RHS 132 - The Power Brokers on the Future of Insurtech

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Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. And it's a multi-guest show.
I don't do a lot of these because sometimes when you don't have a good flow, they can be a little distracting. But today's episode is just wonderful.
Two former guests, Steve Anderson, CEO of Catalyst, and Peter McDonald, co-founder and CEO of WonderWrite, as well as a first-timer, someone who we are going to have on for his own solo episode at some point, but this is the first time he's on the show, Andrew Wynn, co-founder of Ascend. And you've heard me talk a little bit on the show about Ascend payments and how they've been a big part of our success here in the second half of 2021, moving into 2022.
And really, these guys reached out to me and said, hey, we really want to have this conversation. We'd love to do it on your your show and we want to talk about the future of insure tech and that was just music to my ears uh excited that they would think about this show this this my audience you guys as a group of people that um they would want to speak to and have this conversation in front of uh such an honor it's a wonderful conversation you're gonna learn a ton uh a bunch of really cool ideas, and hopefully get your brain spinning here as we continue to run into 2022 on our collective and individual paths to world domination.
All right, before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of this show, the people that make this show possible. Pay the bills, and that is Podium.
Podium, if you go, you want to see Podium in action, go to rogrist.com, check out the web chat. We use a couple different features of Podium, but the one we use the most is the web chat.
And the reason for that is we get like a 95 plus response rate to people who use that web chat because they fill out the web chat on their phone or whatever online. And then when we respond, it hits their text message.
So, you know, text response is way, way higher than anything else, phone, you know, whatever. And for that reason, this allows us to get in front of people, and really what we're able to do is vet people quickly on the fly through a few questions in the chat, the podium chat, before we move them into our pipeline.
We're able to either send them to, you know, refer them out to where they need to go or put them into our process and start working them through Rogue. So love Podium, big fans, very happy that they've chosen to be a part of our show here.
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All right, with that, let's get on to this absolutely tremendous episode, the power brokers on the future of insure tech. I'm so sick of COVID.
I know, dude, I'm so done with it. At this point, like, even if I were ever actually scared of it, which I wasn't, I just can't take it anymore.
I couldn't take anything. I couldn't take anything this long.
I was definitely a little scared in the beginning there in like March. It was like, I was like thinking of that Matt Damon movie.
I was just like, Oh my God, we're all going to die. I think you get to like, I think you get to like the end of June.
If you were scared to like the end of June, like real scared, I think that's legit. But you know, this point it's just, there was a year and a half ago.
Yeah.

Now it's just a business model. I mean, now we're like, now there's going to be like MBA classes on

like, Hey, want to set up an annuity? Here's a really cool business model.

What I'm scared about now is like just mutations it's like yeah you know we don't have vaccines

going out and whatever I don't know but like just gonna keep mutating it's just weird I don't know

yeah but I don't know I won't I won't get into all that I know I know I know I follow you on

Twitter so between your football commentary and weight lifting and everything I just can't help

it I think I said to my wife the other day I was like I was like I tried so hard for so long

Thank you. weight lifting and everything.
I just can't help it. I think I said to my wife the other day, I was like, I was like, I tried so hard for so long to not have an open opinion on this.
And I just, I can't handle it anymore. Like I can't take it.
Like, like it's gonna, I'm going to explode if I don't have one channel that I can voice my feelings on this particular topic and um so i she's like my life is badass she's like fuck it let's do it who cares what do i what do you care i'm like all right all right sorry steve you woke it you walked into me uh pontificating about the vid uh so so what's up what are we uh what are we talking about here today again this is like a this is like a powerhouse show that we got going on here um i can't hear you steve by the way are you talking yeah steve your mic's not working um the uh i i love I get emails. Who sent me the original email? Was it you, Andrew? That was like, hey, we want to do this show.
I got all these guys together. Can we come on your podcast? I'm just like, this is my favorite.
Yes. Why would I say no to this? That would be crazy.
So what are we talking about talking about here fellas yeah and wanting to wait to see it we can hear steve oh see oh steve are you steve this does not look good for catalyt this does not play well exactly first tool of catalalyst is going to be an IP phone system. How about now? There we go.
There we go. There you go.
It's amazing when you actually turn the microphone on what happens. Yeah.
I have to leave mine. I figure I just got people snowed about catalyticac.
So, you know, no big deal. So, you know, that's actually the advantage of being around so long.
You know, it's just like, hey, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, I got this thing.
Well, I've been snowing people about my understanding of insurance for about 16 years now. So I'm right with you.
I feel like I'm that one.

So, all right. So, so, so, so guys, what are we, what are we talking about today?

You got three complete power brokers on the show. And, and I have literally no idea what

we're talking about, which is makes me very happy. I think Andrew had approached, you know,

we were chatting about something we had connected about a year ago. Um, and we were chatting recently with Steve and with each other.
And we're like, you know, it'd be great to do a podcast kind of discuss the future of InsureTech. I think there's been a lot of thinking and agents in the beginning about, you know, where's my place in all this, there's all this sexy stuff happening.
All these companies like lemonades of the world are happening and what's happening with us and i think that we wanted to kind of set the record straight that or you know people are already on board obviously but um the future of insured tech is really about empowering independent agents there's a future there and i think we're you know steve's unique background and experience of knowing all the different tools that's out there comes into play is he can talk to that. And also, it's an interesting conversation point for Cadillac, which is, I think, having a big year this year, talking about how to help agencies simplify and understand.
Yeah, we are having a big year. Actually, literally today we signed another state on board.
So congrats. They're dropping like flies.
That's awesome. So let's do this for those listening at home who who may, you know, let's do like again and no grandstanding here.
I know we're all proud of the things that we do, but let's do just quick, quick soundbite on whatever your thing is.

We'll start with Steve.

We'll go in reverse.

So we'll go reverse for me.

Steve, Andrew, finish with Peter.

Just quick, you know, what's the thing?

What is, what is catalytic?

Where can people get more?

And then obviously we'll, we'll do all that at the end and stuff too.

But for people listening right now, like hit them, hit them, hit them with your, the elevator

pitch just so we can level set everybody. Sure.
I can probably do that. So I'm Steve Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Catalyst, a new for-profit entity formed by seven big I state associations, along with a growing number of other states that have partnered with us to provide technology resources and information to their members.
The way I describe it is we help agents discover, evaluate, select, and implement the technology they need to continue to thrive.

Gotcha. I love that.
It's like a trusted, a trusted source for all their tech concerns. Questions, problems, who's out there, who should I pick? How do I do it? How do I not make a mistake? Yeah.
Yeah. Good.
Well, cost. Cost me.
What Ryan costs you 500,000, 2000, multiple thousands of dollars if you make the wrong choice. And the time and the brain cycles, that's the part that time is the biggest.
Yeah. Yeah.
The cost is like, I mean, I think the cost is the easiest thing to feel frustrated about, but like it's the time and, and the, and, you know, I always think in terms of brain cycles, like, like how much energy do I have to give to this thing to do it? And like, when you change a big system, man, it takes a lot of focus and a lot of attention. And if, you know, if you end up making a mistake or get something you're not happy with or something that can't solve your need, man, that is a killer.
I mean, you just want to, you know, that's when I popped the bottle of Buffalo Chase behind me. Exactly.
Well, and the message, the message we'll have this year, frankly, is we are a fractional CIO for the normal independent agency. So large brokers have one or multiple positions that their full time job is to do that.
You know, the traditional normal, you know, agent doesn't have the resources to do that. We become that for them at a very reasonable monthly fee.
That's great. I love that.
I love it. That's a great.
Okay, cool. Well, good.
So Andrew, on to you. What the hell do you? Yeah, thank you.
I'm Andrew. Is this your first time on the show, by the way? I don't think it is.
Yeah. Oh, that kind of is so funny.
These guys have both been on. Steve's been on a ton of times.
Talked to him too much. So, okay, well, so that we got to do an individual show too, but okay.
We'll do that later. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, well, thanks for having me for the first time.
Looking forward to the others. Uh, I'm Andrew Wynn, one of the co-founders of Ascend.
Uh, Ascend is the first modern insurance payments platform. We're an all-in-one payments platform for, uh, independent agents.
So we allow you to do premium finance, digital payments, uh, automating payables, things like that. To Steve's point earlier, it's really about saving you time and helping you do what matters to you, which is sell insurance and help people find the right coverages and not worry about all this other paperwork and stuff associated, or traditionally associated with selling insurance.
Yeah. And guys at home, you've heard me talk about Ascend a little bit.
Obviously, Adrian has been on the show yet. So we'll do a solo episode coming up and do a deep dive.
But Rogue is a Ascend client. And I processed a payment with him today.
To me, there is no easier system on the market for capturing payments. And the fact that you can do the payment, like just a straight payments, you know, kind of standard payments or do the premium finance that to me in the ease of it, right.
The, the, just send out a link and you guys kind of take care of the whole thing. Like, I don't even have to send the email anymore.
There's like a button where once it's all set up, I just click go. And then you guys take care of the email and the reminders.
And, um, you know, I, I, I have, it's been a game changer for us and, uh, you know, I, I appreciate it. And then you obviously pay the brunt of that in terms of all the Slack messages that I send with different insights that I have.
We'll call them insights. No, no.
We appreciate it. We appreciate it.
But yeah, I mean, that's really just want to take that muscle memory away of deciding, hey, should I offer premium finance? If so, blah, blah, blah. Let me get a quote.
Let me go to the systems. We push that to the customer so they can decide on the fly.
Hey, do I want to finance this or not? If so, you know, I'm going to choose and you don't, you as the, as the agent don't need to be in the loop of that. And we handle the rest.
So really saving you a ton of time. Yeah.
Very cool. Very cool.
Okay. Peter, you're up.
Yeah. So, um, my name is Peter McDonald.
I'm one of the co-founders of wonder rights. We built what I think is the best experience to fill out applications with your customers.
So quick background, I was an agent for seven years. I wish Steve that Catalyst existed five years ago.
We were literally looking for a fractional CIO. And Andrew, I love the concept of Ascend and knew I had a use for that in my own life as an agent, as I did for an easier way of filling out applications, because I used to fill them out with pen and paper.

It was literally the fastest way to do it.

And it drove me crazy to think that I would work so hard to win deals and

then fill out apps with paper or Adobe Acrobat or whatever.

So best, easiest, fastest way to fill it out collaboratively,

invite your customers, you know,

click a button to send them an email, et cetera. Yeah.
I will also give another disclosure that we are a paying client of wonder, right? Neither one of these guys or any of these guys are sponsors of the show. Um, and this is, this is a real story and appears to think I'm stroking his ego, but it's not.
Um, so we hired a new account manager for our team, we call them client success associates. And, um, she'd come from a standard agency and she needed to do something in the cord form.
And she's like, can I get a login to Adobe Acrobat to manipulate this form or whatever, right? And I said, no, no, you don't need to do that. And she goes, what do you mean? I go, so we Zoom and I do a screen share.
And I go, we use this tool called WonderWrite to do that.

So we get about two minutes in the thing.

And she literally goes, ah!

And she has like a reaction, like a physical and audible reaction.

And she goes, holy shit, this is so easy.

And I said, well, you know, use the tool and, you know, make sure or whatever.

But yeah, this is what we use now.

And it's crazy how quickly people take to that process.

And we've enjoyed we've, we've enjoyed, we use it every day, uh, pretty much. So, um, so I just, I just want to put that out there that when people hear me talk about it, I do, you know, none of these guys are sponsored.
I use their tools. Um, so cool.
All right. So now that we've gotten all that nonsense out of the way um let's talk about the future of insure tech and i want to start with steve because um steve's the oldest has the most experience and um only by a couple years so yeah well and yeah um i also a couple of digit years but yeah steve's also probably the smartest out of all of us.
So let's start. So Steve, you know, you, you have, you know, uniquely have this breadth of experience in our space, really starting from when tech really first started to infiltrate into the, into the industry to now where you've kind of lived through multiple iterations of everyone's going to go away and there's not going to be agents anymore.
And, you know, and then we cycle through that kind of phase and, and then come back and, you know, it does feel like we're in a fairly unique period in that technology is starting to be built like two, the two guys that we have on the show.

It's starting to be built with agents in mind from the very start, not trying to disintermediate

them, but strictly trying to take them to the next level outside of the standard kind

of technology players that we all had to use for so long.

So it's kind of a really interesting, innovative time.

And I'm just interested in your take and kind of how would you kick this conversation off?

What's going through your coconut?

I think the phrase is kind of hitting me right now is the democratization of technology.

So when I started literally in the 80s, you know, there were few options.

They were expensive and were not at all customizable. And again, like you said, Ryan, I mean, I even presentations I would do in the early 2000s, you know, really was agents, you need to get a website, you need, I mean, this is what's coming.
There were a lot of people talking about, you know, not needing an agent anymore. And I think perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of today is the fact that I want to, I, this may not be accurate.
You can fact check me on this, but I feel like every direct to consumer player all of a sudden has recognized that, oh, agents are there. And I actually think there's a very specific reason why that's happening.
Because I've been trying to figure out for a while, you know, a year, whatever, 18 months, kind of what was the change? Or why does that mindset? Why is that mindset changing? And then then I think also, and again, like, you know, Peter and Andrew platforms, processes, procedures, you know, tools coming out specifically designed to help the agent, you know, move forward. And it's not about technology.
It's about, it's about meeting the customer where they want to be. So kind of stop there.
I've got some stories and things like that I could talk about, but I feel like democratization of technology, meaning even some of the smallest agents today have tools available if they're willing to think differently, they can do amazing things today. And I think that's part of what's different.
Yeah. You are our fact checkers.
So the fact that you said it means that it must be true. And no, I think you're right.
I have loved secretly secretly considering how much of a jerk he was to all of us when he first came in watching lemonade and their CEO start to placate to agents now being that they can't crack 40, what is it? 43% retention or whatever. I think on their last quarterly, you know, to me, I find that hopefully humbling to him, although he's probably on some yacht and some Caribbean island at this point.
But, you know, that that to me is interesting because they they were really the case study for an app, a personified bit of, you know, what they called AI, which was really just, you know, CSS code that that, you know, could this replace the interaction that someone has with a human? And they have proven the case that it just doesn't. And that to me, you know, I'm not a behavioral psychologist, but to me, it's how many of these case studies do we need before we all start to realize that it's some way, to differing degrees, humans be part of the process and it just there hasn't been a case study to the to the former other point yeah and again i always like to be careful too that agents can't just sit back and go hey you know i've been successful i don't need to make any changes either so that that's sort of the interesting kind of balance act there that I think we need to keep in mind.

Yeah. Andrew?

Yeah, I was just going to say that, you know, that point, the lemonade point was proven with arguably the simplest insurance product, right?

So if you can't do that in renters, how are you going to do homeowners, auto, commercial, right? It just gets much, much more complicated and you definitely need a human in the loop. But I agree with you, Steve.
I think we're actually in a really great time for technology inclined agents and customer experience, or maybe even customer obsessed agents to come and capture a ton of business, right? Because people are going to be a lot more efficient and effective than they have been able to be historically using technology. And if they're willing to adapt, they're going to be, you know, we're going to have these super agents, people like Ryan, right, who are going to be able to come and clean up a ton of business.
And I think it's going to be a really special time for folks moving forward. Yeah.
I'll tell you what in particular, WonderWrite and Ascend as tools have done for us is open up the E&S market. Right.
For so, I was told from the beginning, don't go out for small business. There's too much E&S.
There's too much E&S. You can't make money doing E&S.
It's unprofitable, but on and on. I mean, I must've heard from two dozen agents when I explained to about a year and a half ago, about six months in a rogue, I did a solo episode where I kind of said, Hey, we got our butt kicked by COVID.
We're pivoting. This is what we're doing.
Here's what we're doing going forward. And I just kind of shared that idea and I get a ton, I got a ton of feedback and everyone said, that sounds great.
Except for ENS is going to destroy you. You're not going to be able to have a business.
And, and what is exciting is that with, you know, we now have eight people, but for most of our history, you know, except for the last three months, we had only three people, right? We've added five in the last three months, but for most of our history, we've only had three people and almost 50% of our business is ENS. And it's because of tools like Ascend and Wonder Right that are so accessible, even to a small agent that now ENS, which has been this thing that no one wanted to touch has, I mean, I'll take an ENS account just like I'll take any other account.
It means nothing to me. I mean, literally we don't go in our head, ah, ENS.
No, we're just like, oh, this is what we do. Bing, bing, bing.
We put it in here. We get the accords.
We send them into this company. We use this for payment.
It means nothing to us. And I think those are the kind of opportunities that today have opened up for even small agents that were really only accessible to bigger agencies who had a workforce to handle all that stuff.
And that's what to me is a game changer. Absolutely.
I think you look at Ryan, some of the biggest companies that have really verticalized in the space. And you're like, what is the best version of this company look like? And I don't know.
I kind of think about, it's like watching a football game, you know, as you come to the playoffs. It's like, is there gonna be a playoff game where you don't see an ad for like a big insurance company? Like, no, they're always going to have ads.
These companies have always been around. They're always going to be around.
In some ways are kind of the exception rather than the rule, because a lot of the business that independent agents are writing, to your point, it's not standardized. It's written, it's regulated at a state level.
It's written regionally. There's these different niches and pockets.

And I think insurance agents like yourself, you've always had a take on customer experience.

It's always been a top priority for agencies, always.

And I think a lot of agencies have always known

it could be better.

It could be way better.

And I think you see this not just with WonderWrite,

but with companies like Tarmica,

AgencyZoom, or Glovebox,

literally founded by former agents

who just knew there had to be a better way.

And so I think back to Steve's point,

Thank you. companies like Tarmica, Agency Zoom, or Glovebox, literally founded by former agents who just knew there had to be a better way.
And so I think back to Steve's point of democratization, we're at a point now where the tools that I think some of us agents wanted five, 10 years ago are finally coming out. And so now as an agent, you have those tools and the barrier to entry is not super high yeah yeah.
Yeah. I mean, the, the, I know there's a lot of talking, I was talking with, well, it's probably a couple of months now, but I saw Carrie Wallace down in North Carolina and she was talking about agency valuations and all this M&A activity and all this stuff is going on.
Right. And she's, she's, you know, she's doing these valuations and she's like, oh, we're going to crest a thousand.
And I think we easily crest a thousand. Right.
We were pushing up towards like almost twelve hundred. Well, what's really interesting to me is despite that, the number of agencies has stayed flat or even I've seen a couple of reports where it may have even increased because the barrier to entry for agents with these types of tools that you can be remote, work out of your house.
right? Like we don't have an office, right. But, but we can still provide an incredibly professional experience.
And that's exciting because now you have all these new people popping up and some of them be successful and will fail just like anything else. But, but they get to take this shot that even five years ago, I don't know that they could have launched these types of agencies or going after some of these niche markets because the tools just weren't available or to Steve's point, they weren't democratized enough that they could customize them in a way that would work for them.
They had to kind of play within the same rules that everyone had to play in. I've definitely felt that.
Go ahead, Peter. Yeah.
I was just going to say, I've definitely felt that energy. I was down at the IAOA in Florida and man, Ryan, the energy was, was awesome.
It was just a ton of like new agents, buildings, building from scratch, starting scratch agencies. And like, if you want to talk about entrepreneurship, like that is just exciting.
You have people in every pocket of the country, starting every niche type of agency imaginable. You know.
First generation insurance agency. It was really a lot of fun and it was refreshing as a millennial former insurance agent.
Well, my comment was the most recent Future One study identified approximately 36,500 independent agencies in the United States. And again, that number is fluctuated not by much over the last number of years.
What was really interesting to me is 14% of those agencies are five years or younger. Wow.
So, and I believe the M&A is actually throwing off agents, producers, staff who don't want to work for a large organization. They like the smaller feel.
It's whatever that looks like. And again, Moran, I agree with you.
The tools they can utilize today are cheaper, better, more useful, more customizable than they ever were before. All right.
So I have a question for, I'm going to throw this at Andrew, because he hasn't had an episode on the show. And it's just something I'm interested in.
Like when you were evaluating, you know, starting, you know, starting Ascend, right. And you're looking at the space and you're, and you're looking for opportunities and you see payments is a problem.
And payments was a huge problem. I mean, the fact that premium finance companies got away with operating the way that they did for so long is absolutely bananas.
And I'm glad that they can't operate that way anymore because you guys, and to be fair, there are a few who have, you know, who've put some improvements in. So it's not like you're the only game in town, but you know, obviously I'm a big fan.
So when, what, what was it when you, when you started evaluating, was it just you knew payments? Had you been thinking about payments for a while? Did you do like an analysis of the industry to find gaps? Like, like what did that look like when you were trying to find a place where you could add value or build a company? Was it, was it payments were already in your mind? Did you figure out payments? Like how did that, how did that come to be? Yeah. So, you know, Praveen and I started from the place of, I would, I would almost argue like a, the opposite place of Peter where we were working at a full stack carrier and short tech where we, you know, we'd sold our last business too.
And we'd actually seen firsthand, like, gosh, like the agent channel continues to perform the best.

We believe that there is a real opportunity to build.

And, you know, the words we were using at that time was sort of in the infrastructure for insurance, as opposed to coming and trying to build everything end to end and replace, you know, from distribution through underwriting through, you know, the whole stack as a lot of full stack insurance, insure techs are doing. And we said, gosh, there's a, there's a huge opportunity to specialize.
So what are areas where there is an, a very industry specific problem and payments and insurance are hugely industry specific. It's not e-commerce, right? It's not, let me collect my money and then it's my money and I do whatever.
It's, I have commissions, I have endorsements, I have payables, I have premium finance, right? Premium finance doesn't exist in other industries. So we know it was very complicated at the industry level and industry specific, but it wasn't, we were also looking for something that wasn't a brokerage or carrier or MGA specific.
So, you know, pretty much everyone has the same problems with payments and insurance. It's not like everyone does it very differently.
And so that's how we, we kind of arrived on payments as an opportunity. What's up guys.
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Did you see, and thank you for that. That was kind of a setup question to what I really wanted to ask you, which is in that analysis, did you see any other places? Like, was there, was there other segments, other little dark holes of that, that, that may exist that you're like, you know, Hey, here's some other things or, you know, that, that evaluate, I'm always interested in that evaluation process because, you know, I'm, I'm not necessarily one of those people who would just, um, come up with an idea for, for forms or come up with an idea for payments.
Like, so I'm always interested in the, in when you do find it, like, what does that evaluation process look like? Because, you know, I'm sure for Steve and then, you know, I'll pass over to Steve too. Like, you know, you're looking for all these ideas, Steve, like you're trying to be that aggregator of all this information.
So was there anything, Andrew, else that you saw that you're like, ah, that'd be interesting, but maybe that's the next business, or we'll start that once Ascend is kind of matured, or is there any other opportunities that you saw, or maybe, or, you know, if you don't have any, maybe just throw that out to the whole group. Yeah, we, I mean, we looked at a bunch of stuff and obviously nothing we thought was as compelling as, as payments, which is obviously where we ended up.
We looked at, you know, I think the TPA space has a huge amount of opportunity, but the lens by which we looked through it is kind of on the business model and monetization, right? Like there's a lot of problems to be solved in insurance and not all of them will be able to sustain a meaningful large business. And that's kind of, I think, you know, a consideration as people are thinking about starting in, you know, agency tooling or insurance infrastructure type businesses.
So we looked at a bunch of stuff that we didn't think would be a sustainable enough business. Yeah.
I'm curious what other people think, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
You guys, have you guys, and you don't need to give away like your pocket business that it's gonna be your next big rocket ship, But are there any other sectors or spaces that you've just evaluated or come across where you're like, geez, I'm really excited for someone to solve this problem or this area? Well, I will say, as I'm kind of, you said, continuing to evaluate kind of where things are, where things are going. I think there is a very interesting opportunity, again, for the smaller agent in machine learning.
And I do not very specifically use the phrase artificial intelligence because we don't have it right now. is a term i i'm on a campaign to eradicate um and we won't have it for probably 30 years so but machine learning pattern matching um and there's some really interesting again i have a thinking of a slide i have in a presentation i do again democratization of machine learning between Google Cloud, AWS, maybe Microsoft, Azure.
There are so many tools that, again, are accessible. It takes a bit more technical something.
But just as a simple example, on my website, I have a Amazon tool called Amazon Poly that whenever I post an article, the tool automatically converts my text into voice. And I get to choose the voice and I get to choose the country and the language and et cetera.
And puts a bar on the top of my article that says, click here to listen automatically. It also automatically, and it's same kind of process can do a couple of things.
One, it can actually convert that to a podcast. So again, text to podcast, which I didn't do because, you know, that's not the experience I want, but it also then can be a skill in Alexa.
So you could ask Alexa to listen to Steve Anderson's tech tips. Now, are those, you know, are those gee whiz shiny object things, or are they worth experimenting with to find out where the right sweet spot is and so so some of those things and i think machine learning and automated account reviews i i'm working with a vendor right now and developing some stuff for catalyt there's just some interesting opportunities and again you know staying within the insurance industry for me is key because there's, you know, I always jokingly say to people, you know, insurance is a great industry to be in because they're five to seven years behind everybody else.
So when I talk about something, everybody thinks it's a wow, you know, and the rest of the world goes, Oh yeah, we did that, you ago yeah um so i probably sound smarter than i actually am just because everybody else is farther behind come on steve steve um follow question to that is uh what accent did you what did you what did you choose i did a male um uh u.s but you could do british you could do Australian, you could do. And by the way, the other thing I do is I actually translate that article into four different languages.
Yeah. Now, I mean, think about that, depending on where you are in the country.
Yeah. You know, it could be Spanish, could be Vietnamese, could be Polish, could be.
I'm thinking of different areas of the country that have larger populations that speak a different language and your site automatically. Could be, yeah, could be Southern drawl.
I saw something like this in practice, actually, recently, we changed our health insurance for our company this year. And I went on to the portal, they give you a free Fitbit, because they want to track your data or something, make you healthy, make sure you get your steps in.
But there was a video review of your insurance policy. And it was like, Hello, Peter, here are your family members, and it put their names on the screen.
And then it's like, here's your coverage. And here's the terms.
And it was like a whole video customized to me. And it was definitely cool.
You know, I've heard about this, I've thought about it in our own sales demonstrations. But it was really cool to see like an insurance company actually implementing that, you know, for the first time.
So I, yeah, definitely interesting. You know, what's, what's funny is, so we use Neoteric Agent, which I love Grant Botma, but that's the worst name of any tool that exists in the industry.
And Grant, I love you, but your tool has a terrible name. But I love the tool and I use it almost every day.
So it's a video proposal tool. There's a couple of these out here.
It's just, it's the one we use and I, and I like it. And we do a simple thing, right? We set an expectation before we sell.
We say, Hey, the next, after I gather, next thing that's going to happen is I'm going to figure out what company program coverages I recommend. I'm going to send you an email.
The email's got three parts.

It's got a high level overview.

It's got, you're going to get the download the PDF right from the company.

So you can see exactly what I see.

I'm going to do a quick video, right? Just breaking down why I chose this company and the coverages, whatever.

People lose their minds.

And they're like, I've never seen anything like this before.

This is amazing. I can't believe you took the time to do this.
Took the time. It was like five minutes.
I mean, literally, that's it. Imagine a normal sales process is 45 minutes across the table and you're pushing paper and you got like an easel chart that you're doing graphs on and stuff.
And like, this is five minutes of me just in front of a camera, half the time I'm in a hoodie and people lose their mind. So when you talk about like technology that in our industry is mind blowing that in other industries is like running the mill video proposals, which is, it just, to me seems so remedial, absolute people lose their minds.
They lose. I mean, I get people that are just like, I don't even care what the prices I'm in.
This is amazing. I'm in the emails that we've gotten back and it just, it's, it's bewildering to me, but I mean, I guess that's why there's opportunity.
Well, I think that's right, Ryan. It's that, that is why there's opportunities.
And I was going to say when I was putting catalytic together and we were doing, you know, estimates of, you know, what penetration would we have with independent agents? Part of what I did was I actually took about 20 or 25 percent of our universe off because I figure that's about the right number of agencies that don't care about technology, never will. They're not going to invest.
They know they're going to sell.'s not my audience um and so you know what again i like to try and convert them but i've decided you know what i don't have time anymore to try and do that if they don't if they don't buy into that's not a catalytic ideal agency it is the agency who's willing to go gosh that sounds interesting i'm willing to'm willing to test that, or I'm willing to try it, or I want help in figuring this out, or how do I do this? So, you know, I think that's, and I'm, I think I'm hoping that percentage will shrink again, M&A, right. All this, all the changes going on in the agency world with that.
But frankly, even some of the bigger organizations that, you know, everybody thinks they have the resources, but they don't have the mindset to actually be willing to experiment and fail and experiment and fail and experiment and get a big hit. So.
No, I agree. Andrew, when, so in launching Ascend into the marketplace and Peter, I'm going to ask you a similar question too, if your answer is different, you can say if it's not, what has been like, so you're giving people this piece of technology.
It is, you know, someone can say they don't want to use Ascend or maybe it's not right for them, but there's no denying that you are saving people time and it's an efficiency tool and all that kind of stuff. So, you know what I mean? Like, what is the, what has been one of the most interesting pieces of feedback you got either adoption or, you know, like, has there been anything that you've been like, geez, I didn't see anyone saying that about this or, or man, I wouldn't have expected people to go this path or that path.
Is there been anything unexpected about the process of rolling technology out to independent agents? I mean, that's part of the fun of, of, of doing this work. Right.
And like you were just saying, Steve, it's about the experimentation and learning and, and readapting. So we've learned a ton as we've, as we've gone to market.
And again, not coming from the independent insurance agent background, we've learned just a huge amount about the process of how, you know, typically client interactions are working and payments are collected and what that generally looks like. And I think we get to bring a pretty unique perspective because we don't have the sort of fixed mindset or that this is how it has been done.
And so we're able to sort of mix in the feedback of, hey, this is how we have been doing things with a sort of first principles look. And so I think that's part of the reason Ascend has come to this, you know, is able to save folks time.
In terms of specific surprising things, I mean, I think, you know, the thing that surprised us most is the highest level, I guess, part of Ascend, which is just the feedback we got on the novelty, if you will, of putting pay in full or rate plan digital payment collections alongside premium finance in a single tool. You know, that was pretty foreign to folks in the market who were working with multiple providers, whether, you know, it's someone who is just for digital payments or someone who is just for premium finance and putting those two things together.
We had to explain that a few times to people before they were like, wait, so it's one thing or like, yeah, it's one thing. And that was, that was pretty fun at the beginning.
How many people get into you guys asked it. So we're, I don't know if, I don't know if we're in a Slack channel with the team from Ascend and we give them a lot of feedback and we've been on the tool since I think August now.
Right. I think we've you guys since August and you know in the and you know we're like hey we'd love to have a button here or something you know and whether they do it or not we're just giving them feedback and one of the questions they asked was like how does our interest rate line up against others I was like I was like I couldn't imagine and I'm sure there are agencies that do this.
I just could not imagine. And frankly, since you asked me that question, I have now pinged some of my like little networks that I'm in to get feedback on this.
And there are literally people who on like a week to week basis will compare the premium finance interest rates from different companies as to like whose is the best and like where they place the premium finance. And I'm like, you do what you spend how much time on what, what are we talking about? Like I said to them, I was like, it's so easy.
I don't even, I couldn't even tell you what your interest rate is. I just create the link and I send it off.
And if someone has a problem, you know, we'll figure it out. I mean, they got to pay the premium.
I don't know. Like, it's just, it's funny where we as an industry, to me, it's funny the places that we're like willing to invest time versus like some, you know, the things that you guys have created and what Steve's been talking about for, for how many years, all these little efficiency finders and tools.
But someone at an agency who makes real money, who owns that agency will be like, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to figure out which one of my premium finance companies has the best interest rate. That seems like a useful use of my time.
It just blows me away. I mean, what? Well, yeah, no, I mean, I like, I get it right.
Because it, it impacts your customer experience, right? If your customer, you want to be able to provide your customer the best possible experience and rate of premium finance is certainly one of those vectors. And that's part of the reason, you know, we, we wanted to build a product that was much

more than just premium finance and provided a much better customer experience. We, for two reasons, one, we didn't want to just compete on rate, you know, that's what premium finance, incumbent premium finance companies to do today.
And that's where their focus goes, as opposed to building better customer and product experiences that actually, you know, differentiate. And so we wanted to build a product that delivers that better customer experience while staying competitive on rate.
And I think, you know, we're happy for people to compare our rate to other folks. Like, yeah, we're good there too.
Right. And it's not that we just don't want that to be the only reason that people would choose to use Ascent.
I just couldn't imagine. And I'm aware that maybe I just think differently about some of these things.
But I just couldn't imagine going through the traditional premium finance. Someone said to me the other day, we're going to be a quarter point lower than whoever you use, no matter what.
You us who you use and we'll be at least a quarter point lower. Right.
That was their pitch to me and random cold email. And I just was like, you couldn't have pressed the button that I care about less than what you just said to me.
Cause I know that it's not as easy as that. And my time is worth that quarter point.
And if that business owner cared so much about the rate on the premium that they're paying, they'd pay the thing in full and not be a cheapskate. So, you know, I don't know.
It's just to me, it's just crazy where we spend our time. If people had just listened to Steve for the last however many years, how much freaking further along would we be? But they don't.
They think about stupid shit like finding a premium finance company with a quarter point less than the one they currently have. Like, I don't know, Peter, what, um, what about you, man? I mean, you're doing the same thing.
You're, you're, uh, you know, people go, well, why do you use one? Right. I had someone asked me the other day.
Why do you use one? Right. I was like a court forms.
I go, well, yeah, my agency means I didn't go. Yeah.
But one, it's easy Two, it has all the supplementals, which you don't have. That's a game changer for me.
And three, your customer can fill it out alongside you, right? Those three things, that's kind of how I pitch when people ask me. None of those things really at face value seem like game changer ideas, but put together, saving a tremendous amount of time for people.
How, like, what have you gotten for feedback? What has been the most interesting thing you've heard from someone who maybe did or didn't, you know, decide to use WonderWrite? Yeah. I think the top thing is make it easy.
And, and the reason I arrived at this is, you know, I think where Andrew was very thoughtful probably about how he created Ascend, I think I was an agent and I was like, there has to be an easier way. I was banging my head up against the desk or I was having my account manager yell at me or be angry at me for not filling out applications.
And that's how I started about to create WunderWrite out of like sheer brute force. Like I'm going to do this.
I'm going to teach myself to code, to build this thing. And so I had very opinionated ways about the way that I like to work.
And that's built into the software. You know, I have a lot of insurance designations.
I made cold calls, I've sold policies. And so I'm opinionated.
And I think we get great feedback from our users. Sometimes they say nice things to us.
Most of the time they say nice things to us and they don't always tell us the bad things. And so we actually, Ryan, we kind of track how people use the software.
We anonymize like their mouse movements and what they're typing, but we can kind of play back randomly videos of like when things don't go well for them. Like a user experience software.
Exactly. And I didn't even know this thing existed until our product person was like, we need to use this to make the software better.
We're super tuned into both the feedback we get, whether it's written or recorded video or a Slack message or intercom.

But even more so, it's like, how about when people actually use it and maybe they're not like filtering their opinions and seeing people get stuck is really painful.

Like you think it's pretty simple. There's like there's two buttons on the screen and they're like, which button do I click? And so the message is like, there has to be, you know, one button and it has to be right in the middle of the screen and flashing red.
I mean, not really, but you know, basically that's what it has to look like because to your point, like you like one, right? Cause it's easy. It's fast.
I think in the old days to Steve's earlier point, people would put up with these softwares where you'd have to onboard, you'd have to take classes. There were even coaches you could hire to like, you know, walk you through how to do X, Y, Z.
And today my own patients included, I have about 30 seconds to a minute of attention span when I'm using a new thing. And if I can't figure it out in a minute, I'm like, dude, I can order a Tesla in a minute.
Like, why can't I get an insurance policy? Why can't I fill out a form? And so we just want OneWrite to be so easy. There shouldn't have to be a user manual.
It should be like hit you on the head, obvious, but at the same time, like really powerful because insurance gets to be kind of complex and there has to be a lot of complexity behind like that easy interface. So that's been, I think one of the hardest lessons has just been seeing people use the software, seeing them get stuck on something that I thought was obvious.
My own dad included who has an agency and, you know, he's a big fan of ours and he uses it and it's painful when I see him use it and he gets stuck and I'm like, yeah, you got stuck there. You know, I probably would have got stuck too.
I don't know how we released this, but we got to fix it. I think the, the important thing to, um, or I shouldn't say the important thing.
One of the things that I think is the most promising and one of the trends from like the 2015, 2016, like disintermediation or whatever words, all the words people are using to today is the openness and transparency of the evolution of products, right? Like, like today I get to give Andrew direct or his team, you know, his team direct feedback on like, like the other day there was a screen and it didn't have the name of the account on. Right.
This is a super simple thing. And I can see if you're building this software, you just, and I just said, Hey guys, like, it'd be super cool.
Like the name of the account was on this screen. I sent him a screenshot.
I said like, like right here, you know, whatever. And you know, whether they do it, don't put it someplace else.
Doesn't matter. But the fact that I can, and I know I'm not the only one, I'm sure there's a collection of agencies that are getting feedback can now, you know, right to the source say, Hey, this would help us do our job better.
If we could, that was never the case, never, ever the case with these other, you know, like I'm, it took me two weeks to get Vertifor to add a user to my PL Raider account. I mean, I just, I'm like, I want to pay you more money.
And it took two weeks and two phone calls to get that done. And like, you're just like, what is everyone doing? I'm trying to pay you more money and you won't, you know, and, and it's like that, that mentality of the openness and the iterative changes.
And like, I love how better agency every two weeks was putting out this list of updates and, you know, you're just, it was almost hard to like keep up, but it was cool to see both they had a list of like, here's what we launched and here's what we're working on in the next sprint. And like that kind of transparency really, you like feel like you own, you know, you own the development of this platform, like you become emotionally invested in its success.
And that has been an enormous change in our industry that I think is very, very positive. Yeah, absolutely.
I remember being the agent, sending out lots of emails to different technology vendors to fix XYZ thing. And I get it.
You know, it's tough. There's been some learnings along the way.
It's tough when you're on the other side of the table and you're trying to manage all the demands. but I think and Steve could probably speak to this more but with the proliferation of new companies and new startups the most important thing for us is that our users are having a

great experience

in most cases and,

and they're coming back and they're telling their friends about it because

it's, it's making their lives easier. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

One point on that, which is really, I think,

interesting and important to remember is, you know, Ryan,

you're our customer agents are our customers, but what,

and we obviously hugely value and care about what you think,

but the question behind the question is what are, what are the,

Thank you. our customer, agents are our customers, but what, and we obviously hugely value and care about what you think, but the question behind the question is what are, what are the buyers of insurance? What do they want? Right.
And you guys are the conduit for that. And ultimately we're all working toward you and us, right.
To better serving those customers, because that's how we win business, right. That's how you, that's how you succeed.
And then that's as a result, how we succeed. And so we can't lose focus on that end customer.
And I think a lot of,

you know, even some agents, right? Some of the, I would argue some of the folks Steve was talking about earlier in that 25% he cut off, but also a lot of technology providers have lost that focus.

And once you've done that, I think it's kind of game over and we all need to really maintain that

Thank you. a lot of technology providers have lost that focus.
And once you've done that, I think it's kind of game over and we all need to really maintain that obsessive focus on that end customer. Yeah.
Steve, have you seen, and I know we're talking about a very, there's a very big gap between say those 25% that you said just are never going to be catalytic customers or, or whatever, versus maybe some of the people at the bleeding edge, right? Maybe more than most industries, we have a very broad spectrum, but have you seen, and this is probably pushing more towards the more technologically advanced. Have you seen people almost demanding more out of their providers? Has that been a general trend that you've seen is, is where before we would just be like, well, this is what it is.
You know, this is what we got to do now. It's almost like a, like, like there's, there's actual demand.
There's pushback coming from the agent marketplace as to what they'll accept from it. Have you seen that at all? Yeah, very definitely.
And I actually think first of Applied and API and, you know, open access and, you know, that historically have been very resistant to allowing third party connections. I think a couple things changed there.
One, I do think customers in it, because I talked to them in some of the big ones, right? Push back on what they're trying to develop and wanting more openness. So I think that's one thing that helped them.
I think the second thing that helped them is their new CEO. Taylor Rhodes came from outside the industry.
And I remember actually my first conversation with him was before he took the position. He was researching it and I didn't know it.
And, you know, and when he actually became CEO, I was, I talked to him and I said like, okay, did I say anything really bad? But, you know, he said from that very first conversation when he took over, It was that he came from APIs were a no-brainer, you had to have them mindset, not a we have to protect our walled garden mindset. And it's taken some time, but that mindset is starting to change.
We'll see how fast, right? That's always the question. But I think Vertifor

too, with their Orange Partner Program, again, is feeling pressure. And that's trickling down, certainly for other management system vendors.
So I think there's no question that the more agents voice their frustration and the more I think they demonstrate that they are willing and have the capability of doing things on their own, which was always assumed they wouldn't. And I think that again goes back to my first comment on the democratization of technology.
It's, you know, there are a whole lot of people that can do things today that never would have considered themselves, you know, technology focused or friendly or capable that definitely are doing things today. It definitely seems like the Taylor Rhodes applied is not the applied of the past.
No question no question. I, I haven't had a conversation with Taylor yet.

I've heard some interviews that he've been on things about him. I do not know him,

but not sure I'm ready to trust them yet.

Absolutely appropriate. Right.
But I do think it's a good thing. I mean,

there's so many agents that are on them and you know, people, asked the question a lot um about agency management systems and i'm not an expert but i certainly have opinions and um and i'm on now certs which i don't want to talk bad about them but it does seem like they don't understand what they're what they've built um an um, an agency management system that people actually pay them for. Um, so that all being said, you know, there is no better agency management system than Epic.
If you want agency management system that works, that is going to do what it's meant to do. That's not going to break and blow up and throw all kinds of crazy stuff at you.
The downloads are going to work. That's going to be accessible and scale.
There's no better, in my opinion, agency management system. That being said, the unfortunate part is until they change the perception outside of their culture, digital agencies, which I believe are going to be predominantly the agencies of the future, are not going to use their system because you look at it and you go, man, I'd love to plug HubSpot into that.
Nope. Or, or yeah, sure.
For a hundred grand. And you're like, if I have to pay you to integrate with you when I'm paying you for the system, like, you know, that was one of the things that, you know, I said to, cause I was looking at a MS360 pretty hard and I couldn't get past the 1987 font and the way the system set up.
I just couldn't get past that. But, you know, the whole like paying for integrations thing.
I'm like, I'm paying you to use your system and I want to send data into your system. And you're telling me I have to pay.
Like, I don't know. I just to me, it's just completely the wrong mentality.
It's still that, you know, you know, best you do what we say kind of mentality. And I don't think the next generation of entrepreneurs in our industry are going to abide that.
I think that's why you see platforms like better agency. And, you know, you have, um, there's this woman in Virginia beach who builds custom, uh, Salesforce.
And she's like book solid for like a year because everyone just wants, they don't want to have the rug pulled from them. And, you know, that's the part that I think is really interesting.
You know, I think I know for a fact, everyone's scared about your two companies. They're like, they great today.
But what happens when applied or Vertifor buy them? What are they going to turn into? I mean, that is literally, you guys have probably heard that from people already, right? Like every platform that's exciting and young and fun and is growing and adapting and listening to agents gets to a certain size and then Vertifor applied, come in with a big check or Zywave, right? And then it becomes garbage. And that like, when does that cycle get broken and who breaks it and how do we break it? Because those three options, I, I struggle to believe those three options are the future of our industry.
I think they're part of our industry forever. And I'm not saying they shouldn't be, but like, how, how do we keep independent technology independent? I know the founders got to get paid.
I completely believe that I completely believe that the risks that they took and all that I completely understand, but like, how do we keep independent insure techs independent in a way that allows them to still be customer focused without the only exit strategy being one of the big three. And then the tool that they built in their legacy turns to crap,

which has just happened over and over and over and over and over again.

That's what concerns me.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

And we've heard this from the beginning.

We've thought about it.

Nick from Better Agencies posted about it with agencies,

UMacquisition recently.

I mean, it's out there, right?

And it's no secret.

I think that with the amount of funding right now going into InsurTech and the amount of new solutions, I just think there's a better opportunity now than there's ever been to have real new options. I think with the creation of BrokerTech Ventures, which we were a part of, it's actual agencies investing in tech because they're like, we want to, you know, in the best possible way, which is, you know, financial based returns on the investment, but it's, you know, they want to have a say in a control of what's happening.
And I think that's been helpful for us. And I think that as an industry, we need to have that ecosystem to support the tools that we want as agents.
And so we're excited about the future and yeah. Yeah, that's good.
I think you're right. What about you, Andrew? You're like, give me that paper.
I can't wait. Send me that term sheet, baby.
No, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Andrew's not like that, guys. I'm just busting his chops.
We're in this one. And I think, yeah, like it's a, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of, of value to be created.
And, and that's obviously a huge reason why some of these big companies snap up in InsurTechs. But I think as more and more folks continue to adopt technology in a faster way, thanks to things like Catalyst and Steve, I think some of those teams building in SureTech will actually start realizing like, gosh, it is worth being in this for the long haul as the adoption increases.
And we don't need to just tack our product onto Applied's existing customer base, for example. We can go and do that ourselves.
And I'm really, really hopeful for that. And that's certainly the approach we're taking.
Yeah, that's cool. I think it's a great, I mean, look, when you build a great product, it is a great problem to have as to, you know, you have all these people interested in big platforms.
And I think that that's tremendous. I guess my, you know, when I think about independent agents, and I think about where we're going as an industry, I know everybody says the same thing about every new tool, right?

They say it about Better Agency and Nick and Nick, you know, Nick puts all that out there.

They say, hey, eventually someone's going to come in with a big enough number, buy them up, destroy the tech.

And, you know, we'll have to wait for the next iteration of the startup agency management system.

And that, you know, I think that's sad. I would love, I don't know how you do it.
You know, I, I, you know, I love that I do I I've seen agents investing more and, and trying to be more involved in the, the investor cycle for, for startups and different insure techs for that reason. But it's just, it's a good problem to have that we have so many companies doing amazing things and building.
And hopefully there, there becomes a path for founders to reap the benefit of the risks that they took, which I absolutely positively believe that they should be able to do while staying independent from these large conglomerates and whether it's just a better ecosystem, a more connected ecosystem where you don't have to be bought, maybe it's platforms like Steve's who are able to get everyone in the same room and allow for that. But I think it's a very exciting time.
Yeah, one other kind of comment too, and it really is a result of my work with Cadillac and getting that going, but it's interesting to me how many, bigger than I realize, state associations are actually investing in some startups, helping them get going, having, you know, again, part of it is financial return, part of it is service and benefit to their members, part of it. And, you know, I've always seen potentially Cadillac having some kind of role in that.
I don't know what that looks like at this point, we got to get going. But, you know, again, it's interesting.
And I think some of those are kind of investments are not as focused on, what's the right phrase? I can't think of it. Buyouts and cashing out as much as are we serving our members and are they getting the help that they need? And so I think that's another interesting aspect of not just the, you know, the big boys playing and taking it over.

But again, investment from agents themselves, but also I see it associations too. And there are a handful, quite a few actually, who are able to and are making some of those strategic investments.
Yeah, I think, so I wanna be respectful of your guys' time and of everyone listening. I'll just give everyone a final thought here to just comment on.
And, you know, if I were to kind of surmise this conversation and the concept of the future of InsurTech, it's that, you know, highly valuable products are now becoming downstream available at cost for agencies of any size to really build the type of agency that they want, which makes this one of the most exciting times to be in our industry that have ever existed is, you know, that that's kind of my take. And, and, and, you know, knowing, knowing individuals like yourselves and many others who are playing similar games this is, it's a lot of fun.
I mean, this is, you get to build whatever you want, you know, and that wasn't the case not too long ago. And that's really, really fun.
So I just want to say thank you to you guys. For everyone listening, I'm going to have links to LinkedIn's and websites and any other contact or resources that these guys send to me, you know, on my website, but also just, just Google these guys, you'll find them, LinkedIn them, connect with them if you're not already.
And I just couldn't recommend the insights, thoughts, and the tools you guys are building anymore. And I just want to say thank you to three of you for choosing the show to come on and have this conversation with.
It's been such a pleasure. Ryan, it's been fun.
Yeah,

very fun. Thanks, Ryan.
Appreciate it. Thanks for having us.

Been a great time. Thanks for it.
And I'm looking forward to the next one. Absolutely.
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