m3 had this idea and
pitched it and part of it was good most
of it was bad
and then holmes murphy took it and made
it a thousand times better
but the amount of work uh that the folks
at homes murphy have done
uh to really make this go has just been
astounding
in year one and so it would be kind of
dumb
i think to have the first storyteller to
not go thank you
tip our hat um to you all um but
they're the ones uh and so i don't know
if you want to jump in but they're the
ones who are like
hey israel like let's
just do this here and see it's like
we're gonna do something here india
what's going on
and so i don't know if you want to talk
but it was just great how that just kind
of happened
well first of all thanks mike for the
comments that i think also thanks to
brian brian heather tinkington and the
abd team because uh their connections
through wbn have definitely been helpful
in getting this rolling as well
um the the international piece in
particular and
you know i think to your point mike once
you have one connection
in today's world it just multiplies so
quickly and
really has helped propel this board at
an unprecedented speeds
yeah brian do you want to add to that
well an echo i mean i think uh when we
all talked about this
a couple years ago the ciab about trying
to do a fund that was harder to go do
than putting together btv
i think holmes murphy really has taken
the lion's share of making this easy for
us to participate
it's a lot of work and so thank you to
homes murphy for that
uh you know i participated in the wbn
when i spent on the board there
and when i mentioned this to a couple of
colleagues we actually did an early
webinar that was well attended from
around the world people wanted to learn
more
and now they're working on a dtv europe
and a btv latin america that are going
to try and replicate what we've done
here and
and in the spirit of collaboration it
all starts with hey this may not work
out to be a btv venture but we're happy
to share what we've learned if you want
to go do something like that
that's going to help the whole industry
but again none of this would happen
without the groundwork that
m3 and holmes murphy put together so
thank you
now terry you are you are farther in the
future than the rest of us because
you're on
east coast time and i think we might
have four different time zones
represented here today how has you know
connectivity with other founding members
that are in three other time zones we
have people in
new jersey in california and montana and
iowa on the call today
how big of a challenge has that
connectivity been as this project's been
getting going over the last year yeah i
would echo the
my colleagues comments that holmes
murphy has made this process
easy for us we don't know what goes on
behind the scenes
so for us it's been easy and you know
the the connections the
it's it's also the the relationships
we've built with the other super
regional firms for us
you know as as our as our industry goes
through
continues to go through consolidation
there's fewer and fewer firms like
the five of us around and working
together on broker tech venture
and really getting to know each other
and just sharing best practices has been
a terrific benefit
cool and i think to wrap things up let's
talk about what what's happening
here within the next six months what's
in the near future for broker tech sarah
do you want to
kick us off on that um sure i wish i had
a calendar in front of me to give you
specifics here but
um we just know it's going to be a lot
and it's going to be fast
as someone already said things are moved
along uh very quickly which is
exciting i know our our team at payne
west has sure
enjoyed that it's like hey we're going
the next thing the next thing but
um you know obviously uh you know lots
with those carrier partners that
some have already been mentioned um
there and the accelerator i
mike or ellen what's our time frame on
that i think we're applications in the
fall
which is such a fun and energizing
process last year
you know this year who knows what it's
going to look like because of covet 19
but
i'm sure we can if we have to i'm sure
we'll pull it off just the same way but
that's kind of that'll be highlight for
sure in the fall get those applications
and start that process all over again
where others can pick up on other things
going on as well
i will be saying farewell to the first
cohort now though
we say we're saying farewell i'm not
sure that that will ever happen because
we're excited about
continuing those relationships i think
everyone was really impressed with the
quality of the applicants for the first
accelerator
so as we at to sarah's point she and
she's absolutely correct we'll be
kicking off that
process again in the fall so hopefully
we'll be able to get together
um and in the same room again and i'll
be able to analyze
that another great group um and kick it
off all again
all right so we currently have 37 proof
of concepts going on with insure tech
companies and insurance
agencies and carriers so we're really
excited about what comes out of that
you know we really helps again when we
talk about speed
not having all of the individual
agencies evaluate all of the products
but being able to share those concepts
has been really hugely helpful to us
i think the only other thing i would
want to make sure that gets
covered is the the response from
some just amazing insurance companies
has been uh it's been humbling for us
and it's been
in a lot of ways validating that having
a partnership with btv
also is a part of their if you will
roadmap
and and long term fine so we've
mentioned travelers a few times but in
addition
the cincinnati insurance company
embarrasser
our friends at uh am wins who else am i
missing team
r2 specialty and rt um
it's just been amazing and then we've
got conversations going with
two or three or four other people that
we hope will join us and they're just
taking some time to
make sure that they
you know dot their eyes and cross their
tees but we're optimistic that more
people will want to join us
so before we wrap things up as we look
back on the last 12 months of broker
tech ventures you know we've just
wrapped up our first year
how have things changed brian from where
this thing
started where this concept started to
where it sits today
i think part of this we didn't know what
we didn't know a year ago so we had 60
people
apply put to be the part of the
accelerator and we were delighted to
have that number
and we called that down to 20 in person
and picked our
first class of 12 companies i think we
learned along the way that some of those
companies were more outliers and what
kind of capital they needed or what kind
of
guidance and mentorship they needed so i
think as we're going through this for
this next year it's really making sure
that
the community at large the leaders edge
readership
and subscribers all know that we're
looking to go elevate the platform
of an altruistic way to go help build
the distribution channel for insurance
and so i'm kind of curious to see how
this next class comes in how many
applications are and how we
separate the different categories of
pure startups to
mid-size companies to companies that
really need your capital or access to
our talent
ellen what do you think about that same
question
the past year we've connected with
thousands of people
through this process so i think you know
having startups recognize the value of
the broker distribution
um having the brokers come together and
really have
created ideas and collaboration with the
carriers has been amazing
and also our ability to help the
startups
have capital and continue that process
throughout their life cycle
is will really be magical so um
that's what i think we've accomplished
over the past year and some of the high
points that i see
mike i know you've been around since
since day one
how have things changed for you
you know the i think that
it's either changed or validated um i
really feel
confident that this business model is
going to work
and it's going to have the impact that
we had only kind of hoped and dreamed so
maybe that's a change
hopes and dreams are becoming reality
you think about as ellen said the people
that we know and that we've met
the people that we've gotten a chance to
team up with to work on not just their
technology but how it impacts us and our
customer and how it's going to
move the industry um and i think in this
space
uh it may have been brian or terry i
can't remember who kicked it off you had
asked a question about
competitors coming together and working
for the better of the industry
now that was a hope and dream and i
think if there's one thing that's
changed for me
is a 1 000 solid conviction i don't know
when it actually happened and
i think everybody on the panel would
share it if you want something done
right
do it together and i think we're showing
that
um so that's what i got i love that
terry how about you yeah i would i would
follow up mike's comment i summarize it
by saying teamwork and i think the
teamwork's been terrific the teamwork's
been great
with the the partners the teamwork's
been great with the
the individual startups and i would say
it's
it's really interesting how much we've
learned from some of these startups
how much they've learned from us and
then how much we've learned
from the other brokers and owners
involved in broker tech venture
cool how about you sarah
you know we talk a lot about the
infinite game when we have our meetings
and you know that that thought of plan
to keep playing
and uh this group is all in yeah in that
um so when i think of this last year in
pain west our involvement in brokerage
adventures and our involvement in
collaboration with
with these characters on the call with
me and
and others too it's really it's it's
exceeded our
our wildest dreams um at pain west and
so we're looking forward to more of it
what's really cool and it's really cool
to kick off this broker tech ventures
and leaders
edge webinar series fun to get the
founding members of broker tech ventures
together
uh to kick off this series so thank you
guys all so much brian ellen mike
terry and sarah for joining us today our
next our next uh webinars here our next
episode of this webinar series will be
on the capitol tower which we'll talk
more about at that time
but thank you guys all so much and good
luck
getting through this pandemic thank you
thank you
too thank you thank you bye everybody
