Creating efficiency and speed for agents and brokers is a major topic in this podcast sponsored by BrokerTech Ventures.
Jeff Lobman, assistant vice president for digital and head of innovation, and Bob Pick, CIO and executive vice president, both at Tokio Marine North America, discuss how they stay on top of brokers’ operational and customer service needs, balancing automation and human interaction, and what’s next for insurers and the internet of things.
Read the Transcript here
Sandy
Welcome to the Leader’s Edge Podcast. I’m Sandy Laycox, Editor in Chief of Leader’s Edge. In this podcast sponsored by BrokerTechVentures, I talk with Jeff Lobman, assistant vice president for digital and head of innovation for Tokio Marine North America, and Bob Pick, CIO and executive vice president at Tokio Marine North America. We discussed their priorities in terms of creating efficiencies and for agents and brokers. We talk about the state of data extraction and data sharing between carriers and brokers, the balance of automation and human touch, and how groups like BTV help them stay in touch with broker needs. Give it a listen.
I am here today with Jeff Lobman and Bob Pick from Tokio Marine North America. Welcome.
Bob
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Sandy
It’s great to have you both here. We’re going to have a bit of a technology conversation, which is always exciting from the carrier perspective. So we’re going to go ahead and jump right in. And I’m going to start with a question for you, Jeff. As a carrier, I’d love to hear your priorities around technology that are relevant for our agent and broker audience.
Jeff
Sure. Thanks. We’re focused on internal efficiencies where we can add speed and return feedback quicker to our agents. So anything that reduces cycle time and that varies by different products too. Like we understand agent expectations are going to vary by product. So for a less complex risk, there might be a greater expectation of speed versus a more complex risk where they’d actually rather that we take a little bit more time. But where we can, we want to effectively prioritize and respond to submissions. Just as an example, we’re also focused on digitizing our processes so that we can focus on data extraction, all to help accelerate all of those kinds of activities.
Sandy
That’s great. And a quick follow up question to that in terms of the data extraction and data analysis and extraction and data sharing is a big conversation between brokers and carriers. Do you feel like we’re in a good place with data sharing and the ability to get that data out of those places and have that cohesion, or where are we in that process? Bob, you can jump in if you want.
Jeff
So directionally, where it’s matured, it’s something that we’ve spoken about. I’ve been in this industry for maybe 18 years, and since I remember my first interview with our chief underwriting officer at the time was talking about upload, download, and here we are and it’s there and it’s kind of being adopted and kind of not being adopted and parts of that is because of what happens when the brokers receive that information. And so there’s issues, maybe there’s some legacy issues people are worried about how used to maybe overwrite other information that we’re in to agency management systems and a variety of other issues involved with that. So those capabilities are there and expanding, but they’re limited. They’re there for maybe certain products, and there may be accord based products, and so there’s a lot of room for improvement.
It’s expanding, and some of the key players are expanding their offering. So all of that data exchange, hopefully we’ll continue to get better and it will make it easier for everybody. But it’s taken some more time than I think any of us anticipated.
Sandy
Yeah, I think that tracks with what I hear, Bob.
Bob
Yeah, I just throw in that as a technology matter, it’s never been easier than it is now to interchange and exchange data. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s never been easier. It gets easier every year. That said, it’s still complex. As Jeff alluded to, the lack of universal standards and formats is a challenge. The open banking and open insurance trends we see in Europe are just not things that really have taken hold in the US or even the North American market. But we do also see changes in demand.
While the conversations about upload, download have been going on for decades, there really was, among our interactions with our agents, there was less interest in kind of directly tying into agency management systems and those sorts of things, even going back just three, four years ago and certainly ten years ago, and if there was interest, it was very custom, it was a bespoke integration from us to the agent system. It’s very expensive for everybody involved and very fragile, because if one end or the other change something, you’re going to have a problem. However, in the last several years, and some of it was probably moved along by Covid and broader digitalization efforts. But some of that, I think, is the maturing of the technology and the comfort, increasing comfort with technology and kind of operating in a fully digital environment.
The interest is really researched, and depending on who you talk to, they’re more interested in upload, download, prefill is always interesting. We call it e everything. So it’s e signature, e check, e this, e that, making sure that we’re keeping our data and our trade partners data as digital end to end as possible. I think that’s definitely come along, but the tech is largely there to support it, but it’s still a fragmented market. Agency management systems, there are a couple that have a huge chunk of the market share, but not the whole market share. And then some of the larger firms want to have their own systems where they customize things. So there’s a lot of noise still. But I think the interest is now there.
And where there’s interest, there generally can follow some improving standards or rationalized approaches that we and everybody in the industry can take advantage of.
Sandy
That makes a lot of sense. Bob, also a question for you. You talked about what you’re hearing from your agency partners. How do you stay in touch with their needs?
Bob
Yeah, and that’s something that, again, it’s never been easier to stay in touch, but because it’s easier, there’s a lot more information, there’s a lot more voices floating around. Jeff and I and our IT team at Tokio Marine North America support several Tokio Marine companies in the us market, the largest being Philadelphia insurance. And in the last three, four years, we have reinvigorated an old concept, but also made it very digitally focused with our agency tech council, where we have a number of our key and preferred agents that are generous enough to share their time regularly with us and participate in some proofs of concept and pilots, as well as just provide us their unabashed feedback. What matters to them? What will move the needle for them, either for them and their business or their business with us.
And so we just try and listen more, but we actively reach out, we actively survey, and I would say it’s an important part of our approach and we’re not unique in this to include our agent partners in these efforts. So when we’re rolling out new technology that will touch an agent, well, let’s include them in that process, rather than saying, tada, we just created something. Here you go. Well, let’s have them in that process of evolving, that get their feedback, have them participate in phases of testing or demos, those sorts of things. So that’s been that type of concept, whether it’s in the formal agency tech council that Philadelphia insurance has, or in other less formal mechanisms, has been a key part of our approach.
We also listen to and through our other partners, like broker tech Ventures and in particular broketech ventures, because it uniquely touches on the agent market, where a lot of the conversations focus on either the carriers or the tech. And getting in between, that was a really important differentiator. So the things that we see the agent participants, the members and partners of BTV interested in, that’s helpful to us. And I know the other carriers involved feel the same way. A good way to gain intelligence. What sounds so sneaky, but just gain perspective on what matters to an agent, to an MGA, to really help us interoperate better with them on a progressive basis.
Sandy
Has there been anything recently that has surprised you in learning that agents and brokers are focused on that you maybe didn’t realize was a big focus area for them?
Bob
I wouldn’t say so much. It was a surprise, but it was really the order of priority. And Jeff will probably smile as I briefly tell the story. But when we really started making a focus with Philadelphia insurance to improve ease of doing business together with our agents, we had some assumptions about upload, assumptions about download, assumptions about things like where we might go with mobile capabilities, that sort of thing. And we got some of it absolutely right, and we got some. It’s just completely off the mark. And it wasn’t that it was wrong, like had no value, it was the priority.
And what was interesting, of course, there’s varying opinions among our agent partners as to their priorities, but on the whole, were a little surprised that upload was a lower priority than download for many, and just simple things like that, and the desire for integration with agency management systems. For some, that was really important, particularly to help with prefill and that sort of stuff, but for others, it wasn’t. So it was really just gaining, realizing that, well, even though we have great relationships with so many of our agents, that’s a general conversation. Having a specific conversation about their technology and digital enablement needs, hopes, dreams, aspirations, led to some different priorities and some different kind of focus topics than when you’re just kind of chit chatting about a wide variety of things, and tech is one of them.
So by focusing the conversation, I think we got a much better idea of what the actual priorities were. Jeff, I don’t know if you have a different perspective on that because you’re in the weeds on some of these things.
Jeff
Yeah, it was very similar. I mean, that feedback, I was smiling when you were talking about upload. That was one that really surprised us. And then when we. And the important thing there too, is to ask the question again just because those priorities change. So we asked the agent maybe a year and a half ago that question, that was a low priority. We asked them again six months ago, and they said almost like, yeah, why aren’t you doing this already? And so we have to make sure, yeah, we have to make sure that we’re paying attention to that we’re not scared to ask them again and recalibrate.
Sandy
Do you all find that and this might be a silly question, but the needs of maybe the more mid-sized regional brokers versus, you know, the larger ones, are they vastly different in this space, or do they kind of sort of circle around some similarities?
Bob
I mean, go ahead, Jeff.
Jeff
I think we’re going to say this. We’re going to say the same thing. Some similarities, some differences. I mean, I hate to give answer like that. If a larger agency might have back-office staff that they have efficiencies that they actually want, or that might also mean I. That so they might want efficiencies to lift the load off of that staff. That also might mean that they have other staff to kind of COVID up where a smaller agency might not want that. And so it really depends on the products and the specific agencies, you know, what it is they’re looking for. There’s some things that are just common. Like, you know, they want, we want to be easy. You know, they want a carrier to be easy to work with. They want them to be responsive.
There’s just going to be things that are going to be across the board. They’re going to be the same. There’s other things that are different.
Sandy
Yeah. All right, so you’ve talked a little bit about what you are doing, listening to agents and brokers and trying to refine the way that you work with them. But I’d love to hear more about how you all are improving the customer experience in other ways. And I don’t know if that funnels all the way through to the policyholder customer. But, Bob, tell me a little bit about what you all are doing in this space.
Bob
Well, I think a lot of it centers around not applying digital and tech, where the human touch is more valuable. And I would say we definitely see personal lines as different than commercial, for sure, both volumetrically, but also some of the expectations. But I think when I look at our Tokyo marine companies, one of the things that differentiates most of them is that we still have humans at the end of the phone, literally people to answer questions. And I think that’s an important aspect that often gets overlooked in a sea of digital and Insurtech and things. So it’s worth throwing out. And everyone has different perspectives and the different proportions of that human touch, but that’s something that we continue to be pretty committed to. Now, this is not to say that we don’t offer options, and that’s also an important part.
Agents, whether it’s a generational thing, whether it’s just their preference, some of them prefer to talk to people, some of them are perfectly fine working through a chatbot. Some of them want to research on their own and just hit a web portal and go that direction. And making sure that we have omni channel capabilities that people can opt into. We don’t force anybody to go one direction. We give them the options to. And I think that’s been effective. It’s about reducing friction, but it’s also about meeting our agents and our other business partners where they prefer to be. And I think that’s an important aspect of a digital experience, is that it isn’t always bits and bytes on a screen or one channel of bits and bytes on a screen.
But for sure, I mentioned about e everything, getting things digital, keeping them digital, making them as fast and efficient as possible without sacrificing quality and without compromising on thoroughness. There is a point at which you just got to get the questions answered and you got to get the data entered and those sorts of things. So we don’t want to be slap dashed by any stretch, but things like e binding as well, getting that in place and just making it easier on ourselves, agents and policyholders to get what they need to get when they need it and how they want to receive it. Some people still love paper. It’s a diminishing bunch, but some people still love paper. Some people are fine with emails. Some people want, you know, some people want it on their phone. Some people, you know, barely use the phone.
So I think, you know, all those are different efforts. But I will say through Covid, and it wasn’t just because of COVID but through Covid, all those expectations on a general based generational basis of who can adopt technology and how quickly they’ll uptake in comfort level. All of that went out the window. And I think we saw folks who are, maybe we’ll just say later in their careers once they’ve figured out how to be digital, because they know the industry so well, they were totally comfortable working completely digitally, whereas those who are earlier in their careers may have been more digital native with the mechanics of it, but they don’t know all the answers because they don’t have that experience.
So it’s being able to work with folks that are different states of knowledge of industry, knowledge of their job role and their mechanics behind it, and being able to provide them services and connectivity that matches with what their needs are and what their preferences are. So it’s a little bit generic, but it really is a philosophical thing that we kind of carry pretty heavily here.
Sandy
Yeah, I think that it makes a lot of sense. And it is the approach that, you know, we’ve heard being talked about for several years is everybody wants that Amazon experience and why doesn’t insurance provide it? Right. So you’re working towards being more, meet people where they are. That, that seems to be the goal. Jeff, any additional thoughts on, you know, the future of automation and how far you all might want to take it?
Jeff
Yeah, so what Bob just said, that really resonates. That’s how we think about this in terms of what do folks expect and give them what they need at that time. So sometimes you might want a chat bot to give a quick answer. You don’t want to talk to anybody. You don’t want to wait even to talk to anybody, have a very simple question, get a simple answer. But once it goes beyond that, you want to be able to get to a human being at times. And so, you know, that’s a balance that we really look to make of. When do you get a person, when do you get a quick answer? And so our automation that we’re focused on tends to be internal.
We’re looking at our opportunities to become more efficient, to do things in a way that will improve the external customer experience by focusing that automation on the internal processes that we have.
Sandy
I think that makes a lot of sense. All right, we’re going to talk, we’re going to go a little bit into the future at the end here. Let’s talk a little bit about the use of Internet of Things sensor technology. We know that some of that’s been in place with telematics and other things for carriers for a little bit. Now. Bob, I’d love to hear first of all, where you all are using that kind of tech and then where you plan to go with it.
Bob
Yeah, absolutely. That’s been a really key part of some of the efforts that we have for Philadelphia insurance for pure, our high net worth private lines company and a couple of our other companies as well in the us market. Philly definitely has led the pack there for more than ten years. Having auto telematics in place with its Philly track program and then Philly sense for property telematics, leak detection, those sorts of things, it’s been very successful. When I say that it’s not just a matter of premium, it’s a matter of having happy policyholders who get useful information and useful help. The last thing a policyholder wants is to incurred some kind of incident and have to file a claim. We help them avoid that or when a claim is filed, we’re able to kind of facilitate and speed up the recovery on that.
So that’s been very successful. And I think that the telematics piece of Internet of things has really come to the fore as being broadly useful, particularly in property and auto, but also in other areas with wearables to help people avoid injury, is, I think, a real growth area for these things. And then over in spaces that we’re not necessarily big in, but over in manufacturing, being able to really track piece parts, track human locations, those sorts of things, and help avoid challenges, but also in those cases, help improve process where these telematics devices can actually capture data, which leads toward understanding of inefficient process of number of steps, those sorts of things. So there’s real value in that.
And I think in terms of where we’re going, a little bit of special sauce, I’ll avoid talking about, but it’s continuing to build on those foundations where we can provide more insights to our policyholders that are in the commercial side are more business beneficial. We’re giving them information, in some cases real time, to help make better business decisions, whether again, it’s in the auto or property space. And then for sure, there’s a whole raft of insure tech plays that are creating interesting devices, not all insure tech, some other kind of extech creating interesting devices that can rise up the stack in terms of what’s monitored and also automated actions that are taken. It’s widely known that leak detection is step one, but being able to turn off the water upon detection of a leak step two.
Hugely valuable things there that I think are maybe not as industry shaking as some other themes, but they create incremental value, incremental claims reduction, but incremental claims avoidance, which is real value for businesses and individuals that just don’t want to have these hassles. So balancing the technology investments and the real cost of deploying and maintaining these devices is an important part of the soup as well. But I think we continue to see growth. And of course, Matteo Carbone is one of the widely known folks in his IoT observatory, which we participate and many others do as well.
But I think he’s able, and his team are able to give that very broad view of where we may go all the way into use of digital twins, to be able to kind of anticipate where problems might exist, where you actually don’t have devices installed, but you can model them in a very discreet, low level or high level detail way so that you can anticipate where there might be issues, even where you don’t have deployed devices. Those types of things are really interesting trends. And again, a lot of Insurtech time is being spent there. I would say IOT generally, telematics generally is probably number two behind generative AI. Of course, everything is generative AI at this point. We all know that.
But I think that these are important trends and frankly, it’s a great community and societal benefit in addition to being beneficial in the business of insurance.
Sandy
Yeah, you know, the flood numbers always surprise me when I hear about the amount of damage from internal leaks and things versus, you know, what actually happens from not cat flooding. And it always surprises me that it’s actually higher when you look at these internal things that happen to most people and they just aren’t prepared, don’t know about it. So it seems very strong in the risk management, risk mitigation area.
Bob
Well, plus you can also purchase data that has a decent, even in the days of climate change, pretty decent accuracy with regard to floodplains and that sort of stuff. There’s no data you can purchase that says that house or that building at that point, at that temperature is going to have a leak. And so being able to detect that now, interestingly enough, as enough data is gathered over enough years from enough different types of property with different types of piping, with different installations, similar categories of installation types, maybe there’s the ability to gain inferential information about where leaks may most likely occur. If it’s that type of piping and that age installed in the basement and that sort of thing, maybe that can come up.
I think as an industry, these are the types of things that we think about insurance as a business, but it also delivers a societal good that’s squarely in the societal good side of things. And if we can get into some great data sharing as an industry, the floodplain contours that we all get maybe can become weak contours or weak kind of characteristics of the future. That’s the kind of stuff that I think Matteo and gang, they’re already thinking about and talking about how as an industry we might eventually get there.
Sandy
It’ll be interesting to see where we are with that stuff in ten years or so in terms of improvements and what’s been avoided for sure. Any final thoughts? Jeff, I’ll go to you first for our audience on technology and the carrier space and what you are thinking about there.
Jeff
Yeah, as Bob was talking about, that societal good, I mean, that’s really where some of this, the evolutions that are occurring could just be really impactful and interesting for what the capabilities are for helping people. Like Bob said, people don’t want to have that loss in the first place. And so how the ability now to utilize both data and say, well, that building we know is a certain age, you know, where in the past you had to ask somebody those kinds of questions, so how can we utilize these different things and then how can we leverage some of these conversations that we’re having as an industry to just identify improved best practices that help everybody and that kind of thinking and that kind of possibilities is pretty exciting.
Sandy
Very exciting. Bob, anything else to add?
Bob
Yeah, I would just kind of go back to reemphasize that, you know, the digitalization and ensure tech trends, which are all very valuable. It’s the human piece, it’s the partnerships, it’s the communication from agents to carriers and back again that allow us to figure out pathways where the tech is hard that we can work through to improve together in our mutual business, but also deliver those benefits to our policyholders, which is really what it’s all about. So it’s the communication aspects, having conversations like this one that maybe get some ideas going so folks can talk to their carrier partners or carriers can talk to their agent partners and just get the chit chatting going toward kind of bettering in all these fronts. If there were easy answers that were plug and play, we would all have them already done, and there just aren’t.
And the causality for that is different depending upon the topic. But I think the more discussions that occur, and I definitely have seen pre and post Covid substantial increases in these types of discussions where folks that we’re never talking about digital or never talking about this process efficiency, everybody’s talking about it now. So I’m very bullish for the progress that we can make in the next five to ten years on a whole host of these topics.
Sandy
All right, well, we’ll look forward to seeing what happens. Thank you guys both so much for joining me.
Bob
Great. Thank you.
Jeff
Thank you.
Sandy
That was Jeff Lobman and Bob Pick in this conversation sponsored by Broker Tech Ventures.
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