RHS 089 - Jennifer Linton on the Secret Sales Superpower of Data

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Speaker 5 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 1 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 7 Today, we have a tremendous guest, Jennifer Linton, the founder and CEO of Fenris, an insurtech company delivering data to the tools that we use, and ultimately unlocking our ability to be real value providers to our clients.

Speaker 7 This is a dynamic discussion.

Speaker 7 I was definitely in a mood, and so was she, in terms of just a lot of energy, a lot of laughing, a lot of back and forth.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I kind of,

Speaker 7 I've known of Jennifer for a while,

Speaker 7 but we had never really spoken.

Speaker 7 And I saw her commenting on some posts around embedded insurance on LinkedIn.

Speaker 7 And I think it's a really interesting topic, taking insurance products and shoving them into other services and at other points of sale.

Speaker 7 And I wanted to get her perspective on that idea and a few other things. And we talked about that, but then we really dive into

Speaker 7 the practical case for using data pool services to expand how you do business and the practicality of it. And I think you're just going to nerd out on this one.
You're really going to enjoy it.

Speaker 7 Jennifer's a great follow on LinkedIn. And Fenris is definitely a company that you need to keep your eye on because they are going to be a big part of our ecosystem moving forward.

Speaker 7 So you're going to love this episode. Before we get there, a couple quick things.
Guys, if you're listening to this show,

Speaker 7 the best way to stay on top of new episodes is to simply subscribe. So wherever you listen, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever your preferred platform is, just hit that subscribe button.

Speaker 7 And that's the best way to get new episodes. So that's cool.
Before we get to Jennifer, I want to give a shout out to Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Don't call them Tarmica, guys.

Speaker 7 About this time last year, I called Tarmica. I was the first person advertising Tarmic.
I was the first person talking about Tarmica. I was one of the first people to use Tarmica.

Speaker 7 I saw what this tool had. I knew it could make small commercial profitable.

Speaker 7 And they have become a standout in our industry. They are a staple of quoting, binding, issuing small commercial lines for independent agents.

Speaker 7 And while there are other players in the market, and I've seen them all, I've interacted with all those tools, some of which I've even worked for, I know that Tarmica is the best.

Speaker 7 And the reason I know they're the best is because the underlying philosophy of how you connect to your carriers.

Speaker 7 And, you know, that doesn't matter to anyone, but to me, I like to build a book of business with carriers I have a direct appointment with. That is a huge deal to me.
And

Speaker 7 just from this perspective of building up value with your underwriters, building up value with a book that eventually you'd like to get some contingencies on, just keeping your book of business consolidated with carriers that you have hands in.

Speaker 7 Tarmaca is the tool to do that. They're fast.
They're efficient. You're getting accurate quotes back.
They have a huge number of carriers now.

Speaker 7 And it's all driven through APIs, which you're going to hear Jennifer talk a little bit about and you can imagine how tools like this may or may not work together someday.

Speaker 7 It really is dynamic stuff and the only way to get Tarmica is to go to Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com get a demo, know about the tool. You're not going to be sorry that you did.

Speaker 7 All right, let's get on to Jennifer.

Speaker 5 Hey, Ryan. Hey, how are you?

Speaker 8 I'm doing great. How are you?

Speaker 5 I am good. Can you hear me all right?

Speaker 8 I hear you great. How's my audio?

Speaker 5 I went with headset today you are also good I uh I normally have I have this fancy microphone right here but I've officially run out of USB ports so if I want to

Speaker 5 I either have to go get a

Speaker 5 thing that has more USB ports or I have to

Speaker 5 Like I've had to like trade off being able to do soft phone calling versus You know the decisions the things that we actually there's like the business in memes and stuff, and then there's things you actually have to do during the day.

Speaker 8 You need one of those things, I think they're called an octopus, right?

Speaker 8 Where you, there's heaven knows, way more outlets than you everything you'll need, and then eventually you get to the point where you need a second one.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, I know. I just

Speaker 5 so I hired two people this week, um,

Speaker 5 employee number one and number two, I guess, in addition to me.

Speaker 8 So I don't know. Congratulations, two and three.
Tripled the size of your team is how you should say it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, I tripled the size of my team. Yep.
Yep. Triple the size of my team in one week.

Speaker 5 There's a, you know, I should write that in like a LinkedIn post and get tons of like hashtag entrepreneur life or whatever.

Speaker 5 No, I.

Speaker 8 Congratulations, Delhi.

Speaker 5 How hard to hire is so important. No, so close.
I'm, I'm dying. I can't wait to get,

Speaker 5 to get them both up and running. So,

Speaker 5 the first one is supposed to start today. So, one of them is a full-time virtual assistant managed by Agen CVA.
I don't know if you've heard of them.

Speaker 5 And she's going to be awesome. I'm so excited for her.
Offshore?

Speaker 5 Yeah, Puerto Rico.

Speaker 8 I was listening to how you said you were going to do some hiring from Puerto Rico and Singapore, and I just thought that's a neat idea.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So she is,

Speaker 5 so Wes Anderson, who owns ATC VA, is a buddy of mine. And I called him in December and I just said, look, man, it's gas pedal time.

Speaker 5 Like, I'm sick of being, one, just in life, I'm sick of working on this business by myself. And two,

Speaker 5 I have some things that I aren't my, aren't my strengths. You know,

Speaker 5 I know there's like a huge debate. And maybe this is a good question, but like,

Speaker 5 I'd be interested in your take. But like, I'm so much more of a, I'd rather just do the things that I know are strengths than learn weaknesses.

Speaker 5 And I, and I've heard other people put it, oh, you know, you should,

Speaker 5 that's bad advice. You know, you don't want to have these deficiencies.
And I just, the idea of learning certain skills that I don't have sounds terrible.

Speaker 8 It just goes back to economic theory and Adam Smith's strength of nations, right? And each nation should have one export or three exports. And the rest comes in, supposedly.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I think like people, you know, as an entrepreneur, sadly, you're going to do 12 jobs.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 You might do four of them well. You might do four of them okay.
And you're going to do four of them like shit. I hope you're not recording.

Speaker 8 But the truth is, at least getting them done is better than not.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And then you'll hire people in to do those jobs where you just, you're just not great. Like I did hire a director of marketing.
And I'm so delighted because that was one of the tasks on my plate.

Speaker 8 But I'm only mediocre at it. And now I don't have to think about it again.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And she listens to Joe Rogan.
So there's a big, that's a very, cool thing. I know.
Isn't she great?

Speaker 8 She's so much cooler than I am.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, you know, I have found what's funny is

Speaker 5 I don't ever know that I thought I was cool, but I certainly thought that I was like dialed into stuff for a while.

Speaker 8 I thought you were cool.

Speaker 5 And today,

Speaker 5 you were. You are.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 I was not. I wasn't until I got to insurance.

Speaker 5 I got to insurance all all of a sudden. People

Speaker 5 were like, whoa.

Speaker 5 People were like, oh,

Speaker 5 this shit you say is cool. I'm like, what?

Speaker 5 I don't know. I don't even know what I'm doing half the time.

Speaker 8 Island of misfit toys kind of comes into play, right? Yes.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That's part of why I like it, too, because

Speaker 5 I know everyone's story in insurance is like, oh, you know, I didn't, I found my way here. I fell into.
I mean, everyone says the same thing, and I'm no different than any of them. But

Speaker 5 I do think the people that stick have a certain type of misfitness.

Speaker 5 And it's wide-ranging, but you can always come back to there's something about them that is a little different, or they wouldn't stay here. You wouldn't stay here.
I mean, there's got to be something.

Speaker 5 I don't think it's the same for everybody, but you wouldn't stay here unless there's something like a little off about you. Cause, you know, it's not easy.
Everyone hates you.

Speaker 5 It's not cool. Like you go to the party and people are like, what do you do? And you're like, I'm an insurance.
We're like, oh, shit, he's going to try to sell me something.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Or, please don't tell me anymore.
I'm good. You've said enough.
Can we talk about something else?

Speaker 5 So, yeah, it's really interesting. To answer your question, we are recording, but you can curse on the show.

Speaker 5 I most likely will later at some point. But

Speaker 5 yeah, I feel you. So I am.
I have this

Speaker 5 thing, and I've talked about it before on the show. And I'm going to give a shout out to Gordon Coyle on this one, who owns an agency down by the city, New York City.
And

Speaker 5 every other week, we talk on the phone for like 45 minutes because we both prospect similar markets.

Speaker 5 And I did an episode about three weeks ago where,

Speaker 5 or four, it doesn't matter, some amount of weeks ago, where I was like talking about my call reluctance. I have really bad cold call reluctance.

Speaker 5 And when I say really bad, I mean I've read every friggin book. I've done the just do it thing.
I've played the rock music.

Speaker 5 I went to 90s gangster rap, which you can usually get me through just about anything. And it doesn't matter.
I hate doing it. And I make every excuse not to do it.

Speaker 5 Now, you give me someone who's even given me the door a micro-inch open, whatever a micro-inch is. And I'll make that phone.
I think you just mixed up the metric.

Speaker 5 But that completely mixed up the metric system.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Do Do you

Speaker 5 do you have do you have kids that watch like Pixar movies? Are you in that vein? Are you Pixar?

Speaker 5 Penguins. Have you ever seen Penguins or the movie Penguins?

Speaker 8 Oh, yes.

Speaker 8 Yes, I have children.

Speaker 5 One of my favorite scenes in that movie is the movie Penguins. And I promise we'll start talking about you.

Speaker 5 This is what happens when I schedule these.

Speaker 5 This is what happens when we schedule these in the afternoon. But

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 in Penguins, they're falling out of the airplane and

Speaker 5 Skipper goes to whatever the smart one's name is.

Speaker 5 He's going 500 meters, 400 meters. He goes, damn it, whatever his name is, American.
And he goes, 324

Speaker 5 feet, 295, you know, like, because, you know,

Speaker 5 her system is so screwy compared to the metric system, you know, which is just like 10, you know,

Speaker 5 I don't know why, but that every time I do that crack up, my kids who are seven to five have absolutely no idea why I'm laughing. I just find that to be so funny.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Oh, I was a scientist in college. I studied molecular biology and I did a lot of chemistry.
So I was really excited about this whole, you know, significant figures and scientific notations.

Speaker 8 And so, yeah, I was saddened when my children couldn't figure out. that a decameter was bigger than a decimeter.

Speaker 5 Like that was a major disappointment in my life.

Speaker 5 That's funny.

Speaker 8 Clearly, we are a little off in the insurance space, aren't we?

Speaker 5 I think, I think, yes, everyone's got it. I'm telling you, you're never going to meet a regular person in the insurance industry.
Like, oh, you know, she's just like kind of regular.

Speaker 5 You're never going to meet that person. There's always something weird about them.
It might not be as obvious. It's always going to be something weird about them.

Speaker 5 So, okay, well,

Speaker 5 let's transition to talking about why I wanted to have you on the show.

Speaker 5 So the first thing that caught my eye, just for everyone listening, is I was scrolling through LinkedIn and there was a post, which I think I found the one that really caught my eye, about

Speaker 5 embedded insurance.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I've heard the term. I think I know what it means.

Speaker 5 I think I have opinions on it, but I also, the more I read and stuff, the less, you know, it's one of those things where like some of it may be uninformed and I just wanted to get you know you had some cool opinions and and I want to talk about Fenris 2 and everything but I just was like this seems like somebody cool who I'd love to chat with about this topic and others and

Speaker 5 so what the heck is embedded insurance and why should we care

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 8 it's going to be a term that is going to, I think you're on the very cusp of something big. There are a lot of people throwing this term around.
I've seen even the venture

Speaker 8 capitalists are starting to include that as part of their thesis for investments.

Speaker 8 But it was really something that

Speaker 8 is really easy to understand. So the OG of embedded insurance

Speaker 8 is travel insurance.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 8 So go back to last time years ago when you bought an airplane ticket, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And what happens on checkout? You're asked, you're presented by Allianz or another company, would you like to get travel insurance with this, right?

Speaker 8 And you say yes, and it doesn't distract you from your purchase. It just is simply an add-on.
And you go through it and done. So what they've done is

Speaker 8 they've taken a typical purchase pathway where you might have to go to a separate location or direct to get this insurance and they said it makes sense to kind of weave it into the purchase pathway.

Speaker 8 But they have to do it in a way that does not distract them. The primary reason you're there, which is to get your airplane ticket.

Speaker 8 So that's, you know, to me, the best definition and example of embedded insurance. And we've all experienced it.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 There's now a lot of really new and innovative ways coming about where they're inserting insurance products into alternate purchase pathways.

Speaker 5 Okay. So I'm not as uninformed as I would have thought.
Does that align with your thinking?

Speaker 5 That's close to what I was thinking.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 you know what? I never understood about that. So I am, I am, I don't know if you know this or not, but I am,

Speaker 5 my, my background is, is heavy into marketing. So being that

Speaker 5 marketing is a great way for relatively unintelligent people like myself to seem a lot smarter than we actually are.

Speaker 5 I tend to work through a marketer's mindset. And I never understood why they didn't quote you the price with the travel insurance and the button was remove versus

Speaker 5 add.

Speaker 5 And I'm sure that there is a logistical reason for that, but I always said to myself, I would probably purchase this more often if I didn't have to check to add it versus check to remove it. Now,

Speaker 5 taking that thought and moving it into a question around some of the other lines,

Speaker 5 you know, there's actually... There is actually an epic Twitter debate happening as we're recording this right now with,

Speaker 5 here, I'm going to pull it up, with Mateo and Nigel Walsh and Charlotte Halkett and Billy Van Jura and

Speaker 5 all these Twitter insurance

Speaker 5 insurtech geeks that

Speaker 5 I love

Speaker 5 about a topic very similar to this with home insurance. and how

Speaker 5 auto seems to auto has embedded both embedded features that they're starting to embed more things into auto and auto is starting to be embedded more

Speaker 5 for eyes and wireless is selling insurance product is starting to sell insurance products now or

Speaker 5 you know there's just there's a lot of these things happening and the debate was can this be done with home can can you embed home insurance into different

Speaker 5 into different processes and really what it came down to was hippo aligning with um again, and

Speaker 5 we're not afraid to name drop or just straight call companies out in this show.

Speaker 5 I haven't been sued yet, but I also don't have any assets, so don't come after me if you get pissed about something like that.

Speaker 8 I have to abide by all my NDAs, but talking generalities.

Speaker 5 So I have so many NDAs. I say to people, I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to say and what I'm not supposed to say at this point.
But

Speaker 5 that'll make everyone question whether they should sign an NDA with me or not. No, I'm better than that, guys.
So the question, you know, what was coming up was

Speaker 5 while HIPPO has started in publicly, so this isn't NDA stuff, has started to embed their product into mortgage transactions, real estate transactions,

Speaker 5 the debate that was going back and forth was ultimately where

Speaker 5 there hasn't been in the main property lines, the main property and casualty lines, there hasn't been

Speaker 5 a real standout winner from a profitability standpoint in an embedded product or in

Speaker 5 these types of relationships. There's been huge numbers in terms of being able to write policies, but it feels like, and this is what the conversation was about, is

Speaker 5 it still the standard agent?

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 the standard independent agent still seems to produce the most profitable business, but they can't produce nearly the volume of business that,

Speaker 5 you know, these types of relationships can. And

Speaker 5 I feel like I've just put like 17 questions out at one time, which is terrible. But

Speaker 5 yeah, so is this funny that we're having this conversation? This debate is happening right here, and that's what it's about.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 8 Question one. Why does alliance or why doesn't travel insurance make it an opt-out?

Speaker 8 That's a regulatory issue. So all 50 states like consumers to opt into a product that's an insurance product to acknowledge that they're getting the benefit.

Speaker 8 So to your point, that's so important to think about the regulatory requirements when you're doing any product.

Speaker 8 I think question two was a little bit about

Speaker 8 some of the different models that might be profitable in this sense.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And in comparison with independent agents,

Speaker 8 we'll have to debate on that one a little bit. But

Speaker 8 I like to look at embedded insurance as a real game changer.

Speaker 8 And there was a really excellent report that Simon put out a little while ago that said that he literally projects that embedded insurance will grow today from its infancy in the United States to about 230 billion in premium in 10 years.

Speaker 8 So that's a seismic change. Might take another decade or two to get there, but I think the indications are there.

Speaker 8 So yes, we're seeing a ton of opportunities to disintermediate traditional purchase pathways.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 8 it's more not about forcing it, but it's just a matter of where it makes sense. So, you talked about home insurance.

Speaker 8 Yes, certainly, you're buying a mortgage, you should be offered home insurance, but also you should be offered life insurance to cover that mortgage in the amount that's appropriate, because that's a perfect opportunity to say, what if something were to happen to you?

Speaker 8 You need the safety net, and you want to provide for your family.

Speaker 8 The same, I think goes logically as well for some of the other products

Speaker 8 let's say you're just a renter because everyone goes through a renter phase if you're if you're lucky you can go right to a house but when you're signing your lease why wouldn't you then at the same time get renter's insurance why should those be two separate purchase pathways why should the landlord say now go find renter's insurance right they're already using softwares to manage their apartments and things like that so embedding that as a feature within that purchase pathway would make a ton of sense.

Speaker 8 We're seeing a ton of in the auto insurance space. A lot of dealers

Speaker 8 are being offered with the InsurTech Partnerships they have the ability to

Speaker 8 quote someone while they're getting their test drive so that they can drive off the lot, even though they have, I think, up to 30 days in most states, right, to

Speaker 8 retro and get that auto insurance applied.

Speaker 8 So, I think those are your traditional standards, right? Auto home life just makes a lot of sense because, on a profitability basis, I think there's a couple of things to think about.

Speaker 8 There's obviously the expense, the cost of marketing. Now I was a marketer too.
That's actually how I got my start.

Speaker 8 I came over from a different industry and was tapped to be the head of marketing for a startup direct to consumer auto insurance company. And we created elephant auto insurance.

Speaker 8 And it was like just harrowing and eye-opening at the same time because I would sit eyeball to eyeball with our head of pricing who had just come from a decade at Geico.

Speaker 8 He taught me a lot, but mostly he answered all my inane questions: why does it have to be this way? Why do we have to ask 50 questions?

Speaker 8 Yeah, why, why, why? And every time he had

Speaker 8 a pretty rational argument as to why it had to be that way, so I learned, but I never stopped pushing. I think there's got to be smarter ways, don't you?

Speaker 5 I mean, this is 100% think there are. I um,

Speaker 5 so I, so I have a couple thoughts on what you just said. I um

Speaker 5 I agree with some of the, so

Speaker 5 here's where I struggle with some of these things.

Speaker 5 I wholeheartedly agree the best time to purchase a homeowner's insurance policy is during the mortgage procurement process.

Speaker 5 I think it's even better than when you're actually looking for the homes of the real estate agent. That is the moment, okay?

Speaker 5 So that, so that, and some of the big guys have already started to do this, right?

Speaker 5 We're going to find a carrier like a hippo, like a Lemonie, like somebody, or or a technology-focused MGA, like an OB or someone like that who just purchased, oh man, what the heck is the name of Sudica's old company?

Speaker 5 Doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 that makes a lot of sense. However, I literally just rewrote one of those.

Speaker 5 The guy had a home auto. He's got four kids in a rental property.
And his

Speaker 5 streamlined, wherever he got it, online,

Speaker 5 wrote $100,000 on his underlying home insurance policy. So what that, so when I come back to it, and I think this is the common independent agent pushback is, where's the expertise, right?

Speaker 5 Because if you're a mortgage broker, you could be the best mortgage broker in the world. It doesn't mean you have the mental cycles to also be a high-quality insurance agent.

Speaker 5 And as of yet, though I don't necessarily understand this, it doesn't seem like one singular organization has been able to build out two competingly

Speaker 5 expertise-driven units, right? A unit of mortgage brokers that are just as X have just as much expertise as the unit of insurance agents. It feels like one is always lagging.

Speaker 5 So that seems like a problem that's very solvable.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 5 I guess that is the common pushback is like, yes. That's the moment to purchase home insurance.
Absolutely no doubt.

Speaker 5 And they should be able to do it with four clicks because all the information is already in uh the the rep the um inspection report and the the loan application right there's no information in those two things or there's no information on a home application that isn't in one of those two documents so but how do we make sure they get the right stuff

Speaker 5 and that's i think the part that i come back to that i don't i feel solvable but no one has solved it yet

Speaker 8 Yeah, so I am actually a big proponent. Is it still two-thirds of all insurance is sold through agents?

Speaker 5 Personal lines is about 50-50 at this point. Commercial lines is 85% in the States.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 So I also think that we've, and even let's let's even think back to consumer choice and their preferences.

Speaker 8 I mean, the experiment of Google, when Google created that comparison auto insurance quoting site,

Speaker 8 and Nick was running that, and you know, they shut down, I think, after maybe 16 months.

Speaker 8 But at the time, more than half of the people that were searching, they didn't find without talking to an agent so this feels like a very counterintuitive thing right there everyone's trying to get more and more digital but i believe and that honestly the best solution is to meet the customer where they are right get that product started get the best information in there and then if they would like

Speaker 8 I can't see why they wouldn't.

Speaker 8 And in fact, sometimes we need to suggest that they talk to an agent because it rises to the level that it's not simply a streamlined or straight through kind of processing, right?

Speaker 8 There's a little more detail there. And that's exactly what agents should be doing, I think.

Speaker 8 I can't imagine not having access to an agent when I have severe concerns or questions about deep problems that I'm just not trained to know about. So yes, I want to have an expert on the call.

Speaker 8 And I would imagine that's why we're seeing the trends as well, where many of the direct-to-consumer players, the insure techs, they're also backing up, aren't they, with their models?

Speaker 8 And they're integrating or implementing more of an agent-friendly solution set. Because I think everyone is realizing that insurance is really,

Speaker 8 it's not complicated, but it can be complex. And it's best handled with someone who has all the information and can be a trusted advisor.
I agree with that on that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's a,

Speaker 8 I think getting it kicked off though is really important, right? So you want to capture, every agent wants to capture the most qualified leads. And this is a wonderful way to do it.

Speaker 8 You're seeing crazy embedded things too happen. Like there's the episodic movement as well with insurance where you're basically like ticket insurance.
I buy event

Speaker 8 and I want to insure either my race or my concert, right, for all of those things. So you're seeing these episodes

Speaker 8 that are essentially insurable as well. And so those also have to be simplified purchase pathways because it's not a complex product.

Speaker 5 I agree.

Speaker 5 I look at this and I say to myself, like, the fact that this hasn't been solved yet to me is insane because really

Speaker 5 there's a couple components. You need the data.
And I shouldn't say insane. I understand why it hasn't been solved yet.
Like, you know, I was actually right on the front lines of the Google thing.

Speaker 5 You know, one of the company I was working with at the time worked very closely with them to actually find them agents. And they're, you know, again, this is a testament to

Speaker 5 hopefully how far we've come, though. If you're listening to this, you're part of the problem because we weren't picking up the phone.
Independent agents weren't picking up the phone.

Speaker 5 Part of the reason, so Google,

Speaker 5 when we met with them, came to us with two main problems. Cost of acquisition is higher than what we can make for the ads.

Speaker 5 And two, your people won't pick up the phone when someone clicks, I want to talk to an agent. So

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 problem number one, I don't have a ton of thoughts about because CAC is

Speaker 5 in our in our industry, it's just it's high.

Speaker 5 That's why, like you said, everyone's backing up because all these D2C players are looking at their cost of acquisition, going, we got to find a way to mitigate it.

Speaker 5 And I think think it was Matteo Carbonio that just came out with a report the other day that since Lemonade has gone to independent agents, which I have opinions about,

Speaker 5 they've reduced their cost of acquisition by like 40% or something like that, just by adding the, I don't even know if they have a thousand appointed agents yet. So I think that's pretty interesting.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 the second part has been traditionally

Speaker 5 working with a human agent. I'm not even going to say just independents, working with a human agent has been so terribly difficult that

Speaker 5 it was a legit trade-off. I'm going to take the risk of going it myself or calling into a call center where I know I'm never going to talk to this person again if they sell me this policy.

Speaker 5 But geez, I'm going to have to go sit and fill out a paper form at some dusty office, you know, that, I mean, that was really what the options were. And I think

Speaker 5 what I find to be one of the most intriguing opportunities, and it's really the basis for the agency that I'm trying to create here in Rogue Risk, is the mashup of those two worlds.

Speaker 5 The technology exists

Speaker 5 to be on time, to deliver where people are on their terms, and give them a human that if they call me five times, they can get me or someone who sits near me over and over and over again.

Speaker 5 They can develop a relationship and we can understand what they need, if that's the type of relationship they actually want.

Speaker 5 And that's why I look at things like, I mean, I don't know if you know him, but he was on a show a couple,

Speaker 5 for those who listen a lot, maybe six weeks ago, Matt Soudica Skylight Insurance.

Speaker 5 He just merged with OB.

Speaker 5 And some of the things they're doing from a homeowner's and rental property and habitational property perspective are exactly what we're talking about. And it's really phenomenal stuff.

Speaker 5 They have a, I think, nah, not countrywide, but a Century, American Century. They're in their product is embedded into the buying process or the searching process at least

Speaker 5 for

Speaker 5 one of the big real estate companies. And it's really interesting stuff how they're mashing the two together.

Speaker 8 Yep, you're going to see so many more of those partnerships taking place because insurance has to expand its boundaries.

Speaker 8 So much innovation, right?

Speaker 8 Even to the point where I liked, even talk about your last podcast, you had Steve on from Branch and

Speaker 8 the blending of the products. So that's a big battle cry for Fenris is we do think that insurance tends to be too product-centric.
And as an agent, your job is to think about everything, right?

Speaker 8 And so Fenris as well comes at this as applicant-centric, right? So it doesn't matter for us what product you're quoting. We are going to have the information on the applicant.

Speaker 8 We have data on every adult, every household, every property, every vehicle, and we're able to append that quickly and bring that forward.

Speaker 8 That enables that embedded insurance process to take place quickly and in a streamlined way.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 this is a perfect transition. You were one question early on me, and I had my transition over to Fenris.
Oh, no, it's great. No, it's great.

Speaker 5 I would love for you to break down Fenris for everybody because

Speaker 5 like I'm positive that if they've been in this space, they've probably heard the name, but not everyone dives to

Speaker 5 the data and systems complexity I think that you guys are at in terms of, you know, they tend to stay like, hey, is it a CRM or an agency management system?

Speaker 5 So like, where are you fitting into the space and what are you guys actually delivering?

Speaker 8 Yeah, so we are a single source for your data and insights.

Speaker 8 It's a real-time API delivery system.

Speaker 8 And that means you can inject that into your customer acquisition flows to identify who's going to become your best customer and then ease their way.

Speaker 8 And we are also launching a new API suite for post-sell. So to monitor your existing policyholders for life event changes that we detect that would then indicate a moment that matters, helping agents

Speaker 8 and marketers to leverage those moments to have a deeper relationship, to reach out and right-size any coverage issues or add new coverages.

Speaker 8 And then

Speaker 8 we're basically trying to take insurance and move it to where some other industries are in terms of the intelligence and the insights and the the action that they can take.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Because,

Speaker 8 you know, insurance, it's an interesting one. It never really started out as,

Speaker 8 you know, the whole genesis of insurance is, sure, it's a safety net, but at the same time, it was let's gather premiums so we can reinvest them and make the money off of

Speaker 8 them. And I feel like it's finally coming full circle.
Like everyone is really actually focused now on the products and if they're meeting the needs.

Speaker 8 And so what we're trying to do is push, let's actually think more about the applicant or the policyholder from that perspective.

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Speaker 5 How does that present to,

Speaker 5 so are

Speaker 5 Carriers your primary? I mean, I'm sure, like,

Speaker 5 where in the chain? Who are you playing with?

Speaker 5 Are your products coming all the way down to retails? Are you staying with some of the larger, like, top 100, top 250? Like, what is the market that you're playing in?

Speaker 8 So, with an API, the nice part is, is we have

Speaker 8 maybe I'll explain it this way. We're the Levi Strauss of the Insured Tech Gold Rush.
Okay. We're handing out picks and shovels, right? Data and tools that can be used and leveraged.

Speaker 8 So, we have several of the top brokers as clients, large agencies, small agencies, medium and small carriers, and a couple of the very large ones are doing pilots. They just take a little bit of time,

Speaker 8 as you can imagine, to get them through. And we have a lot of intermediaries as well, some of the even the lead gen or the comparative radar companies.

Speaker 8 And the reason why we're so broad is the

Speaker 8 provenance of the data that we use, and we use our data sets

Speaker 8 really because we're generating machine learning insights. So

Speaker 8 we start

Speaker 8 earliest in the funnel is we try to push insights and scores so that folks can prioritize what's coming into the funnel.

Speaker 8 Almost using marketing as underwriting, right up front.

Speaker 5 I love that.

Speaker 8 So you shouldn't have to wait for that moment of truth to come after you've had a 30-minute conversation to collect all the information.

Speaker 5 I'm an enormous advocate of agents

Speaker 5 being true frontline underwriters. And I think what you just said

Speaker 5 is really the most advanced version of that, which is if the marketing person in your agency was actually a true frontline underwriter from a mentality perspective, then they would drive in the profitable business and you wouldn't have to sift through as much of it.

Speaker 5 And then what I'm assuming is you layer in your data and now you can pull out the stuff or redirect it to a department that could handle it profitably and just streamline or pipeline the uh the the stuff that that that fits what you want, that that's right where you want to be.

Speaker 8 Yes, it's a series of API calls could be the journey. So it could be as simple as

Speaker 8 they could

Speaker 8 be on your website and maybe they use our license snap API, which allows someone to take a picture of the back of the license. Boom, one click, you answered your first 15 questions.

Speaker 8 Most Amazon-like experience. In that is the name and address.
That's how most of our APIs function. We want the name and address of the applicant.
We then harken back to our reference data sets. And

Speaker 8 the next step would be we would generate a score that says this individual is four times as likely to buy from you today.

Speaker 8 And those are unique scores created for every customer because every customer attracts and has different strengths

Speaker 8 as to who they're going to close. So those scores will tell you, and it tends to fall out that way,

Speaker 8 there's a one-to-five score and the fives are four times times as likely to buy as the ones.

Speaker 8 So you can then prioritize that call center or your reactions and you tend to see a

Speaker 8 multiple on your conversion rates because you're not getting, you're not having to sift through all of that information, right? We're helping you prioritize.

Speaker 8 Then when you know who's prioritized, the next API call is go ahead and take the pre-fill, right? Let's go ahead and pre-fill 50 questions to five for auto.

Speaker 8 So it's either a more swipe, less type experience if it's online, or if the agent's doing that, the agent should have the ability to walk them through as opposed to interrogating, should now have all that information and advice at their fingertips to be able to guide the conversation to make it really productive.

Speaker 8 And not just for that product, but it could be auto home or life and it could be the full bundle. And then, you know, that's how we streamline that process to enable

Speaker 8 just about any purchase pathway. You know, through the call center, online, or with an agent.

Speaker 5 This is the, I mean, for everyone listening at home, what you just described, that is the mission. I mean, that's the, to me, this is the next generation of what our industry should be.
It's not a,

Speaker 5 you know, we're never going back to, thank God, paper forms and nonsense like that.

Speaker 5 But I certainly think, and obviously you share my opinion, that the human agent or professional, whatever you want to call him, whether you call him an agent or not,

Speaker 5 plays a big role. But they shouldn't be asking, how far is the fire hydrant from your house?

Speaker 5 That shouldn't be a question that we're asking. Because you know what? One, people go,

Speaker 5 I don't know, you know, it's down the street. And now you're going, well, is it down the street like really far? Or is it down the street? Like, you can see it.

Speaker 5 And then you're typing in 500 or is that

Speaker 8 my favorite too? It's like, would you say it's less than 500? Because you know that's the answer you want.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Because all that's doing, that's just taking away from your time when you should be going. What are we trying to get out of this? Oh, you have you have three kids.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, how important is it to you that if something ever happened to you or your wife or your, you know, your husband, whatever, that

Speaker 5 they get to go to college? How important is that to you? Oh, geez, that's that's why I live every day. Okay, well, now we need to set your program up a little differently.

Speaker 8 The conversation right there, you just get it. That's why, that's why you're good at this.
I mean, you want to tap into the human element.

Speaker 8 You don't want to be asking them things like, okay, I have a funny story too about like getting details.

Speaker 8 So I was buddy jacked in on a call center and we were doing auto insurance and the agent was lovely and asked for that person's VIN. Well, VIN is kind of tricky, right?

Speaker 8 So they said, oh, it's on my car and they described where it was. So they took the phone with them outside and you could hear them stepping across the crunches of their gravel driveway.

Speaker 8 And it was quite a long driveway. And they got to the car, opened the door.
You could hear ding, ding, ding, right? And they got their flashlight out and they found the VIN and read it off to us.

Speaker 8 And she dutifully typed that in and closed the door and they went on their way. You could hear him crunch his way back.

Speaker 8 And then, you know, a couple questions later, some joviality, but she got to the next series and she said, are there any other vehicles in your household?

Speaker 8 Yes, there are. Well, can you read me the second bin?

Speaker 5 Okay. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
So

Speaker 8 you get that sense that those types of hiccups,

Speaker 8 we're past that, right? We want to enable. We want to make it a good customer experience and a good agent experience.
The only way to do that, because you need data. You have to have data.

Speaker 8 And consumers don't understand why you need so much data because they're used to Amazon and they're used to other channels where they can buy something with a click or a couple of questions.

Speaker 8 So we're trying to enable two question quoting. That's really part of our mission there.

Speaker 5 So I just,

Speaker 5 this is to this point. So

Speaker 5 you know about Plymouth Rock. You've heard of Plymouth Rock, what they're trying to do, some of the things they're doing.

Speaker 5 So I don't think Plymouth Rock is a perfect company, but I think that they are on a very good path. I really like the path that they're on

Speaker 5 and what they're trying to do. So I had a carrier whose name just about every adult American would know call me today and question my production with them.

Speaker 5 And I said, yeah, no, I'm a startup agency, so I wasn't going to blow the doors off to begin with. We had that part of the conversation.

Speaker 5 And she said, well, we haven't seen, we've seen a lot of quotes, but not a lot of finds with us. And I said, I'm going to run you, and this happened maybe 45 minutes before we got on the phone here.

Speaker 5 I said, I'm just going to run you through a quick scenario, okay? Person calls me, home auto umbrella.

Speaker 5 So Plymouth Rock doesn't write rentals, just for anyone who's listening.

Speaker 5 Home auto umbrella, okay?

Speaker 5 Put it into the rater. I don't always use a rater because there are certain things that I want to put with certain carriers, just because I know they're the best fit for different reasons.

Speaker 5 But in this case, so I said, I use the rater, okay?

Speaker 5 I click through, you and Plymouth Rock are side by side on price. Let's just say that's, it's rare.

Speaker 5 I did drop in because I was kind of a pissed that she was calling me, but

Speaker 5 I said, you know, that's rarely the case, just so you know, I didn't put that. I can be a vindictive bastard.

Speaker 5 Well, here we are, nine months into my startup journey during freaking COVID, and I'm getting a your production isn't high enough call. I just wanted to say this is why everyone hates you.

Speaker 5 So I said, okay, so now here's what I have to think about. Plymouth Rock has five tabs.
They're going to pull every driver in the household in. They're going to pull every vehicle in.

Speaker 5 They're going to pull every accident and

Speaker 5 ticket in with button clicks. Click, click, include, don't include.

Speaker 5 I can be done, rated

Speaker 5 in three minutes, three minutes, completely done auto rated ready to bind as long as there's nothing crazy do you know how long it's going to take me to rate in your system I have to have them send me pictures of VIN numbers pictures of VIN numbers I'm saying this into the phone she's like well you know you don't understand when you know we have the best high credit score pricing in the industry and I'm like how many people have a high credit score seriously I mean when a high credit score is 865 for you how many people have a high credit score?

Speaker 5 And I'm not trying to be a jerk, but my point is, Plymouth Rock has figured out a way, they may even be a client of yours for all I know with how much data they have,

Speaker 5 to zap in this information. I don't have to ask for VINs.
I need their address. I need the name of household members and birthdays.

Speaker 5 If I have those things, you probably should get driver's license numbers if I can because sometimes they don't pull. But they always have VINs.
They always have all the vehicles.

Speaker 5 I'll find, oh, you didn't tell me about the brand new 16-year-old driver. Oh, you know, so,

Speaker 5 you know, and

Speaker 5 that experience difference is driving, is driving the placement of business today. And there are carriers

Speaker 5 and agents that get that, and there are those that don't. And it's

Speaker 5 why I was excited to have you on because this topic of

Speaker 5 getting data,

Speaker 5 and I do have a question, I promise, after the story,

Speaker 5 of

Speaker 5 injecting the data into the process so that we can be value providers, right?

Speaker 5 I can go through a Plymouth Rock quote on the phone with someone because I know I'm not going to have to stop and spend 20 minutes typing stuff into the computer.

Speaker 5 With this other carrier, I would never have someone on the phone when I went through it because I would most likely drop an F-bomb on them at some point because it would time out, or I'd have to go back seven screens to copy and paste a piece of data.

Speaker 5 So, here's my question for you, because this is the question I get after this, if you don't answer this, I will get this question.

Speaker 5 Where the heck

Speaker 5 does all this data come from? That is the question that I think a lot of people who have not invested time and energy, you have to tell me the exact spots, just maybe so people can understand.

Speaker 5 Because that's they're going, this data, where does it come from? It can't be any good.

Speaker 5 Where does all this data come from? I mean, that's, I always get that question. So,

Speaker 5 where the heck does the data come from?

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 8 part of our job was we were creating, we started out creating the machine learning scores, right, to predict if this lead would be best suited for a particular agent or carrier or

Speaker 8 we do a couple of other scores as well, like predicting propensity to churn or propensity to persist. Will they be paying their bill in four or six months, right?

Speaker 8 So to collect all that data for our machine learning that's that was why we we actually didn't set out to collect all that data for that purpose.

Speaker 8 We consider pre-fill more to be our data exhaust products, to be candid, right? But we have it and we can package it. So

Speaker 8 yes, one of the key functions and any organization that undertook this would learn quickly that you have to invest heavily to source alternate data. You have to secure the provenance of that data.

Speaker 8 You should not scrape anything because you want to make sure that that data is going to be, has a pipeline to you and that you understand where it's coming from, that you're using it for the proper use cases.

Speaker 8 For instance none of our data is scri regulated so that means we can inject it into those workflows earlier than before without customer approval because it's marketing level data yeah and the way those use cases work that's why we're able to reach further up earlier in the pipeline but we have probably 10 to 12 different sources now and we continue to add more quality data sources all the time

Speaker 8 so that we can

Speaker 8 create lift in our models first and foremost but particularly through some of the accelerators that we've done, like with plug and play or mass challenge fintech or InsurTech New York, right, we find new problem statements.

Speaker 8 And so we do have just a cadre of advisors that have been in the data world for decades.

Speaker 8 And the new alternate data sources are public, they're private, they're proprietary, but it's the labor of love in how you curate, aggregate.

Speaker 8 You have to cleanse that data, you have to make it readily usable, and you have to secure that data. Those are multi-million dollar projects at companies.

Speaker 8 So that's why a lot of companies come to us because they don't want to undertake that role themselves, just for those products.

Speaker 8 The next step, of course, is for us is we've most recently secured our life events data, and we have some exclusivity around those

Speaker 8 data sources for our uses in the insurance industry. And that's also something key.

Speaker 8 the usual suspects. So if you're going to predict that somebody is listing their house,

Speaker 8 you could try to predict it or you could just go to real sources that collect that information. That's what we need to protect that.

Speaker 8 And I'm sure, you know, you know how

Speaker 8 just yesterday I got an announcement from my niece.

Speaker 8 She's having a baby, and so they've registered with Amazon Services or Amazon Marketplace, whatever that is, so that I could send them a baby shower gift, right? They're having a virtual shower.

Speaker 8 And that's, again, part of our sources will go to that to indicate, hey,

Speaker 8 they're expecting a child in the household. So we're detecting those kinds of sources.
So I hope that helps. There's nothing nefarious or wrong.
We're not scraping anything.

Speaker 8 We're going to these quality sources and we really vet the use cases with our clients to make sure that everything's on the up and up and it's just a situation where we know that customer experience is going to improve and that the client's going to use the data to improve that experience and hopefully become more profitable because they'll spend their marketing dollars and

Speaker 8 you know their efforts on the best fit for them as well.

Speaker 5 Yeah. No, I so I have one more kind of tactical question for you.

Speaker 5 And that's, you know, these data, I wanted to ask that question because I think

Speaker 5 well-meaning people who haven't spent time really thinking about data, I think they just don't understand that there are all these different data pools, pools of data. for all different things.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 I think everyone immediately goes to, oh, this is some dark web you know you're handing bitcoins for chain links and blockchains and you know getting all these credit card dumps and you know I think like it's been so demonized data I think has been so demonized by you know that it kind of and I just thought it was important to explain that

Speaker 5 you know this is this is how this is done like that yeah

Speaker 8 and it's probably worth even pointing out a lot of people are familiar with the incumbents that do this like Lexus and Barris yeah and they have contributory data sets that they pull from.

Speaker 8 And so, until maybe the last few years, we couldn't have competed directly head-on with those contributory data sets, but we can now.

Speaker 8 There are alternate sources for that data under the right use cases, right?

Speaker 8 And it actually opens us up because if you don't contribute, you can't pull.

Speaker 8 And sometimes

Speaker 8 what kind of kills me is a lot of insurance carriers will tell you their own policy data that's in their own systems has a lot of errors, right? Leakage. So, premium leakage is a problem.

Speaker 8 But when they contribute it to those contributory sources,

Speaker 8 by contract, they can't change it when they pull it back out again.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 8 oftentimes, we're told that ours is actually more relevant, more recent, more accurate, and really fits the bill. So, that's how we're a little bit different in how we're approaching it.

Speaker 8 But companies are very familiar with that contributory data set.

Speaker 8 I just don't think anyone's pushed the envelope as to how you could use that very early on in the marketing funnel.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Is this data pool connection and collection game kind of like the Wild West today?

Speaker 5 I mean, are you out there, you know, six guns ablazing against competitors trying to get at the different pools of information? Or is it a relatively

Speaker 5 calm thing and it's more about how you use and connect the data?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think honestly, there's a lot of shady data brokers out there. So yeah, we're very careful about who we even start to engage with, right?

Speaker 8 Making sure that the rights to the data are there and it's permissible and all of that stuff.

Speaker 8 I don't know if it's a wild west yet, but there are so many companies that think they can scrape data and sell it, and that's just unappealing to us.

Speaker 8 Who knows if they'll be allowed to in the future due to terms of service. So I think it's important to always try to find the right partners.
We just keep an eye on not just the data, but benefit.

Speaker 8 So we've got to make sure there's a really good problem we're solving with that data. And when that makes sense, it opens up the entire world.
I mean, suddenly it's like night and day.

Speaker 8 It's like, oh, you mean you can help me see this outcome before I get past stage one. I can predict where it's headed.
Now I can be much more proactive about the products I present to them,

Speaker 8 what the customer journey is going to look like. And

Speaker 8 I'm excited because I wished I'd had something like this when I was setting up marketing

Speaker 8 at an auto insurance company because I just felt so depressed when we'd get a 2% conversion rate. And that was good.
I know. That was Ring the Bell's run of victory laugh around the call center.
Good.

Speaker 5 I know. Well, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 5 I have this database that I use because Workers Comp is the lead for us.

Speaker 5 I have this data pool that I pull from called insurancexdates.com. And I have found it to be the most consistent and accurate pool for that particular thing.
Now, it doesn't have experience mods.

Speaker 5 That would be nice if that was pulled in, you know, but what I find myself doing, and this is a problem that you solve for certain events, right? For the events that you have use cases for, is

Speaker 5 I'm teaching my VA, he's got to go to like four different tabs to get all the info we need. to do this.

Speaker 5 So we have a cold outreach campaign that we do, and it actually does pretty well because we're targeting very specific people, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 But the idea is like, he's got to pull from this database, then go over here and cross-reference, then go over here and cross-reference.

Speaker 5 And like, you're like, oh my gosh, imagine if like there was just a spot where I could say, hey, when this happens for this kind of company, send out this message, then tell my salesperson to pick up the phone and call, you know, call them to follow up on that message to, you know, and here's our points of differentiation, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I feel like you're providing more value to the people versus I also bought an email list of like 7,000 contractors in New York that I can spam anytime I want and just hit them all with a blast email I have no idea if they need my product I have no idea if they have corkers comp all I know is they're a contractor and at some point this may have been an email they used and you know which one of those which one of those methods is is more conducive to providing value to the client?

Speaker 5 You know, I

Speaker 5 And I think that is what you guys saw. I mean, that is where you're going.

Speaker 5 But much more scalable than what I'm describing. But, you know, that

Speaker 5 it just to me,

Speaker 5 this,

Speaker 5 you know, I think like you do. I wish I wasn't in startup mode.
I wish I had like a basket of cash somewhere because all the things that you can do are amazing.

Speaker 5 So, okay, here's what I'm going to get to. Machine learning score.

Speaker 5 How the

Speaker 5 one, machine learning is a term that makes blue smoke come out of us neophytes' ears. So what does that mean? And how do you turn, what is it learning that it's allowing you to produce a score?

Speaker 5 And how the heck do you build that?

Speaker 8 Yeah. By the way, I'm going to come back to your point about you wish this were the case.
Let's talk afterwards. So we, here's your little preview.

Speaker 8 We haven't made this public yet, but we are going to launch one of our next products is the small business commercial space.

Speaker 8 So we've secured about 35 million small business records. We're keeping that up, and we're able to link those micro-businesses to the owner name and then pull in some additional insights.

Speaker 8 So, that's something that I'm really excited about. And the e-mods and figuring out all of that.

Speaker 8 There's just no end to the opportunity there because that's where the Wild West is. I agree with you.
People are running at it.

Speaker 8 I don't think any insurance company has more than 5% market share in small business. So,

Speaker 8 that's a big one for us to enable.

Speaker 8 So, how does the machine learning work? You know, that's

Speaker 8 it's really less about the mechanism and more about the result. But, yes, machine learning is the latest set of tools that really enable folks.

Speaker 8 Some people will even call it artificial intelligence, but we're under that umbrella in machine learning. And,

Speaker 8 you know, in the old days, I think people just did progression. And you can essentially get very close to the same thing.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 8 what we would do for clients is, let's say you are,

Speaker 8 do you guys buy leads?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Okay, so you're buying the leads and you want to know up front as you buy that lead, because it's pretty time-sensitive sometimes.

Speaker 8 You want to know within a second, is this lead one of the ones that's most likely to close for you?

Speaker 8 So a simple way to do that is we're going to do a retro analysis and we're going to pretend like we had provided you the scores last month across your leads.

Speaker 8 But what we're going to do is we're going to take the name and address of your leads and the outcome, the target variable. Tell us if they quoted, tell us if they bought.
It's nothing too sensitive.

Speaker 5 We're just going to always have that.

Speaker 8 And what we do is, now that we have the name and address, we use our reference data on every adult, every household, every property, and we append that.

Speaker 8 So let's say we have a thousand data points or features attached to each one of those records, and we have your target variable. They bought or they quoted or both.

Speaker 8 And let's say you want to know which ones are more likely to buy from me, and how likely are they to buy from you? Well, this is where we already have our base models.

Speaker 8 We'll run you through the base model and we'll come up with a predict, we'll say our base model predicted that accurately called 75% of the time, something like that. That's a pretty good start.

Speaker 8 But now, machine learning, what that enables us to do is to reweight those variables and even pull in new features from that data set so that we can fit the model, not overfit,

Speaker 8 but fit the model to your particular outcomes. And we're going to do that on 80% of your data.
We're going to train. Now we've held back 20%.

Speaker 8 So once we've trained that model and let's say we now have an 85%

Speaker 8 accuracy, we're going to take that and put it out there against the 20% and see if we can reproduce that using data it hasn't seen before. And if we can, that's voila.

Speaker 8 That's what we present back to you. And it's about a week or two-week pilot.

Speaker 8 It's free. We do that for all of our customers to get them started and show them the impact.

Speaker 8 So we would come back to you and say, hey, Ryan, we know you were getting an X percent close rate before, but if you were to, instead of focusing on the entire lead set, but focus on this one-third or half that is much more likely to close, we think, you know, we talked to you, we think you're going to double or triple your close rate, right?

Speaker 8 And to you, that's worth big bucks. So that's your ROI calculation where we go in.
We like every client to have an ROI and a set of expectations before the implementation.

Speaker 8 And then it's a simple implementation.

Speaker 8 We simply score your unique algorithm so that when you hit our API with your credentials, it recognizes that, pulls your algorithm, calculates, and send it back to you in that moment.

Speaker 8 And that's how that works. And that's highly scalable and it's really working out well because over time, you would keep sending us outcomes, right?

Speaker 8 And we would keep tuning that model, and we would get better and better all the time for you.

Speaker 5 That is amazing. I mean,

Speaker 5 you just,

Speaker 5 it's,

Speaker 5 this is what people do in their brain, except your brain only has right like you just have this little tiny piece of your brain

Speaker 5 yeah yeah you know what i mean you go hey i seem to do well with auto repair shops well how big

Speaker 8 not small but not big well what does that i mean like that's kind of and you may not have all that data till you talk to them but so we can bring that data so all we need is the name and address and we're gonna basically explode you know the information on that so we can feed our model and give you a quick insight see and to bring this all the way back to the beginning where I think I went on some crazy tangent,

Speaker 5 I hired a appointment setter,

Speaker 5 23 years old. Literally, she's like, I love telemarketing appointment setting.
She's got a history. I talked to her.
She's dynamic. She's fun.
She's hungry. It's awesome.

Speaker 5 I'm super excited to add her to the team. And it's like, it's like

Speaker 5 where my brain is as you're talking is going, oh my gosh, I'm going to feed her.

Speaker 5 Like I could take this data and instead of having this pool where she's kind of, you know, I have a feel for what I think might be good targets, but still, I mean, you don't know.

Speaker 5 So, you know, it's just narrowing her focus where she's making highly relevant, closable phone calls every single time she dials.

Speaker 5 And when you think about that from the perspective of she continues to get better, the data gets better. Now you're now and then now you build an army of those.

Speaker 5 Now, you know, she teaches the next person how to do what she does.

Speaker 5 And now you have two and and then you have four and now you have ten and they're they're focused in on target markets and any insurance company that is listening to this that wants to

Speaker 5 wants to ride this train you you you you know i'm willing to play so um because as you said

Speaker 5 i'll say this crazy to me that they that that this isn't happening on a commercial lines basis yet i think about companies like i mean i think the big boys the you know the the the harfords and the travelers that they just i think they probably see it it's just they're so big already And I had a traveler's executive say to me one time, Ryan, I know every account that exists in the country don't need your help.

Speaker 8 Well, they're changing.

Speaker 5 I know.

Speaker 5 And I like travelers.

Speaker 5 If you're listening to this from travelers, I'm not giving you a hard time.

Speaker 5 It's one of my favorite comments I've ever had. He was also talking about larger middle market business.
And, you know, we're not talking about small market. It was just funny.

Speaker 5 You know, he was like, I do not need your thing, Ryan. Try not, don't sell me something else.

Speaker 5 I know but um but that's I look at that and I think this is really where what you're talking because I think sometimes

Speaker 5 I don't want to I don't want to make any agency sound unsophisticated but if you haven't dived into this world and I've and I've only been my my time at trusted choice in agency nation gave me some opportunity to at least understand partially what you're talking about but this

Speaker 5 partnering partnering with this type of data set,

Speaker 5 it allows you to be more focused, more determined, more

Speaker 5 of the expert that you are because it's basically saying, you're telling us what you're good at, and we're just giving it to you. Like, you know, instead of you guessing.

Speaker 8 Your best customer. Yeah.
And I like, I just, I'm so happy to think about the fact that it is a better,

Speaker 8 it's a, it's a better employee experience. Yeah.
One of the call center frustrations is the churn because people are so frustrated. You mentioned how you are such a fan of cold calling.

Speaker 5 Yeah, huge.

Speaker 5 Huge.

Speaker 8 To be sarcastic, right?

Speaker 8 And nobody likes that. They want to be successful.
So, so this tool is making them more successful.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And I like that too, because at the heart of it, you know, I just think there's a lot of inefficiencies that don't have to be there.

Speaker 5 You know what the other side of that is, too?

Speaker 5 I don't mean for this to be a justification for my lack of desire to cold call.

Speaker 5 No, no, it's okay.

Speaker 5 And no one wants to hear me belabor this point anymore anymore who listens to the show either.

Speaker 5 But but I do think, and I was thinking about this the other day, and it was part of my decision to hire the woman who's going to be appointment setting for us, is that she loves it.

Speaker 5 She wakes up in the morning, and it's something she enjoys doing. Awesome.
Right. Now, part of it may be she lives in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 5 She'd give two flying craps what someone in all the New York thinks of her. Where I always go, geez, I might bump into this guy or this woman at the coffee shop.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Like, so, so maybe that's part of it. I think it's more just her disposition.

Speaker 5 and she seems to enjoy it someone who enjoys something provides a better experience has more energy towards it so if I can say to her okay you like calling people but still kind of probably being hung up on or the bad experience of a cold call probably aren't your favorite I'm gonna reduce those even more now you can be even more excited now your bonus can go up even more because you're setting more appointments and and you're instead of doing two or three appointments a week you're setting six appointments a week you're selling setting so many appointments a week i got to hire another producer right like that's what we're talking about is gains in efficiency gains in and productivity and um

Speaker 5 man i i am uh i think this is such an important topic uh i and i i'm really glad that uh i'm really glad that you're taking this on because it's this this is the the to me the people who grab on this and this i want to be respectful of your time and i know we're a minute over so i apologize um i feel like the

Speaker 5 companies from all the way down to three-person independent agencies to

Speaker 5 the Marshes and the Gallagher's and up to the Travelers and the Harfords and all this, whoever grabs onto this first and can actually implement it will be so much farther ahead than the competition.

Speaker 5 Like I feel like we have a window, right? You have a window. There's a few years here where you can get such an early mover advantage.

Speaker 5 And some people already have, but I feel like there's still a window where you can grab onto this and go way out ahead um or you can kind of sit back and wait and and

Speaker 8 i i don't i don't see that working out very well that that's kind of where i'll finish this yeah yeah we definitely see a ton of demand for this we grew 400 last boom so um it's exciting we're hiring as well as you mentioned you know it's important to find the good people So I would love to make sure I get a plug-in for that as well.

Speaker 8 If this is exciting to folks out there and they think, you know, I want to be part of this change I want to make marketing a more efficient process I want to almost make marketing an underwriting tool right to track and screen and draw through profitable business and I want to think about insurance from an applicant perspective and not a product perspective if that's exciting to you and you happen to like APIs

Speaker 5 come and talk to us

Speaker 8 We're practically doubling our team this quarter alone.

Speaker 5 It's going to be a lot. I'll be honest, yeah.
All those words you just said, there are so many nerds listening to this podcast right now that are like losing their minds.

Speaker 5 I'm just telling you, I know the agents that listen, first of all, you got to be a certain kind of person to spend enough time with this show. But

Speaker 5 the people that are listening, you just said a whole bunch of words that turn them on. So that's fantastic.

Speaker 8 Oh, that's fantastic, too. Yeah.
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I'm listening to this. I love what you're saying.

Speaker 5 Connect on LinkedIn. What's the website?

Speaker 8 Like, how do people either learn more about the product if they're interested in the product or just want to be around the company follow you guys or or if they're potentially interested in a in a position yeah so we went from spending zero marketing dollars last year we're going to spend a little more this year yeah well you grow 400 you can do that yeah you can um you're supposed to uh i think the best way is come to our website at fenrisd.com and uh just click to get a demo or a free trial and you'll be hooked up uh we often send set people up next day for free demos get Get free API access, or we can run that free trial for you with a proof of concept and an impact statement.

Speaker 8 Follow us on LinkedIn. That seems to be our best channel because insurance is still a very serious business, right?

Speaker 8 So we tend to put out most of our news and updates on the LinkedIn channel, but we're exploring other ways to do that. And we're going to launch a bit of a podcast series ourselves.
Nice.

Speaker 8 I would love to invite you to be on our podcast sometime.

Speaker 5 Tell me when. I'll be there.
I will be there for that one

Speaker 5 for sure.

Speaker 8 And I'd love to have you on as well.

Speaker 5 When's the Fenris

Speaker 5 TikTok channel dropping?

Speaker 5 That's a little too hip for me.

Speaker 5 Me too. Me too.
I don't even have it on my phone. Someone said the other day, TikTok me.
Someone actually said that to me, and I'm like, it's not on here. I don't have it.

Speaker 5 That's past me, and I'm okay with that. I'm Twitter and LinkedIn.
We'll Facebook. That's about it.

Speaker 8 I got it. After this, I got to check in on that Twitter war that you were mentioning.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's so good. I'm telling you, they've been going back and forth.
I'm not kidding you for like three hours. I think they're doing a clubhouse tonight.

Speaker 5 They're still going.

Speaker 8 I'm not even cool enough to have a clubhouse invite yet.

Speaker 5 This is, oh, I'll invite you to clubhouse.

Speaker 5 I don't even, I haven't gotten on it. I'm not into it.
I'm,

Speaker 5 I get it. I just don't, I'll be honest.
Like, I get it. Like, Elon Musk shows up.
It's cool to listen to him. Like, I think that's cool.
But

Speaker 5 coming from the guy, you're the guy who was on YouTube a decade ago. I know.

Speaker 8 I know.

Speaker 5 I get it.

Speaker 5 But, but everyone's got to age out at some point.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 the truth is,

Speaker 5 I still, to me, I think it's amazing, but I've seen thought leadership platforms emerge before, and I have no desire to be a thought leader in that regard.

Speaker 5 That's what I think it is.

Speaker 5 If you're trying to be a thought leader on a topic, fintech, insure tech, insurance in general, whatever, I think it's probably a tremendous platform for that and would highly recommend people getting involved because of the depth of content that you can get and the access.

Speaker 5 But that's not the world.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to grow an insurance agency so that in 10 years I can sell it to someone for a shit ton of money and I can play more golf and watch my kids develop into the next level of their life in college.

Speaker 5 That's what I'm trying to do. I've already played that game.
It was awesome. Now I just want to build a rock star business, sell it for a ridiculous amount of money.

Speaker 5 I want to be able to Scrooge McDuck into my money and

Speaker 5 then I want to not have to talk to people ever again.

Speaker 8 Hashtag life goals.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 All right. Thank you so much.
This has been tremendous and a lot of fun. And we'll talk soon.

Speaker 8 That's good.

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