Retiretech Forum 2022 Recap

00:00:01:17 - 00:00:28:01
I want to bring up Mike Kalen, who I'm going to call the father of
retiretech to talk about Mike where did this word come from and why
should anybody care about it? So Mike Kalen. Thank you, Paul.
Everybody Well, everybody has to be the father or the mother of
something, right? So you might as well be father of retired tech.

00:00:28:18 - 00:00:48:00
I also just happened to be this week father of the bride. My daughter
got married on Saturday, so I haven't gotten there yet. I highly
recommend it and I can share stories off to the side about what it's
like having to do the father daughter dance and do the speech and all
that. But it was a great weekend.

00:00:48:09 - 00:01:13:23
But now I'm focused and excited about the RETIRETECH again. So just a
little bit of a background about about me. So I've been in the
insurance and retirement and financial planning space now for 40
years. I was with Prudential Financial for 17 years in wealth
management, insurance distribution, asset management. I started our
first RIA, so I come from the industry, I'm a clue and CHF.

00:01:14:01 - 00:01:48:24
See, I was president of Hartford Life Insurance and Simsbury when
there was a Hartford Life Insurance. We don't have that anymore.
Hartford was purchased by Prudential, so that was a merging of my
former worlds, which was another strange thing but for the last 12
years now I've been in venture capital and private equity. I was with
a firm called Aqua Aquiline Capital, Carolinas, private equity and
venture capital firm, entirely dedicated to financial services,
insurance, asset management, banking and technology.

00:01:49:14 - 00:02:16:11
And I was there for ten years. I ran a portfolio company for them and
then worked with their technology growth group, which was looking to
invest in early stage insurer tech and fintech companies. They ended
up making investments in a couple of companies carpet data was their
first investment. I helped with that. They've invested in Reg Tech,
another Connecticut company called Frist.

00:02:16:13 - 00:02:43:14
If you haven't looked at it, but Alkaline is probably now one of 15
venture firms that say they're dedicated to early stage insurer tech
investing. And again, I worked for them for two years. I left them to
actually run an insurer tech company so I ran a company called Cover.
We're a life insurance insurer, tech company. We just did our series B
fundraising rounds.

00:02:43:14 - 00:03:12:18
So I actually raised $15 million of venture capital money. So if

you're an investor out there and you've been on the circuit to raise
money, I've successfully done it. Cover has raised money from City
Ventures, Nike, Commerce Ventures, Aflac, Allianz, Sony. We just took
an investment from Stone Point. So I'm out there pitching life
insurance innovation in a real world environment.

00:03:12:18 - 00:03:36:08
Speaker 1
So we did a $15 million round it funds our operations for 18 months.
And looking at the stock market and capital markets, I'm starting to
think about what I need to do my next fund raise. So the world is
changing very rapidly. But anyway, that's helpful. I've been on the
community side with Paul helping the city of Hartford start this whole
thing.

00:03:37:21 - 00:04:02:05

The state and the town and the city of Hartford have done really good
work to create this community of sharing and it allows us to leverage
all of our skills and our talents and come together and help each
other grow. And I when I talk about cover, I say cover is the number
one life insurance insurer, tech company in in the second city for
insured tech.

00:04:03:02 - 00:04:29:06
So and people laugh like, what does that mean? So clearly, New York
and San Francisco are the center of insurer tech and fintech. Hartford
is not New York or San Francisco. But my contention is we don't need
to be like we have plenty of talent. We have plenty of access, we have
plenty of resources. And it's been great to be along for the ride to
see what the city of Hartford has done.

00:04:29:13 - 00:04:51:08
And it's a great place to run my little company where we're housed on
the fifth floor right next to reimagine, and we get to tap into all
the things that Nassau has done. And we're here, which you're afraid
you're going to hear from Bryan Padgette today. Another really good
life, an annuity and a tech company. Their growth and our growth is
very similar.

00:04:51:15 - 00:05:22:02
We're making a big difference difference. We're using digital
innovation. We're using visualization to make the purchase journey and
to manage policies easier. So you know, in the community, you know,
sure, fi and cover are important parts of what's starting to work in
the life insurance side. So it's a very long way of getting me to why
retire tech when we when Aquiline was looking for investment thesis
and you look at and sure.

00:05:22:02 - 00:06:02:19

Tech and sure tech is 99% auto and homeowners with like 55% auto and
home 35% health and 10% life and 1% like annuities. If you then look
at the world as to what the growth markets are right I don't
homeowners the markets the market life insurance is flat or declining
even though sure tech has made a little bit of change in that health
insurance is gigantic unclear how that's going to shake out because
it's very regulatory driven and the barriers to entry are hugely high.

00:06:03:00 - 00:06:40:20
People don't buy individual health. They buy group health. Group
health is highly concentrated. But these firms, these 15 venture
capital firms are looking for guaranteed retirement income. How the
same technology for a I and robo and guaranteed income how it can
apply to both the IRA market individual retirement accounts and to the
four and one K market. So all this money that's coming to either auto
and home health or life is looking for the annuity market to be very
specific to emerge.

00:06:41:14 - 00:07:25:07
And there have been a handful a handful of successful companies that
have done something with digitalization a I new interfaces, better
product design a lot of it's on the 41 K side where there's been
progress there's been a lot of movement in financial planning tools in
money and you know money guide pro and different planning tools to
optimize but the market for retire tech individual annuities helping
people put annuities into their portfolio, visualizing it getting
better products, creating guaranteed income streams that product and
everything around it should emerge.

00:07:25:23 - 00:07:51:03
And the next three years where we're going to have volatile stock
markets inflation, rising interest means a rising tide for the annuity
market now now being very specific to the annuity product. But
everything's going to not everything. A lot of things will favor the
annuity space. And with rising interest rates, insurance companies
will be able to do much more exciting things with these products.

00:07:51:16 - 00:08:22:20
And then that then gets me to what is retiretech and why is it an
interesting topic? So I help Paul and the team visualize this retire
tech map and kind of the segments product innovation I planning like
all of those are in the retirement ecosystem. They all touch the
things that I think technology can help disrupt or enable and I felt
that nobody was doing it like nobody was doing it.

00:08:22:20 - 00:08:45:24
People said and sure, tech, they don't really know what it means. I
mean, they kind of know what it means. And I really do think there's
an emerging space for retire tech to be something. And I think all in
the team have done a good job in smartly designing the map and now

creating the ecosystem for commerce, investment, collaboration to
accelerate.

00:08:45:24 - 00:09:06:01
So I think in 10 minutes, Paul, that's kind of how it worked. And I,
you know, I think this is a great start, right, to get 75 people
together and however many are on the livestream but you know, for
those of you that run companies, there is money out there. There is a
lot of money in funds that have not been deployed yet.

00:09:06:01 - 00:09:26:00
Dry powder in these very large venture funds that are looking for kind
of what's coming next. So I do think there's an opportunity that we
can create for the innovators. I think the providers of technology and
the product manufacturers are going to play a big role and I think
this is a cool thing. So all right.

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:02:17
Thanks, Mike. Now, first panel.

00:00:03:16 - 00:00:04:17
Bring the panelists up.

00:00:06:05 - 00:00:06:22
Speaker 1
Great question.

00:00:07:17 - 00:00:39:17
Speaker 2
It's growing market. But how do you find him? You know, it's
everybody's got to buy car insurance. Everybody's got to want to own a
home, buy a home insurance. How do you find people who are thinking
about retirement? So Denny Southern, who's one of our key partners at
AmeriLife, runs independent distributions to be the moderator we have
Barbara Ingraham from Verisk, who's been a very active participant in
Harvard ecosystem and brought her a lot of energy here Jeff Petrowski
from Jornaya and.

00:00:40:17 - 00:00:41:08
Speaker 1
Behind Brian I.

00:00:41:13 - 00:00:53:16
Speaker 2
Here you Bryan Padgette (Sureify), I'm sure who, who's also was an
early part of our incubator and he's been doing some outstanding work.
So come on up and let me give you guys this mic.

00:00:53:23 - 00:00:54:15
Speaker 1
Awesome Paper.

00:00:54:24 - 00:00:55:08
Speaker 2
Harbor.

00:00:56:05 - 00:00:56:16
Speaker 3
Thank you.

00:00:59:17 - 00:01:26:13
Speaker 2
Thanks, everybody. I think I'm on here. Can you hear me OK or do I
need to use my outdoor voice here? So thanks, Paul. First of all,
Mike, just great. Great to see you, sir. And being a fellow disruptor
in the marketplace, I think that's a real good thing. I think
disruption could almost be a key here in terms of whether you're

talking about the climate that we're in.

00:01:26:13 - 00:01:52:20
Speaker 2
And if you think about it, 2020 things started really with the
pandemic, where things started changing in terms of the way you reach
a client, whether it's a carrier, whether it's, you know, technology
companies, whether it's an agent, however it is, you know, the way you
reach clients ultimately the product have changed. And so in then then
last year, it's just been accelerated.

00:01:52:20 - 00:02:21:12
Speaker 2
We've had, my goodness, since 22, we've had war, we've had a huge
correction in the market. We've had rising interest rates. You got
political divisiveness at an all time high you have the regulatory
environment where, you know, you have politicians and you have career
staffers where they're very vested in different kind of things. And
all these things. You can get lost in the details and we get lost in
the weeds.

00:02:21:12 - 00:02:42:16
Speaker 2
But I think it's really important to remember the one constant through
all this is the demographics don't change. You know, that's the one
predictable thing throughout all this. And so it's like, how do you
make your way through chaos? And so how do you merge technology with
the agent experience and the client experience? And so I think we've
got a great panel here.

00:02:42:16 - 00:03:01:23
Speaker 2
And so if you don't mind, that's kind of where I think I think we'd
start. And so I don't know how this works exactly for the people
online. I would assume if they've got questions, too, to send them in
and they'll be asked this should be very interactive. So I think this
can be a really exciting day or it can be a very long day, and that's
up to everybody here.

00:03:02:07 - 00:03:26:14
Speaker 2
So I would encourage you all to ask questions from whatever point of
view we are we're at because it's a it's a it's a very, very group in
terms of who the audience is here. And really, so I've had the
opportunity to talk to everybody here. And, you know, we've got
different experiences from the PNC side of things am from the
lifestyle side, annuity side of things.

00:03:26:14 - 00:03:49:10
Speaker 2

And so I think it's it's kind of interesting to see the way things
emerge here. And so, you know, data clearly is is kind of at the
center of what we're doing. And so if you don't mind, one of the
things that, you know, I would say I would tell you is I think clients
like to cross by, but agents don't like to cross sell.

00:03:50:03 - 00:04:14:07
Speaker 2
And so, Jeff, if you don't mind, you know, I kind of like to talk to
you about cross selling you know, and then as data emerges, this is
kind of a wide topic. But how do you how do you manage data and the
compliance concerns? And then even the regulatory concerns between
maybe life and health and annuities? Yeah, that's a that's a big
question.

00:04:15:03 - 00:04:46:18
Speaker 2
So I think before I answer, it's probably appropriate for me to
provide a little bit of of perspective on on how I approach this
market. So I lead our go to market strategy for our PNC Life and
Health Business at Verisk marketing solutions which was formerly known
as Jornaya until December of 2020. So we are a data and technology
company that has an eye witness view of comparison shopping online and
for major life purchases.

00:04:46:18 - 00:05:15:11
Speaker 2
So any big ticket item where a consumer is doing research online and
then ultimately soliciting quotes and applying and then making a
purchase decision, we're there with the consumer as they make their
way through that journey. So we're seeing mortgages originate, we're
seeing insurance quotes being requested and applications taken. We're
seeing a folks go back to school, buy cars, any of those big ticket
items.

00:05:15:11 - 00:05:45:03
Speaker 2
Right? So what we've seen that I think echoes everything that you just
said is over the course of the last two and a half years, shopping
online has been supercharged in insurance in life in particular, we're
starting to see is, as Mike mentioned, we saw this incredible
increase. We're talking about double digit triple digit percentage
growth year over year in life insurance and shopping.

00:05:45:09 - 00:06:07:00
Speaker 2
And if you look at the MIB, they were seeing the same thing play out
in application activity. As quickly as we saw that that flash happen,
we also saw it dissipate and now we're seeing double digit percentage
decreases in traditional life products. On the PNC side continuing to

see growth year over year on the health side, continuing to see
shopping growth year over year.

00:06:07:00 - 00:06:34:19
Speaker 2
And I'd say that shopping growth can either mean that more consumers
are flooding the market and are interested in taking advantage of
their options online because it's easier to do so or products continue
to be as confusing as they've ever been. And consumers are hungry for
somebody to make it clear and easy for them to understand. And then
ultimately purchase in the manner that they would like to purchase and
whether that's online or still offline with an agent.

00:06:35:01 - 00:07:04:01
Speaker 2
So. So I turn to the question that you asked I think first and
foremost, we're seeing more shopping than we ever have. It's important
that data is is not only leveraged as a tool for agents, brokers to be
able to do their jobs better, but that also that data is secured not
only with regard to regulatory compliance and those bodies, but how a
consumer would want you to handle their data in the first place.

00:07:04:15 - 00:07:35:10
Speaker 2
So you've got the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, you've got the
California Consumer Privacy Act. All of those are good guideposts. But
the one that I most often use is what do I want the companies that I
do business with to do with my data? How do I want them to secure it?
And obviously, that's a sort of broad way to describe it, but welcome
the opportunity to to get into the details or maybe then from a
consumer standpoint then, Jeff, you like technology.

00:07:35:10 - 00:08:06:21
Speaker 2
You know, how how do you leverage the technology and get the advice to
the to the client, the ultimate client? And bar. Right. Even throw
that out there to you to about, you know, when you're looking at
behavior of what they're buying and home insurance car insurance,
their buying patterns, how do you how do you correlate that to other
things like Mike was talking about earlier in terms of potentially
lifetime income and things like that as somebody is going through
retirement to be able to fund those things.

00:08:06:21 - 00:08:37:24
Speaker 2
So, yeah, I can start. So there is more information available now than
than ever about who the households and who the individuals are that we
want to write and I would say knowing who you want to write and then
and then better understanding who they are as they enter your your
marketing funnel is is critical. It's frankly table stakes at this

point.

00:08:38:07 - 00:09:07:05
Speaker 2
So having a system that can accept that type of data and make sense of
it is is important. And then collecting that data is one thing, making
sense of it and then deploying it is another. So you had mentioned
lifetime income. You had mentioned things like, gee, your credit
score, outstanding mortgage amount. So all of this stuff is widely
available and frankly, shoppers these days are expecting that Amazon
type experience.

00:09:07:05 - 00:09:30:22
Speaker 2
They're expecting us to know who they are prior to us even having a
conversation with them. So I would say that that that job is as
important is as it's ever been for agents to be able to understand who
those consumers are before they even enter enter the funnel and then
deploying that data across the value chain and throughout that
customer lifecycle.

00:09:31:02 - 00:09:33:09
Speaker 2
I don't know. Barbara, do you have any differing opinions or.

00:09:33:21 - 00:10:04:15
Speaker 3
Not necessarily a different opinion? I can give a little perspective,
though, on on sort of the state of the art. What is and what is not
possible in terms of understanding how to refine your offering. So I
think I as background, I'm more of a PR person so if you think about
what is the state of the art right now when it comes to being able to
target your offering to your particular consumer and I'd like to
suggest that it's not as refined as you hope it is.

00:10:05:05 - 00:10:36:00
Speaker 3
First of all, the personal auto is probably the area that's most
advanced in insurance in terms of digitization. There's more money
thrown at it, there's more effort thrown out it than any place else.
Yet how many dollars are spent in in mass market advertising? You can
answer the question yourself because you can probably name all the
characters for all the major commercials for all of the major auto
insurance companies, personal auto companies, and you can probably
sing half the jingles.

00:10:36:09 - 00:10:56:16
Speaker 3
And if you're from New Jersey, you can even sing the jingle for the
one that says it doesn't have a jingle. So so with that in mind. So

that's actually though so the Holy Grail is to be able to target to
exactly what you want and where the where the auto insurance industry
would love to go is to be able to do it as well as your credit card
company.

00:10:56:16 - 00:11:13:14
Speaker 3
Right. You get that personalized credit card offers just for you they
figured out that it's something that you might say yes to. And that's
actually where the auto insurance industry would love to go. And
they're still figuring it out. As you can tell when you stop seeing
all the when you stop seeing flow on TV, as often you'll know they've
started to figure it out.

00:11:13:21 - 00:11:35:11
Speaker 3
So having said that, though, there's still a lot more that you can do
than you used to be able to do. But in terms of technology, the only
way to really take advantage of that is to go with modern technology,
not to have you've got to have cloud, you've got to have look, have no
code. You've got to be able to configure and, you know, adapt and all
those good buzzwords, agile all.

00:11:35:11 - 00:12:02:19
Speaker 3
Is that the kind of stuff? If you can't do that, then the best you can
do is take information, third party information, other kinds of
information, bring it in on a spreadsheet into your CRM, your
salesforce or whatever, and it will help you. It will be better. But
if you really want to start tailoring and, and, and, and refining what
it is that you're offering, either through your agents or directly to
consumer, you do need to go with modern technology.

00:12:03:13 - 00:12:30:11
Speaker 2
You know, I've kind of throw that to you. Then, you know, I made a
comment about clients like the Cross Live and agents don't like to
cross sell. So, you know, how do you use technology maybe into leads
into being able to cross sell or have cross-sell opportunities and
then what challenges you have maybe from a compliance standpoint or
regulatory standpoint you know in terms of sharing information excuse
me.

00:12:30:11 - 00:12:54:04
Speaker 1
So I think it might be helpful to give a little background as well
what we do. So I'm responsible for revenue operations for sure. If I
offset and insure tech based in San Jose, California, we're getting
ready to celebrate our ten year anniversary. So before we record an
insurer attack, we've been out trying to to help the life in annuity

group space or retirement space with digital transformation.

00:12:54:04 - 00:13:21:19
Speaker 1
So we help them with acquisition, we help them with ongoing
engagement. And frankly, we also help them service those clients once
they come in. And so cross-sell. So I might take a little different
angle. So sure. If I while legislation don't know we exist, we have a
lot of carriers that come to us and they talk about some of these
buzzwords in and for but we kind of have to step back, crawl walk on
and and see what they can actually do where they are today.

00:13:21:19 - 00:13:49:17
Speaker 1
I mean, the number of people that don't have email addresses on
existing customers is, is crazy so but that doesn't mean don't get
started right so so what we've seen are successes that we've seen with
carriers are the ones that pick a piece and go after it. So some of
our you know, I'll give an example of a property and casualty carrier
probably better known for the property in casualty business, but we
work with their lifetime and they already have a wealth of data that's
sitting there.

00:13:49:17 - 00:14:04:07
Speaker 1
They know who that customer is. And so your point is perfect or that
the agent doesn't reach out to them because a lot of agents we find
are very good at selling a certain product. And that's where they
focus their business. And we always joke if we can just say, hey, did
you know, we sell these other things?

00:14:04:11 - 00:14:21:08
Speaker 1
But the outcomes would be enormous. But so how do we do that for the
agent? How do we facilitate that? Or, you know, a growing number of
orphans or reassigned policies? How do we help that agent do it? And
so the carriers that we've seen have success is taking that in-house
data, using that to then make an offer.

00:14:21:08 - 00:14:42:04
Speaker 1
So if they're on the website, if they are on a Facebook and they know
who they are, and targeting that person with an offer like, Hey,
here's a $15 a month policy that you qualify for, they ask them five
simple questions and then that person is bought and going through not
going through a full application, not sending them something that that
doesn't make any sense.

00:14:42:04 - 00:14:51:11
Speaker 1

And so we've seen a lot of success with the people that get out there
because as everybody knows, the first day of trying something, you
learn more than four years of planning to try something.

00:14:52:17 - 00:15:17:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with any of those statements. The
difficulty that we see a lot of in in terms of activating on a social
media campaign, for starters, right. Is they can get expensive really
quickly or competing in the paid search arena or even buying data
leads or warm transfer phone calls. It the first 30 days always look
great.

00:15:17:02 - 00:15:39:15
Speaker 2
And then as we all know, then it starts to dip and you don't know why.
So again, data like ours as an example I don't I promise this won't be
a pitch, but data like ours will help you separate the wheat from the
chaff and again, focus in on and spend the exact same amount of money
on acquiring the people that are not only good risks, but then also
the people that are most likely to respond.

00:15:39:15 - 00:16:07:05
Speaker 2
So again, an example that that resonates is we work with a large PNC
carrier that is not known for their life business but interested in
growing it and we took their In-force file. We listened to our network
of of a half a billion shopping events every month and then provided a
daily feed of shopping activity back to the carrier to distribute to
agents.

00:16:07:05 - 00:16:29:12
Speaker 2
So those agents have a data driven reason to call their customer, have
a benefits review, have an effort a discussion that the agents loved
because it wasn't just, Hey, call your book and thank them for their
business and see if you can cross-sell them. They had a reason to call
they had a goal to get towards, and it resulted in, you know,
additional policies sold for sure.

00:16:29:12 - 00:16:51:24
Speaker 2
But it also resulted in a ton of agent satisfaction as a result. So
that's an example of using data and technology. But I'll throw this
out there in this environment in particular. So a little bit about us
so so I run the annuity and retirement planning division in America
for a distribution company with five different verticals. So this is a
very timely discussion for us.

00:16:52:08 - 00:17:18:18

Speaker 2
And so in the type of environment we're in right now where you have
volatile markets, you have a set, set group of demographics that are
looking at retirement, that you're looking at things. How do you get
your message out effectively, especially in an environment where
you've had a 20% plus market correction and you've got client behavior
to deal with in terms of they're unsure what to do, but they're
looking for solutions.

00:17:19:02 - 00:17:42:05
Speaker 2
And as an advisor to use technology to be able to efficiently get to
them and not be blocked by all the different kind of things out there,
how do you be effective and yet be efficient in terms of reaching new
clients I'd say sort of similar to what I just mentioned, like you've
you have finite budget to work with, you have finite time to work
with.

00:17:42:05 - 00:17:51:02
Speaker 2
So being really, really choosy about who you're targeting in the first
place is where I've most often seen success. Yeah, yeah.

00:17:51:14 - 00:18:08:01
Speaker 1
I'll go back to one of the comments. So we see a lot of people that
have that data or they know they want to go sell a certain product or
they're getting interest and they're seeing leads coming off the
website. So for example, we had a carrier that got ranked in a, you
know, one of the publications review is a great place to buy life
insurance.

00:18:08:01 - 00:18:30:15
Speaker 1
And so overnight the number of leads that came in, some like 100,000
that were going there, but their online experience, both for life and
annuity was they had a quote for life it was called a telephone
number. And you can imagine these people that were digital coming in
at the point, it just fell off pretty hard. And these are just free
leads that are coming in.

00:18:30:15 - 00:18:52:02
Speaker 1
And so relying on the the agent and you're sending them to the agent
or the call center, it's important. And there's people that want to
buy that way. But we find that the biggest success is when carriers go
a step further and take the action for the care, the agent. And so
actually send the message with that agent's, put your name on it for
them.

00:18:52:02 - 00:19:28:20
Speaker 1
Now, of course, there is the who owns the customer and the my our
founder Dustin kind of calls it commission conflict versus channel
conflict when you start interacting. But we have that PMC carrier was
talking about just give me some statistics. So when they were making a
PNC offer they also now put a life offer at at the same at the point
of sale and they were saying anywhere from a four to 7% placement rate
on all the health policy excuse me, home policies, car policies that
they're writing, they were well under half a percent before that.

00:19:28:20 - 00:19:35:03
Speaker 1
So just enormous numbers for them taking that extra step and actually
sending the first communication for them.

00:19:36:10 - 00:20:09:11
Speaker 2
Well, our Barbara and I had this discussion a little bit earlier. You
know, we were talking about the P&C space as far as technology goes,
has been so far ahead of our of our industry. I you know, I think
that's not any surprise to anybody. And so recognizing the buying
behaviors of people in the P&C space, you know, how how do you
integrate those two spaces in terms of data and information as it
relates to buying behavior?

00:20:09:11 - 00:20:22:06
Speaker 2
And then the second part of that is the security that's around that,
both from a, you know, a risk standpoint, but also a regulatory
standpoint. Protect information.

00:20:22:20 - 00:20:45:09
Speaker 3
You know, so when you start the buyer experience. So let me I'll just
do some background illustrations that you see. A lot of people a lot
of industry techs coming to market is mygas. And they they do so
because they have a great piece of technology. They understand how to
interact with that customer. You know, they're probably more tech
forward rather than insurance forward.

00:20:45:09 - 00:21:07:13
Speaker 3
They can do a B testing, they can change all the time, figure out
where they're losing people, you know, in the process and and refine
that. Right. And so so that is one of the areas that you're seeing
where where there's an awful lot of well, you're seeing the insurer
tax is starting to make headway is in doing a much better front end
than the insurance carrier.

00:21:07:13 - 00:21:27:16
Speaker 3
But they're mygas, which means that they at some point someone's got
to provide the policy. And and you have so now the the latest trend
that we're seeing is that some of these companies that start off as
mynas is starting to build full stack carriers and be like, why would
you do that? Why would you do that? Why would you take on that surplus
load?

00:21:27:21 - 00:21:51:06
Speaker 3
I would you take on that regulatory load? Why would you take on all of
that expense that isn't going to once you have a carrier, just looks
different. You had this high flying tech company and now you have this
huge asset pool that you've got to manage completely differently. And
the reason they do it is because the need to the needs, the customer
can feel the difference.

00:21:51:07 - 00:22:11:16
Speaker 3
Right. So to the point you were just making, where you start off with
a very high tech experience and then you end up having to make a phone
call, you know, that that's kind of like the mega legacy carrier
combo, right? So you've got this really great front end where you've
set up an expectation that doing business with this company is going
to be really special.

00:22:11:22 - 00:22:32:20
Speaker 3
And then you have, you know, a legacy claim system and a legacy back
end and all this other kind of stuff. And, and you can't deliver on
the promise. So so that's that, that is kind of where you see these
things going. And I think that's where the opportunity is in the life
space. However you were, you're asking about security.

00:22:32:20 - 00:23:02:13
Speaker 3
And so one of the things that happens, though, is you you end up with
a lot of challenges because if you're a legacy carrier, you can see
the opportunity for you to put this like front end out there right but
but now how does the way they do business mesh with the way you're
doing business? I was listening to to one guy talking he's talking
about how typically in a lot of cases, that legacy carrier, they'll
sit there.

00:23:02:13 - 00:23:21:15
Speaker 3
Cybersecurity will kind of be they built the data, sits there in the
pool and they build the moat around it and the wall trying to keep
everything out. And now you've got to let the insurer tech in to do

the thing that they do. So that you can interact together. And now,
you know, what does that do to all of your security?

00:23:21:15 - 00:23:43:17
Speaker 3
It puts a whole different flavor on the way you're doing security. You
know, we're we're we as a company, we have we manage many large
databases, some of which are contributory. And we use FCPA databases
and things of that sort. And, you know, we have even gotten to the
point where we're like, we can't just do business with every startup
and.

00:23:43:17 - 00:24:01:11
Speaker 3
Sure. Tech that calls us that. But, you know, you have to have certain
standards before you can you can really talk to us because our data is
at risk and our relationships with the people that from whom we get
the data is at risk. So it's it just puts a whole level of of security
concern on it that wasn't there.

00:24:02:07 - 00:24:09:15
Speaker 3
The problem with legacy also is that. So you've built it well, you
know, how costly is it going to be to rebuild that? So you kind of
have to make it work the way it is.

00:24:10:20 - 00:24:32:20
Speaker 1
I might add. I agree with a lot of what you said. We sit in a lot of
executive boardrooms or we go through our fees with vendors and
they're focused on the front end where we're a digital front end
company. So so we love that. But, you know, you take simple things
like service and beneficiary change and you're like, I saw this cool
experience.

00:24:32:20 - 00:24:59:07
Speaker 1
I had this no code platform come in and I can build anything and it's
slick. It looks great. And this is what people expect. You're
absolutely right. What we found is that you know, anybody can come in
and show you a really pretty website and little things, but what the
carriers have that legacy issue and, you know, ten, 20, 30 different
backend systems that range from your green screen to maybe something
with an API if it's newer.

00:24:59:16 - 00:25:18:21
Speaker 1
And we seen carriers attack it a couple of different ways where we had
one of our carriers sell their entire book of business and go
greenfield all new vendors. We've had all, hey, new products are going

to be on this new digital stack and you know, we'll figure out what
we're going to do back here and then we've had, you know, hey, I'll
talk to me in ten years when I'm done converting everything.

00:25:18:21 - 00:25:41:10
Speaker 1
And so I don't know if we agree with all of those, but what what we've
really seen is that the text that you work with or the partners that
you work with and your text become such a broad topic. They have to
understand your business. They have to like that's the hard work.
That's what takes so long. It's, you know, getting through regulatory
compliance claims that we have a 12 month contract.

00:25:41:10 - 00:26:03:15
Speaker 1
And I mean, we work with companies like Nationwide, Allstate, AMI.ca,
Bright House, you know, massive carriers like yourselves. And and
still it takes 12 months to get through because everybody's scared of
being the next front page news. I mean, what do we have? We have our
brand, we have our price and we have the product. There's not much
that differentiates us there having bad press can hurt and so you know
getting through is hard.

00:26:03:15 - 00:26:21:06
Speaker 1
But then what's really hard is you hear someone say, oh, this is
really cool. Yeah, but how are you going to connect? How are you going
to make that actually happen? And it's where we're, we're, we're in
the gold rush for going and digitizing. But, you know, and a lot of
people have taken action and made that first step, which is important.

00:26:21:16 - 00:26:37:23
Speaker 1
But what they what they you know, what we're seeing is over the past
two to three years, a lot of people tied up in projects that have this
awesome end result from a digital front end. But they're trying to
figure out how to make that happen. And so, you know, I really
encourage people to step back and say, don't worry, the shiny part is
important.

00:26:37:23 - 00:26:47:01
Speaker 1
It's got to be a good experience. But that's that's a checkbox make
sure that you can really have ask the questions about how they're
going to solve the problems underneath.

00:26:47:18 - 00:27:16:09
Speaker 3
So another P&C analogy, one of the things that one of the ways you see
ensure tech really thrive in the P and C side of the house is where

they have figured out how to expand the market. So a couple of
different categories cyber, small business or micro-business even
those are areas that where ensure techs have sort of focused on and
are doing a very good job and creating and what they're doing is
actually expanding the market.

00:27:16:09 - 00:27:37:11
Speaker 3
They're selling insurance to people who didn't used to buy it. So if
you were so say you were the you know, you're you're a spouse of
someone who is working full time. You want to start your own business
at home. You paid historically, you didn't buy insurance for that, but
now you might because it's a lot easier to do and it's a lot more
tailored to what you want to do.

00:27:37:23 - 00:27:54:20
Speaker 3
What is but one of the reasons why that is so easy to do is because
you're not bumping up against legacy systems. So if you're an insurer
tech, you know, you've got this much runway, what have you got? 18
months, right? So and if it takes a year to make a decision, you know,
that's that's two thirds of your recent funding around.

00:27:55:02 - 00:28:34:10
Speaker 3
So if you're an insurer tech, you know, it's a lot easier to stand
something up and get that partnership if you if they don't have to if
they if the legacy carrier doesn't have to let you into their legacy
system in order to be able to do that. So you know so the the
opportunity I think, in the life and health space is has to do with
maybe a smaller premium items or selling to markets that were
historically underserved or things of that sort, things where you can
experiment in a greenfield space build of a fully digital throughput
experience keep your costs down appropriate to the size of the premium
and the offering and learn

00:28:34:10 - 00:28:38:03
Speaker 3
how to do it. And I think that that's a great opportunity.

00:28:39:00 - 00:29:09:15
Speaker 2
Well, one of the things you know, Mike, you had short comments, but
you really had a lot of really good things in there. And, you know,
one of the things I that I really took away from what you were talking
about was the need for lifetime income and how how a cash flow type
approach is beneficial but yet, you know, you've got you've got the
investment world, you've got the insurance world that have kind of
been at I don't want to say at odds, but they've had different
viewpoints on the way to accomplish things.

00:29:09:15 - 00:29:36:01
Speaker 2
And then there's been kind of a convergence. So as that's happening
and you mentioned robo advisors, too, you know, how how I'm curious
how this group of maybe, you know, throw it open out here is, is when
you see technology versus human interface react with the client
because we want to be able to deliver products. However, client wants
to consume them, whether it's online, whether it's personal, however
it might be.

00:29:36:09 - 00:29:55:14
Speaker 2
But I think often times that's going to be a combination of those
things. And so, you know, I've I've done things just for fund to
where, you know, you buy a life insurance. I won't mention any names
but you know, from an online insurance company. And where it got
really interesting was when you pushed it to make sure you got human
interface.

00:29:56:06 - 00:30:17:17
Speaker 2
You know, how where it got clunky in the process and it's very clunky
and the process, you know. And so I'm curious from everybody what you
think on that as how do you make kind of a seamless or hopefully
seamless part between consuming and the buying experience where you
have to have both technology and advice?

00:30:18:11 - 00:30:42:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'll I'll try to say so meeting the customer where they are,
right. And who is the customer like, you know, obviously the statement
used to be, well, my customers, the agent and the broker, that
therefore, you know, that's change. And you have to have that direct
relationship with the consumer. They're demanding it. And then from an
experience standpoint, you know, agents, you know, they used to maybe
let us get away with a little bit more.

00:30:42:08 - 00:31:00:23
Speaker 1
And so they were OK with a clunky process because they getting paid at
the end of it. Well, now they don't have to be in their expectations
from a digital experience are maybe even higher sometimes because
they're like, I'm not going to put that in front of this customer,
especially when you're asking them to cross, sell or sell something
that may be something new that they're looking at, like.

00:31:01:04 - 00:31:20:00
Speaker 1
So they haven't traditionally been selling annuities for the the

market hasn't been that great in it. Right. And so now you're saying,
hey, I want you to do this. And traditionally, most of the carriers
that we work with, their annuities also from a digital experience has
taken the backseat that that's changed rapidly in the last four months
from from the calls and interactions, the projects that we're working
on.

00:31:20:22 - 00:31:45:16
Speaker 1
But that that expectation has completely changed. You've got to you
it's really easy for the insurer techs to do that because they're
starting from scratch, that greenfield experience. But when you're
like we describe it as a highway, you know, so our tech stack allows
that carrier to do everything to get on and off of that same highway
and not to have, oh, I have my direct to consumer experience or I have
my agent experience or my bank experiences.

00:31:45:21 - 00:32:05:11
Speaker 1
How do you merge those? Because people are going to want to start a
lot of people by themself, but we still see they want to interact,
they want to make sure they're making that right decision. And so
partners like glia that we work with, which allows for face to face or
instant calls, there's lots of those out there, but you know, how do
you man them when do you send that to a person?

00:32:05:11 - 00:32:22:15
Speaker 1
How do you provide videos for cues? How do you help educate people as
much as they can so that you're only getting to the, you know, the key
conversations and then when you're having that conversation, making
sure it's not a you've been here 30 minutes, and then I'm starting
over saying, OK, what are what are you calling in for?

00:32:22:22 - 00:32:24:11
Speaker 1
What do you mean? What am I calling him for?

00:32:24:12 - 00:32:49:20
Speaker 3
So yeah, I was laughing as you were telling your story about pushing
and trying to get to a human, because I immediately brought to mind a
visit that I made to an insurer tech where they were. They're now a
unicorn, but at the time they were not. And so the person I was
visiting pointed out this table over here was like ten people sitting
around a table, probably max age 26.

00:32:50:01 - 00:33:10:08
Speaker 3
And those were the licensed agents. So that when somebody had a

question, that's where they ended up with one of these. And anybody
who's ever been an insurance front end, if you've been an agent or if
you've been an underwriter, or you've got to talk to that customer,
it's like, you know, when I was a baby broker, they wouldn't, they
would let me do anything by myself.

00:33:10:08 - 00:33:30:15
Speaker 3
When I was 26. They didn't trust me with, with the clients. Right. And
that's who's handling your experience. So I think the thing to think
about the problem that we all have to work through in our industry is
that in a lot of ways our legacy business is a utility and it is so
for many, many reasons, right?

00:33:30:15 - 00:33:52:07
Speaker 3
We must protect the assets we must be there to pay the promise that we
committed to the day, we committed to that promise. And we have a
well-organized regulatory system that's designed to help us get to
that point and, and be and you know, and the financial crisis, if
everybody remembers the financial crisis, proved that we know what
we're doing in that regard.

00:33:52:07 - 00:34:17:11
Speaker 3
So so there is a lot of good reasons why the utility looks like way it
does. And then you're trying to put a slick front end on top of that.
Where where and the people who who have been manning the utility all
these years don't have that skill set. So this is a completely
different skill set. We're talking about a high growth fancy tech
business that we want agile and change and a B testing I these this
buzzwords is I can throw out.

00:34:17:11 - 00:34:36:23
Speaker 3
But but the point is that the people who know how to do this really
well don't do this. And the people who know how to do this don't do
that. And we're as an industry that is the problem we need to solve.
How do you bring those two things together in such a way that you can
deliver the entire experience that the customers were looking for?

00:34:36:23 - 00:34:38:08
Speaker 3
And I think we're still working on that.

00:34:39:24 - 00:35:17:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. So a couple of key themes that I'm hearing all of us sort of
circle back to. The first is break down silos between your your
product offerings. The second is break down silos between your your

marketing and sales channels. So what we've seen, Brian, you hit the
nail on the head is people love to start online. Insurance is still
complex enough where I personally still talk to an agent before I make
any sort of purchase decision maybe for a simplified issue or lower
face amounts, things like that, I would feel a little bit more
comfortable making a purchase online.

00:35:17:13 - 00:35:34:19
Speaker 2
But at the end of the day, when I was making a critical decision for
my family, I still wanted to talk to an agent before I made that
decision. Same goes with a number of different insurance offerings,
not just life and annuities. So I'd say break down silos in your
infrastructure, brief break down silos and create an omnichannel
experience.

00:35:35:00 - 00:35:59:07
Speaker 2
Whether that person is talking online, carry that information over to
the agent when I call in on the phone number that was given to me on
the website when I abandoned Cart and decided I didn't, I needed some
assistance. American Airlines, my cable provider, they all recognize
me whenever I call in to to their support centers. Let's start simple
and then we can build off of that together.

00:36:00:23 - 00:36:20:10
Speaker 3
So I was as I say, my my own insurer actually does do that. So if I
start online and then I abandon it and call, they actually say so I
see you were just on the website, how can I help you? Which is, you
know, it's good, it's not creepy.

00:36:20:22 - 00:36:21:15
Speaker 1
Well, and.

00:36:21:16 - 00:37:00:05
Speaker 2
I think that that's what we're dancing around too, right? Like where
that line resides of like personalization, but not not the creepy
factor, right? Knowing where this person wants you to pick up with
them without making them feel uncomfortable with it. Well, I think,
you know, that's an interesting because there's where an opportunity
is, is how do you make a seamless experience where technology and
human interaction are seamless, where you're going back and forth and
technology and personal advice become conversational versus I see you
were looking at this.

00:37:01:17 - 00:37:24:23
Speaker 2

They're tools, right? They or never. That's the other thing that a key
theme, right? There's a there's a misalignment between the agent base
and the carrier align those incentives make the agent feel like you
know big big Internet is not going or robo brokers are not going to
take their jobs but rather make them help them do their jobs better.

00:37:25:09 - 00:37:30:23
Speaker 2
That's my personal belief. And it's maybe a little bit controversial
coming from a data tech guy, but that's what I believe.

00:37:31:02 - 00:37:48:15
Speaker 1
I think I think it's the right opinion. I think if you get most of the
tech people in the room that have had any experience and seen stuff
would agree with you. You've you've got to you've got to meet them
there. The commission conflict from reception and like pay them like
we have here. Like I sell through agents.

00:37:48:15 - 00:38:05:01
Speaker 1
I don't it's like, OK, so you're saying anybody that starts online you
don't care about like why would you not facilitate those in here? A
small percentage may make it all the way through. That's what they
want. So and maybe you don't want that. Maybe you want them to talk to
agent. That's fine. At least let them start and then you offer them a
good experience.

00:38:05:08 - 00:38:29:04
Speaker 2
But I just I know we're right up against launch here, and so I just,
you know, I want to thank everybody. I know everybody is going to be
around for the day, and you've got real expertize that I'm surrounded
by up here. And I would encourage you to talk to these folks because I
think, you know, there's some really great conversations to be, you
know, to to go around this whole subject as it relates to these
things.

00:38:29:04 - 00:38:35:10
Speaker 2
So just with that, I'd like to thank my fellow panelists and thank
everybody for putting up with this at the start of the day. So thank
you all.

00:38:35:12 - 00:38:35:24
Speaker 1
Thanks, Ira.

00:00:01:17 - 00:00:04:14
Speaker 1
I wanted to bring up the rest of our panelists as well.

00:00:20:18 - 00:00:44:24
Speaker 1
All right. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to Session two for
Service and Operations. I'm honored to be moderator doing this panel
of very, very talented experts from many different subject areas
within the topic. So really excited for the conversation. I'll give it
everyone a chance to introduce themselves, but I'll go ahead and kick
it off. My name is Zainab Noorali.

00:00:45:07 - 00:01:19:05
Speaker 1
I am the head of Innovation and Thought Leadership at Infosys
Retirement Center of excellence. I've been in the retirement
industries, particularly in the PC space, for the last 15 years. I
started my career at a retirement provider where I focused a lot of my
energy on the plan sponsor and participant experience. After that, I
joined a very early stage startup company called Best, where we were
offering a retirement platform for advisors and for small businesses
to give them access to for one K plan for small business owners.

00:01:20:05 - 00:01:51:01
Speaker 1
Was head of sales and strategy there. And then I joined Deloitte for
five years where I was a management consultant in the retirement and
wealth space, where I had a lot of great conversations with retirement
providers and helping them find solutions for their business use cases
and their problems. And I just joined emphasis relatively recently.
It's been less than six months, so excited to be here and talk about
the importance of customer experience.

00:01:51:01 - 00:02:14:20
Speaker 1
My experience in my 15 years has been really focused on customer
experience, so I know the importance of it, particularly how it's
evolved over the last few years, pre-pandemic even during the
pandemic. And eventually, if you'll ever get there post-pandemic to
see how the needs of our stakeholders have changed. But I wanted to
pass it off to Bobbie and give her introduction as well.

00:02:15:20 - 00:02:46:03
Speaker 1
Good afternoon, everyone. Bobbie Srivastav. I'm a co-founder, chief
product officer of Benekiva. And what Benekiva is, is a claims and
servicing platform we focused on building our solution from a
beneficiary first perspective when it comes to claims and also how do
we make it easy for the staff to manage and adjudicate the entire

claims value chain? And prior to Benny Kiva, Benny was my third SaaS
startup.

00:02:46:20 - 00:02:56:22
Speaker 1
I work for organizations such as Pepsi Division of AIG and Center for
Creative Leadership, and I'm looking forward to being part of the
panel to talk about some insights.

00:02:59:13 - 00:03:39:09
Speaker 2
So we're going to share a mic. Hi. My name is Manisha Bhargava. I'm
the chief customer officer of Innoveo Innovators and know code
platform company, which sells for complex insurance centric business
problems in a very agile and rapidly. I have a career in technology
and business. I've essentially worked with clients across the globe
right from Asia, Europe and North America, as well as the de la Times,
South American markets in their transformation journeys.

00:03:39:15 - 00:04:22:11
Speaker 2
What I could bring to the conversations and rich understanding of what
is driving change across markets I definitely see a lot of change
coming in from, I think to the way insurers are transforming
themselves across markets is interesting. If you look at what issues
doing what the latter market is doing well, there are a bunch I think
they are far larger population of people to address a lot of
underserved economies as well as when you look at more mature markets,
the way technology's transforming client experiences.

00:04:22:18 - 00:04:27:18
Speaker 2
I come in with that lens and happy to share some of that with you.
Yeah.

00:04:28:18 - 00:04:55:04
Speaker 3
I think this Hello, my name is Pete Sanderson. I work as an account
manager. Socotra is a cloud native platform that's built for a policy
administration. It's a culture. We do everything from quote to claim
and everything in between. Our focus is on PMC. We do some life
products like simple term life products, and then we're doing some med
sup as well with a large carrier.

00:04:55:04 - 00:05:18:00
Speaker 3
So in previous lives I've worked as a marketer. I helped some folks
launch and sell an MGA that focused on Medicare and medicine up in
Rhode Island and New England area, and that's probably where I'm
coming in on this panel. So I did a lot. I did. I'm the guy that sent

a ton of mail and a ton of emails and got a lot of leads in for reps.

00:05:19:00 - 00:05:25:01
Speaker 3
So we serviced a lot of people and that product got sold and is is
still doing very well today.

00:05:27:08 - 00:05:53:10
Speaker 4
Hello, everyone. My name is Galya Appell. I'm senior vice president of
Strategy, Innovation, at AmeriLife. It's really hard to represent
innovation at a distributor where you actually have people from real
innovative companies here, but we do our best. So as you know, I'm
pro-life, has been on the journey of attracting money from reputable
investors for for several years now.

00:05:53:10 - 00:06:23:19
Speaker 4
We just raised another fund from Gemstar which, you know, tries to
bring innovation and a lot of platform plays around the country. And
in my role, I oversee a lot of elements of how we call its value
proposition, right? If you are a distributor and wholesaler, you
basically touch every single link of the value chain from carrier to
to the ammo to ammo agency agent and ultimately the consumer.

00:06:23:19 - 00:07:00:15
Speaker 4
And so we are constantly trying to reimagine sort of what the value we
can bring as a platform player. It's been a very interesting time for
me. I've been a matter of life for two years, and before that I spent
ten years at Boston Consulting Group doing transformational consulting
for financial institutions and did a lot of work in customer centric
transformations, which was an interesting journey, especially talking
about 2015 when I think in financial sector back then it was still a
very, very weird concept.

00:07:01:01 - 00:07:35:18
Speaker 4
They were like, What do you mean customer centric? And I was like,
Well, you sell mortgage in a car, loaded a credit card out of three
different departments, and none of them knows that they do it, what
you do in other departments. And they were like, What's the problem?
So at least now we moved a bit away from that and we do talk a lot
about customer journeys and agent journeys and how technology really
augments it and helps to facilitate a much better and more in reach
and experience for everyone in their both sales conversation, but also
in services.

00:07:35:18 - 00:07:43:01
Speaker 4

So I'm very excited to share what we are thinking about at the Metro
life, but also from my consulting background. Let's have a good
discussion.

00:07:43:12 - 00:08:07:04
Speaker 1
Awesome. Well, let's just jump right in. Just a few years ago, I think
our industry was so focused on being tech forward and innovative,
particularly to engage the younger population because the seniors,
they were they like their paper statements, they like going to the the
call center or they like engaging with an individual face to face. But
boy, has that changed.

00:08:07:11 - 00:08:32:22
Speaker 1
I'm sure many of us in this room saw this evolve, especially in the
last couple of years. My family in particular right? I was for some
reason, all of a sudden overnight, my entire family knew what Zoom
was. It's no longer a company teleconference conferencing platform. My
family was using it to be in touch during the pandemic. And they all
had it downloaded on their iPads, their iPhones, their their laptops.

00:08:33:03 - 00:08:54:00
Speaker 1
All of a sudden, my mom's asking me, how do you use Venmo and Zelle?
And I'm like, why do you even know what that is? So it was a really
interesting shift to see the seniors starting to be a little bit more
tech savvy and more engaged digitally than they were before, and they
were almost forced by it, and they adopted it just as seamlessly as
the younger population.

00:08:54:00 - 00:09:15:03
Speaker 1
Right it wasn't that hard for them to to pick it up and get
comfortable with it. And to add to this shift, there's almost 10,000
baby boomers that are turning 65 every single day in 20, 31. In fact,
the US population over the age of 65 will be 75 million, which is
double what it was just 15 or 20 years ago.

00:09:15:14 - 00:09:44:01
Speaker 1
So with this generational shift and the size that's transitioning out
of the workforce, it's obviously going to impact retirement providers
so what I wanted to ask the panelists is now that the baby boomers are
and seniors are becoming more and more comfortable with technology,
how will this change how they want to engage with their service
providers and how will carriers and agents need to conform to this
shift I can I can go first.

00:09:44:15 - 00:10:22:15

Speaker 1
So I think like the trends that we've been seeing in the the
marketplace with the with the generational, I think it's the same want
and desire that any generation has, which is meet me where I'm at.
Give me give me the most easiest way to complete a task. Because
honestly, as a consumer, whether regardless of the age demographic,
you don't really care about what the carrier internal processes when
it comes to services, you don't care that they have ten to 20
different legacy systems.

00:10:22:17 - 00:11:05:10
Speaker 1
All you care about from a claim and servicing perspective is I need to
file a claim. What's next, what do you need to require and how do I
interact with you? Whether if I'm a senior that is still not
gravitating towards digital, whether that's traditional mechanisms or
whether I want to be digital first. So I think from a carrier lens in
this scenario, as a service provider is how do you look at meeting
your user base, where they're at and giving them all the things that
we want from a consumer perspective, is how do you how do I make it
easy for them to complete a task?

00:11:05:18 - 00:11:25:11
Speaker 1
How do I when I call in and we were talking about in the earlier
panel, how do they know that I'm the person that's calling? How do I
validate easily? How do I submit information to you without having the
need to back do the same billable PDF? That doesn't really I'm going
to have Nagle off the door internally.

00:11:25:11 - 00:11:45:03
Speaker 1
So it's all about the reducing the friction but it's also upbeat. It's
also appreciating the user and what their desires are because we can't
go digital for digital sake. It's really meeting about their needs,
whether they are younger consumer, an older consumer, whether they
want digital or traditional.

00:11:49:20 - 00:12:18:22
Speaker 2
So irrespective and I echo Bobbie's point about looking at the
consumer in a holistic sense, even if you look at the 50 plus consumer
engaging with any aspect of their lives, whether it is retirement
planning, whether it is just getting groceries, whether it is engaging
with their financial organizations, they've adopted digital in a big
way how we work.

00:12:19:02 - 00:12:52:02
Speaker 2
So this thing is the center of it. It's not consumption, it is

servicing. And while a lot of the industry is looking at how do I get
my ERP have out there, how can I start selling more, how do I enable
the agent? What's going to be materialists, completing that lifecycle,
delivering a state through experience across the value chain
integrating with those legacies and delivering service at the heart of
it, the sale will happen.

00:12:52:15 - 00:13:10:07
Speaker 2
So it's all about shifting the focus at least I believe. How can you
service it at the center of the client experience of the climate
client? So this moment that is going to be the the shift in thinking
that we need to be thinking.

00:13:11:15 - 00:13:33:12
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think in terms of listening to you guys, I think in terms of
what we used to call personas and marketing. So as you were talking,
I'm like, OK, there's pure print and there's Dorris Digital or
something. Like that. So you almost immediately have two different
types of client that you're working for and how you service each of
those is going to be different.

00:13:33:12 - 00:13:50:14
Speaker 3
Obviously, everybody wants to treat folks digitally because it's, it's
in theory, easier, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to
service some of those older folks the way that they're used to, which
is a little bit more maybe print oriented or maybe a greater touch.

00:13:50:18 - 00:14:14:18
Speaker 2
So so it's a sorry, I don't want to take so I guess it's you know, to
clarify, it's not about it has to be both. Yeah, it's not one or the
either. Right? It's both. It's about how you enabling that transaction
piece, how we were having the and you know, the previous and it was
very interesting because I got with a lot of the cards that were
spoken there.

00:14:15:00 - 00:14:21:23
Speaker 2
It's all about marrying the agent to the advisor along with the
digital experience.

00:14:22:21 - 00:14:49:21
Speaker 4
So I guess my perspective here will sort of tap into what you just
said because the merry life, when we think about our client, our
client is primarily the agents who then serves the person who is
seeking the advice or product. And the very interesting observation we

made in the last year or so when all the consumers were already
mentally prepared to embrace the digital innovation, a lot of agents
were not.

00:14:50:10 - 00:15:17:13
Speaker 4
And so what we observing actually is an agent community, which we all
know is aging rapidly. It's sort of the average age in the industry is
56 to seven and obviously they are not necessarily on the front of the
digital revolution. And for them, adoption of tools was even more
complex. And part of the reason for that is which we have reflected
on.

00:15:18:03 - 00:15:56:18
Speaker 4
There are actually no tools that represent independent agent
viewpoint. Like there are tons of tools that sort of solve for very
particular activities within their workday, but none of it that
represents a full sort of blown CRM slash, you know, book of business
management tool because I guess, you know, it's a little bit industry
specific until, you know, companies like a Metro Life started to
emerge and represent hundreds of thousands of independent agents, like
there was just no representation and demand for solutions like this.

00:15:56:18 - 00:16:18:21
Speaker 4
And so we're actually living in a very interesting times where even
though consumers are ready, agents very often are not. And it's really
hard for them because, you know, we have interviews with agents and
they say, you know, I can run my book of business with a notepad, an
iPad. Why do you give me an iPad? Why do you give me, you know, all
this Fs?

00:16:18:21 - 00:16:53:13
Speaker 4
Like, I don't like that it's not how I do my business. Like, you know,
I drive around in my car. I don't need an iPad somewhere. They're
like, so it's interesting how we need to actually influence the main
channel to adopt this and educate them about how technology can
positively augment their sales effectiveness and the service
effectiveness. And it's interesting to see that we also have a new
generation of agents, and they're probably more prominent in Medicare
and financial expense.

00:16:54:03 - 00:17:25:13
Speaker 4
We're more transactional products, but they're you you see like 27
year olds go in and successfully being able to service people because
they do actually embrace the technology and they do embrace, you know,
meeting people on Facebook or in other social media channels. And they

understand what drip email campaign is and building personal brand on
YouTube and community on Facebook means and that that actually allows
them to sort of educate the consumers also about what's what's the new
experience.

00:17:25:14 - 00:17:54:20
Speaker 4
Right. All of a sudden, like you can have a real digital community
experience about, you know, things like Medicare. And we didn't have
that two, four years ago. So it's very interesting to see. But I think
we actually have quite a lot of resistance in the system that we need
to overcome. And I think that one of the interesting aspects to think
about is I like the narrative of simplicity and I think that we need
to think about tools, be super simple for agents as well.

00:17:55:07 - 00:18:15:06
Speaker 4
And it's not degrading at all to make the the tool as simple as
possible. We sometimes think, OK, if someone, you know, needs to drive
a plane or like, you know, drive a car, it has to be a super complex
dashboard with a lot of different, you know, tools and metrics, you
know, because it's overwhelming. And we actually don't want them to be
overwhelmed.

00:18:15:12 - 00:18:18:20
Speaker 4
We want them to embrace the very new experience so.

00:18:19:17 - 00:18:44:13
Speaker 1
So one comment in your spark about the agent really brought back the
story about our first customer. So our first customer was a pre-need,
pre-need customer, where the claimant is also the agent because it's
an assigned beneficiary. And when we were building our product
initially, we were we were building it, of course, into our tech.
We're going to be digital, you know, digital first.

00:18:44:22 - 00:19:05:04
Speaker 1
And our the audience is the funeral home and we learned that 80% of
the claims that were coming in were through taxes. And I was like, oh,
yeah, I'm one of those people that want to get rid of the fax machine
with the office space I want to hammer down the faxes, get rid of
that. But I had to quickly learn that I can't do that in order to be
successful because.

00:19:05:04 - 00:19:28:00
Speaker 1
80%, in order to create that change I had to meet that agent, that
claimant where they're at. So I had to accept faxes. But what we

learned through that process was if we enabled digital and traditional
mechanism and showed the path of digital is a slightly little better
process, you're going to get faster notification. We're going to get
that readability correct.

00:19:28:14 - 00:19:42:04
Speaker 1
They're going to they're going to slowly move to more more digital
avenues. But here we have to start with the persona in mind and build
it backwards instead of really forcing digital.

00:19:43:13 - 00:20:01:12
Speaker 3
To the digital agent thing was interesting. I was thinking back, our
our biggest question was what's my password from an agent instead? And
I don't mean that that's kind of snide and all that, but it's is true.
It's like the guys who we were and the folks we were working with were
56 plus somewhere in there. They did, they crushed it.

00:20:01:12 - 00:20:03:18
Speaker 3
They did a lot of work and and.

00:20:03:20 - 00:20:25:11
Speaker 4
Then you ask them in the survey, Are you a digitally savvy person? And
everyone says, yes. So like and so it's interesting, like, I feel like
our industry as a whole will benefit from some kind of mass
collectively sponsored ethnography study or agents because we have a
lot of assumptions about that community. But I think that the reality
might be eye opening.

00:20:25:19 - 00:20:59:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think this shift doesn't necessarily mean we have to go
100% digital. Right? I think there is that happy medium that hybrid
approach that we're talking about, where there's going to be
situations like password resets and account information that IVR is
in. Chat bots can completely replace humans to be able to do. But then
there's going to like myself when I'm in a particular situation with
whether it's a credit card company or my bank or whatever, I do want
to pick up the phone and talk to somebody because I know I'm not going
to find that in the effort cuz I'm not going to find the answer in the
website, but I easily

00:20:59:13 - 00:21:30:01
Speaker 1
want if I'm ready to take action, then I want to go back on the online
channel and take action online and be able to track where my the
progress of my transaction online as well. So it's going to be very

important to find that that happy medium where it's going to be easy
for the end user, whether it's the agent, the consumer to be jumping
back and forth between these channels because that's that's going to
be our future for the next several years until if we even go 100%
digital, I don't think it will ever even make sense to go.

00:21:30:01 - 00:21:34:03
Speaker 1
You'll always need that human connection at some point in the journey.

00:21:34:17 - 00:22:05:08
Speaker 2
It finally boils down to how many I mean, from what I know, the pool
of transactions, what percentage of those transactions need that human
touch and what can be eliminated, thereby driving efficiency in that
system and also driving adoption in the process. Including, you know,
for simple transactions you do not need or face to face. And how many
of our parents and grandpa started using Instagram Instacart during
the pandemic?

00:22:05:24 - 00:22:34:15
Speaker 2
Right. If we look at the number of people who adopted an embrace
digital channels, it kind of took out a lot of that conservatism in
the in the equation during the pandemic. So we can at this juncture,
start from a space of seeing digitalization has been embraced in a lot
of ways. Across different spectrums of life. So there is acceptance.

00:22:34:20 - 00:22:55:02
Speaker 2
And when we start from that space and then start eliminating those you
know, those anxiety moments where you do need a human touch. But
beyond that, it's all about the digital experience at a transactional
level. I think the way we'd imagine that will probably drive a better
strategy.

00:22:55:02 - 00:23:19:17
Speaker 4
I really like what you say because what we see now research is that
every customer journey right there is a moment where there is the
utmost need for validation, right? And for example, for financial
products, a lot is just the product selection, right? So you kind of
understand what benefits you want. You understand what you're ready to
pay.

00:23:20:08 - 00:23:54:15
Speaker 4
And then, you know, when you sort of in all the different comparison
tools, you type all those things in and you see ten different products
that kind of, you know, fit your profile. And at that point you need

someone to sort of navigate you around the choices. But ultimately,
you know, typing in your needs if the intake form is intuitive enough
or, you know, thinking about like this or that, like it's it, it's
almost like we need to understand where the agent or advisor is
absolutely necessary and which parts, you know, we can actually enable
the person to complete themselves.

00:23:54:15 - 00:24:35:18
Speaker 4
And it's the same with the agent, by the way. Right? So when agent
submits the business, like, you know, they also like some things they
can do themselves. But at some point someone from the carrier side
also needs to help them and at some point when we because we talk
about services I would love to also talk a little bit about the fact
that in our industry, one of the reasons why we a little bit behind,
you know, PNC Wealth Management is because the product manufacturers,
the carriers and I apologize, you know, being in the building of one,
but they don't make it easy to automate everything related to the
products because the data is

00:24:35:18 - 00:24:56:24
Speaker 4
actually not very easily accessible. And so I think that we a lot of
us here you know, are struggling to also create those experiences
because to power those experiences, we need, you know, policy status
and try to integrate this field with policies that is from a given
carrot. Not so in this one, but like, you know, just a given carrier.

00:24:56:24 - 00:25:32:13
Speaker 4
And it's probably six months of customer integration like and if
you're trying to sell products from multiple carriers, you know,
multiply it times carriers, times products, and then who has time for
25 years of endless integrations and so I think that we we probably
also waiting for some kind of standardization of data across different
policy parameters right. So that we have some kind of policy status
API, you know like commission API, some something else API that we can
actually channel is data in the most effective way.

00:25:33:15 - 00:25:54:04
Speaker 1
I definitely want to get into like the product feature side of things
of how we can enable the digital journey but taking it back to the
importance of that relationship, right where I think we can all agree
in this room that especially for major financial decisions people want
to talk to a financial professional before making that major decision.

00:25:54:04 - 00:26:14:14
Speaker 1
We brought it up in the last panel as well. It's very important. And I

think the underlying reason for that is trust, right? There's either a
financial advisor, there's a financial professional, there's somebody
within your family or your own network that you're trusting to help
you make that decision. So how can we be building that trust in a
digital journey?

00:26:18:06 - 00:26:41:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, I can. So, you know, we're so much focused on the claims side of
the side of the house and oftentimes what we've seen for most
traditional carriers is at the time of claim, they if a claimant is a
family member, they may or may not be looping in the agent of the the
person that's just passed away.

00:26:42:06 - 00:27:27:10
Speaker 1
And and the the battle from the field perspective is typically, you
know, I want to be I've serviced this this family for so long. But at
the time of when it's needed the most, how come I have not been aware
and from a tech perspective, that's as simple as notification and I
get the legacy landscape not trying to oversimplify that's a different
topic we can talk about, but from a trust perspective at the time of
claim, what we've seen in our research is if you loop in the advisor
as part of the claim process and make it easy, even as easy of getting
the agent the tools because in some carrier scenarios that have an

00:27:27:10 - 00:27:54:24
Speaker 1
agency pool, 50% of the claims are coming from family and other
mechanisms, and 50% of the claims are coming through. The advisors and
their biggest complaint to the carrier is You're making me go through
the same process as somebody, as a claimant, but I'm part of your
system, I'm part of your organization. And make my life easy. So it's
just as simple as creating those tools and looking at that persona and
building that claim journey.

00:27:54:24 - 00:28:40:06
Speaker 1
That they can serve the claimant at the time of need. And what we've
seen in our research is like less than 4% of claims when they get
paid, it gets retained back to the carrier. And we have a in our
research, it shows that percentage gets increased. If you loop in the
advisor because it's a trusted individual and it gives that care and
it gives that agent the opportunity to sell more services of the
carrier so it's you know, we focus so much in our industry about
distribution or labs issues, but oftentimes we forget about the claim
payments going out and that retention and that retention in our belief
is when there's a when there's

00:28:40:06 - 00:28:41:04

Speaker 1
a human involved.

00:28:44:04 - 00:29:17:00
Speaker 2
I think the single largest way of delivering trust in a digital
channel is transparency. And visibility. These are the two. And
visibility and transparency from the perspective, whether it is the
customer having the visibility and transparency on the offers
available to them at the point of sale, the transparency and
visibility of what's happening to the claim across the life lifecycle,
the the availability of information.

00:29:17:00 - 00:29:46:02
Speaker 2
So the visibility and transparency for the advisor and agent in as the
as they engage with the customer as well as the carrier engages with
the customer. So whether it's that notification, whether it is at the
point of sale, the visibility and transparency of commissions that
they're earning is a part of the process. So I think if we even when
we start solving for that, along with doing that, simply that builds
trust more than anything else.

00:29:47:00 - 00:30:15:06
Speaker 4
I like that. And I also like the concept of, you know, how trust is
and loyalty is something that sort of result of positive, consistent,
positive experience. Right. And I think that connecting to the topic
that was discussed on the previous panel, you know, experience sort of
expectations, maintenance reality. And I think with a lot of
investments in digital fronts, we create very high expectation sets
and then consistently mismatch it with reality.

00:30:15:06 - 00:30:45:03
Speaker 4
And that's where sort of the the the trust gets eroded very, very
quickly. And I think when we were preparing for the panel where we
actually were talking that, you know, the so Kerry is now obviously
try to understand how in the disintermediated space sort of create the
brand recognition and loyalty. And a lot of them kind of keep
forgetting that the only experience that customer actually has, it's
not at the point of acquisition.

00:30:45:03 - 00:31:12:24
Speaker 4
It's a point of claim. And it doesn't matter how beautiful your brand
looks like when you display it during the Super Bowl commercial, if
you know, you know of someone who had to go for a deaf claim and had a
horrible experience. And so it's it's very interesting to sort of
think about how investments are made. And by the way, like, you know,

it's we have the same thing.

00:31:12:24 - 00:31:36:10
Speaker 4
You know, it's very easy to invest in something that generates revenue
and very hard to invest in something that generates retention or
satisfaction because it's very hard to, you know, spend some kind of
business metrics to it. But I think now in Medicare, for example,
where the retention on the policy, you know, becomes like a very, very
big criteria of success for everyone involved, it kind of shifts a
little bit.

00:31:36:10 - 00:31:49:02
Speaker 4
But I feel like in sort of one, lifetime purchases, like a lot of life
products or annuity products, we probably struggle to put the focus on
on the experience that.

00:31:51:09 - 00:32:09:20
Speaker 1
And I think there's a lot of of of technology and tools out there that
can help enable this to. Right. So how do you get that human
experience and technology? I don't think we'll ever be able to replace
humans 100%, but we can get pretty darn close. You know, there's
there's a tool that emphasizes it's called poor text.

00:32:09:20 - 00:32:34:14
Speaker 1
And I'm thinking about this because I just had a meeting about it, but
they based that that tool basically nudges contact center reps or even
gives the data to the chat bot to be able to pick up on on consumer
sentiment. Right. So they're picking up on what phrases or what
responses are getting consumers annoyed or frustrated or upset.

00:32:34:20 - 00:33:13:21
Speaker 1
That way they can continue to refine the experience to to build that
connection. Right. So instead of I'm the first to do this when I get
my call is received by an IVR, I immediately start going agent agent
agent. I don't even want to go through that experience. But if I find
that the IVR is almost talking like like a human and asking me like,
you know, how can it like almost like having a conversational
conversation versus a robot, I'd be a little bit more open to it and I
would start building a little bit more trust in that system and
allowing a robot to talk to me versus wanting to talk to humans.

00:33:13:21 - 00:33:27:06
Speaker 1
So I think there's the we're getting close to be being able to replace
a human, but I don't think we'll fully be able to like like there's

going to be always that scenario or that circumstance where you're
just going to be like, I need to talk to somebody.

00:33:28:01 - 00:33:54:22
Speaker 3
It's tricky because people trust people, not always technology, but
now so we we when we were doing our Medicare work, we found a lot of
people would come to us, you know, a few years later and ask us for
financial advice and like, oh, wait a second. But that quickly turn we
vetted and find a partner and we ended up kind of creating a side
business on that where it was super.

00:33:55:01 - 00:34:15:23
Speaker 3
It was great. It was great for us. It was great for the customer. They
had that agent that they've been working with all along. We could have
probably gotten better at identifying triggers to like when certain
people were more ready than not to do what they needed to do. But it
was it's hard to fully replace just the connection that you have with
another human being.

00:34:16:23 - 00:34:51:17
Speaker 2
So let's look at financial services as a case study. They did it. That
industry is engaging with all aspects, all the you know, all age
groups and delivering services, delivering products, delivering
complex products digitally and it's the same consumer where they're
getting an experience from a financial services organization of being
including built products and you know, portfolio management digitally.

00:34:51:22 - 00:35:21:15
Speaker 2
And here is that same customer who's experiencing a consumption of
life products, retirement products from life insurance or from, you
know, the health care world differently. So it's not the consumer that
has to adapt or is preferring advisory services. It's about how are
you delivering that information and service to the customer for them
to be able to consume.

00:35:22:04 - 00:35:36:01
Speaker 2
And I think we you know, we really have to start looking differently
rather than trying to solve for the fact with the assumption that the
customer always needs an advisor in the mix. Maybe not.

00:35:38:17 - 00:36:19:14
Speaker 1
By May, it's about meeting the customer where they're at. So in that
scenario where you were talking about like the technology really
enabled that that service, but if in your scenario with the robot, if

you were to say agent and if you didn't have the human it would have
been lost. Right? It would have been so it's like how do you come up
with meeting the consumer needs and whether that's, you know, they
need an advisor or maybe they don't need an advisor, but how do you
make that experience where maybe they go through a full workflow of
what they need from a financial like I always think about claims, but
from a claim perspective,

00:36:19:14 - 00:36:39:22
Speaker 1
if my claim payout includes, I want a portion of my proceeds to fund a
different product if that workflow was clean and I don't need an
adviser because I it's it's that journey. I understand it. But at any
point, if I need a human to connect with, how do we facilitate? How do
we orchestrate that in a seamless manner?

00:36:39:22 - 00:36:44:12
Speaker 1
How do we allow technology to be true enabler instead of a replacer.

00:36:45:06 - 00:37:17:09
Speaker 4
And fortunately, unfortunately, I mean, the answer for that is let's
look at how tech companies do that. Right? And the first thing to
build is the very powerful customer data platform that underpins every
single interaction that they're having with the consumer. And I think
that obviously in product centric environment where the policy is the
unit of information, it's really hard to create a customer anchored
data set that that you can then depend all sorts of metadata on and
browsing data.

00:37:17:09 - 00:37:47:10
Speaker 4
And and that's I think it's an interesting thing because what we see
right now in the industry right? You have on one hand a massive
revolution of lead providers, and it's an industry about which we can
have a whole separate conversation probably not here, but you have
sort of the the, you know, personal identifiable record sellers. Then
you have the whole layer of people who sell some data.

00:37:47:10 - 00:38:13:23
Speaker 4
You can append to those to those leads. Then you have everyone who
will tell you, I will build a profile of of your customer. And then
somewhere at the end of it, carriers need to decide how to sell to
them, but they actually still don't own the customer. And I think that
ultimately whoever creates that, that view, that really informed view
of the consumer will eventually be the most successful in in both
servicing and selling.

00:38:14:10 - 00:38:37:21
Speaker 4
And maybe just just pointing a little bit to the product innovation
because we're talking about retirement like one of the interesting
things that I see in this space is right now we we have a lot of
concepts that sort of reinvents the retirement products to solve for a
particular need. Like, for example, at the conference a couple of
weeks ago, I talked to you guys from Retirement Genius.

00:38:38:07 - 00:39:13:03
Speaker 4
And what they do, they take a life insurance policy and they find
people who are just about to default on their life insurance policy.
And then they basically buy that policy from them with a discount. And
give them money that they can put in like a trade type fund to use to
pay for long term care because they figured out, OK, there are those
people who like have this very expensive policy but they are so
concerned about their health care costs that their life insurance
policy doesn't address that they would like forego on substantial part
of the payout just to be able to afford their health care bills.

00:39:13:20 - 00:39:34:14
Speaker 4
And I think for me, it was an interesting example of the fact that we,
the industry sometimes think that, oh, if the person has life
insurance policy, they kind of taken care of, whereas like a lot of
people will benefit from constant reevaluation of their current
situation and financial needs, not just like overall retirement, but
also day to day.

00:39:35:01 - 00:40:01:19
Speaker 4
And I think that that creates a lot of opportunities for maybe re
platforming consumer from one product to another, depending on their
needs in the moment. And maybe carers can look into that because we
see a lot of sort of this abandoning of the product at a time where
like people put money against that for 15, 20 years, but they have to
walk away because they just can't afford it for whatever reason.

00:40:02:06 - 00:40:04:22
Speaker 4
And it's interesting how the industry kind of doesn't catch that.

00:40:06:18 - 00:40:38:16
Speaker 3
You hit on a really key point that the technology cannot replace and a
bias around one particular aspect and that's where this exact, like
said, really good clients don't refer to their advisors as financial
advisors or their advisor. And, and the way life events and, and
advice as it relates to certain kind of dynamics, kids or with

grandparents or things like that, that's something that technology
can't get into.

00:40:38:16 - 00:40:48:07
Speaker 3
But where the product manufacturer can get into some of that stuff is
some of the dynamics of exactly what you're talking about, being able
to look at other types of products.

00:40:49:15 - 00:41:19:24
Speaker 4
And I think it's just in general like thinking of I mean, we all know
that the problem with Advisor engagement with retirees is that the
cumulation of assets is not a particularly lucrative area for them.
They like, OK, going to put you on an annuity and focus on some other.
Yup. Is so hard to say. But I think that, you know, we need to figure
out the regimen of treatment of the people in that stage that you
know, creates new product opportunities, new discussion opportunities
and just regular engagement.

00:41:20:10 - 00:41:54:14
Speaker 2
What's interesting is those are kind of problems that technology is
trying to solve for. I just call upon a use case that we're delivering
an issue where we are working in the embedded space. So working with
the rideshare companies and the telecom companies in Malaysia and
Thailand and Singapore, where we are capturing in the partner or the
distributor.

00:41:54:14 - 00:42:27:15
Speaker 2
And this is a this is a in use case for a large carrier where we are
capturing different life moments as a part of their life journey,
using those as triggers with the AI engines, figuring out, you know,
simple things that the in an e-wallet, the customer starts buying
diapers. That means there's a life movement that's happening there and
serving of products which are saying that the client may have a new a
bone in their family.

00:42:27:15 - 00:43:04:20
Speaker 2
How do they start their, you know, the education and fund, how do they
start preparing for life products? And that's the kind of innovation
that's happening driven by technology, fueled by technology to be a
part of that lifecycle. And those are some aspects I think as we
evolve and more and more carriers start adopting these kind of use
cases, we'll start seeing how advisors to us to some extent can be
replaced using technology.

00:43:07:01 - 00:43:25:02

Speaker 3
You mentioned something about data and I came from the publishing
industry, so that was an interesting industry in that the moment
Amazon kind of came into play, they were sucking out all the data. We
didn't get the data back and we didn't. We always talked about the
single view of the customer and then all of a sudden we didn't have
any customers.

00:43:25:05 - 00:43:42:24
Speaker 3
We were selling tons of books. Well, we didn't have any customers, and
that's in order to do a lot of the things you've talked about, you
still need the customer. So to make a quick comment, I wrote
predominantly know Medicare, Medicaid. So often it depends on the
state, but there's something more.

00:43:42:24 - 00:43:43:21
Speaker 2
Fundamental about.

00:43:43:21 - 00:43:58:19
Speaker 3
Digital transformation that the digital divide of all your customer
interconnection settings, digital literacy, not all those devices.
Then all you can go to that third one is, yeah, so that's where
persona would come into play.

00:43:58:19 - 00:44:12:15
Speaker 4
So and about sort of the mode of delivery, I think that's something we
didn't touch. I hope no one still creates anything for desktop first
like.

00:44:13:09 - 00:44:40:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, this was fascinating. Thank you so much. SB Just to clarify,
your point is very interesting. We found, you know, working with our
advisors suddenly senior Twitter and zoom on where we supported a it
was a mark you were on that one. We did a live event livestream event
with one of our advisors. Suddenly, you know, 20 customers popped up.

00:44:40:13 - 00:45:00:23
Speaker 3
I mean I've never see customer you know to that point Danny there were
old older than me and Iran's no and so we started talking to how do
they how do they get on here and you know it turned out that they
helped us with the churches you know, because a lot of these people,
you know, very active in church and all the churches went online and
trained them.

00:45:00:23 - 00:45:10:02
Speaker 3
So it's there's been massive, massive amount of change in this
particular sector. You all we've been talking about. First of all,
thank you so much for your time.

00:00:00:10 - 00:00:17:11
Speaker 1
Next stop is our product group. And unfortunately, Michelle Richter
could not be here. She got sick. Hopefully she's on Zoom. Anyway,
Bruno, when you come up and will be the moderator and introduce a
really, really interesting panel.

00:00:18:16 - 00:00:19:09
Speaker 2
Absolutely.

00:00:27:08 - 00:00:34:23
Speaker 1
Now I have to try it on. Is it working? Well.

00:00:36:08 - 00:00:37:03
Speaker 2
I have to turn.

00:00:37:11 - 00:00:37:20
Speaker 1
And we're.

00:00:53:06 - 00:01:23:12
Speaker 2
All right. Well, thank you very much for for joining us. At the risk
of stating the obvious, the demographic environment, the regulatory
environment and the economic environment has been, to say the least, a
roller coaster over the last few weeks, few decades, however you want
to put it. And this has caused a tremendous waste for innovation
within the retirement income space.

00:01:24:03 - 00:02:03:03
Speaker 2
And I'm thrilled today to be leading this discussion panel with
industry experts entrepreneurs and most importantly, innovators. So to
begin with, I like this. I would We have a lot of product expertise
from from various segments of the of the annuity space So in terms of
the of the individual annuity market, where do you see this market
adding very soon and in the next few years?

00:02:03:03 - 00:02:07:13
Speaker 2
And where do you see the the innovation in in that market?

00:02:07:21 - 00:02:33:03
Speaker 3
Well, thank you for the question. And my name is Evie Mroczek, and I'm
from Lincoln Financial. And as alluded to here, I work and lead the
annuity product, the market research team, focus on data digital and

anything in between. But kind of getting back to your question, I
think hearing from everyone here today, right, we all know that there
is a lot of challenges out in front of us, but every challenge brings
an opportunity.

00:02:33:21 - 00:03:00:02
Speaker 3
I think that industry over the years has proven that we can create any
what some call product widget to serve the need. Right. To address
investment concerns to make sure we can balance the risk that we're
onboarding. So we can also provide an opportunity and the benefits
that we can pay down the road. Right. But I think the true opportunity
for innovation comes with the challenges we discussed today.

00:03:00:10 - 00:03:27:15
Speaker 3
It's the ability to deliver solutions that can address the needs that
can become visible in these digital tools that are easily I don't want
to use the word benchmark but compared. But most importantly, they are
understood by the receiving end. And here the receiving end are the
customers and are the advisors right? The advisors that are there to
tell our story, to provide advice.

00:03:28:02 - 00:03:41:24
Speaker 3
So I think if I really think about it and bringing it back, the true
opportunity really becomes in simplicity. So where I see the industry
going is the push for simplicity and not over complication of the
products that we sell today.

00:03:42:16 - 00:04:09:12
Speaker 2
Well, thank you And next, going with Robin, who's is SVP at Vitech in
terms of pension risk transfer. I'm usually again annuities again
serving lifetime income customers, but from a different dynamic.
Robin, where do you see the risk transfer coming and where do you see
the innovation coming in the next few years?

00:04:09:20 - 00:04:38:13
Speaker 3
Okay. So country risk transfer is more broadly a technique that's used
by defined benefit pension plans to manage the risk of the plan. So
there's been a lot of innovation done to help plan sponsors manage the
plans. Many of them, let's say over 60% of plan sponsors state that
their, their objective is, is to go to a full buyout, transfer the
risk to an insurer.

00:04:38:22 - 00:05:04:17
Speaker 3
And so they have tools along the roadmap to manage it, one of which is

they can transfer all or part of their pension plan to an insurer or
through a group annuity contract which preserves the guarantee or one
of the innovations is the buy in contract which allows the plan
sponsor to keep the the plan and match the cash flows, the investment
risk and the longevity risk of the plan.

00:05:05:02 - 00:05:22:23
Speaker 3
Often that's done as a staging technique to for buyout longevity. Risk
transfer market is a huge source of innovation, also primarily in UK
and Europe to manage the risks to in these traditional plans which for
those who have it or is just a wonderful benefit to preserve.

00:05:23:16 - 00:05:27:08
Speaker 2
On the whole. Thank you. And all right so you have.

00:05:29:19 - 00:05:51:18
Speaker 2
The Laurence is the CEO of be and founder of The Index Standard and
obviously an expert within FIIs. Can you tell us a little more about
the FIA market Where is it heading and where is the innovation in
there or if there's too much innovation, if that's such a thing?

00:05:52:10 - 00:06:24:09
Speaker 4
Thanks, Bruno. So I guess firstly, my name is Laurence Black. I'm the
founder of the Index Standard. And what we do is we provide tools to
try and simplify fixed index annuities and riders. So what we do is we
rate indices, we rate A's and we provide forecasts and returns. Now
it's kind of funny. Everyone says our product is simple and like what
we're dealing with is we're hearing these investment banks developing
indices that use mean variance optimization.

00:06:24:24 - 00:06:56:15
Speaker 4
They risk control. We've got some indices that we've got long short.
They've got VIX and the average financial professional just does not
understand. So, you know, this industry has become incredibly complex
because in these annuities, you have all these wacky, wonderful
indices. And then on top of that, you've got payoffs, which sometimes
we're going to give you pay off that we're going to cap you at 10%
We're seeing payoffs that will give you 5% of the market's go up and
we'll give you 5% of markets go down.

00:06:56:15 - 00:07:18:00
Speaker 4
And there's just so much complexity. So you know, at the index
standard, what we try and do is really help guide consumers through
this by helping them make these choices. And, you know, I think it was

alluded to on the previous panel that, you know, I think I assume
everyone has got an iPhone, right. Or some kind of Google farm.

00:07:18:24 - 00:07:42:24
Speaker 4
Yes. It's tremendously complex. Right. But we understand the benefits.
And I think the insurance industry is not great at explaining the
benefits. You know, annuities still has a bad reputation, which I
think is changing a bit recently and probably some of the cove. It
helped that. But we need to focus on the benefits. And what I find in
my in my seat is too many people are trying to explain to me how my
iPhone works.

00:07:42:24 - 00:08:00:04
Speaker 4
And with all of these chips and this technology and it's like, oh, I
don't get it. You know, I just need to know that I can make a call. I
can look up something, and then I can go to the apps that I need. So I
think that's something we should focus on to try and help convey the
benefits.

00:08:00:04 - 00:08:07:23
Speaker 4
And, you know, because these products are incredibly useful and people
want want them, but they just not sure how to access them or how to
buy.

00:08:09:06 - 00:08:56:09
Speaker 2
Well, thank you. And I love the the iPhone analogy. There are
obviously a very complex and single segment annuities, but at the end
of the day, how do we use them effectively? So individual annuities,
if I is insurance transfer I'll I'll save you for last, Richard,
because I love your product. So, David, you have a completely
different approach as far as Plangap and it's really starting at the
root with with government sponsored programs such as Social Security
and you take a completely different approach at offering retirees a
solution based on on that.

00:08:56:09 - 00:09:00:12
Speaker 2
Can you elaborate a little more and what what is essential gap?

00:09:01:07 - 00:09:21:18
Speaker 5
Thank you, Bruno. And hopefully it helps sort of tie a little bit
about what you guys talked about and plan gap at its core is a product
invention company that helped create a new living benefit for the life
and annuity space to address really the largest unaddressed fear in
retirement planning in America. And that is what's going to happen

with Social Security.

00:09:22:07 - 00:09:58:20
Speaker 5
The dependency is massive and people are worried that it might not be
there as promised and so we believe that you really can't have a
guaranteed income story without talking about what's happening with
Social Security and how to protect your income. Stream. And so over
the past few years, we pioneered this industry. We helped build the
regulatory framework and we've partnered with some of the best
companies out there to bring products to markets to sort of give
people a sense of power over a program that they've paid into.

00:09:59:00 - 00:10:21:24
Speaker 5
They've paid all their lives. You know, anyone in this room, you know,
100% certain they're going to get Social Security as promised. And the
retirement plan, you know, maybe, maybe not. But if your answer is
maybe not, then you know why we're in business. And so we think this
offering, this new living benefit will expand the tent of annuity
buyers.

00:10:22:02 - 00:10:43:10
Speaker 5
More people will be attracted into a conversation that's normally
pretty complicated and if we can make it more relevant to the real
concerns on the street, then we think we can make the experience for
the advisors better. They can acquire more customers and then address
that, that really large fear in America that the rules might change.

00:10:44:07 - 00:11:35:14
Speaker 2
Wonderful. So last but last and not least, Richard, we talked about
annuities and various different shape and form you along with many
academics and an economist, I've been a big advocate on longevity,
poorly And the concept of like longevity pooling, risk pooling, this
translates right now into annuities. Is there another way is there an
innovative way? Is there an alternative that goes beyond that could
ultimately complement annuities and offer a different a different
avenue for people seeking income and people seeking seeking to
decrease their their longevity risk.

00:11:36:18 - 00:12:12:16
Speaker 6
Thank you. I think the answer is yes. Only people will actually be as
quick background are companies called well below where startup
Retiretech. It's A B to B company are target market really is
primarily asset managers and insurance companies as well. Governments
and robo advisors. Anyone who's providing services, retirement income
kind of services. And we talked a little bit about a defined benefit,

right?

00:12:12:16 - 00:12:37:02
Speaker 6
So there's this issue of pension risk transfer and people don't like
the risk on their books sponsors. So there's this big trend away from
defined benefit into defined contribution that's been going on for
many years now. And unfortunately, when that happens, we lose risk
pooling, right? So the idea is now to bring risk pooling into the
defined contribution space.

00:12:37:16 - 00:13:13:17
Speaker 6
And there are ways to do that. I think one way to think about it is
like offering of a non insured, non-guaranteed annuity life annuity.
All right. That doesn't say you're going to get exactly this much
money or follow a certain index pay out, but just completely sharing
all the risk. So there's no guarantee, no guarantee costs are so
significantly less expensive to offer So for people who say, you know
what, I'm very risk averse, I do want a guaranteed income stream, I
want to know exactly how much I get most people should buy a
guaranteed annuity.

00:13:13:18 - 00:13:46:04
Speaker 6
Right. For people who say, no, I want a shared lifetime income, I
don't care exactly how much it's going to be every month. I'm willing
to let it go up and down some in value. Then perhaps they could use
something that's a risk sharing risk pooling arrangement that offers
that and could be offered in, say, defined contribution plans today
using the existing investments that are already offered in those plans
today or through robo advisors and different things like that.

00:13:46:15 - 00:14:04:05
Speaker 2
So in terms of contrast to what's already offered, how would you
contrast this with maybe you made that contrast with pay out
annuities, but how would you contrast that with, let's say, variable
annuities with living benefits?

00:14:05:20 - 00:14:29:13
Speaker 6
Yeah, good question. So we talked about that a little bit too. So a
lot of these products are very complicated. All right. So and they all
do have some kind of guarantee built in. So the idea here is you just
say, let's just dispense with that right so it's similar in a way in
that you could say, you know, you are going to get a lifetime income
and it's going to vary with the experience of your investments.

00:14:29:13 - 00:14:51:20

Speaker 6
But we're just saying there's no no guarantee period of exactly how
much you're going to get. So if you invest in a relatively
conservative portfolio, you're going to get payouts that are going to
vary somewhat over time. If you invest in extremely risky portfolios,
you're going to get payouts that go up and down along with the
experience of the the investment return.

00:14:52:17 - 00:15:00:12
Speaker 6
So it's largely about offering that kind of a thing, but with just
zero guarantee zero guarantee.

00:15:00:21 - 00:15:05:03
Speaker 2
But obviously maximum payout. So it's it's it's a tradeoff.

00:15:05:03 - 00:15:08:20
Speaker 6
Maximizing the payout by reducing cost.

00:15:08:20 - 00:15:35:24
Speaker 2
Basically. Right. Because I think we all we all love guarantees from
annuities. I think most of us would not be in this room if it wasn't
for the benefit of guarantees. In terms of annuities. There's also a
flip side that most most of the time under under appreciated annuity
and that's the risk pooling, just like there is a risk pooling for
every other type of insurance, car insurance, life insurance and
whatnot.

00:15:35:24 - 00:16:21:21
Speaker 2
So I think that it is extremely interesting to see that we are coming
out this way in terms of in terms of innovation and David, back to
you. In terms of, you know, in terms of solution based on you know,
based on governments issued programs or should I say government
sponsored programs, are there other avenues where you can actually
actually offer or kind of replicate that that that offering on Social
Security, thinking about potentially Medicare or anything any any of
those other other programs?

00:16:22:01 - 00:16:56:18
Speaker 5
Great question. I know I'm in the room with, I guess, The Godfather
retired tech, right? Yeah. And we like to people smarter than us have
said that we're creating a kind of a new category called retirement
insurance. And so what we like to think about is all the income
promises that were made to any one of us that sits off balance sheet
pensions deferred comp, Social Security, things that are promised to

you, that sits somewhere else, that you're counting on that income or
those promises to be kept.

00:16:57:12 - 00:17:30:07
Speaker 5
And we think that there's the same application can be applied to
pension income, to these other sources that may or may not be there as
promised. You know, the old Arthur Andersen guys know a little too
well what happened to the deferred comp. It becomes an asset that
creditors can go after and the retirement plans changed. And so, you
know, we really just believe that people that have done what they're
supposed to do kind of played by the rules as presented to them
throughout their career.

00:17:30:14 - 00:17:47:16
Speaker 5
And then to have those rules change is kind of crappy and they should
have the ability to buy protection or hedges against those potential
broken promises. And we think that really expands the appeal of the
annuity and life market.

00:17:49:07 - 00:18:16:10
Speaker 2
Wonderful. So maybe back to the more traditional annuities that the
individual annuities, the pension risk transfer annuities I regression
for both of you in terms of innovation, is technology the trigger for
potentially new innovation, especially within the the pensioners
transfer yeah.

00:18:16:20 - 00:19:00:11
Speaker 3
Sure. Oh, well, it's an enabler. So what you know, I work for VI Tech
Systems Group which does the Policy Administration Systems Digital
Integrated Digital Administration Systems for retirement plans for
plan sponsors, insurers and benefit providers. And what you find is
that the old legacy systems don't provide accurate, efficient
information to the plan sponsor or the participants. So a digital
platform will do all of their provides data can be grabbed in any
form.

00:19:00:17 - 00:19:48:20
Speaker 3
It's provisioned. There's automatic benefit kills the plan participant
will have digital self service and other layers can be added on to it
to connect to it. So the product morphs to become the product features
and the service experience for the participant. If I could pivot just
quickly to the defined contribution market, there's I think the
possibility for even more transformation in defined contribution
because you need go betweens between the record keepers and the
participants to grab the data, put it in the right format and feed it

to all the parties that need to have access to it for these new
innovative forms of lifetime income.

00:19:48:20 - 00:19:52:08
Speaker 3
So I would expect a lot of transformation in that area.

00:19:53:21 - 00:19:57:08
Speaker 2
What about you? Any any opportunities, tech or non tech in terms.

00:19:57:08 - 00:20:19:17
Speaker 3
Of obviously Retiretech is here to stay. I want to say that it's not,
but I think one of the things we have to be careful with is, as
mentioned here by my fellow panelist, is that technology is not the
solution or technology is the railroad that can help us get there. So
we really have to think about what problems are we trying to solve for
our customers and what is it that they're looking for.

00:20:19:17 - 00:20:44:22
Speaker 3
Right. We have a plethora of products, right. And already products
that some out there are trying to simplify. Yet us US carriers were
looking to deliver things that can really benefit the customer. So I
think in all this, technology is going to keep US carriers in check,
especially the retired techs out there looking at not overcomplicating
our products.

00:20:44:22 - 00:21:13:09
Speaker 3
Right. I think we at times forget that what we create and why might
make sense behind the closed doors is not necessarily easily
digestible on the other side. So those digital interfaces that will
not know where to place us will challenge us to think better and think
harder. So I think technology's going to serve us well to really
challenge us, to really look to what we need to deliver that's out
there.

00:21:13:19 - 00:21:43:22
Speaker 3
But it also creates a way at potentially reaching the underserved
markets, right? It gives us an ability to maybe reimagine how we and
how we deliver our products to which we didn't have that before.
Right. We now have digital ecosystems developing that have customers
looking and studying products. Right. The recently I went through
supporting immigrant parents on Medicare Medicaid, purchasing Medigap
policy.

00:21:43:22 - 00:22:04:09

Speaker 3
Right. These are individuals that are non-English-speaking that need
to figure out how to maneuver that system. Well, there is an
opportunity for me sitting as an insurance carriers, they wait, wait a
minute. You have individuals coming in studying Medicare type coverage
that are going to have to be coming in every year to come in and
review our policy.

00:22:04:09 - 00:22:25:14
Speaker 3
Maybe that's our point of entry. Right. We heard earlier that the
Medicare agents are the ones that are more digital savvy. Maybe
there's an opportunity for us to think simple annuities and think
about introducing our products in a new way. So I think in all where I
see the innovation happening is us challenging ourselves to think
beyond our traditional channels.

00:22:26:01 - 00:22:53:10
Speaker 3
Of course, we have to serve those that have worked with us over the
years. But also look to grow. I think all of the US sitting on the
insurance carrier, we always talk about growth and sales. Obviously,
our goal is to expand and be here for another hundred and 50 years and
for many years to come, but we have to also challenge ourselves to
identify new markets and that's the way to really survive to the
future.

00:22:53:20 - 00:23:36:21
Speaker 2
I couldn't agree more. That's a really good point. I mean we've been
hearing about, you know, penetrating the middle market as a challenge
for everyone, for every carrier. So definitely finding those
solutions. And essentially to your point, through through technology
can get can help out. So switching gears again, Lawrence, you know,
back on those index you mentioned or we all mentioned, the entire
world is focused around ESG any is there any way that is you can make
them work their way into those indices?

00:23:37:05 - 00:23:54:10
Speaker 2
Or if so, is it going to be driven by by compliance, by regulation, by
consumer demand? How do you see ESG fitting in into this entire entire
range of of indices operate within fixed index annuities?

00:23:55:11 - 00:24:19:18
Speaker 4
And that's there's a lot of things in that question. So I'll take it
from a couple of angles. I would say, firstly, we see ESG as a theme,
and I think themes are easy to sell in in the insurance space. So
whether you can have a product that says, I'm going to give you a pay

off linked to the Nasdaq or to this fintech group of companies or ESG
or green.

00:24:20:04 - 00:24:50:22
Speaker 4
So I think themes are actually really helpful because they're easier
to convey what's happening to to the end consumer and I would say ESG
has evolved a lot. You've probably seen some of the some of the bad
press that a number of the large asset managers have got from claiming
to be ESG compliant when perhaps they weren't. And we do a bit of work
in Europe and I'd say things are evolving rapidly in Europe.

00:24:51:03 - 00:25:22:23
Speaker 4
And my sense is what's happening in Europe, ESG is is less well
thought of now. Because pre the Russian invasion of Ukraine, everyone
thought, let's say a defense company was not an ESG company. Now that
might have changed, you might say, well, a defense company might be
part of the S society. It helps keep stability. So my sense what's
happening in Europe is people are moving a little bit away from ESG as
a framework per say.

00:25:23:04 - 00:25:48:24
Speaker 4
It's going to become embedded and people are focusing more on what's
called the sort of Paris goals, trying to they want to identify
companies that are really genuinely reducing the global temperature by
two to two degree centigrade. So that's what's happening there. And
then sort of tying back into innovation and tech. And so some of your
thoughts, you know, I agree with you that I think tech is really an
enabler.

00:25:48:24 - 00:26:13:08
Speaker 4
And one thing from our space is we have a lot of clients that are in
the ammo flow space and we see regulation is coming into the industry
in a big way. Not this has really been an unregulated industry. And
now you've seen something called rag vie come into place and you've
got another regulation called 84, 24. And I see a couple of nods
there.

00:26:13:08 - 00:26:32:22
Speaker 4
That's great. And you either have to demonstrate that you sold a
product that was in the client's best interest. Or number two, you
have to may you might even have to be a fiduciary, which is pretty
scary. So I think, you know, the tools can help demonstrate that. And,
you know, we have rating reports, we have full cost.

00:26:32:23 - 00:26:58:05

Speaker 4
We're one of many tools, but at least I think technology can allow you
to save these reports down, whether it's mine or someone else's. You
can demonstrate that you how you got to that solution for a client
that we actually considered various products we had. We were able to
evaluate them. We could look at the quality. You know, we chose three
demonstrate, save that down and we gave the client this final one.

00:26:58:05 - 00:27:13:09
Speaker 4
So I think that's going to be really, really important. And I think
there was a comment earlier on the earlier panel that some people are
using pens and paper. I think that's still true. But technology can
reduce the errors, demonstrate compliance and really help them.

00:27:14:23 - 00:27:15:22
Speaker 2
Have something please.

00:27:16:21 - 00:27:33:24
Speaker 1
Yes you raise a good point is on your 46 end of last year introduced
chief financial officer and one thing else came out of the perception
of like a younger demographic me. Yeah how are you going to do.

00:27:34:13 - 00:27:53:09
Speaker 4
That it's so true so I think and it's kind of it's interesting you
know I've been sort of crisscrossing the country in the last couple of
weeks and I think you're right you have this age and then I'm kind of
like on the coasts and ESG is pretty cool and then I'm in the middle
of the country and it's dealt with a bit more skepticism.

00:27:53:09 - 00:27:56:10
Speaker 4
So yeah, you're right. Hello.

00:28:02:01 - 00:28:36:13
Speaker 2
Thank you. Thank you. That's helpful. And Richard, obviously a very
ambitious project. You have worked as a consultant for for
governments, for for for privately owned companies across the world.
How do you see this solution being implemented? And we see it more as
a public or private, a joint venture between public and private how do
you see the implementation of a of such of such an infrastructure here
in the US and elsewhere in the world?

00:28:37:05 - 00:29:03:02
Speaker 6
Yeah, I think it really depends significantly on what country we're

talking about. So I'll just give you a few examples. Perhaps in some
South American countries, there is no annuity market at all. Right? So
a lot of these countries develop their defined contribution system
decades ago, and some have mandatory contributions, right? So there's
like very big pots. The baby boomers have approach to retirement.

00:29:03:02 - 00:29:31:21
Speaker 6
They're ready to start spending and there's like no good option for
them to get a lifetime income because there is no annuity mark, at
least in some of these countries. And so the governments are thinking,
well, gee, how do we get an early market started here? Right. And how
do we attract that? And in many cases, it's nearly impossible because
their constitution has certain requirements for retirement income that
is basically unhedged able for an insurance company.

00:29:31:22 - 00:30:02:10
Speaker 6
So so now they're thinking about, oh, here's an alternative approach
right? So a lot of these governments also are moving further to the
left, right? So the pension plan providers are lamenting this because
their business may be going away, but the government may be able to
provide this kind of a tier two kind of solution that is offering a
risk pooling like nationwide.

00:30:02:11 - 00:30:42:18
Speaker 6
Right. And they're doing they're offering it so there may might be
public we've done some work in Japan as well. And their insurance
companies are really interested in this idea because interest rates
and if you think it's been difficult here, right. So interest rates
there are even lower than here. Longevity is even worse than here. So,
you know, the the supply of the annuity market in many places around
the world, including there, is shrinking and very difficult and so
they're thinking, oh, well, here's a way that we can offer lifetime
income with no capital reserve requirement.

00:30:42:21 - 00:31:07:14
Speaker 6
Right. And it can be done at pretty low expense. Right. It's all
automated, basically. So there could be insurance companies in the
private market that offer this you could also think about like an
asset manager says, yeah, we're we love our target date funds. Right.
And then a lot of them have very big franchises. They lament the fact
that they can't offer really a lifetime income solution.

00:31:07:17 - 00:31:36:20
Speaker 6
Right. But they love their target date solution and they don't want to
do anything to disrupt that so we can say, well, keep your target date

solution and wrap a risk fooling around it where participants perhaps
optionally can opt in or not. Right. But if you opt in and say, yes, I
want to share my longevity risk with others, then they are able to
offer their preferred investment solution in a way that offers risk
proofing.

00:31:36:20 - 00:31:57:20
Speaker 6
So the people not only getting investment returns, are also getting
longevity credits or mortality credits. You prefer to call it that and
pay out for the rest of their life and it could start immediately. Or,
you know, people could basically choose, right. When you want your
income to start perhaps 85 all right.

00:31:57:23 - 00:32:26:17
Speaker 2
Well, thank you. Now, maybe your question for the for the panel and
maybe not a question more of a kind of a business case. But if we all
think of ourselves as a society and I don't want to rehash all the
years all of the numbers of the 10,000 people turning 65 every day and
one person out of four is going to live up to age 95 or whatever it
is.

00:32:27:12 - 00:32:57:12
Speaker 2
We all know that this scenario is true. If we fast forward ourselves
20 years there is going to be a major chunk of the population that's
going to be very advanced in age and not every single one of them is
fully equipped to survive and not most of them will have deplete their
funds that's that's a societal catastrophe.

00:32:58:08 - 00:33:30:12
Speaker 2
At the same time. It's not a spectacular one. It's not a building
exploding it's it's mostly going to be a slow bleed if nothing
happens. Now, the question is, and I think we've touched on that every
year from every single one of our panelists, but what can we do to
make sure that as an industry, we we address that and we we make sure
that society is ready for that.

00:33:30:12 - 00:34:02:01
Speaker 2
And we offered the right the right products, the right advice I know.
Thankfully, we have you know, we have podcast like that annuity show
that talk about these concepts and put in for those conferences
together. But as an industry, you know, what can we do, what should we
do and what type of product and advice should we should we should we
bring on the forefront or at least try to bring to the forefront?

00:34:03:02 - 00:34:15:23

Speaker 2
I'm hopeful. Hopeful hopefully we'll get an answer for every single,
single five of our panelists because I think it's a very common
denominator here, regardless of where we're where we're coming from.

00:34:15:23 - 00:34:44:18
Speaker 3
All right. Well, maybe I'll take a stab, Will, but I will not answer
that with a product. I think I would like to answer that with the open
gap that's missing in education. I think what we need to do, as all of
us here, regardless of where a tech company or where a carrier is,
really educate, you know, the society about the risk and what does it
mean and that there are solutions out there that can solve it.

00:34:44:18 - 00:35:16:23
Speaker 3
And I'm using the word here solutions carefully because it's not
necessarily my carrier's product or any of the solutions here. Right.
It's the solution that's required for the person on the receiving end
and what they need. So if I really had to think back on how do we
overcome, you know, bigger societal problems is really addressed the
fundamental need of lack of understanding of the risk we're dealing
with and really pointing folks on what does that mean for them and how
are tools out there that are available to solve it.

00:35:16:23 - 00:35:20:20
Speaker 2
So we don't have to go in order, but please.

00:35:23:19 - 00:35:54:04
Speaker 3
Building on that, the scenario that you paint is in the future, right?
Beyond the five year perspective, we're focused on today. And by that
time you have to assume that most of the population is digitally
native. And, you know, one of the soundbites from the Liberal
Retirement Conference was planning your retirement is going to be
similar to planning a vacation on Kayak, where you have the
information, the tools to form a trip or series of trips.

00:35:54:08 - 00:36:30:23
Speaker 3
You could argue our aging process is a series of trips with real time
updates, and there won't be one solution for all because everybody's
experiences needs priorities. Family circumstances and resources are
different, and they change over time. And I think that you know, if
you encourage the not only the education, the access, we talked
earlier today about simplicity, ease of use, portable city would be so
these would be features that would be common, you know, I mean, that
you'd want to see in solutions that would be provided for future
generations.

00:36:32:13 - 00:36:37:03
Speaker 4
I've got to say, I feel sorry for you guys because I know what I was
thinking has already been said.

00:36:37:03 - 00:36:39:17
Speaker 2
So yeah, absolutely right.

00:36:39:21 - 00:37:09:03
Speaker 4
Advocation is absolutely critical for this industry. And I think to
your point, it's also about partnering with the advisors to give them
the tools so that they can enable it. And I think we need to have more
products. I love your solution. I think that's just what the industry
needs so we can have more annuities, but also I think we need more
support from the industry because like there's only one that annuity
show, but we need more things like that because we have to get out the
word to everyone out there.

00:37:09:03 - 00:37:17:16
Speaker 4
And there's such a negative connotation that we really have to come
together and help the industry overcome that to sell more products
that we can help more people.

00:37:18:04 - 00:37:43:07
Speaker 2
And that's a really good point. On annuities annuities change so many
different things. It's just something that accumulates and can provide
income. Some can be a neighbor and there's just a lot of you know,
it's such a vague terminology, but people tend to associate and make
some sort of conclusions or find common denominators very well. So I
think that's a really very good point.

00:37:45:08 - 00:37:46:03
Speaker 5
You make. All right.

00:37:48:04 - 00:37:57:12
Speaker 5
You know, I came from a town, Flint, Michigan, that's I clutch water
everywhere I go. That's where I grew.

00:37:58:19 - 00:37:59:10
Speaker 4
That.

00:38:02:03 - 00:38:54:00

Speaker 5
That, you know, everyone sitting around the dinner table relied on
General Motors, right. To pay for the retirement plan. And I know for
a lot of my friends, you know, their parents had pensions. Their
parents have social security. Their parents have these other plans
that were bestowed upon them for participating in this work. And I
think to the point of education, I think the education needs to be
self reliance and I think that is a huge opportunity for the private
market where it's education based on those systems that were relied
upon in the past often don't exist right now.

00:38:54:00 - 00:39:22:11
Speaker 5
I mean, I have friends I know that are like, you know, I just haven't
really thought about retirement income. My parents had a pension I'd
be like, well, you don't have a pension. I'm like, well, you're right.
I guess, you know, and and so there's this chasm between a lot of our
parents who had this infrastructure of retirement, defined benefit
versus defined contribution that this generation is the first
generation where they can't that rug's been pulled out.

00:39:23:13 - 00:39:50:12
Speaker 5
And there's some naivete in that there's too much faith that it's
going to be OK. 20 years from now. And I'm here to kind of rattle that
cage. I think that and maybe it is because I watched General Motors go
bankrupt I watched family who counted upon promises, have those
promises broke and then witness the carnage, really, of retirement
plans because of that.

00:39:50:20 - 00:40:16:14
Speaker 5
So I know it's true and I think as an industry to be able to get out
front and say, I can put you back in control, is such a powerful
statement to bring kind of solid footing to a retirement plan that
support annuities. The support, the structure and the ratings and the
financial power of these great carriers. I think that is really the
messaging opportunity.

00:40:18:11 - 00:40:19:08
Speaker 2
Last but not least.

00:40:20:05 - 00:40:38:17
Speaker 6
I don't know if I have too much else to add. I mean, I completely
agree. I think Mary summarize it this way by saying I think so much
depends on trust, earning the trust of our clients, which is something
that's been challenging for the industry, to say the least. And I'm
not saying that in a bad way. It's just a complicated problem.

00:40:38:17 - 00:41:14:23
Speaker 6
Right. And so and people aren't as learned as us. Right, in these
matters. So even for an actuary it's difficult. And so how do we
explain some of these products or any product to someone who's doesn't
have that kind of background? But now so so you know, I think
emphasizing simplicity, transparency and, and the education. Right.
And making sure that I guess the other thing that in particular that
we're trying to work with is this idea of fully funded.

00:41:15:03 - 00:41:35:04
Speaker 6
So your pension is fully funded. It could. Yeah, it could vary up and
down over time, and it will with the investment experience and the
mortality experience of the pool. But it is fully funded. Right. So
there is no underfunding and hopefully that's something that's going
to help earn trust in that kind of a product for sure.

00:41:35:19 - 00:41:58:14
Speaker 2
That's a really good point. And if I can answer my own question, I do
believe that one part that's missing right now is income. I think, you
know, if I think of my my my current role as a as a as an associate
director at MS, what we look at is the financial strength of insurance
companies now, what is where do we start?

00:41:59:18 - 00:42:18:00
Speaker 2
We look at a myriad of regulation and statements and actuarial
opinions. But where we look at is a balance sheet. That's the number
one thing we look at. And most of our answers are going to be their
second thing we look at is the operating performance. You know, where
is that balance sheet going to look like? So you have a balance sheet
and an income statement.

00:42:18:07 - 00:42:41:16
Speaker 2
OK, if I look at my prior job as an equity analyst with dry stock
prices, earnings first page on on the you know, on the report is
earnings. That's the number one thing we look at page three. You look
at the balance sheet because it's still, you know, still very relevant
so why am I stating the obvious? You need a balance sheet in an income
statement.

00:42:43:01 - 00:43:06:09
Speaker 2
But I believe that the retirees are completely ignoring the income
part of it. Everyone knows what their balance sheet look like. They
know what their mutual fund balance is or CDs. They're their variable

and how much they're worth, how much they have. They all have a magic.
Not everyone has an magic number. How much income does that generate?

00:43:06:21 - 00:43:09:03
Speaker 2
How much income does that generate for the rest of your life?

00:43:11:05 - 00:43:27:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, no one knows. So that's the that's the important part. And
that's as important as having X amount of dollars in terms of net
worth, how do you generate that income? How do you generate that
income for life? That's the that's the.

00:43:28:05 - 00:43:53:13
Speaker 1
There's something else perplexing just in this generation, which is
the workforce and the way we look, we no longer devote our large 4050.
You have to income then in the gig economy the contract the black
diamond which is many decades away if you're doing it, move for one
contract to another. Well.

00:43:55:06 - 00:44:26:10
Speaker 2
That's that's an extremely good point. And before there was this
thought of saying well I'm going to reach I have enough to retire so I
don't have to work anymore. So your point now now we're we're saying
well I don't think I have enough to retire. So I just keep on working
within that particular economy. And when or if I get to a point where
I'm comfortable you know, what is that what is that trade off between
income in in and assets?

00:44:26:24 - 00:44:47:24
Speaker 2
And again, to your point, that also brings the question of do you want
to supplement your income while you're in retirement? And I think that
that works out very well for for many people if you know, if you have
that that capability and that ability. So, yes, all all very, very
good points. Yes.

00:44:48:06 - 00:45:20:16
Speaker 1
We have this discussion earlier. But, you know, I there's a guy called
that, you know, he's gerontologist, behavioral psychologist, and
looking at what he thinks retirement is going to look like going
forward. And millennials have a very different view than than some of
the folks are boomers and just the way it looks in terms of working
part time or doing things to supplement income from a lot of
fulfillment standpoint as well as side of things.

00:45:20:16 - 00:45:25:09
Speaker 1
I think that's part of the whole paradigm well, what what does
retirement.

00:45:26:09 - 00:45:38:03
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Absolutely. What it means, you know, not necessarily
thinking the traditional way of doing things is going to be the gold
standard for the next.

00:45:38:05 - 00:45:59:22
Speaker 3
Well, let me let me jump in on that as well. But I think that also
brings another element of danger right? I think a lot of us or those
that with that mindset are thinking that I'm going to be able to work
part time. Right? I'm going to be able to do this. I can have fun and
work and that will be my retirement.

00:45:59:22 - 00:46:40:12
Speaker 3
Well, what happens if you can't work? I think that's where a lot of
times the element of insurance is overlooked, right? It's this idea of
every single one of us tends to look at our future optimistically.
Right. I think that's a human nature. We're here to look to the
future, have things better. And I think that's where us as an
industry, we have an opportunity to really think about, to complement
in that scenario, what does this product or our offering or as an
industry we can bring to the table it's that element that if you can't
work, you can still enjoy that and you'll save so save a little bit
now to have that safety

00:46:40:12 - 00:47:03:13
Speaker 3
tomorrow. But I, I think we all know there is another, another element
that's changing the mindset of those coming in. It's that instant
gratification, right? My kids me as a child during research for a
paper, I had to plan accordingly so I can get on the bus and go to the
library. My kids can sit down an hour before the night before and say,
Oh, shoot, I need to do something.

00:47:03:13 - 00:47:28:20
Speaker 3
They Google it. They have instant information constantly. And right
now, asking somebody to give away a hundred bucks, the 100 bucks,
whatever that percentage is to put away in the pile for something that
you might use years down the road brings another challenge. So I think
that change in the mindset and the evolution of the need for instant
gratification brings another challenge for us to solve.

00:47:29:09 - 00:47:47:19
Speaker 4
I mean, sort of related to your point, I think there's industry and
the whole investment industry is all focused on we can help you invest
better and make your money, but there's very little focus on the
accumulation better tools and helping people that can do the gig
economy. Or if you don't, helping people through that is going to be a
big opportunity and a big challenge.

00:47:48:20 - 00:47:53:22
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And it's completely different dynamic. So yes, please,
please.

00:47:54:09 - 00:48:15:18
Speaker 3
It's quite sure how how young is too young? You know, where I just you
know, I products differently not start talking about education such an
opportunity.

00:48:17:05 - 00:48:42:01
Speaker 5
You know the the thing that always still amazes me is the magic of
compound interest. Right? I mean, and if you look at sort of the tale
of the in the last ten years of a 40 year cycle or 50 year cycle and I
think you know educating starting early saving and really
demonstrating that is is truly unbelievable when you see that graphed
out.

00:48:42:01 - 00:49:04:16
Speaker 5
So look, I've always railed against the school system. I mean, you
know, I graduated from one of the top business schools, never taught
me anything about mortgages or taxes or, you know, or anything like
that. So so I think, you know, what happened to social economics
classes, right? Like back to ten, 11, 12 budgeting money. My dad, you
know, made me mow the yard at 12 years old.

00:49:04:16 - 00:49:08:01
Speaker 5
So that seems like a good age to try to make some money and
understand.

00:49:08:14 - 00:49:08:23
Speaker 2
What.

00:49:09:03 - 00:49:38:22
Speaker 5
What it takes, you know, to save and allocate and then to plan. And I

think you know, creating an experience young of saving, earning and
acquiring. I think that was one of the things I remember I was really
young and I wanted new skis and my dad made me work for new skis, but
I got the new skis and so the money was gone, but I had to save.

00:49:38:22 - 00:50:06:05
Speaker 5
I went through the exercise and then I acquired and then I knew that
that was the path for me to then get new things and so I think just
the simple exercise that that we don't really talk about because I
think to Evan's point, the gig economy or being able to say, hey, I'm
going to work when I retire, well, things might change if things
there's a ton of optionality and maybe we say there's not quite as
much options as you think.

00:50:06:10 - 00:50:10:21
Speaker 2
But didn't you buy your first mall owner at Malone or at 14 years old?

00:50:11:05 - 00:50:17:08
Speaker 5
Is that so? Yeah. My mom knew she was in trouble and I my 14th
birthday asked for a leaf blower to leave.

00:50:17:12 - 00:50:22:09
Speaker 2
All right. Sorry, I misspoke on that. I guess 14 years old would be
the.

00:50:23:19 - 00:50:51:24
Speaker 3
I guess from my perspective, I now speak of my own children, their
early years. You can start the second they get that first $20 or $5
from their grandparents. Explain to them that not all of it stays take
a portion aside. And you know I did that from the moment they could
really understand that concept and right now any other, you know, any
party or anything that happens and grandparents they are willing to
share they give money.

00:50:51:24 - 00:51:12:19
Speaker 3
And with time my children just come to me and say, hey mom, let's put
this in the bank. Here's the money to go to the bank. But what I did
was take it a step further. I did take them to the bank. They saw the
process. It's not mom taking it and putting it into my wallet. It's me
driving with them physically to the bank to deliver and deposit the
money.

00:51:12:19 - 00:51:43:20
Speaker 3

So it still that appetite to do this. So I think overall it's school
age, right? It's getting that back early education to school and most
importantly, the first job and I'll give credit to my first manager
who my first paycheck, first thing he said is make sure you put
whatever the company matches you max that on your forehead one K at
that point coming out I wasn't really thinking much about it but you
know what power of compound interest it does help.

00:51:43:20 - 00:52:06:16
Speaker 3
So I think it's this idea of identifying the moment and bringing the
education early. So I think that would be a fun. And as an industry, I
think we have an opportunity to do that. We have an opportunity to
bring it forward and bring it to the schools and the next generation
coming in. We'll know to look for it I mean.

00:52:06:24 - 00:52:43:16
Speaker 1
I think look like today. What do you think retirement actually like 20
year. The third question is do you think retirement so we're listening
to you right? Or like we're, you know, we're looking at this idea of a
climate my friends over there from Michigan, your dad worked for the
union. Right. And he had this pension. My son was like, what what does
that really look like 10,000 people I think if they retired we
would've like them in the way we're talking like 20 years from now.

00:52:44:03 - 00:52:50:24
Speaker 1
What would that look like? Because we're talking about this big
organization, right? The ability to keep working. So we just do things
together.

00:52:53:10 - 00:53:04:18
Speaker 1
Is there really retirement that you can find just because we just work
so miserable.

00:53:06:18 - 00:53:42:14
Speaker 5
So this could be my my programing, but I think it's about options,
freedom, having options to do whatever it is that you just described
in so many people in our retirement today. And it's only trended
trending worse. The people have less and less options, so they dread
retirement age because they've been told that retirement age means I'm
no longer dependent on a job or I don't have to wake up instead in
traffic or do something that maybe they don't love to do.

00:53:43:03 - 00:54:06:12
Speaker 5
And so maybe retirement needs to be defined to a period in your life

when you can do what you love to do. And if that's work, great. If
that's golf, every day, great. But you need to have the financial
resources to execute on that regardless of today, ten years, 50 years
from now, because no one's going to hand out.

00:54:06:24 - 00:54:28:03
Speaker 5
Unfortunately, in my opinion, there's not going to be that
infrastructure to hand out tickets to go play in whatever arena you
want to play in this retirement world, you're going to have to supply
your own tickets. And so if you want to talk about what it really
means, in my opinion, it means I can make the rules. I have options to
do what I love to do.

00:54:28:14 - 00:54:31:15
Speaker 5
So I think that might hold the test of time.

00:54:32:03 - 00:54:39:19
Speaker 3
We know we are going to actually go to break, but this is the kind of
interaction that we're looking for today. So thank you, Bruno. Thank
you.

00:00:06:08 - 00:00:32:26
Speaker 1
And as we find our seats and find other beverages, I just want to say
thanks to everybody who is attending on Zoom. We see you so shout out
to Novo SC to Memorial Asset Protection Plan, Engage Retirement Tax,
Northwestern Mutual Longevity Funds Siena Insurance, Silver Bills, and
we have a few individuals as well. So thank you all for being there
with us on Zoom.

00:00:33:02 - 00:00:44:02
Speaker 1
Please send in any questions that you may have. We're happy to answer
them and engage with you in that way. And without further ado, I will
start this session off by introducing our moderator, John Thomson.

00:00:47:00 - 00:00:51:03
Speaker 2
Good afternoon. This may be the smallest panel of the day.

00:00:54:01 - 00:00:55:13
Speaker 3
You're calling us short. I think that.

00:00:57:13 - 00:01:24:12
Speaker 2
Actually actually I think it may be it may be one of the most dynamic
as well. So let's let's take the optimistic view. So thank you. Good
afternoon. My name is John Thomson. I am a an aging baby boomer who is
I think qualified to start to talk about this field of of retirement.
And what does retirement mean?

00:01:24:12 - 00:01:41:29
Speaker 2
I thought one of the gentleman in the last session asked the question
about what does retirement look like now? What does it look like in
ten years, what it's going to look like in 20 years? You know, I don't
know. I don't know what retirement looks like for me. So I think
that's probably an answer. It is probably consistent with what most
consumers would answer that question.

00:01:42:27 - 00:01:56:14
Speaker 2
But I think what it poses the question is it starts to get into this
area of risk. So Raj and I are going to talk today about risk. So
first I'm going to ask Raj to introduce himself about himself and his
company yeah.

00:01:56:14 - 00:02:34:29
Speaker 3
Hi. Thanks, John. Raj Patel. I work with a company called WithSecure.

It's a cybersecurity firm. Global customers and my my roles and
responsibilities are around cybersecurity, engineering, so I work with
the sales team. We cover the North North America region, and we just
basically help customers understand their risk profile when it comes
to cybersecurity risk and how they can become compliant, protect
against all the different variants out there, all the different
malware and stuff.

00:02:34:29 - 00:02:35:18
Speaker 3
Like that. So.

00:02:35:25 - 00:02:56:10
Speaker 2
Great, great. Well, I want to begin with how my morning began this
morning. Very similar. A lot of mornings, the first thing I do when I
get up is find my glasses and then I find my way to the coffee pot.
But then the third thing I usually do is to turn on my my mobile phone
and and check the emails and so forth.

00:02:56:10 - 00:03:23:07
Speaker 2
And of course, I always scan the, you know, the weather and the, you
know, the news headlines. And then I start to look at some of the
feeds that I get. And one of the feeds that I get and I guess it'll
show you what kind of a nerd I really am, is, is, is, is from an
organization that focuses on or management and oh our meaning
operating room and I've spent a lot of my career has been spent in
the, in the health care field among a couple of other places.

00:03:23:07 - 00:03:52:08
Speaker 2
But one of the announcements that they made in this in this feed from
this or management organization was that the average or the life
expectancy of people has increased yet once again. So for me, it just
was like, wow, it's a great thing happened this morning when I'm
coming to this retire tech thing is that we realized that now people
are going to be facing retirement and they're going to be living
longer.

00:03:52:08 - 00:04:11:24
Speaker 2
And and I can remember back if I talk about my grandfather, who was
happened to be a life insurance salesman, he sold life insurance based
upon the fact that you needed protection for if you died prematurely
and your family had obligations, you had a mortgage, you had children
to educate, you needed to have life insurance to protect your family.

00:04:11:24 - 00:04:39:14
Speaker 2

For that to you know, today we'll start to look at risk and the risks
are there. That's really happening is in a lot of things, it's not
really so much dying too soon. The risk now, which is growing and
becoming bigger, is living too long. And so with the average life
expectancy increasing, it means that there's a larger focus on the
insecurity associated with that longevity.

00:04:40:02 - 00:05:01:08
Speaker 2
And so in Paul's theme this morning, he kind of started talking about
the seas that are associated with it. So I thought from retire tech
and from area of risk management, we talk about Tuesdays the sea,
another sea here where we'll talk about is is is the consumer or and
the other is sort of the company or corporate perspective.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:35:02
Speaker 2
So those are kind of the two things that I see. So the prompt that I
got from Laura on on this area of risk management was to talk about
the, you know, with older adults and with the pandemic, older adults,
adults have become much more proficient at using technology, which
which is probably true. I think people have out of necessity, have
been forced to understand how they use their their mobile phones or
their or their iPads or their laptops to do more things and to connect
and so forth.

00:05:35:02 - 00:05:56:29
Speaker 2
And I think Paul talked, I think, about older adults who couldn't go
to church or actually attending church services, being zoom or or
YouTube, which they probably never turned on before. So they became
very familiar with that. But with that, the question was, does that
how does that change? How we as as professionals in the area of
retirement?

00:05:56:29 - 00:06:19:21
Speaker 2
And I'm not sure I think we maybe we have to come up with a new word
for this phase. Of life, because it's becoming a significantly longer
phase and it is looking very different than it has in the past. But
it's how do we help our people and help them manage their way in this
latter part of their of their life, which is a significant period.

00:06:19:21 - 00:06:40:20
Speaker 2
It's not five years. It typically is becoming now a time horizons or
25 and 30, 30 years. So I don't know whether I have 25 more years. I
probably should plan for having 25 more years or maybe 30 years more,
but I may only have 30 minutes more. So who knows how my day is going
to go from here.

00:06:41:06 - 00:07:11:23
Speaker 2
So anyway, so we'll talk about the area of risk. And I want to hearken
back to the panel that was just up here because they were very
articulate about some of these issues associated with, with, with
retirement and, and the consumer's perspective on retirement. And one
of the great quotes that is a winner and Milena from Lincoln made some
very very good comments, I thought.

00:07:11:23 - 00:07:34:28
Speaker 2
And and this 11 of the points that she made was that we really need to
provide solutions for consumers and and the product is not a solution.
And I thought that was pretty insightful. And then I thought the idea
about technology technology is not a solution. It it is a tool. And I
think it I made that that distinction as well.

00:07:34:28 - 00:08:11:24
Speaker 2
And I thought that's really appropriate. But I think the area that
maybe where we can start defining some a an informed way to understand
the consumer, the see perspective is in the area of risk management
and risk management has historically been done and talked about from a
C, another C a corporate perspective. And I think in the last panel or
one of the panel before one of the panelists talked about the risk
management process that product providers have to go through in
delivering offering and managing their products.

00:08:11:24 - 00:08:36:27
Speaker 2
Because if you have annuity contracts that are issued, you've got to
make sure that your investment return as a as a as a company are
sufficient enough to cover the promises you've made in the policy
contracts or the annuity contracts that you've made to your policy
holders. And so that's a risk management process. And it's it's a,
it's a structured process that they go through.

00:08:37:16 - 00:09:05:02
Speaker 2
So I start to look at that. And then based on my experience and in the
end, the risk management area on a corporate side start to draw the
connection was maybe there's a parallel process for risk management
from the consumer perspective. And it may be if I pull that out a
little bit further, I start to look at it in terms of is that also a
way for us to establish an understanding about the consumer's
perspective?

00:09:05:02 - 00:09:38:14
Speaker 2

And is that what the consumer is doing is are they actually managing
this basket of risks that they face in retirement? And they need they
need help to do that. And looking at the prompt with respect to are
they are consumers becoming more proficient with technology? Yes. But
are they looking to buy with technology? You know, I we put out there
that I think maybe a lot of consumers are using technology to find
education and help them better manage their risks.

00:09:39:01 - 00:10:06:06
Speaker 2
So if I look at risk management and what did you find, what it is, you
start to break it down and look at what is risk, what is management
and what is risk management. But risk is is basically and we look at
it whether we're a risk owner or a risk taker as an underwriter, where
we're accepting risk is risk is basically a deviation from an expected
outcome to use kind of a statistical term.

00:10:06:27 - 00:10:31:28
Speaker 2
So that's what people when you're practicing risk management, you're
really thinking about what are the what are the other outcomes that
are exist out there beyond what's expected and how am I preparing for
that and how am I managing that or how am I financing that? And
corporates and consumers manage that by buying products. A lot of
insurance is a way of managing risk.

00:10:31:28 - 00:10:59:03
Speaker 2
It's a way of actually financing risk. And in insurance as a risk
financing mechanism transfers risk from the risk owner to an insurance
company who assumes that risk. So that's what the area of risk is.
Management, on the other hand, is sort of a structured process. And we
all learned in undergraduate business, school and management this plan
lead organized control.

00:10:59:03 - 00:11:26:29
Speaker 2
And that's really what management is. But for risk management, it
really is a structured process of how we go through it, identifying
risks, evaluating and measuring risks, and then looking at ways to
manage or mitigate risk, whether we retain the risk or whether we
transfer the risks through insurance or whatever. That's the
management piece and then we kind of have the process where we check
it periodically to see how are we doing and do we need to make changes
in how we do that.

00:11:27:19 - 00:11:49:27
Speaker 2
So just like corporates, individual I put forth a postulate that
that's what they are doing on the consumer perspective. So I think it

would be interesting to to take a dove and look at a key risk area
that all of us face, whether we look at it from a corporate side or
for an individual and to enter the world of what Raj manages in the
area.

00:11:49:27 - 00:12:09:25
Speaker 2
Of cyber security, which emanates in terms of managing cyber risk. So
a pitch it over to him and talk a little bit about how do you see
that? Is that a good example? Of risk and managing risk and how you
see it impacting both the corporates and potentially, you know,
extrapolating, adding to the consumer perspective?

00:12:10:01 - 00:12:49:15
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. So well, first thing is you guys are all representatives
of companies, right? Do you know if you guys your companies have any
cybersecurity risk insurance? Right. So that that's that's been
relatively recent and it's due to the fact that there is there's a lot
of cybersecurity issues currently today. And companies have to prove
that they have the mechanisms in place to keep those risk premiums
down.

00:12:50:19 - 00:13:15:06
Speaker 3
And I feel like, you know, a lot of companies just aren't doing a good
enough job. It's a very difficult landscape to navigate. You know,
when you look at some of these companies out there in the news,
there's hundreds of them. You know, back in 2013 I think target. Do
you guys remember the Target breach? Anybody know what happened?

00:13:15:15 - 00:13:18:06
Speaker 3
Why they were breached?

00:13:24:01 - 00:14:01:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a multibillion dollar company and they
invested hundreds of millions of dollars into their i.t.
Infrastructure, but they hired this one company from pennsylvania
fazio vac services or something like that. And one of the
representatives of that company had his credential stolen. Those
credentials were used to tap into the target infrastructure and
essentially stole, you know, millions upon millions of credit card
information.

00:14:01:11 - 00:14:23:26
Speaker 3
And, and, you know, the list goes on. But, you know, target
eventually, I think all told, was out like $300 million or something

like that. And I think they still had to pay for the service that they
chose. So but but the point being is, you know, you can throw millions
and millions of dollars into infrastructure and trying to secure your
your perimeter.

00:14:24:24 - 00:14:52:00
Speaker 3
And all it takes is 11 employee or one end point. It could be an
iPhone. It could be those dreaded desktops. I think someone was
talking about desktop earlier and that's all it takes if that if that
desktop is not properly patched and there's there's a way to get in
and on you go. So you know that that's an issue a lot of companies
face.

00:14:52:00 - 00:15:18:15
Speaker 3
And frankly, you know, the fact that not everyone has been breached,
it's because they've they've just been lucky, I think, at this point.
So, you know, my company, what we do is we we we consult on on where
those gaps are on the endpoints. And, you know, my company, in fact,
in North America has a has a unique perspective because we're we're
based in Finland.

00:15:18:27 - 00:15:52:01
Speaker 3
So we've got 600 miles of of neighboring border with with with Russia.
And so, you know, there's there's a lot there in terms of, you know,
cybersecurity, just awareness, just being in the Eastern Bloc and all
that. And you know, it's it's a difficult landscape to navigate, at
least on the corporate side. When it comes to the consumer side, it's
it's a little bit easier I think, you know, my my parents, they have
their laptop sorry, iPad users.

00:15:53:00 - 00:16:18:17
Speaker 3
And I as a cybersecurity professional, I look at them and I think to
myself, OK, you know, my dad turns on his his iPad. I relegate his
iPad two to one app. And why one application, which is which is the
the the chase of mobile app. So he does his mobile banking. I think
everyone here does some sort of financial traction transactions on
their phones or mobile devices.

00:16:18:24 - 00:16:41:16
Speaker 3
Right. I mean, that's just the way the world is. But you can protect
yourself by putting in those those controls to prevent things from
from getting out of hand. So I relegate his experience to one mobile
app, which is the Chase app and one website to go out, which is this
Indian scripture that he that he goes on.

00:16:41:16 - 00:17:05:17
Speaker 3
Other than that, he can't really use it all that much, but he has to
come. It's come to me if he wants a new site to go to. Right. That's
just how it works. And the funny thing is that's basically the way the
world is going. And, you know, it's difficult to protect your firm and
still maintain business efficiently.

00:17:05:18 - 00:17:45:01
Speaker 3
Right. You know, some examples are I worked with a with a company and
and, you know, we couldn't do anything to the CEO's computer. The CEO
could do whatever they wanted with with their computers. And it's just
one of these things where unless everyone plays ball and sort of, you
know, adheres to the policies, you're going to have a situation where,
you know, a privileged user like a CEO may potentially get their their
computers hacked because they're you know, they just are unwilling to
potentially go in with the rest of the folks.

00:17:45:01 - 00:17:53:09
Speaker 3
So there's, you know, countless examples of of of that sort of stuff
which we try to consult against.

00:17:54:08 - 00:18:17:12
Speaker 2
But great. Thanks, Raj. I think kind of flipping back to the consumer
side and we look at risk in the last professional part of my career, I
was a I taught in the Barney School of Business at the University of
Hartford. And one of the courses that I was given to teach I'll never
forget it was this course that had been taught for many years there.

00:18:17:12 - 00:18:40:23
Speaker 2
It was called Social Insurance. And I looked at it and I said, OK, I
can teach this but I can't teach it the way the syllabus was written.
So they said, We don't care. Just teach the class. As long as you kind
of stay within the broad parameters of the course, you can do that. So
I flipped it and I taught the course from a risk management
perspective and understanding risk.

00:18:40:23 - 00:19:03:02
Speaker 2
And it was very, very interesting because I think, Suzanne, you asked
the question about, you know, how young is too young or how old is old
enough to start with sort of understanding risk management or
understanding financial education? And now, mind you, I'm dealing with
21 year old students who are taking this class and and they talk about
it.

00:19:03:02 - 00:19:21:19
Speaker 2
And they said, well, you know, I'm not too worried about retirement
because I'm going to retire on my Social Security. And I said, Good
luck with that because they had no idea. They thought, well, that's
what you retire on, right? And I go, Well, you usually can meet maybe
some of your basic human needs, like food, clothing and shelter.

00:19:21:19 - 00:19:43:08
Speaker 2
But beyond that, that's it. Talk about your lifestyle or what you're
used to that you're not going to cover that. And then we get into
other things in terms of talking about their expectations well, how
are you going to provide for your health care? Well, I'll take
Medicare because that's free. I go like, well, it's you know, it's you
don't know that, but it's not free.

00:19:43:08 - 00:20:03:23
Speaker 2
And by the way, the program is full of holes with deductibles and co-
insurance and so forth, and you need a supplemental program. And so
but it was very interesting to me was that they as prospective
consumers thought, well, there are two aspects to that. One, they
didn't really understand the risks that were associate with health and
your health risks.

00:20:04:07 - 00:20:20:24
Speaker 2
And they didn't understand the risks associated with making sure
having the financial ability to sustain your lifestyle, which they all
wanted to do when they approached that age, that what we typically
used to call age 65. Yeah.

00:20:26:00 - 00:20:42:27
Speaker 2
I think it was more 90. It was just amazing to me. But we went through
and we did that and we started to talk about that and they learned
about it and they were like, O-M-G, what am I going to do? But they
started to do it. And it was interesting because I saw a distinct
difference between how the millennials were responding to that.

00:20:42:27 - 00:21:05:29
Speaker 2
Then what the Gen Z were responding to that, and that was very
interesting. The Millennials were sort of they were they were angry,
frankly. They were pissed off because they didn't realize they thought
this was all taken care of. And now their life is like, what am I
going to do? The Gen Z years where they were really upset, but they
said, Well, thank God I learned this now because I've got to take I've
got some time horizon to do something about it.

00:21:06:11 - 00:21:36:04
Speaker 2
But that was what the it was it was pretty, pretty broad based. And I
think that's what we consume others are actually doing is they're
really now as they as they age and they and they start to think about
this, but they historically have started to think about this when they
were in their fifties. And we all know that starting to plan your
retirement when you're in your fifties is not a good idea because you
have a very short runway after that, before you need to be you're
going to be activating your plan.

00:21:37:05 - 00:22:05:03
Speaker 2
And this in and the other idea is understanding your health risk. It's
not good to arrive at age 62 and be £40 overweight because you've got
you're carrying this health risk around, which is not it's not a good
risk factor for you to have or you know, maybe you've put off some of
your, you know, routine maintenance or you haven't had a, you know, a
well visit with the physician or something so they're the consumers, I
think are waking up to risks.

00:22:05:03 - 00:22:22:17
Speaker 2
And the idea, I think, is we need to start to get people to think
about risks broadly. It's just yes, it's financial risk, yes, it's
health risk. But what are you going to do to take care of yourself if
you need help? Are your kids going to take you in? Can you move in
with your kids? If you need assistance, in living or whatever?

00:22:22:23 - 00:23:08:12
Speaker 2
There's a whole series of things. And I think that that becomes maybe
perhaps my my postulate here is that that becomes the basis for maybe
having conversations with consumers to understand. And by doing so,
you're providing a value added to that consumer to help think, oh, I
didn't understand that. Now, thank you. I understand how that works,
but it really becomes a way to build that trust in that, you know,
that that Avellino, how did you describe the solution with
transparency and trust and and having that that relationship and that
provides the basis versus saying you got to buy this, this, this,
this, this whole life insurance policy because it's got a cash value
feature

00:23:08:12 - 00:23:25:24
Speaker 2
that you really will appreciate in your older years. And people go
like, I'm not sure I understand the difference between term life and
whole life and and it and it gets into that. So that's sort of the
postulate that I put out there in terms of risk management, that it

can become a platform to help consumers help them.

00:23:25:24 - 00:23:58:06
Speaker 2
And I and I think maybe that that's what they're doing when they're
starting to navigate the, you know, through technology is to get
information and educate themselves. They're not necessarily going to
buy on the first click or with the first connection they make, but
they're going to buy, I think because you've established trust when
you teach them something and they go, oh, OK, I trust Evelin because
she explained it to me and now I know how it works and I know there's
options and that's what I'm looking for, flexibility.

00:23:58:12 - 00:24:19:24
Speaker 2
So and, you know, OK, I know it has a cost to it, but I'm really
looking for some other things besides that. So that's kind of what I
put out there, that risk management could potentially become a way to
have a conversation with consumers and help them make informed
decisions and add value to them and and help them deal with this.

00:24:20:04 - 00:24:31:22
Speaker 2
The multitude of risks that are out there in the ecosystem all, you
know, compounded with VUCA for you know, volatility, uncertainty and
all of that. So, yeah.

00:24:47:28 - 00:24:58:13
Speaker 1
Well, that going well. My first thanks to you on the topic absolutely.

00:25:00:27 - 00:25:14:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take on that one for rent and well the company icon
system.

00:25:17:13 - 00:25:19:06
Speaker 1
Yeah so people aren't.

00:25:20:07 - 00:25:55:27
Speaker 3
I think in insurance in particular is is a very human business and
it's not like going on Amazon and buying a pair of gloves. Right.
There's there's an empathy factor involved, right? There's sort of a
trusted advisor part that you need to play if you're making any type
of advice. So it's you know, the person that's actually, you know,
shopping for some type of annuity online or some type of insurance
product online, you know, that they want to be an informed consumer,
but they're not going to know everything.

00:25:56:09 - 00:26:20:12
Speaker 3
And the way that you can tap into that, that human spirit is by just
in my mind, you know, showing that empathy and being that sort of
trusted advisor. And most of the time, a parent's going to look to
their child you know, or it's funny, when I first started out of
college, I was selling annuities for Merrill.

00:26:20:26 - 00:26:44:13
Speaker 3
This was back in like 96. And I was that somebody termed it the baby
broker, but I was the baby broker and I was what, 24? I mean, who the
hell is going to listen to a 24 year old about annuities? But, you
know, I didn't, I didn't probably make as many sales as I would like
because I didn't have enough gray hair, but I could sell the crap out
of annuities.

00:26:44:13 - 00:26:45:07
Speaker 3
Now look at all this great.

00:26:47:07 - 00:26:47:11
Speaker 1
You.

00:26:47:11 - 00:27:13:27
Speaker 3
Know, but back then. So I guess it's just making sure that you do as
much as you can to be on the, on the same side of the table as far as
that person that's looking to buy in insurance on the on the corporate
side of things. 11 thing that I love about the innovation is, is the
automation built into the user experience.

00:27:14:25 - 00:27:49:04
Speaker 3
But again, you need to have that that human factor as well. Like at a
certain point, the the automatic process or the bots or whatever you
guys enable to to make the process go faster. That goes to a certain
point. And then you need to have that human human interaction that
trusted visor that's going to kind of close the loop on on the sale,
if you will, because outside of that, I'm not sure how you can you can
move much product without that human interaction.

00:27:49:04 - 00:27:49:09
Speaker 3
But.

00:27:49:17 - 00:27:53:10
Speaker 2

You know, I think the human interaction is important. Barbara, you had
your hand.

00:28:03:09 - 00:28:04:09
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:28:06:22 - 00:28:07:02
Speaker 1
Sure.

00:28:09:29 - 00:28:11:28
Speaker 3
Emotional health, too, like all that stuff.

00:28:12:14 - 00:28:39:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. What I'm suggesting, though, is that it sets up a system
acceptance of. Sure by different.

00:28:50:05 - 00:29:12:27
Speaker 2
I think is a very good idea because I think to use the parallel, we've
gotten more comfortable with health risk assessments I mean, a lot of
employers want to do that because it keeps their costs down. But it
really also it does help provide you as a consumer consumer protection
because it makes you think about now how many drinks did I have this
week and that I don't ask me that.

00:29:14:08 - 00:29:32:06
Speaker 2
Ah, you know, did I quit? Yeah, I quit smoking. So I don't worry about
that. But but then getting some of those like diagnostic, you know,
did you get a colonoscopy and if you had one in ten years and those
questions like that are very helpful. But I think there is a sort of a
financial well-being perspective on that.

00:29:32:13 - 00:29:52:26
Speaker 2
And you know, Susan, yesterday at your summit you had a breakout and
the when you went to healthy, wealthy and white. And it was pretty
interesting because it really and it sort of took a whole step back
where the panelists were all basically saying well, we all we all used
to be insurance company people, but now we're now we're in the health
care field, which was very interesting.

00:29:52:26 - 00:30:20:19
Speaker 2
But they still were working for actually many insurance organizations
and health space have migrated from being they don't identify as an

insurance company. They identify themselves as a health care company.
I mean, if we look at you know, Aetna up the street being bought by
CVS, we see Cigna buying Express Scripts. You know, now they tried if
they talk about cost, quality, access, equity and population health,
and they say that and that's how they fit in.

00:30:20:19 - 00:30:36:08
Speaker 2
And when I worked at Cigna, when I started, it was like, well, you
know, how fast can we pay a claim? Was that a metric that was
important and how fast can we get an ID card out correctly, which was
always a big risk, always was a challenge. But it was sort of that was
the big thing about the business.

00:30:36:08 - 00:30:47:27
Speaker 2
And now it's very different. And I think you can take that concept and
flip it or like you suggested. And I think that that's a great way of
having that sort of financial risk assessment. So, yes.

00:30:48:18 - 00:31:05:12
Speaker 1
But the risk categories are different. The local vendors are looking
at the profit side and looking at adverse effects for retirement.
That's correct.

00:31:09:01 - 00:31:43:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think addressing them is different, and I think that's why we
have to have, I think the distinction there because they're different.
The risks are not all alike and they move in different directions at
different times simultaneously. And but then sometimes they're
integrated. Like sometimes a health risk can create a financial
catastrophe. I mean, who would my grandparents would never have
believed that having health care costs could have put you in a
bankruptcy you know, they thought it would have been a burden or they
wouldn't have gotten it, but they wouldn't have thought about the
economic impact today.

00:31:43:13 - 00:31:48:17
Speaker 2
That's a reality. So I think that that's important to understand. That
I don't know that you think differently.

00:31:48:28 - 00:32:13:27
Speaker 3
Well, I mean, from a again, from the cybersecurity perspective, you
know, we have we have a term called privileged users. Right? That's
sort of like the folks that need to keep the lights on in the
business, the administrators. Right. They're the they hold the keys to

the kingdom. Right. They hold access to all the PII that that you guys
are trying to protect and that you guys look at to make your next
sale.

00:32:13:27 - 00:33:06:24
Speaker 3
Right. And, you know, that is that's a huge risk to corporations being
able to to pick the right individual to to have those keys is super
important in the process. You know, the the process of picking the
right individuals to manage the network I mean, that that's an
inherent risk for for all companies. I feel like, you know, when it
comes to cybersecurity risk, it's multifaceted, but it starts with
every single employee, how they interact with with the data you know,
what their intent is when you hire someone, you you have the best
intentions for them to be like an equitable piece of the organization.

00:33:07:03 - 00:33:37:07
Speaker 3
But there are those disgruntled employees there. There are those
employees that, you know, take a wrong turn and you know, try to
instill malicious activity. And that this is this is where where my
firm comes comes in in terms of being able to provide that next
generation protection against malware or any type of internal,
internal or external threats.

00:33:37:29 - 00:34:10:02
Speaker 3
And we do that. It's it's changed so much. But the biggest thing that
a lot of cybersecurity firms out there, particularly around the
insurance industry when selling to insurance companies, is the
behavioral aspect of of protecting firms and against cybersecurity
threats. And what I mean by that is, you know, every single employee
has a certain behavior when they when they work, when they interact
with company materials.

00:34:10:02 - 00:34:54:09
Speaker 3
Right. And if that employee or that workstation that they're
constantly using deviates from that behavior, that sets off a
behavioral anomaly, a trigger that essentially says, hey, look into
this, look into this activity, this is atypical to this employee's
behavior. Right? So that's kind of where cybersecurity is going. It's
around the behavioral, you know, to use an overused term, I that that
the data driven aspect of protecting networks because it's it's not
what it was like 15 years ago where you just looked at a list of
signatures or list of definitions and and that was it.

00:34:54:17 - 00:35:29:03
Speaker 3
Things have have changed. The landscape just changed so much. So, you

know, I encourage every every representative of a company that's here
today to just kind of understand those those types of risks out there.
I mean, how many people actually interact with with their technical
teams how good a lot right. So you understand the concerns that are
out there and you know, especially around the insurance industry where
you guys hold so much PII, brand recognition is huge.

00:35:29:03 - 00:35:43:27
Speaker 3
Right. And all it takes is one massive breach. And, you know, you go
the way Target did ten years ago. I don't know if they've fully
recovered, but absolutely.

00:35:44:20 - 00:35:46:00
Speaker 2
At Yellow Haven.

00:35:46:17 - 00:35:51:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, I I don't really.

00:35:52:11 - 00:36:21:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. And the occurrence is almost daily, you know, and it's it's it's
not just ransomware. I mean, everyone knows ransomware, but it's not
just ransomware anymore. You know, the advent of cryptocurrency is
causing more and more attempted attacks because it's just easier to
send over some Bitcoin. I've always said, you know, all it takes to
actually have a successful breach is is time and energy, right?

00:36:21:24 - 00:36:36:04
Speaker 3
So what what we've tried to do is prevent that, you know, lessen the
time of an attack lessen the, the, the effort of, of an attack. And
then maybe you won't it won't occur as much.

00:36:36:12 - 00:36:40:28
Speaker 1
Your strategy would be the monitoring costs is variable. Yeah.

00:36:43:25 - 00:37:15:19
Speaker 3
The monitoring of of the of the networks. Yeah. I mean, there's so
there's two ways and this is another direction for, for anyone who is
really interested in where cybersecurity the industry is going, it's
going in the direction of, OK, you, you have an internal team that
manages cybersecurity risk through a toolset that you've purchased.
Right. But then that team needs an out they need a set of trusted
advisers.

00:37:15:19 - 00:37:53:27
Speaker 3
We call them white hat, white hat hackers. Right. A channel, a phone
that if they can't figure out what's going on, there is a service that
sort of is their backstop. Right. So that's another thing we've built
into our program WithSecure is not only do we have the front, not only
do our customers have that front end application that helps monitor
everything, but if in a situation a company's internal team can't
figure out what's going on, they can elevate the instance to our white
hat hackers in Finland.

00:37:53:27 - 00:38:02:26
Speaker 3
And that's another set of professionals that can can help out with
with an impending attack. Maybe it would have helped some well.

00:38:04:16 - 00:38:10:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. That like yeah. Oh, yeah.

00:38:29:08 - 00:38:30:29
Speaker 1
You have a product. You have a program.

00:38:36:22 - 00:39:08:12
Speaker 3
That's a good question. I mean, I, I think cybersecurity firms I've
been with, you know, for in the last ten years, that's never come up
in terms of embedding the insurance. I think that's just another can
of worms that they don't want to. Yeah, well, no, it's a great idea.
But what I can say, the last firm I worked at, just the name itself,
lowered risk premiums for customers because they were so well known in
the industry.

00:39:08:12 - 00:39:43:28
Speaker 3
So that's, that's something. But I feel like the what's going on now
with everyone working from home and hybrid hybrid workforce and, you
know, folks using their own personal computers to tap into corporate
networks, the wired piece to the pie. I feel like the systems need to
be put into place to mitigate any risk. So if you've got if you're a
company allows a personal device to access corporate networks, there
has to be a secure tunnel to get into that corporate data.

00:39:43:28 - 00:40:09:26
Speaker 3
Right. These are small things that will absolutely lessen
cybersecurity insurance. And the big thing I know what the educational
enterprises are. They need to have some type of endpoint, detect and
respond. What I was talking about the behavioral analysis that allows

companies to sort of understand if there's any, you know, mischievous,
anomalous behavior going on in the network.

00:40:09:26 - 00:40:17:05
Speaker 3
Just that alone will will lower will lower the premiums. It's called
it's called Next-Generation Protection.

00:40:17:26 - 00:40:30:18
Speaker 1
I'll give one yeah. You could visit just one of your clients actually.
So on. Yeah. Yeah.

00:40:33:16 - 00:40:58:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's a that's a that's a great idea. I know. We'll cover
companies do that internally, but they make a mistake, so they're
called development pods or development instances, right? Where you
have your protection, your production data. That's where, you know,
the PII, the legitimate client data goes back and forth. But then in
order to test certain scenarios, they have a quarantined area.

00:40:58:02 - 00:41:22:15
Speaker 3
It's a development area. Problem is, I've seen companies take that
development area, which is sort of a sandbox, and they have a leg into
the production, which is a no no. Right. So like when when you apply
for cybersecurity insurance, that's the type of stuff that they look
at. And, you know, if if you have certain failures, then you're you
may not get the insurance or the premiums are going to be super high.

00:41:22:25 - 00:41:26:03
Speaker 2
But I bet Amazon's working on that right now.

00:41:26:03 - 00:41:26:12
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:41:26:18 - 00:41:54:27
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, they've got eight they got Hwc. I mean, it's
interesting, I think about that. That's a that is a great idea,
though. I think that that's the type of thing. But that's the type of
thing. I just want to flip back because we had a very interesting
discussion in the last panel and after that between panels, about time
value of money education and how it's, you know, that understanding
the compounding interest and how it works and that I'm just going to
pick on one person here.

00:41:54:27 - 00:42:16:24
Speaker 2
And that's Allison. In terms of how do you feel about as a rising
young professional about your preparation and or the interest or the
preparation of your your colleagues in terms of understanding your
long game? I mean, it's not the next five years. It's the next 50
years.

00:42:19:04 - 00:42:24:05
Speaker 2
Does that ever come across to your your thinking or is that sort of
like, I'll worry about that tomorrow?

00:42:27:19 - 00:43:02:09
Speaker 2
Now, but that's great. That's right. So I think that that really shows
the value of education and understanding that. And you have to start
thinking about it when you're in your twenties, you don't wait until
you're 58 to just start to do something about it because it's very
difficult to do that.

00:43:02:16 - 00:43:07:28
Speaker 1
So yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

00:43:12:10 - 00:43:34:28
Speaker 1
Yeah. Thanks so much. And our next topic very soon I would say if we
had a P and C, panel discussion on climate change, climate risk, oh, I
know what this can be about, but we're talking about annuities and
it's interesting we're going to do a little bit of tech change here.
We have a virtual moderator or panelists coming in here.

00:43:35:15 - 00:43:40:14
Speaker 1
So so we're going to see how this all works. Thank you very much.
Thank you.

00:00:00:18 - 00:00:24:26
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. Thank you. So, you know, Charlie, I'll introduce
you. Charlie. Charlie Sidoti. I'll let him talk to him about ensure
what he's doing in the Cambridge area, but great. Been a great partner
over the last couple of years. And he called me. Maybe I know this is
maybe a year ago. And you said, Hey, pal, you think there's a role for
annuities in climate change?

00:00:24:26 - 00:00:27:18
Speaker 2
I said, Maybe.

00:00:28:08 - 00:00:42:24
Speaker 1
So with that, let me turn this over to you and let's guarantee you
this will make you think a little differently about climate and what
the power of of the price we were talking about.

00:00:46:02 - 00:00:46:08
Speaker 2
Right.

00:00:46:28 - 00:01:10:07
Speaker 3
Thank you, Paul and Laura. Thanks for the support He said maybe last
year. This year he said, come to our meeting and next year climate
will be one of the forces. That's our plan. So I'm going to introduce
the panel and it's a panel of four. Actually, we have people online
that I think will be here.

00:01:10:22 - 00:01:12:25
Speaker 4
Laura, I didn't realize virtual was an option.

00:01:15:04 - 00:01:16:09
Speaker 3
Hey, you live here, don't you?

00:01:18:28 - 00:01:47:03
Speaker 3
So I'll just quickly introduce myself. We get the online people up and
running. Charlie Sidoti, I'm the executive director of INNSURE. We are
a nonprofit. Our mission is to catalyze a bold and decisive response
to climate change by the insurance industry. Just quickly, my
background. I have 25 years in the insurance industry, followed by ten
years running start ups on insurance and insurance.

00:01:47:05 - 00:02:20:05
Speaker 3

Insurance in case of injury, sorry, companies and three years running
a nonprofit, which is a totally different thing. Next I'll introduce
Josh, and certainly if you want to add anything, go right ahead. But
many of you know Josh. Josh is an advisor. An attorney works on
complicated regulatory issues, general counsel matters, and difficult
issues related to fairness. And A.I. and climate challenges.

00:02:20:05 - 00:03:02:29
Speaker 3
So he's going to help us talk a little bit about the regulatory
environment around these. And it looks like we have Stephanie and Evan
online, so I'll introduce them. Stephanie Simon is a corporate
innovation leader with deep experience in both the insurance industry
and financial products she develops and manages. She has a lot of
experience developing and managing startup ecosystems, and she's been
working very closely with insurer to help us develop partnership
opportunities and develop an ecosystem Tim really focused on this
intersection of climate insurance and innovation.

00:03:03:22 - 00:03:32:15
Speaker 3
And finally, certainly last but not least, Evan Greenfield has 20
years in as an operator and an investor in ESG. He was the global head
of ESG for S&P, and he spent a lot of time and effort building and
overseeing ESG in impact investing platforms. So that's the team. It's
a it's an honor to be with this team, and it's an honor to be here.

00:03:32:15 - 00:03:58:09
Speaker 3
And thanks again, Paul and Laura. I don't know if I can see those
slides, but Stephanie, why don't you go to the next one? Okay. We
introduced the team. So before we get into the panel discussion, I
wanted to show at least this visual. We talk a lot about climate
change. Go back to the Florida one, if you could.

00:03:58:09 - 00:04:34:06
Speaker 3
Thank you. We talk a lot about climate change and goals. The UN's
sustainability goal is if we get to net carbon zero, which means the
world is emitting no CO2 into the environment at all. By 2050. That
will keep the the temperature increase to below 1.5 degrees centigrade
by the year 2100. So that's the goal. We are not necessarily on track
to meet the goal.

00:04:34:06 - 00:05:07:23
Speaker 3
We're more on track to have a 2.5 to a 4.5 increase in temperature. So
those two pictures of Florida show what the coastline would look like
if we have the one on the left is a two degree increase and the one on
the right is a four degree increase. So although I am from the coast

and you know, the coastal people love the ESG stuff, a lot of this is
built on, a lot of science goes into it.

00:05:08:12 - 00:05:33:26
Speaker 3
And so there are real risks. It's more than just a regulatory issue.
And and you know, a theoretical issue. And we are getting to the point
where some of these things are starting to happen. You're starting to
see the wildfires and the coastal and and other issues. So I'll throw
one more slide of stats at you and then we'll kind of get into the
other stuff.

00:05:33:26 - 00:06:14:22
Speaker 3
And I'm going to have to go over here a little bit just to see. So
some of the stats between 2010 and 20, 20 was the hottest decade in
125,000 years. So that I think is compelling. CO2 is the highest level
in 2 million years. 1.2 trillion tons of sea ice melts annually and
that is accelerating. And one of the reasons it's accelerating is as
temperature increases since industrialization, the oceans have
absorbed CO2 making the impact less.

00:06:15:10 - 00:06:48:10
Speaker 3
The amount of CO2 that the oceans are absorbing is slowing. And at
some point as temperature increases the oceans will start releasing
CO2, which accelerates the the temperature increase, which accelerates
the release of CO2. So, again, I don't want to terrify people, but
it's a serious thing. And we're going to talk about the risks related
to it. But also the opportunities and specifically the opportunities
for the insurance industry.

00:06:48:21 - 00:07:12:17
Speaker 3
One of the biggest ones is there's a one point $3,000,000 trillion
protection gap, and it's growing. And what that is doing is pushing
some of these risks onto individuals, enterprises, and the communities
that represents market opportunity. And I know some of that is what
we've been talking about all day. How do you sell insurance? How do
you get to the customer?

00:07:12:17 - 00:07:57:23
Speaker 3
How do you meet the customer where they are? But a lot of that is a
lot of the risks are related to climate risks. And just when we talk
about climate risk, we really talk about three different risks.
There's physical risk, which we all think about. You know, wind and
weather changes drought changes, wildfires or worse, those affect
physical assets like, you know, if your asset is in Miami and we hit
that those numbers where the Miami is offshore, those are physical

damages to physical assets and then the other risk is transition risk.

00:07:58:10 - 00:08:22:10
Speaker 3
So if you are selling if you own chains of gas stations, and the world
does actually transition to a low carbon economy and everybody is
driving electric vehicles, that's a risk that an operator of a gas
station faces. And there's going to be lots of lawsuits around things
like reporting. What action did you take? What action didn't you take?

00:08:22:20 - 00:08:34:25
Speaker 3
So there's all sorts of liability risk risks associated with that. And
if you go to the next one, I'll kick it over to Stephanie Thank you.

00:08:34:25 - 00:08:36:18
Speaker 5
Charlie, can you hear me OK?

00:08:37:13 - 00:08:37:27
Speaker 3
Yes.

00:08:38:25 - 00:09:14:28
Speaker 5
OK, so as Charlie mentioned, my background in the financial services
sector and insurance, particularly in life and health and retirement.
And so supplementing what you just heard about the overview of climate
risk and climate change. Just talking a little bit about climate risk
and retirement specifically, which Paul teed up at the beginning. So
according to a 2020 McKinsey study titled Climate Risk and Response
Physical Hazards and Socioeconomic Impacts, financial institutions and
insurers should consider the role climate change will have on their
portfolios.

00:09:15:18 - 00:09:59:25
Speaker 5
There are more studies coming out by asset managers and insurers that
are identifying material risks to performance space to performance
based on climate change. A report from Ernst and Young says the risks
posed by stranded assets assets that unexpectedly lose value as a
result of climate change are rapidly climbing. The investment
industry's agenda in March, the Securities and Exchange Commission
proposed rules to enhance and standardize climate related financial
disclosure for US companies, including information about climate
related risks that are reasonably likely to have a material impact on
their business.

00:10:00:05 - 00:10:26:16
Speaker 5

You probably heard a lot about this because just in the last couple of
days, this week there's been two articles of the Wall Street Journal
from large companies and small businesses responding to this potential
new requirement. In February, the Department of Labor, the DOL, issued
a request for information pretty wide ranging about the impact of
climate related financial risk on your risk covered retirement plans
and individual retirement accounts.

00:10:27:05 - 00:11:03:08
Speaker 5
The DOL specifically asked whether any guaranteed lifetime income
products such as annuities, can help individuals efficiently mitigate
the effects of at least some climate related financial risk and if so,
what mitigation measures do these products take? By 2025, climate risk
reporting will be mandatory across most UK businesses. These moves are
part of a global shift towards mandatory climate related financial
disclosure, fueled by the need to quantify growing financial losses
caused by climate volatility.

00:11:09:06 - 00:11:36:21
Speaker 3
So let's bring the panel in here. And I do just wanted to comment on
one thing Stephanie said she talked about stranded assets. I think one
and somebody on one of the panels, the gentleman from Flint talked
about the broken promises. One thing that I think, you know, ties
directly into retirement is people look at their their home values as
part of their retirement balance sheet.

00:11:36:29 - 00:12:03:16
Speaker 3
And an important part and the notion that property values are going to
always go up is is dramatically going to be changed by some of these
climate risk issues. And it'll be a little different. It'll be
different geographically so from the individual, you know, annuity
buyer, they're thinking that their annuity is part of this kind of
portfolio of retirement assets.

00:12:04:03 - 00:12:26:05
Speaker 3
Home valuation changes are going to be dramatically different going
forward. But with that, I do want to kind of bring Evan into the
conversation. Evan, can you talk about how a portfolio analysis like
where it's been and where it is and where it's going from the
perspective of climate risk?

00:12:27:02 - 00:12:55:01
Speaker 5
Sure. And how can carriers, how can carriers analyze begin to analyze
their investment portfolios to understand these risks? Yeah. Thanks,
Stephanie, for having all the questions. Oh, yeah. Good afternoon. And

I regret that I can't be in person in Hartford, actually, around 40
years ago and four days from now, there was a seminal event in
Hartford, Connecticut, such that I was born at Mount Sinai Hospital,
which is the city of my birth.

00:12:55:01 - 00:13:26:18
Speaker 5
And I certainly hold that generally. You know, listen, there is been a
seminal focus on ESPN climate transition and sustainability transition
since the financial crisis of 2008 and certainly most recently since
Q1 at 2028, which was as we reflect back at the start of the pandemic,
we are seeing significant flows of capital that are being integrated
into ESG and sustainability related strategies for many of the reasons
that Stanley and Charlie just spoke about.

00:13:26:25 - 00:13:53:21
Speaker 5
This is a tremendous risk factor across the board for all systems,
economies, societies, industries, certainly in the insurance side both
on PMC and life and health. But it's also a tremendous opportunity and
the question is to where in an organization do we want to play?
There's great innovation that's transpiring really at a moment's
notice, but we see huge flows of capital that are emanating to look at
climate related risk.

00:13:54:11 - 00:14:18:12
Speaker 5
We're seeing the whole different purchasing pattern from corporates
that are looking to purchase from companies that are more
sustainability integrated and are focused more on climate transition.
Case in point yesterday Deutsche Bank announced that any supplier
providing greater than $500,000 of services to the firm will have to
have a certain sustainability ranking. We see that on the direct to
consumer side as well, and we see that in government purchases.

00:14:18:22 - 00:14:45:02
Speaker 5
As pointed out earlier, we're seeing regulatory regimes here in the
states. We saw here against their proposal last month in terms of
climate exposure and climate disclosure from publicly traded
companies. We're seeing a lot of activity in the European Union. See
activity in Asia, certainly in China, we're even seeing pressure from
rating agencies that are being put upon companies in terms of
impacting their cost of capital.

00:14:45:07 - 00:14:46:06
Speaker 3
Last year, about a.

00:14:46:06 - 00:15:07:14

Speaker 5
Fourth of reading downgrades from the largest credit rating firms were
attributable to material ESG factors. So there's a clear linkage to
financial performance and to financial returns and as we discussed,
we're seeing a great amount of innovation that's happening maybe not
directly related to the insurance industry, but look at the path to
electric vehicles and what Tesla has developed.

00:15:07:19 - 00:15:37:15
Speaker 5
Five years ago, there was very far and in the few in between of
traditional automobile manufacturers that had a clear path to
electrification. Today, everyone that I mean, that was a really rapid
progression that that has been quite considerable from the insurance
side. It's impacting everything from underwriting to managing assets,
managing duration and liability and asset matching. This all needs to
take into consideration a transition to a low carbon economy.

00:15:38:05 - 00:15:59:17
Speaker 5
You know, as I said, we're heading to a really terribly dangerous path
that hasn't been seen before in human history. There will be
repercussions throughout and these repercussions will affect everybody
in the room, both personally and business wise. And I believe that
there's an opportunity we can further discuss to capitalize on this
and to see it from an economic standpoint.

00:16:01:22 - 00:16:16:24
Speaker 3
Thank you. Evan, can Evan, can you talk a little bit more how like the
sophistication of the portfolio analysis has evolved from like
filtering out the bad actors to a more sophisticated approach?

00:16:17:17 - 00:16:35:06
Speaker 5
Yeah, sure. Certainly. And there is a cross section and I know we're
focused on climate transition, but we can look at this overall as it
pertains to ESG and sustainability. But there has been an evolution.
I've been involved in it for the last dozen or so years, both on the
investment side, but most recently on the data analytics side.

00:16:35:14 - 00:17:01:15
Speaker 5
We're having much greater intelligence from ESG data and analytics and
climate data and analytics that allows portfolio managers and analysts
to integrate sustainability as a core part of their investment
process, both on this election side of the equation and screening the
diligence, the monitoring and engagement of the individual assets from
these companies. We're seeing that both in public market portfolios
and private market portfolios.

00:17:01:21 - 00:17:25:12
Speaker 5
We're seeing it across the board, whether it be indices to
sophisticated alternative asset management instruments. We are at a
challenging time now in that respect. You all may have heard of this
aspect that there's great correlation among the credit rating firms in
terms of a credit rating. You know, you go to S&P or Moody's or Fitch
generally going to have a very similar rating from those three firms.

00:17:25:19 - 00:17:48:29
Speaker 5
You have a tremendous lack of correlation. Among the major issue,
rating firms as it pertains to their ratings. You can have a very
different rating from MSCI on the same company relative to sustainable
energy or by Morningstar relative to S&P Global. That creates a lot of
confusion and noise in the market. But keep this in mind. We're still
at a very early part of this evolution and this trajectory to the low
carbon economy.

00:17:49:18 - 00:18:17:06
Speaker 5
If we look at a similar analog to the establishment of a US job after
the Great Depression, that evolved over decades. So we're still in the
earlier stages, but we really need to enhance and evolve the data and
analytics to allow folks like yourselves to integrate it into your
models, to have some meaningful signals to it. That could give you
some type of some type of advantage to understand what returns look
like, where looks like opportunities, et cetera.

00:18:19:18 - 00:18:29:21
Speaker 3
Cool. Thank you. Let's move to Josh and could you give us a little bit
of perspective how the regulators are kind of viewing and approaching
these issues?

00:18:30:00 - 00:18:38:28
Speaker 4
Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Laura and Paul, for inviting me and
putting me in this panel, even though I no longer have any real value
in what I'm saying.

00:18:39:22 - 00:18:41:04
Speaker 3
Not true. Not true.

00:18:41:04 - 00:19:04:06
Speaker 4
But I will say that there's enough of a tail. On my previous job, I
was a deputy commissioner at the Connecticut Insurance Revenue that

just ended in May. And I do think that, you know, I think from the
regulators perspective, there's a lot of things going on. There's it's
really twofold. It's it it starts with with what the companies are
investing in.

00:19:04:06 - 00:19:38:18
Speaker 4
And there always is this little dialog whether or not regulators
should get in the mix and say, well, certain class of investments
should not include things that might negatively impact the climate and
the direction that the regulators really trend, although there always
is conversation is as long as the CEO and the and the financial chief
financial regulator in the in the jurisdiction agree that it meets a
class of investment, they don't really care what that investment is
in.

00:19:39:00 - 00:20:11:12
Speaker 4
And I don't see that changing. It's not the regulators job to
determine to determine what a company should be invested. And they the
job of the regulator, as Barbara kind of mentioned, is to protect
consumers and protecting consumers at its core is to make sure a
company is solvent, because if a company can't pay out its claim,
which is the ultimate sort of consumer responsibility, company
responsibility for the consumer, then what what good is the company
and then what good is a regulator?

00:20:11:12 - 00:20:41:19
Speaker 4
So the job of the regulator is really to make sure an investment
opportunity meets the standard required by the statutes and regs in
that jurisdiction, not to pick each individual different type of
investment. However, it is also the job of the regulator to understand
the solvency of a company. And if a company is heavily invested in
things that might be impacted in a massive way by climate, it's
important that the regulator knows that.

00:20:41:25 - 00:21:14:26
Speaker 4
So that's why in April of this year of 2022, the National Association
of Insurance Commissioners transitioned their their reporting. It's
not CFD. They have their own reporting but they transition into
something that is very similar to CFD. So it allows for carriers to
say, OK, if I did TCF FD, which a lot of large carriers are required
to, then I am now compliant with what the what the states are asking
us to file.

00:21:15:04 - 00:21:40:24
Speaker 4
And there are some discrepancies. So there is additional language that

needs to be filed by the carriers. But, but, but on its face, it
really outlines the risk exposure and it lets the regulator understand
the risk exposure that a carrier has in the climate space. So the
disclosures are really important and CFD was just the G-7 I think
adopted that in 20, 21.

00:21:40:29 - 00:22:03:04
Speaker 4
But I think it's slowly coming across most of Europe and I know it's
in a lot of a lot of European countries now. So I think that
disclosures is the only way to go at this point for regulators so that
they can understand the risk and although not all states are on board,
I think it's only 14 states that agreed to participate in this
disclosure requirement.

00:22:03:04 - 00:22:19:25
Speaker 4
That's the floor of the 56 jurisdiction regulatory scheme that exists
in the United States. However, those 14 states happen to represent 80%
of the marketplace. So it's it's disproportionately impacting the
majority of the insurance market.

00:22:21:09 - 00:22:34:06
Speaker 3
Awesome. Thank you. I think we're going to transition now to the the
next slide and start talking about some of the opportunities. And
Stephanie, are you going to run this one? Is that right?

00:22:34:09 - 00:23:01:16
Speaker 5
Sure. What are some potential novel ideas in the annuity space where
we could be thinking about climate focused annuities? Some novel ideas
for annuities that could meet or preserve retirement savings, as well
as address climate risk. So we've given some thought to this. We'll
share a few starter ideas. We would love to hear yours as well. And
Josh and Evan will have an opportunity to comment and share their
thoughts.

00:23:02:05 - 00:23:32:21
Speaker 5
So the first one, just from a low hanging fruit perspective, of
there's been a significant increase in demand for socially responsible
financial products. I know Evan spoke to that earlier. The growth of
the SGA has been tremendous. So the suggestion here is to create ESG
annuities with an emphasis on de-risking retirement portfolios by
reducing exposure to environmental risks and potentially increasing
exposure to companies with solutions to reduce carbon in the
atmosphere.

00:23:33:13 - 00:23:56:21

Speaker 5
This would potentially provide customers with more investment,
transparency and choice. And there's a quote here from S&P Global
Insurance Talk. We strongly believe that in just a few years, most
carriers in the adoption space will have an ESG offering to answer
clients growing demand led by various demographic segments that see it
as a must have and the focus on from there.

00:23:57:02 - 00:24:14:20
Speaker 5
One example is from BlackRock, which is on the slide here with Midland
National. They have a fixed indexed ESG annuity product. There are a
few others in the market. I didn't see a ton out there, but that's one
example. And I'm going to go to the second bullet and then I'll pause.
I want to talk about green annuities.

00:24:15:04 - 00:24:45:23
Speaker 5
So it's a related concept idea green annuities and ESG instead of the
broad based ESG, environmental social and governance criteria,
specifically offering an environmentally focused annuity product, a
green annuity, where a portion or percentage of the investment is made
by the insurer are in green and or blue bonds. And if you're not
familiar with those terms, green bonds are financial instruments
designed to support environmental and climate related projects.

00:24:45:23 - 00:25:14:07
Speaker 5
And blue bonds, which is a relatively new form, is a sustainability
bond, which is the debt instrument used to support investments in
marine and ocean projects. Let's just say that Stephanie's had a very
large learning curve in 20, 22 climate coming from health care and
financial services. So enough said, there are lots on ESG annuities or
green annuities, Evan or Josh or Charlie or others.

00:25:17:03 - 00:25:49:21
Speaker 3
I'll just add, I, I think there's huge opportunity and, and you know,
the discussion, the way Paul kind of set up this, the, when he
introduced us was I'm not sure where the annuity piece fits, but we
absolutely think there's, there's opportunity to innovate. We're not
exactly sure where, but we, we want to engage with people from the
industry like yourselves to say that there's opportunities on the
asset side, which everyone was talking about.

00:25:50:03 - 00:26:23:06
Speaker 3
And there's opportunities, we think on the product side around helping
the customers understand these risks because these are significant
risk ultimately to individuals and enterprises in the communities.

And, you know, we think annuities are part of that. And we're trying
to think about ways you can hedge those risk where you can create
products that help the customers offset the risks that they don't
really even completely understand yet.

00:26:23:12 - 00:26:32:03
Speaker 3
And much of the industry doesn't completely understand. So we want to
start that dialog. We'd love to hear what you guys are thinking about.

00:26:32:23 - 00:27:02:16
Speaker 4
Well, Stephanie, if I'm jumping ahead and please tell me not to, but
on the asset side, impact investing is a is a is a big deal. And I
think Evan might talk a little bit more about this, too. I'm not sure.
But anyway, one of the thing that's going on with all the with all the
different jurisdictions they're trying to come together to figure out
a way to allow for impact investing to to not be counted against risk
based capital.

00:27:02:16 - 00:27:24:27
Speaker 4
So to allow carriers use their risk based capital for some of these
more untraditional investment opportunities, mostly around a lot of
the conversation is really around low income housing because there's
long history there and it might be able to be that might be a similar
class as a required class of investing for for for risk based capital
standards.

00:27:25:24 - 00:27:50:14
Speaker 4
I think one of the other areas that they should be focusing on is
climate. They should allow for there to be conversations on risk based
capital being utilized for some climate initiatives that there's
history and there's experience and and that you can show that the risk
is very similar to the value, you know, to the required standard
investment for risk based capital.

00:27:50:14 - 00:28:20:21
Speaker 4
So and that's an ongoing conversation that's taking place. There's so
much, you know, to have an annuity, to have life insurance, to have
these businesses. There's so much capital that is required to be
sitting and that capital has to be invested in such a particular way
and to open the capital opportunity, to open investment opportunities
to capital or to investments in climate related things, I think could
really, really change the way money, you know, the way some of these
opportunities are funded.

00:28:24:24 - 00:28:24:27

Speaker 2
But.

00:28:25:04 - 00:28:44:03
Speaker 5
Can I just say one quick thing? You know, I think when we think of
climate transition, we think of these capital intensive,
scientifically risky technology, risky projects and things like carbon
capture and sequestration. We need investment and we need to focus on
that because we are not going to solve this challenge by just the
business as usual approach.

00:28:44:11 - 00:29:07:20
Speaker 5
But those are a little more riskier assets and approaches. But there
is a there is an ancillary industry building, a long, sustainable city
services or climate services. Those companies that are helping with
the mitigation and adaptation that are not as technology risky as that
climate change, sequester, nation. So there is across the board
opportunities. And one last point.

00:29:07:20 - 00:29:34:21
Speaker 5
It always baffled me years ago in the Obama administration where we
said that the oil ruling as it pertains to risk plans and then we sort
of rescinded and the Trump administration now sit back and I don't
know why there's such political ideology on climate plan. It doesn't
really care about politics the last time I checked. But but here's the
deal is that if you want to be a good fiduciary, you should be
certainly integrating any of these climate transition topics into your
portfolio.

00:29:34:21 - 00:29:48:09
Speaker 5
So you're you're actually not fulfilling your fiduciary obligation
because again, this is the most significant economic crisis and
opportunity in modern economic history. If you don't integrated it,
you're not fulfilling your role and responsibilities.

00:29:49:26 - 00:30:19:02
Speaker 4
Yeah. Evan, that's a good point. And I'd just like to add on a little
bit to that when when resiliency is such a huge a huge piece of this.
And, you know, I think insurers working on a huge resiliency and I
think that there might be some interesting opportunities where you can
capitalize on some sitting cash sitting RBC Capital to to then to to
invest in some resiliency things, which we know resiliency isn't
really a risk.

00:30:19:08 - 00:30:22:27

Speaker 4
It's just a way of doing things different and better for it.

00:30:24:12 - 00:30:54:25
Speaker 3
Absolutely. I I'll just add to that, too, the a lot of the a lot of
these opportunities are very good investments. And there's also second
and third order returns. If you're investing in bonds, that's
investing in resilient projects that make the community safer. A lot
of these climate issues are risks on the property casualty side, but
also especially to those vulnerable populations that Josh talked
about.

00:30:54:25 - 00:31:27:08
Speaker 3
So they they create returns beyond the direct returns of the
investment and if the insurance industry is kind of thinking beyond in
not ignoring the the core investment, but also thinking about these
second and third order returns of investing in the resilience of, you
know, individuals, enterprises and communities, there's a huge
opportunity to not just manage risk but capture opportunity.

00:31:28:02 - 00:31:56:03
Speaker 3
And I know I saw a couple of questions. Who wants to go online now?

00:32:13:21 - 00:32:14:15
Speaker 3
Wildfire.

00:32:15:10 - 00:32:20:13
Speaker 2
Yeah, a lot of areas that are far inland.

00:32:20:22 - 00:33:09:17
Speaker 3
They like it. I mean, it is dramatically it is different regions to
region. And I think we have some slides at the end about a few
startups you know, people are building models now to get very
sophisticated to measure the differences on how well like home values
vary in, you know, five, ten, 25 years down to specifically specific
parcels and then roll that up at a portfolio level like the notion
that physical assets, buildings are going to increase in value the way
they historically have is just wrong.

00:33:09:17 - 00:33:39:09
Speaker 3
And there's there's real political challenges to the state of
California started offering people to buy their assets and say you
know we want to migrate people out of Pacifica because one or two

homes are falling into the ocean now and it's only going to get worse
and we need to do kind of a planned migration and people fight it
because they were saying, well, no, you can't say that our homes are
going to fall into the ocean because that will affect our asset
values.

00:33:39:18 - 00:34:15:28
Speaker 3
But it's like this crazy argument that says, but your asset values
will ultimately go to zero because we know and it's already starting
homes are falling into the ocean. So I think part of it is the
technology which people are working on. How do you measure those
regional differences? But also part of it is the mental. How do we
grab you know, wrap our head around that, whether it's kind of the oil
industry assets and coal assets are going to go to zero or my house in
Miami or Key West is going to go to zero.

00:34:16:06 - 00:34:33:00
Speaker 3
So there's a number of challenges there around that. And we're
grappling with it. Like Evan said, where people are, money's going
into it, attention's going into it, people are starting to report on
it. So there's a lot of work to be done, but we're running out of
time.

00:34:33:08 - 00:34:55:01
Speaker 4
Well, I, unlike Charlie, do not have a house in Key West, but I will
say that in Guilford, Connecticut. So if we're talking regionally, it
gets even more local. And Guilford, Connecticut, we my there was a
town plan that was passed that said up until this one road we assume
in 2018 it's could be underwater and and half the town came out said
oh my God this is horrible.

00:34:55:01 - 00:35:21:15
Speaker 4
How how can you do this you know our house who's going to buy my house
if this plan went into effect and the plan did go into effect in 2015
and I don't think it impacted property values at all but building
codes the requirements that each community has we have standard state
based building codes but beyond that each community can set their own
building code requirements on top of that and you have some you know
Florida does a phenomenal job with the way that they require people to
build houses.

00:35:22:02 - 00:35:41:16
Speaker 4
There's some amazing building code examples across the country. But
Connecticut is a little bit behind on that and not that that you know,
that's really not a part of this conversation. But to the point of

there being issues, you know, town by town all across the country and
the issues are different and it's going to be very difficult to
unwind.

00:35:43:06 - 00:36:20:29
Speaker 2
That had the aviation industry looking for a transition budget
propellers in jets wouldn't that segment we have the government budget
nudging. You know, putting the industry you know, on notice that my
point they want to use that instrument everything not regulate the
thing but not just go forward be optimistic you.

00:36:21:14 - 00:36:43:03
Speaker 4
Know that's that's a really good point and I think it's the consumer's
job to participate in that nudge. I think consumers are starting to
demand demand that they know like one of the biggest negative
feedbacks we received from large carriers on the not we wrote the
Connecticut insurance where received from large carriers on the on the
reporting is well we don't want there to be naming and shaming.

00:36:43:03 - 00:37:17:09
Speaker 4
We don't want the consumers to come out and say, well, hold on a
second. We see that this one large company is only invested in oil and
this other company is invested in, you know, all these great funds
that that help society be a better place. You know, why is that? And
so carriers that will be a part of this disclosure is I don't think
the goal of disclosure is to name and shame, but I do think it will
end up nudging carriers because they could be less likely to want to
disclose that, you know, they have some possibly nefarious
investments.

00:37:18:08 - 00:38:02:17
Speaker 3
And I think the flip side of the name and shame, which I love the term
is, is there's opportunity. And I think about my kids who are like 20
years old, they don't think much about annuities. Which is probably
because I didn't educate them at 12 about compound interest. But but I
think there's an opportunity to wrap annuities in these kind of ESG
and green that you know I think about my kids are they would they
would that would get them in potentially interested in how does this
work oh we're investing in money going to things like that which is a
different kind of nudge you know it's pulling but I saw another
question up

00:38:02:17 - 00:38:02:22
Speaker 3
here.

00:38:20:12 - 00:38:33:26
Speaker 2
Every year for the kind of know where.

00:38:36:00 - 00:39:01:01
Speaker 3
The scope of the change that is going to happen, whether you believe
it or not it's going to happen is so big that I I hate to say it's
theirs or theirs or theirs. It really is. Like all of these things
need to come together and really like the next ten years. It's not we
talk about 2050 net carbon zero at 2050, you can't get to net carbon
zero at 2050.

00:39:01:19 - 00:39:19:09
Speaker 3
And we're literally running out of time like things need to start
changing now. And, you know, everyone's talking about things are
accelerating. We're not where we need to be, but it really is kind of
meetings like this, getting people to think about it and start working
together to figure some of these things out.

00:39:19:10 - 00:39:30:27
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean I was speaking with a from the stable insurance form and
it's already done. I mean his mind is where the world is just ending.
So I think that not.

00:39:30:27 - 00:39:31:16
Speaker 3
That negative.

00:39:31:16 - 00:39:46:06
Speaker 4
Yet. I mean having I think your point is I don't, I don't think that
your point is bad. I think it's good. I think that we have to be doing
every component of this to make it as palatable as possible over the
next 20, 30 years and get a lot of air conditioning.

00:39:46:17 - 00:39:47:21
Speaker 2
We're going to increase our power.

00:39:48:05 - 00:39:50:06
Speaker 5
I'm not sure I apologize. I can't hear.

00:39:50:06 - 00:39:52:04
Speaker 4
Everything. So I think you might be required to.

00:39:54:27 - 00:39:56:17
Speaker 2
Can I make a difference?

00:39:57:24 - 00:39:58:24
Speaker 3
Are we doing it on time?

00:39:59:13 - 00:40:21:21
Speaker 5
We have just a couple of minutes, so we have a little bit more to get
through. But go ahead, Evan, and then I'll, I'll finish up this slide.
Yeah. Just very quick point on that. Earlier, a question as it relates
to the opportunity, the knowledge this is hard stuff in many respects.
I've been involved in this movement for a dozen years and you take for
granted what you know and you kind of have an approach that everybody
knows what you know.

00:40:22:15 - 00:40:45:25
Speaker 5
This is emerging and it doesn't very suddenly we've seen there are
trillions of dollars worth of capital market firms making commitments
to net zero in the last two years. And if you discuss with most folks
in an organization the concepts of ESG and sustainability and climate
transition, it's not well educated. There is a lack of training. It's
forms like this.

00:40:45:25 - 00:40:58:25
Speaker 5
But there needs to be much greater expertize that's disseminated
throughout the whole organization, not just in the sustainability
department. And to have that conversation, I think Charlie mentioned
earlier, this could be a driver, right?

00:40:58:26 - 00:40:59:25
Speaker 2
Of of of.

00:41:00:25 - 00:41:27:29
Speaker 5
Getting additional customers an economic return. And we see this next
generation that is very focused on these issues. But it's not only
just this next generation, right? I speak to you know, generation
that's a little bit older than myself and they're focused on this.
Education is still missing. So we need to do a better job evangelizing
for forums like this, not just the sustainability focused forums, but
forums are just folks that are saying, I care a lot about this.

00:41:27:29 - 00:41:45:23
Speaker 5

What is it? How do I capitalize on it and how do I fill this out?
Yeah, thank you, Ivan. And thank you for participating on the panel
today. I am a corporate innovator and I I've redirected in my career
to this work because I think it's so important and it's so exciting to
be able to speak to you about it.

00:41:46:08 - 00:42:18:02
Speaker 5
The last idea I want to share on the innovation side, I want to bring
Paul Tyler up wherever he is back there to thank him for this idea.
That was really one of the prompters of this whole session. So I
wanted to honor that idea around annuities to support just transition.
And this is something Paul had researched. These are annuities that
are not geared towards retirement it's a different use of an annuity
product, but it's to provide a transition for workers away from coal
and other carbon emitting energy sectors.

00:42:18:12 - 00:42:39:14
Speaker 5
So offer an annuity like financial products that would provide a
steady stream, pay out for a fixed time period to ease and encourage
transition to other employment there is going to be a tremendous
amount of other employment if we actually do the work that we need to
do. There's a lot of new sectors created, new jobs created to meet our
climate goals.

00:42:39:26 - 00:43:04:06
Speaker 5
So and others can speak to that better than me. But this would be more
like a public private funding partnership. The World Bank is certainly
involved in these just transition programs. There's an organization
called the Just Transition Fund, which focuses on this. I found
AmeriLife actually is a company that's it's written on the just
transitions, taking it very seriously.

00:43:04:12 - 00:43:21:12
Speaker 5
So this might be more of a play from the community investment side of
a career to get involved in just transition programs and use and
design these annuity instruments to help. Just one thought there. So
Paul, if you want to add anything, please do. I can't see you, but I
know you're there.

00:43:22:06 - 00:43:24:28
Speaker 3
This is good. And I know we're we're short on time.

00:43:24:28 - 00:43:25:11
Speaker 5
OK.

00:43:25:25 - 00:43:46:21
Speaker 3
Let me wrap it up. Can you go to the next one just quickly? We're
super happy to be here to ensure if anybody is interested in these
issues, we're always looking for kind of partners to work with us.
There's a lot of different ways you can work with us. We think the
insurance industry is all about risk and should be running towards
risk.

00:43:47:01 - 00:43:58:13
Speaker 3
And figuring out how to do this. And we know it's a property casualty
issue, but it's also in this side as well. And there's both
opportunity here. And risk. So thank you all.

00:43:59:14 - 00:44:00:09
Speaker 5
Thank you. Wrap it.

00:44:00:09 - 00:44:00:15
Speaker 2
Up.

00:00:01:21 - 00:00:26:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, everyone's getting more tired, you know? You think back. I
think Bobbie talked about fax machines, right? This fax machines.
Right, in this business. But I think back to one of my first jobs is,
you know, this is a MetLife. We decided to insure planes. The biggest
thing, you know, people actually need financial plans. And we're going
to hire people from American Express, put them in our put them in our
organization.

00:00:26:06 - 00:00:51:21
Speaker 1
We're going to create a financial plan machine and, you know, give us
$800 more to crank out this $500 plan to plug the plug the plug.
Right. Oh, and that's that's it. Oh, then think about it. Think about
all the issues we've heard today. Who would ever dream the financial
plan would be something on paper, on a shelf, right?

00:00:52:14 - 00:01:14:22
Speaker 1
So, so, so dynamic. So I guess the first question I have for all of
you and is and I'll kind of just go right down the aisle so people get
to understand who you are, but also what your product and your
platform is doing is, you know, what's the biggest problem you've seen
in the planning industry and what does your company do to solve that?

00:01:15:13 - 00:01:16:06
Speaker 1
I'll start with you, Dave.

00:01:16:23 - 00:01:49:29
Speaker 2
Some David Mark. Yeah, from well to K Paul, I tell you, the biggest
problem is the the creation of confidence in the public's mind right
now. I think we've turned the corner after a 14 year bull market that
has been engineered. Advisors are suffering a different climate. It's
going to be having a huge impact on people. So I think platforms that
are being used by advisors on an everyday basis can do things to help
instill confidence to the consumer through the advisor.

00:01:50:16 - 00:02:04:24
Speaker 2
That involves the sort of the intersection of technology and content.
I think we have to develop content that helps people understand
important issues and builds more confidence about their futures. Well,
that's where I'm focused.

00:02:05:09 - 00:02:06:11
Speaker 1
David, thank you. Alison.

00:02:06:18 - 00:02:27:09
Speaker 3
Hi, I'm Alison. So let's go with the asset map. And this question
actually speaks directly to our founder story. I'll keep it quick, but
our CEO and founder Adam Holt was a financial advisor for many years
with AXA Equitable, and he found that his clients just weren't
engaging in his process. They were becoming overwhelmed with all the
charts and graphs and the long reports.

00:02:27:20 - 00:02:55:13
Speaker 3
So he created a visual platform to really get the clients involved in
the process that allowing them to make better decisions understand
what he was trying to explain, uncover opportunities for the advisor
or the agent. And, you know, really kind of saw that as an issue,
gosh, about 15 years ago and thought I really need to get these
clients to understand what I'm talking to them about meetings and
again, allowing them to stay involved in the process and really make
great decisions along with him.

00:02:55:13 - 00:03:01:21
Speaker 3
So that's kind of the problem that we saw. And he we ran with it and
we're we're working with that today.

00:03:03:06 - 00:03:03:27
Speaker 1
And Jeff.

00:03:04:27 - 00:03:24:25
Speaker 4
Yeah. Hey, everybody. Thanks Paul and Laura for having us today. So it
takes a lot to put this kind of event on. So we really we really
appreciate it. And I speak for all of us here so at Layfield, what we
hear from from our perspective clients and our clients is the
challenge with the accumulation. Right. And I think Lawrence
referenced it earlier.

00:03:25:08 - 00:03:46:15
Speaker 4
You know, we do a lot about investments and in what what products do
we buy and how are we talking to our clients. But when it comes down
to it, you know, we've all talked about the baby boomer wave and and
how many people need this kind of advice in the community as a whole
is really underserved when it comes to de cumulation.

00:03:46:28 - 00:04:11:20
Speaker 4
So we do it life yield is and this is a high level statement, we help

firms and advisors maximize retirement income in a couple of ways
through Social Security maximization. And then, moreover, firms
leverage our engine or our API to to put a tax lens on financial
planning. So what are measures that we can take to help improve
outcomes through through managing portfolio?

00:04:11:20 - 00:04:20:19
Speaker 4
The household and employment can implementing certain tax strategies
to to help improve after tax return and outcomes over time.

00:04:24:09 - 00:04:24:21
Speaker 1
Sheryl.

00:04:25:09 - 00:05:08:06
Speaker 3
So I'm Sheryl O'Connor, CEO of Income Conductor. And I guess I'm going
to mirror everything that everybody my my fellow panelists have said.
We concentrate on retirement income planning solely so we are immersed
in the issues around this. And I think the question, you know, what
problem do you see in this space and, you know, a problem are firms
and advisors challenged with is basically there's a I think there's a
serious disconnect between what individuals want today and what the
financial services industry financial professionals are giving them.

00:05:09:12 - 00:05:46:24
Speaker 3
Believe it or not, a lot of the big technology planning tools that are
out there in the market have focused on accumulation, save, save,
save, invest. And they've really put D cumulation aside. So a good
portion of them, well over 90% of them are using a strategy that was
developed decades ago. So if you think about your parents generation,
you know, think 30 years ago when these tools were created and these
strategies were created, retirees were very different.

00:05:47:08 - 00:06:22:13
Speaker 3
They were not living as long they had pensions on top of Social
Security. They didn't have such high health care expenses partly
because of their shortened longevity. So now fast forward decades
later and we're faced with a whole different paradigm of new
retirement challenges because we've got a whole new set of
individuals, right? They're living longer and they've had to self save
for retirement in plans in their individual accounts.

00:06:23:14 - 00:06:54:14
Speaker 3
And they honestly, their number one concern in surveys, especially
since COBRA is paying for health care expenses. And it's also the

number one reason retirees go bankrupt. So you know, we're using a
strategy for a whole different generation than the generation we're
working with right now on top of that, you know, they've learned to
invest their savings in their own following case.

00:06:54:14 - 00:07:31:10
Speaker 3
And they've even used robots. They've been around for a while. They're
comfortable with technology but most of all, they've been engaged in
making decisions. So if we look at the technologies that advisors are
still using, they're basically using those, you know, old, outdated
strategies, but they're also back office tools. You know, they made a
few adjustments to get people engaged, but at the end of the day, the
advisor is doing fact finding and they're going in the back office and
they're spending hours inputting data into a tool.

00:07:31:18 - 00:07:56:03
Speaker 3
And then really the extent of the client engagement is reviewing this.
50, 60 page report that's full of financial jargon that they don't
understand. And then at the end of the report, they're, they're
getting in a probability it's really an analysis, a probability of
success. It's not a written plan. And that's what they want.

00:07:56:17 - 00:08:24:27
Speaker 1
You know, Sheryl, I was watching television, I guess over the weekend.
I saw Fidelity commercial. I had, I think was your retirement
confidence index. Remember what it was a green thing. I want to sort
of point you mentioned probabilities. I think I have a hard time
thinking probabilities. I think a lot of people do is should the is
the future of these platforms more around collaboration with clients
and advisors than it is with Running Monte Carlo simulations?

00:08:26:01 - 00:08:52:05
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I think if we I mean, that's what Interconnector does. So
we're a B2B cloud based technology that uses a strategy that actually
addresses all the risks in retirement and gives the client a written
plan at the end of the day. And we've built the technology so that I
mean, there's been a lot of talk about education here, financial
education.

00:08:53:00 - 00:09:27:18
Speaker 3
We've built the technology so that the advisor and the client actually
build their plan together. They collaborate, and as they test out
assumptions, the client sees the impact on the plan of various
decisions in real time. So, you know, they say, I want to travel more
the first ten years, boom. One second they see the impact. Well, I

won't be able to believe as much to the kids or I'm not going to be
able to even cover my discretionary or non discretionary income if I
do that.

00:09:28:22 - 00:10:11:18
Speaker 3
And then that gives the advisor the opportunity to educate the client
about all the components of retirement dynamically while they're
building the plan. So I used to be a teacher. Education in context is
a lot more meaningful an education out of context. So that's something
that, you know, at the end of the day, like David mentioned, it gives
the client confidence, but it also increases their understanding of
the plan and they're buying in their adherence to the plan.

00:10:11:26 - 00:10:41:12
Speaker 3
And then the plan can be tracked and managed through our integration
platforms. We give daily plan, performance analytics, business
intelligence, send alerts to the advisor about opportunities to take
risk off the table. But I think most importantly and maybe this isn't
going to this this isn't the crowd, I should say this. And but most
importantly, we don't lead with product clients want a plan.

00:10:41:12 - 00:11:12:07
Speaker 3
They want a strategy. They want to know they're going to be OK. And
the product is the last thing they want to talk about if they want to
talk about it at all. Sometimes advisors tell us, you know what
clients say, I don't even need to talk about products. I have a plan.
You go out and implement it but the nice thing about income conductor
is it allows advisors and clients to use the products that best suit
their needs and that's really, you know, along the fiduciary standards
as well.

00:11:12:24 - 00:11:26:08
Speaker 3
But it's really flexible and modeling the importance of having both
guaranteed as well as investment products with the goal that you're
going to maximize income with minimizing risk.

00:11:26:10 - 00:11:50:25
Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks. And Jeff, we had a lot of discussion about savings. 12
years I think we all decide, right is the answer. We start and
compound interest and David's around here, but you mentioned Social
Security. It sounds like in your platforms, Social Security
optimization is the gateway drug to retirement planning. Why? Why not
start with savings? Why not start with distribution?

00:11:52:02 - 00:12:17:03

Speaker 4
You know, it's not it's not a golden rule, but everybody's going to
get it right. And everybody's retiring. And, you know, I think it was
someone referenced earlier that they were they did a good job with
Medicare planning and then clients would come in and ask them for
other advice. And that's what Social Security is. Everybody we're all
going to collect it, whether it's, you know, whether it's reduced by
24% or not.

00:12:17:23 - 00:12:39:29
Speaker 4
Whatever your belief is on that, you can ask five very simple
questions of a couple and provide meaningful output to them.
Meaningful solutions to them in a matter of seconds using any
technology. It doesn't you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be
life yields, you know, so the other the other part of that is people
are terribly undereducated.

00:12:39:29 - 00:12:57:28
Speaker 4
Not not just young people, older people, too. They have no idea the
factors that determine their benefits. And they say they're going to
do one thing like they get surveyed and they say, oh, yeah, we're
going to defer into our full retirement age. And then the stats bear
out that they don't all the answers. But a study out today, an
investment is it doesn't match up.

00:12:58:06 - 00:13:23:03
Speaker 4
So so instantly as an advisor and agent, you can add tremendous value
by showing someone options. And it's not complicated anymore. There's
not many options left. Right. The old violence is spent. It's gone.
That's what that all went away with the by the bipartisan budget act
of 2015. So if I can show somebody hey by deferring to your full
retirement age or possibly deferring to 70 we can give your household
another $200,000 whatever it is.

00:13:23:03 - 00:13:45:18
Speaker 4
And across all our enterprises over the last two years we've
identified $25 billion in potential income from the Social Security
ministration. Just by having that dialog by having that conversation,
then you can take it one step further and I identify gaps in a plan.
I'll say this too. Don't wait until your clients are 62 to have this
conversation when they're my age at 50 I had this conversation with my
wife.

00:13:45:18 - 00:13:55:01
Speaker 4
We got our daughter going off to school and got a few weeks after she

gets back from Europe anyway. So there is no retired. Retirement looks
different for me.

00:13:57:05 - 00:14:13:06
Speaker 4
But you know, my wife and I had this conversation. She said, well we
defer to 70, we can get that much more. And I said, Do you listen to
anything I say? And then the second part of it was, you know, she's
like, Why does my income go down when you pass away? People think that
they get both benefits, right?

00:14:13:06 - 00:14:36:01
Speaker 4
So there's an opportunity whether it's investments or annuities or
life insurance. If you get to someone when they're 50 like I am, I can
still afford insurance, right? I didn't mention a product name, and we
don't put a product name in our solution. We say, Here, here's what
you need. Here's the amount of insurance you need to cover this to
make sure that your wife doesn't suffer any any losses spending or
bridging the gap.

00:14:36:01 - 00:14:47:02
Speaker 4
Right. If someone defers to 70. I know this is really simple, guys,
but if you have asked five simple questions, you show someone the
value and then say, Hey, what are we going to do from 63 to 67?

00:14:48:17 - 00:15:21:19
Speaker 1
So if you talk about three things that I think are really key
educational points, people that I, I just don't think they think about
one was income gap planning the little things you can do with Social
Security right now and then, and then what you said about kind of
decoupling accumulates risk of that that those are huge mistakes
people make and just an educational standpoint think.

00:15:22:03 - 00:15:50:23
Speaker 4
You know our tool is is terribly simple and we partner with
wholesalers to go out with two advisors and then we do client
meetings. And I'm telling you, this is the this is the gateway to
retirement income. Mary Beth Franklin says it all the time. In every
client meeting I did we did a series of meetings with Franklin
Templeton Wholesalers and Merrill Lynch advisors in every client
meeting after we showed them how to maximize Social Security, they
said, OK, now what do we do I mean, it's just it's so simple.

00:15:50:23 - 00:15:56:17
Speaker 4
And then and then, you know, it's the gateway to a financial plan,

right, to go to go with these folks.

00:15:56:18 - 00:16:36:06
Speaker 1
So Alison, we're just living in such a visual world, right? Instagram,
Snapchat, tick tock, a picture say pictures worth a thousand, words
worth a thousand words. You have a great year. You've got this great
sort of one picture snapshot of a person's financial plan. Maybe sort
of describe that to people because we don't have it on screen and how
if we are doing more and more planning via Zoom, via collaboration
networks, how does that change how we should start to present our
plans in a compelling fashion?

00:16:36:14 - 00:16:38:16
Speaker 1
Fashion people make people actually take action.

00:16:39:00 - 00:17:05:26
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we have actually the advisors using asset map over the last,
let's call it decade a little bit more have actually gone remote long
before we heard the word COVID or coronavirus. I mean, our CEO, not to
bring him up every round here, but he he was a financial advisor for
many years and he was, I think, working in the office two days a week
meeting with his Florida clients from Pennsylvania, you know,
regularly over, zoom over, go to webinar whatever product he was
using.

00:17:06:05 - 00:17:21:25
Speaker 3
And the reason he was able to do that was he's like, you know, if
these clients are in Florida half the year, I don't want to miss out
on an opportunity to talk to them about something important. And we're
talking in like 2009 when nobody was meeting with clients virtually,
and his clients ate it up, it did not matter how old they were.

00:17:21:25 - 00:17:42:22
Speaker 3
It did not matter their net worth. They thought, Wow, this is so
efficient, I don't have to drive to your office. You don't have to
come to my house. And because we to your point, Paul, we have a very
visual platform where you can pop up one screen and have a discussion
about life insurance annuities, investments, Social Security, current
income, future income, business interests.

00:17:42:22 - 00:18:04:01
Speaker 3
You can get the business partner involved, and every single person
that matters to that family financially can be popped up on a screen
and enabling a conversation. Because, you know, once you see something

visually about your life as a client, what do you want to do? You want
to make it accurate, right? So you say, well, you know, my husband is
still a golf professional, but he's recently been promoted.

00:18:04:06 - 00:18:24:24
Speaker 3
Popped that up. Add a new income amount or you know, we really do need
to talk about that old 41 K and because you're collaborating with this
visual online in person or on a smart board, whatever the modality is,
it's the same experience for every single client or prospect. And
that's really what we were after. It doesn't matter if you're across
the country or across the table.

00:18:24:29 - 00:18:49:20
Speaker 3
We want every client to feel like they're getting a really, really
superior meeting. Everyone's time is valuable. And because again,
those items are up on a screen and the client is talking to you about
them and you're giving advice, it gives the advisor permission to talk
about anything that matters to that client because it's a very open
conversation and the visuals just make everybody feel comfortable and
you're able to kind of instead of saying, Well, I don't really get it.

00:18:49:20 - 00:19:03:13
Speaker 3
It's just a lot of words and numbers, you know, you're able to to see
that visual. And I urge you all to just check out asset dash map ecom
because you'll see immediately. The layout is just phenomenal for a
conversation with your clients prospects.

00:19:04:03 - 00:19:13:23
Speaker 1
And David talk to us, who is the constrained investor and how does
your platform make person feel less constrained?

00:19:13:26 - 00:19:37:18
Speaker 2
Sure. Let me start at the beginning. Constraint Investor is a
framework that helps advisors better serve, better assess the needs of
clients. Basically, what it says is you get to retirement with money,
which is great, but the amount of money is not necessarily high
compared to the level of income that's required. To fund, let's say, a
minimally acceptable lifestyle.

00:19:38:12 - 00:19:57:24
Speaker 2
Well, who is that? That's virtually all the boomer women. That's most
people. Look at the retirement savings it's a lot of people right now.
It doesn't mean that you have a small balance. You could have
$200,000, you could have 12 million. I was at an advisor group

meeting, which is one of my clients they told me a story about a
constrained investor case, $20.6 million.

00:19:58:21 - 00:20:29:10
Speaker 2
And you're constrained because you want to live on, you know,
$150,000. A month. You're constrained, right? So the point is, when
you're constrained, you need a special kind of income strategy. The
first priority must be to mitigate risks which can reduce or
completely consume your income. This is a really big issue for our
industry. You have to protect against timing risk and you have to
protect against longevity risk.

00:20:30:10 - 00:20:56:16
Speaker 2
Now think about what I just said which is absolutely accurate. And
over there, the $5 trillion RIAA community, which doesn't address
either risk, it's a real problem for millions of people because those
clients who are looking at the RIAA community to develop their wealth,
grow their money and that's great and a fiduciary matter, that's fine.
They get to retirement, they need to have income.

00:20:56:16 - 00:21:20:05
Speaker 2
And all of a sudden it's like you're dealing with people that don't
even understand the very beginning of the basics of how to do this. So
this is a problem for the industry that has to be figured out. And one
of the things that I get very frustrated with is this difficult
tension between the asset management community and the people who love
insurance put me in that camp.

00:21:20:11 - 00:21:50:17
Speaker 2
I love insurance. And I also say, though, because I understand income
planning, you must have asset management as part of the plan and you
must have protection as part of a plan. But on that side of the
equation, all they see is growth asset management. So I learned in
2005 because I was one of the founders of the nonprofit Retirement
Income Industry Association, which was the first group that emerged in
the industry that studied this issue of retirement income planning.

00:21:50:17 - 00:22:13:04
Speaker 2
And they said, we need a view across the business silos. We need to
have asset management, and we need to have insurance to develop
solutions that really serve the American public. So this is something
I'm working on. Now, add to this one more thing women women are going
to control virtually 100% of the wealth assets within six years.

00:22:15:05 - 00:22:39:27

Speaker 2
What do women do that men don't? But aside from being smarter and
biologically superior, they live longer, right? So now you take what I
just talked about and you make it that much more extreme. This should
be the greatest annuity sales opportunity that the industry has ever
seen by far. And we have a lot of work to do.

00:22:40:10 - 00:23:00:02
Speaker 2
The problem is communications based. We have to change perceptions. We
have to educate advisors who don't accept annuities. We have to make
women understand that they need a different kind of income plan. We
have to put risk mitigation first and we have to do it quick. It's a
lot to do. And, you know, all of us can play a role in making that
happen.

00:23:00:02 - 00:23:01:23
Speaker 2
So I'm sorry to get on the soapbox.

00:23:02:02 - 00:23:24:18
Speaker 1
I love it. I love it. We love it. Keep the link and dialog going here.
So a couple two weeks ago, a number of us were out of this Medicare
conference Medicare in Las Vegas and going to Las Vegas, talking about
Medicare as she goes out here. Mark was there. We'll see you. I don't
know if you and she's not here, but there she is.

00:23:24:23 - 00:23:52:19
Speaker 1
Yeah. We were out there and we met with one of our friends is a VC. We
just raised our debt garage. $100 million only chump change right?
Chump change. His thesis is that the next big thing, insurer tech will
be digitally enhanced wholesalers, agents and advisors. OK, if you I
guess question number one is he thinks he thinks this is this is the
next thing.

00:23:52:19 - 00:24:21:05
Speaker 1
It's not going to be people coming online doing themselves. It's going
to be agents who are advisors and agencies who are more effective.
Let's kind of go down the road. I know I know the answer the first
question and you believe that and B if you look broadly one sort of
whole class of platforms that you all represent, what's the biggest
opportunity, client retention, client satisfaction agency efficiency.

00:24:21:11 - 00:24:22:28
Speaker 1
David, I'll start with you.

00:24:25:06 - 00:24:49:05
Speaker 2
Again, to go back to the issue of confidence, I think technology can
only take us so far. We have to combine technology with content I'm a
big believer in video content. I think we need to educate people on
all of these issues that have been discussed. Video can do it.
Delivering the video in Companion I would say interactive tools that
can help people understand and become better educated.

00:24:49:15 - 00:24:55:04
Speaker 2
I think it's the combination of these things. It's about education,
it's about motivation. And it's about building trust.

00:24:55:04 - 00:25:04:19
Speaker 1
So do you think I find I have at the end of the day, if I do what
you're saying, do I have more clients? Do I have more assets under
management? What's what's the.

00:25:05:14 - 00:25:14:02
Speaker 2
You have more clients and the absolute you have a greater wallet share
of an existing client, because if you do it right, you have 100%
wallet. You're know. Absolutely.

00:25:14:15 - 00:25:16:09
Speaker 1
How else is this a big bet to make?

00:25:16:25 - 00:25:37:10
Speaker 3
I am so lucky to talk to advisors and agents really multiple a week.
And I hear a lot of the same problem and it really relates to this
question. The problem is I have all of these great clients. I have 200
clients. It doesn't matter how many. It depends on the firm. I have
all of these clients and a subset of them I run full financial
planning for I really get in the weeds with them.

00:25:37:10 - 00:26:02:12
Speaker 3
I do deep planning. I feel like I'm not giving certain clients enough
attention. They've purchased a product or two. I keep in touch with
them when I can. I send them a statement every year or whatever the
cadences, but I feel like I can't give them the attention they deserve
or the advice that they deserve. And what, as a map allows these
advisors to do is I don't want to call it speed planning, but
sometimes we do get ready for a meeting in 15 minutes, really get the
most relevant information.

00:26:02:19 - 00:26:19:00
Speaker 3
Let a client know whether they're a brand new client just getting
started in their careers, if they're on track for things like
education, planning or retirement without it taking 6 hours because
you know the stats are 20, 30 40%. I put in my advanced financial
planning tool which we kind of see as a back office tool a lot of
times.

00:26:19:09 - 00:26:31:15
Speaker 3
But what do I do with the rest of these people who really need my
advice and that's where ask them I really comes in. It's, it's the
ability to take on more clients but really give them the benefit of
the advice that they deserve and that's what we say.

00:26:31:24 - 00:26:35:08
Speaker 1
OK, Jeff, would you co-invest yeah.

00:26:35:08 - 00:26:54:12
Speaker 4
I'll take a different I'll take a different route here. I'll look at
it from a distributor point of view because we work with we work with
asset managers and insurance companies and I'm partial because I am a
former wholesaler. And when I was just when I was just in the street,
Hartford leaders wholesaler, that's shows you how old I am Wachovia
had developed.

00:26:54:18 - 00:27:17:29
Speaker 4
And now I'm even getting older. Wachovia had developed and the name
escapes me. They this awful, awful financial planning tool Zero.
Remember what that was called it was what was it? So my my so my
mentor, the guy who taught me how to wholesale, he said, you need to
learn how to use this software because when you go out to meet your
advisors, they need your help, right?

00:27:17:29 - 00:27:34:20
Speaker 4
And it's like, no, it's like knowing how to work the systems, how to
how to find cash at Morgan Stanley or whatever it is. So wholesale,
the most successful wholesalers that we work with are ones that
embrace technology. And it's, it's just like everything else we talked
about today, it's not one thing, right? It's not just the technology.

00:27:34:20 - 00:27:52:26
Speaker 4
It's not I'm not just going to be a digital wholesaler. Right. And
work, work from my desk all the time. It's going to be that

combination of technology and human interaction and human advice that
makes all the difference. I've got a guy out on the West Coast who
talks about Social Security and he's like, talk about a soapbox he's
on a soapbox.

00:27:53:08 - 00:28:10:20
Speaker 4
He he create an email template, template that Franklin Templeton is
using for all the wholesalers. Here's the five questions need to
answer. Let's run a case. How can I help you and he just he crushes
it. So the most successful wholesalers would be the ones and
distributors and asset managers that embrace technology and don't just
talk about it.

00:28:11:00 - 00:28:21:07
Speaker 4
They they they they put it into practice and they provide their
wholesalers with the tools they need to be successful, which at the
end of the day, everybody in this room knows they'll be able to
distribute more of whatever there is they're distributing.

00:28:21:24 - 00:28:29:16
Speaker 1
And Sheryl, before and after, I mean, what's where's the impact of
advisors you see on your platform and others?

00:28:30:00 - 00:28:54:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I've worked with advisors. I started an asset management firm
and built a camp. We worked with advisors all over the country. I
think we kind of we're not really fair to these people because they're
not technology specialists, all right? They're really good
relationship people. They love what they do. They love to work with
people and help them.

00:28:55:04 - 00:29:27:10
Speaker 3
They don't want to spend hours learning a tool or in, you know, a week
training often, even if it's a nice place. And as technology people,
we need to take that on ourselves. So you know, our goal was to bring
technology sort of into the 21st century and democratize it. We have
financial advisors, wholesalers, we have coaches, coaching teams, we
work with LPL and Marcia McLellan.

00:29:27:10 - 00:29:53:06
Speaker 3
Their coaching teams use our software with plan participants in 2030
meetings to create and very, very minimal training. It's very powerful
software, but it's extremely intuitive. So that's on us as
technologists we just can't say, listen, you know wholesaler you've

been in the business 30 years using a pad and a pencil and now you
have to switch over to this more complex app.

00:29:53:12 - 00:30:36:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, we need to make things simple for business people to do business
successfully and the other thing we need to do is again, it's the 21st
century. We've got APIs and tons of platforms that integrate data and
all this data available. You know, one of our most successful
enhancements recently was are our data integration with health
services so we're pulling in personalized longevity projections,
health care expense injection projections, including out of pocket and
Social Security optimization and other strategies into the plan
creation.

00:30:36:13 - 00:30:40:16
Speaker 3
Ed, where we're seeing all that data interacts.

00:30:40:25 - 00:30:41:05
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:30:41:12 - 00:30:54:10
Speaker 3
So we should, as technologists, be use consuming as much data into our
application to to result in, first of all, an intuitive app, but also
a very powerful and reliable app.

00:30:54:10 - 00:31:29:03
Speaker 1
Right. Well, I'm going to just pretend I'm I'm back from law school
here. I'm going to call a couple of people, Denning and Michael
Denning, from your perspective, I mean, you've got probably you work
with every segment in the industry, in the industry, whole careers,
wholesalers, agency managers, agents. You know, if you were on their
advisor, if you were on one of their advisory boards, where do you
think the biggest opportunity is like in the next two years to get
adoption inside your value chain?

00:31:29:03 - 00:32:01:15
Speaker 1
And what are the obstacles, biggest obstacles here? I get a lot of
questions language. Yeah. Tell us more. So, you know, we talked about
it earlier. You got the investment community and you have the
insurance community and it's like Spanish you know, it's just it's
different vocabulary, you know, like I can go to an investment or go
to an insurance agent and I can talk about lifetime income or mitigate
or provide, you know, no losses.

00:32:01:15 - 00:32:30:21
Speaker 1
But like if I go to an investment person and I talk about an annuity,
you know, their eyes glaze over and they kind of start checking their
watch and looking at things. But if I start talking about mitigation
or risk or separate you know, distribution risk or accumulation risk
or eliminating risk multipliers or things like that, they're all ears,
you know, or talk about it as an asset class.

00:32:30:24 - 00:32:52:06
Speaker 1
So you need to marry the two, you know, in terms of the asset manager,
the people that are really into a um is how do you manage your book of
business and be able to convert your client from accumulation when
they start to take the money or what portion of it to solve for it
like you're talking about.

00:32:52:17 - 00:33:18:04
Speaker 1
And so, you know, the, the carriers, so things are priced differently
in different channels. And so it's, it's like how do you build things
to be able to pay for the marketplace even to the point is if wrapper
agnostic in terms of what you look at as insurance product as an
investment product, how does it be, how is it structured and then how
do you distribute it?

00:33:18:23 - 00:34:07:07
Speaker 1
And so the challenge is is territorial to me, you know, I mean, it's
it's how do you get each client? So it's like on what what's your
perspective now you've you've been on on the face to face, you've been
on the digital, you've been on the digital and face to face advisors I
mean, I think I think all the modeling great years of modeling shows
that the great guarantee payments X of having a better product for a
lot of engineers to just stay away from market timing for people
doesn't work on all of it.

00:34:09:10 - 00:35:02:19
Speaker 1
So that duty's integrated into a platform for payments guaranteed for
absence of a day. We could get that out and make it so that when
somebody has to pull the trigger and create liquid assets or an
illiquid assets, they have the confidence that that's true. And, you
know, Pfizer's know it. Most planners don't I think the structural
things about sharing role licensing, compensation structures, which
are all barriers for I'll raise get problems because they trust each
other that's not gonna be good.

00:35:02:19 - 00:35:49:10
Speaker 1

Objectively, prices because of the charges should be fixed. So that's
another thing that you are really curious about is our industry
everything. So what kind of mutual funds was there information that's
available we don't ever show you the file use in real time everywhere
you want to find your mutual fund, you can find it at account so I
think our product, if we don't have that in the carrier silo where we
have to share them with you, we process it overnight or maybe a week.

00:35:49:18 - 00:36:18:27
Speaker 1
So it gets footnoted products filled is real time, even though we say
parts of it. But I still want to think about whether you can you see
or or any of those types share or product values can make a product as
real, as neutral. One comment. I think if there's like a tipping point
out there that that product is is the way looking for you to spare
your income.

00:36:19:13 - 00:36:55:18
Speaker 3
Can I second that our advisors often implement at least 50% of the
client's savings in the plan to guaranteed products. Yeah and we have
a pretty powerful integration platform. We also have an open
architecture plug that we use. And the question always comes down to
can I link, you know, my products in and our answer is well yes, no, I
mean if they're on plaid or not, but also how often do they send
evaluation?

00:36:55:18 - 00:37:01:06
Speaker 3
How often do they update what that, you know, annuity yeah.

00:37:01:20 - 00:37:10:12
Speaker 1
It's yeah. Where it is real time. And I that's got to me.

00:37:10:25 - 00:37:14:21
Speaker 3
And people want it, advisors want it and individuals not.

00:37:17:17 - 00:37:37:27
Speaker 1
Injecting another risk. What is it? Ecological risk you could have you
saw Jeopardy's Ivan Watson Jeopardy Jeff you could have explained what
they are which is the wrong way you could have also put your data for
you you I actually but in the end I mean I'm quite sure there's an.

00:37:37:27 - 00:37:38:24
Speaker 3
Ambush out there.

00:37:40:22 - 00:37:51:28
Speaker 1
Yeah. But you still have a fiduciary responsibility on this that yeah.
Go ahead, David.

00:37:52:16 - 00:38:00:02
Speaker 2
So something first of all, I haven't talked about any of my products
and if anyone's interested, just go to well to account. Call me up.
I'll give you a demo, blow your mind.

00:38:00:07 - 00:38:03:15
Speaker 1
And by the way, we will send orals, we'll send links to everybody.

00:38:03:16 - 00:38:47:14
Speaker 2
But I want to talk about this, men. So we have another problem we have
to think about with women taking control of the wealth assets, how
would you describe an industry where seven out of ten of its current
customers reject the industry? That's what happens when a male spouse
dies. The widow fires the male advisor seven out of ten times this is
a problem that we all have to come together on and help the male
advisor be better because the male advisor over the course of the
marriage is talking about the man ignoring the women and alienating
her.

00:38:48:08 - 00:39:01:19
Speaker 3
So about where the male is bringing on female people that you see
operating in the industry and the female advisor there that I work
with.

00:39:02:11 - 00:39:03:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, if.

00:39:04:21 - 00:39:08:15
Speaker 3
It's just about considering the woman participant.

00:39:09:27 - 00:39:32:18
Speaker 2
So but it's we need to bring more female advisors into the business,
but it's hard to do it quickly and we need to bring minority advisors
into the business and it's hard to do it quickly. So what we have to
do in the meantime is coach men to be better advisors to women. So I'm
very focused on that and I think that's that, that is a problem that
must be addressed.

00:39:33:06 - 00:39:54:19
Speaker 2
And remember there's 86% of your advisor population is male. So it's
something that's going to impact the industry negatively. If we don't
fix it and we don't have a lot of time to fix it, we have to fix it
over the next couple of years actually. Yeah. So to the extent that
you're talking to male advisors, all the time, talk about this
conversation, you know, talk about 70% of the advisors being fired.

00:39:55:06 - 00:40:08:09
Speaker 2
We're doing it. We've recently introduced the first platform for
retirement income, this bill for boomer women, discretely for women,
and it includes female head coaching of male advisors because they
have to be better than they are today.

00:40:09:04 - 00:40:19:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, thanks so much. We'll, we'll send least of all companies
you get a chance to see and learn more about the platform. Thank you
very much. Thanks for your time. Thanks for listening.

00:00:05:04 - 00:00:15:11
Speaker 1
Thanks so much. At this point in time, I'd like to welcome up Doug
Roth, managing partner at S.I. Ventures, to provide some insight into
where he's seeing investment currently trending today.

00:00:17:20 - 00:00:18:04
Speaker 2
Thanks, Laura.

00:00:21:26 - 00:01:05:28
Speaker 2
So Connecticut Innovations, we are the strategic venture capital arm
for the state of Connecticut. We've been doing this for about 30
years. Our core is to invest in generally seed stage businesses, both
in the life sciences and tech We have a portfolio of about 200
companies, and I would say that we are a sort of tech and market
agnostic and more focused on sort of the stage of the business and
businesses that we believe can be we can be very helpful to and that
businesses that are here in Connecticut or can benefit from
significant operational presence here in Connecticut.

00:01:07:06 - 00:01:55:12
Speaker 2
The portfolio that I manage just to give you a view of sort of the
depth and breadth of types of businesses we invest in, the portfolio I
manage and companies I've invested in include things like Internet of
Things, Ed tech, education technologies, mining technologies, energy
technologies, advertising and marketing technologies, big data
analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics
And then, of course, in sure tech and last asked to just talk a little
bit about what we what we like to see when we invest and where we see
some things going a little bit with respect to ensure tech.

00:01:55:12 - 00:02:31:00
Speaker 2
But I think the comments are appropriate across the board. So first
and foremost, we invest in rock star teams but not rock star teams and
in isolation rocks our teams that are working on sort of widely
recognized nice, hard to solve problems. We love teams that have
fallen in love with the problem, not the solution. As a recovering
engineer, I know how easy it is to just love your product, love your
tech, love your solution, and then go try and find a problem that it
solves.

00:02:32:01 - 00:03:12:17
Speaker 2
Which is the reverse, I think, of what is makes for a successful
business. In addition, we love companies that through the solution and
technology they've developed, have created an unfair competitive

advantage and barriers to entry We love companies that are capital
efficient We like companies that have developed solutions where
there's a market pull rather than having to push the solution onto the
customer The hardest thing, I think, is to first have to sell a
company on.

00:03:12:23 - 00:03:37:01
Speaker 2
You have the you have the problem that we solve. And then after you've
convinced them of that, convincing them that you have the best
solution. It's a two part sale. It's really hard. So it's a lot easier
if they're looking for a solution to a problem and you happen to be
top of mind I particularly like businesses that the outcome isn't
binary.

00:03:38:03 - 00:04:11:27
Speaker 2
You know, it's either going to be a huge success or a complete
failure. Singles and doubles actually aren't all that bad and and then
most importantly, and I think specific to kinetic innovations, we are
looking for businesses that will benefit from and can leverage the
resources that Connecticut has to offer. I think all sort of ensure
tech companies have some immediate requirements.

00:04:12:05 - 00:04:48:12
Speaker 2
Capital, there's a lot of capital sources here in Connecticut and
capital sources specific to insurance and insurer tech. Obviously,
there's Connecticut Innovations. We've made an investment as a limited
partner in HCM Ventures. And there are some insurance companies here
in Hartford that either invest off the balance sheet or have more
formal corporate venture arm's talent. We are probably the highest
density of actuaries in the country.

00:04:49:05 - 00:05:18:21
Speaker 2
We have folks like Josh Hollander who can help with the company's
talent needs and can probably speak at length about the variety of
high quality talent here in Connecticut. And then finally, sort of
suppliers, customers, partners, the general ecosystem. And you know
what Laura and Paul are doing, what Michelle Cody is doing, what Susan
Winkler are doing to create an ecosystem supportive of insured techs,
hugely beneficial if you're a young company.

00:05:19:29 - 00:06:34:26
Speaker 2
And so we're looking for those kinds of companies that can really
thrive in that environment. Now, please, participate I mean, it is a
difficult needle to thread, but we have done extraordinarily well in
highly regulated markets. We've done well in the fintech investments.

We've done the other half of our portfolio and investment activity is
on the life sciences and so bringing new drugs and diagnostics through
clinical trials and FDA approvals it it's not easy.

00:06:35:27 - 00:06:56:03
Speaker 2
And I think it is back to my original point, rockstar teams. So we
don't know the we certainly don't know the answers and we don't think
the entrepreneurial team knows the answer at the time that we invest.
But the bet is on their ability to figure it out you know, and then,
you know, part is the ecosystem, right?

00:06:56:03 - 00:07:17:03
Speaker 2
And being able to introduce are our companies to folks like Josh
Hirschman to to get a sense of whether the regulatory environment for
what you're doing. Is that going to be receptive? What kind of
problems can you expect right and and get an early read that's super
important. I appreciate the question. Yeah please.

00:07:18:00 - 00:08:20:21
Speaker 3
I've been just I've unique I don't know. I'm not punctual.

00:08:23:23 - 00:09:06:13
Speaker 2
And we recognize the need for alternative or competitive sources of
capital, which is why we have expand in the last few years as in
investing in other investment funds so I led an investment, as I
mentioned, in HCM venture as a INSURE tech focused venture fund. We've
we've invested in in bullish brands that focuses on consumer products,
Acadian Ventures, which is the future of work, Elm Street Ventures,
which is very tied with Yale and makes bioscience predominantly
bioscience investors, Kane and Ventures and a handful of others.

00:09:06:13 - 00:09:28:15
Speaker 2
So we are trying to also seed other early stage and growth stage
venture firms so that, you know, see, I can't and shouldn't do it
alone and be the only source of funding for young companies yeah. No,
I totally agree. Totally agree. The American.

00:09:30:04 - 00:09:30:26
Speaker 3
Economy on the.

00:09:30:26 - 00:10:08:13
Speaker 2
Down side and yes, I think the we are advising our portfolio companies
to keep a keen eye on expenses. Typically when a young company raises

capital, we tell the entrepreneurial team, you know, you should raise
four sort of 12 to 18 months. I think that's been pushed out a bit to
more 18 to 24 months because we don't know when it'll officially
start, how long it will last and how deep it will go.

00:10:09:20 - 00:10:38:00
Speaker 2
We are already seeing companies in the portfolio reforecast their 20,
22 plan so I think there will still be a lot of investing and in
venture tech because I think the investment terms are going to get
really attractive and valuations are going to get much more
reasonable. I think exits are going to be the area that will be
difficult over the next stretch.

00:10:38:11 - 00:11:00:24
Speaker 2
I think the IPO market, stock market's gone, IPO market's going to be
tough and acquisitions might be difficult as well. But I think there
will be investment opportunities. Companies need to really focus on
their fundamentals. So I don't want to take too much time. I know that
there are a lot of startups that want to pitch themselves, so but
thank you for your time.

00:11:00:24 - 00:11:03:14
Speaker 2
And if anyone has any questions, I'll be here. Thanks.