May 21, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of Insurance Unplugged, host Lisa Wardlaw speaks with Valkyrie Holmes, CEO and co-founder of Phara, about the intersection of insurance, climate change, and technology. Valkyrie shares her journey from space tech to insurance, emphasizing the importance of understanding natural disaster risks and the role of AI in creating proactive solutions. The conversation explores how insurance can serve as a tool for resilience and the need for continuous engagement in the distribution process. In this conversation, Lisa Wardlaw and Valkyrie Holmes discuss the evolving landscape of the insurance industry, focusing on the importance of non-commoditized relationships, the role of distribution channels, and the challenges posed by data management. They explore the risks of non-renewal and the impact of AI on the industry, emphasizing the need for agents to adapt to new data-driven realities. The discussion also highlights the necessity of educating clients about their property risks and the importance of unlearning outdated beliefs within the industry.
Takeaways
Insurance underlies everything we do.
Natural disasters pose significant risks to property.
AI can enhance our understanding of climate risks.
Proactive risk management is essential for homeowners.
Education is key to reducing risk in insurance.
Insurance should be an active partnership with policyholders.
Understanding local risks can improve preparedness.
Technology can help predict and mitigate disaster impacts.
Insurance distribution must focus on delivering resilience.
Continuous engagement is crucial in the insurance process. Agents should focus on non-commoditized relationships.
Distribution channels must be partners in the insurance process.
Data management is a significant challenge for agents.
The risk of non-renewal is a critical concern for agents.
AI is reshaping the insurance landscape by influencing present decisions.
Understanding property risks is essential for clients.
The insurance industry needs to unlearn outdated beliefs.
Survivability should be a focus in underwriting.
Education on insurance policies is becoming more important.
Agents must adapt to the evolving data landscape.
Sound Bites
"Insurance underlies everything we do."
"We have this natural disaster problem."
"We need to minimize the cost barrier."
"We're helping you protect your home."
"Distribution channel being a partner"
"The risk of being priced out of the market"
"Insurance thinks very downstream"
"We need to think about survivability"
"Understand where your property is located"
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Insurance and Climate Challenges
02:28 Valkyrie's Journey into Insurance
05:59 Understanding Natural Disaster Risks
10:28 AI and Climate Risk Solutions
17:15 Proactive Risk Management Strategies
23:16 Distribution and Resilience in Insurance
24:11 The Importance of Non-Commoditized Relationships
24:57 Distribution Channels and Their Role in Insurance
26:50 Data Challenges in the Insurance Industry
28:12 The Risk of Non-Renewal and Coverage
30:32 AI's Role in Insurance: Pressuring the Present
32:02 Understanding AI in Insurance
37:16 Unlearning Beliefs in the Insurance Industry
42:12 Call to Action: Educating on Property Risks
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Insurance. Unplugged in the hot seat where
the complex world of insurance is laid bare.
Hosted by Lisa Wardfall, this podcast promises an unfiltered
glimpse into the industry like never before.
Each episode invites you to listen in on the candid
conversations that usually happen behind closed boardroom
doors. From deep dives with industry
(00:22):
leaders and thought leaders to innovative discussions with
minds shaping the future of insurance, we bring the most
genuine talks directly to your ears.
Our guests take the hot seat alongside me to explore the
inner workings, challenges and triumphs of the insurance world.
If you've ever wondered what goes on in the shadows of the
insurance industry, from the boardroom banter to the behind
(00:44):
the scenes strategies, this is your chance for a front row
seat. Prepare for unguarded,
enlightening and engaging discussions.
That cover every. Angle of Insurance presented in
a way that's both insightful andaccessible.
Welcome to the conversation. Welcome to Insurance Unplugged
in the hot Seat with Lisa Wardbaugh.
(01:06):
Welcome to today's episode of Insurance Unplugged, proudly
sponsored by Iris Insurtech, your gateway to the future of
insurance distribution. At Iris, we harness the power of
generative AI to revolutionize data processing and decision
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Our platform integrates Gen. AI to provide not just insights,
(01:27):
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AI is transforming the landscapeof insurance distribution today
(01:50):
on Insurance Unplugged. Welcome to another episode of
Insurance Unplugged. I'm your host, Lisa Wardlaw, and
I'm so excited to be joined today by.
Valkyrie Holmes, she is the CEO and Co founder of Fora Valkyrie.
Before we get into it, because we have a lot of ground to cover
on climate, on distribution, thereckoning of AI and how we can
(02:14):
actually, I'll just say, cut thesustainability impact.
So as we think about all that's going on with coverage gap of
the traditional uninsured, of that gap rising, one of my
favorite things when I met you Valkyrie is just how you're
looking to practically solve for.
That. So if you don't mind, I I know
(02:36):
that I I just like. It's like a.
New car, I've seen you and then you're.
Everywhere. And your background is something
that I'm just like super excitedabout.
And you know, I won't give it away, but from everywhere you've
gone, from NASA to SpaceX to insurance, I'm really, really
would love it if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to our
audience and just giving them a sense of why insurance, Like
(02:59):
there's so many places where youcould add value to our society
as a whole. And I am so grateful to know
with somebody with your conviction, passion, brainpower,
that you're also overtly choosing to come to insurance
and help us solve problems. So welcome to the hot seat.
(03:19):
Yeah, no, I mean like thank you so much for having me and I love
talking about this, especially for for people that are in kind
of the younger generations that are thinking about what is my
next move. And you know, the big thing that
got me into insurance and, and really had us thinking about,
OK, this is an angle that we can, that we can try to get into
from like a company building perspective or from a problem
(03:41):
solving perspective was the ideathat insurance underlies
everything we do. And if you think about it, like
everything you touch and interact with in your regular
life is insured in some way. And that starts to, you know,
pose a lot of really interestingquestions.
Like now I get on a plane and I know that there's, there's
towers and towers of insurance and I can buy insurance that's
(04:01):
for myself. And there's all these different
angles and companies and people we don't even see that are
helping sustain this infrastructure, this industry
that helps us all live more comfort several lives.
Like at the end of the day, we don't want people thinking about
the fact that, oh, I'm going to lose my property insurance this
year. Thinking about property
(04:22):
insurance all the time. You know, every day we want it
to be you get insurance and thisis something that you have, you
know, in case something bad happens, but that you don't have
to think about that every time you like go to an experimental
restaurant and have like raw fish or, you know, like, like
step in a car with so many cars on the road.
Like so, so that's one of the biggest things that I think is
(04:42):
just so fascinating is, is just there's, there's so much going
on and insurance that we don't even think about as regular
consumers, but it really sends alot of ripple effects.
So like you said, I am not from insurance, My family's not from
insurance. I did not come from any kind of
like academia type background. I grew up in Las Vegas and my
(05:04):
parents, even though they're thesmartest people I know, we're,
we're not in the in the realm oflike entrepreneurship or, or
anything, you know, even similarto.
So yeah. So I started getting into mostly
kind of innovation spaces withinthe space tech realm because I
got bored. Very standard tinkering in your.
(05:27):
Tinker with space, right? Why not?
I mean, and like, The thing is, I got the opportunity to which,
you know, I, I thank the stars everyday that I, that I got
that. And you know, when I was
younger, I, I got this internship with the NASA SEAS
Institute right out of high school, spent a little bit of
time on the geospatial side. I was monitoring low Earth orbit
(05:47):
satellites. And then I got recruited to go
to SpaceX on their commercial rideshare team by the previous
payloads director there. So, so it was essentially, OK,
what do companies need to get themselves into space?
How do we do those things and how do we customize the payload
for whatever experiment or, or companies we're, we're trying
to, to send there? And so I worked in in that space
(06:11):
for, for quite a little while. And then I wanted to work on
something in the climate area. That's something that a lot of
like, you know, Gen. Z thinks about.
But more importantly than that, it's a really interesting, like
very interconnected problem. And I think that was the thing
that excited me is not only doesthis touch every part of our of
our environment and you know, economy, but it is a problem
(06:34):
that consistently impacts peopleat the end of the day, like
people are are hit the most, youknow, impacted the most when a
natural disaster occurs, they lose all of their most valuable
assets, et cetera, et cetera. So I started getting to natural
disaster risk again when I was pretty young, more on the
wildfire side because I had donethis like tech hackathon that a
(06:56):
bunch of my friends did and it was around moon shot technology.
So like, how do we get somewherein the next five years and solve
a really big problem? And initially when you look into
something like wildfire, it's like, you know, we have federal
funding, we have firefighters, we have like we have, we have
things that can solve this. Like this is not a big issue.
This was like 6 years ago at this point.
But then you start to look into it and you're like, oh, OK, huge
(07:18):
population increases in these areas.
Because the population has been increasing so rapidly, we've had
to build buildings very fast, which typically means cheap
materials. And we have all this brush that
hasn't been cleared. So it starts to paint this
picture of oh OK, we actually have it's problem.
We call it good enough, right? Yeah, yeah.
(07:39):
And it's the good enough and it's the it's not gonna happen
to me. And we talk about that a lot in
insurance, but it's it's very, very real.
And we saw that with Palisades. It's an area that burns pretty
rapidly every 30 to 40 years. And we had this, you know,
misconception that it wasn't gonna happen again.
So, So wildfire was the first thing that they got me into this
(08:01):
space. And the connection between
wildfire and insurance is reallyaround, OK, we have this natural
disaster problem, we have a barrier to entry problem for
people to reduce their risk. Like people either don't know
what their risk is on their property or if they do, they
don't really have the means or afinancial incentives to to do
(08:22):
this work and maintain it year over year.
And so the great thing about insurance is that renewals
happen every year and it's something everyone relies on,
whether we like it or not. And that provides us with really
interesting existing infrastructure to try to create
some kind of solution around it.So fell in love with a problem.
Insurance is kind of the mode oftransportation for the greater
(08:43):
solution, which is ultimately how do we keep peoples homes
from burning down or getting blown away in some kind of
natural disaster. So that's a lot, but.
No, no, I love it. And I love, first of all, I love
the connection and correlation too, because I always say so.
I mean, we haven't talked about this before Valkyrie, but I come
from a liberal arts background and I was majoring in chemistry
(09:05):
and minoring in economics. I know that's such a weird thing
to do at a liberal arts school, but why not?
And I left chemistry and I endedup pivoting into my econ degree
and then I went into accounting.But the point of all that is
everyone always says, why insurance?
And I was like, because of the economic viability to, you know,
(09:25):
basic, well performing nations, it's all rooted in economics and
financial services, no matter what people think, because of
the assets that we own and the stability that we provide
economically is such a huge force of good.
And so I always think about thatand you know, like, I, I think
(09:45):
it's interesting. Clearly now the, the climate is
even more, I'd say a Gen. Z and, and societal purpose.
But to your point, it's always been an intricate, complex
problem to solve. It's not one-dimensional, it's
often multi dimensional. So I often think you get really
astute thinkers in insurance, really complex, dexterous Poly,
(10:11):
a lot of Poly mass trying to solve on all sorts of planes and
dimensionality because we can't just solve it one way.
So I really love what brought you here and it was one of the
things that drew me to want you to be on insurance unplugged as
soon as I heard you speak and say, let's go.
Like, I think a little bit deeper because I think that, you
(10:31):
know, as much as we say we want to solve for climate risk, a lot
of times people are like, okay, here we go again, AI and climate
risk. And I'll even stand up on stage
as I was at a recent conference where you and I were both there
at Climate Tech Connects. And I was like, listen, we're
not gonna solve for actually climate change in the immediate
(10:54):
term, right? That's a different trajectory
and there's amazing people working on that.
That's really not what I'm focused on.
I'm solving for this immediacy of affordability of coverage gap
of the ability to predict and prevent.
Or if we need to repair and restore, the people have the
means by which they can repair and restore.
So how do you think about this with FARA and if you don't mind
(11:20):
taking the the listeners througha little bit of what is AI based
survivability? How do you think of scoring?
Like what's different? Because clearly, you know,
generically our industry knows how to score.
So like I like how you were talking about like making it
something that people can actually interact with and use.
Give us a little bit of a sense of how you're thinking about
(11:43):
this in a different way. Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I, I think from from theclimate perspective, you're
right. It's a very broad kind of just
like amalgamous BLOB that like you say, climate change and some
people. Their brains shut.
Off they don't want to hear about it.
There's other people that are really engaged with a lot of
like climate policy. You know there's there's all
(12:05):
these different ranges, but we really at this point haven't
made it as interactive as I think we need it to be.
We haven't made it as almost kind of like in your face in
terms of how this impacts me as I think we need it to be.
So. So that's kind of like one of
the big goals with FORA is, OK, let's say you have a property
(12:25):
that's in a high risk area and you don't know what the risk of
this property is. So you're in this area that is
wildfire prone, flood prone, hurricane prone, whatever, and
have no idea whether or not yourproperty will will still be
there just from a pure like weather, extreme weather
perspective. So that's the first layer that
we need to get people to understand.
And and that's already happened in quite a few states.
(12:47):
Like, you know, if you're in theMidwest tornado Valley area that
you need to have certain retrofits on your property.
You know that if you're in Florida after a certain, you
know, year, the building codes are up to standard with
something like hurricane, very severe winds.
And the same thing is true with like California after a massive
earthquake, all those codes get updated to withstand the next
(13:08):
disaster that we're looking at. So, so that starts to happen as
a baseline. And then the second part of that
is, OK, I know I'm in a high risk area.
I know these things are in placeand I know generally what like
the risk of my area is. Now I need to understand, OK, if
a disaster does happen in this area, what is the likelihood of
my property to still be there after the fact?
(13:29):
And that's exactly what for I does.
So, so it's like, it's like. Making it real, it's like
looking at a prediction and saying what's my house going to
look like if this does happen? Exactly.
Yeah, because then it pulls us back to OK, not only is this
area maybe my neighbors, you know, maybe like the the city
that I live in, the town that I live in might be impacted by a
(13:51):
wildfire. But but not me though, because
because I'm in some other area or, or the winds won't come this
way and and you know, bring the embers to my.
Door facing, facing our own riskscore has always been whether
it's in mortality or property or, you know, you know, an
accident, your home or whatever.You know, we, we are great as
(14:14):
humans as denial, right? Like, not me won't happen to me.
So yeah, I think you're you're right, Like, right.
Like looking at it is very different than avoiding the
thinking of it. And like, even with that
baseline, right, like you, you understand you're in an area
that's wildfire prone and then, you know, and then that just
kind of becomes a part of your daily, daily life, daily
(14:36):
reality, which means that you don't think about it as much,
which means you don't do as muchmitigation or retrofit.
So, so we looked at that. We were originally, you know,
working in grant reimbursement agencies and nonprofits in these
very heavily disaster prone areas to say, hey, you as a
homeowner, this is what what your risk is.
This is the thing. These are the things you have to
(14:57):
do to reduce your risk. And then here are benefits that
you qualify for as part of this program.
So you could qualify for $10,000grants or you spend $5000.
You get that all back if you do these things for the next two
years, right? So there are different
variations of that, but what we found was that policyholders
(15:18):
when faced with these kinds of programs may do them, but they
don't necessarily maintain them.So like I always give the
example of like you can give someone $10,000 to reduce the
risk on their property, but two years later, it's right back
where it was. Because the grant programs like
that, there isn't any follow up baked into that process.
Like why would I continue to maintain if I've already done
(15:40):
this thing, I've checked it off,I'm good, when in reality you're
not good, right? We approached insurance.
So we started asking the question of like, OK, we need to
remove the barrier to entry of education and then we need to
remove the barrier to entry of cost.
So how do we get this information to people that's
customized to their property to make it real for them?
And then also how do we minimizethat like cost barrier that it
(16:01):
takes for people to actually know this information?
So we didn't want the consumer to to really pay anything in in
all reality to get access to this, to be able to reduce their
risk. And again, the great thing about
insurance is that every year youget renewed or you don't and
then it's a different question. And so in my ideal world, when
(16:25):
FORA is everywhere, in every disaster all over the US, our,
our goal is to say, OK, let's say I'm a homeowner, I live in
Napa Valley, 100% high risk for wildfire.
And March rolls around and I realized my insurance policies
renewing in May. And I make a plan.
I say, OK, by May, I have to clear the debris off of my roof.
(16:46):
That happened when, you know, the winter came by.
I have to prune back my trees, remove the logs from under my
deck. You know, like I do these things
maybe like 3 to 5 things to maintain my risk and therefore I
maintain my insurance policy. And now it's an active
partnership like it was originally intended to be.
(17:06):
Instead of you get insurance andyou forget about it and then you
realize you're not insured for the right things or, or you're,
you know, a wildfire comes through and you lose everything
when you didn't even really knowthat that was an issue.
You know what I mean? Yeah, You know, I, I think it's,
I think that's so important and I love the way you're breaking
it down because like psychologically, right, as
(17:28):
humans, even even as insurance professionals, we all avoid
things until they're imminent and in our face, right.
Like, right. Like the time to act is always
when it becomes, it becomes realwhen you make it real.
And then we're all like, OK, nowI've got to get, I mean, just
like I think of all the millionsof things I have to do with my
house and they all get de prioritized unless they're like
(17:50):
real easy, effortless and apparent.
And for me, it's also can I outsource that and get it done
reliably, incredibly right? Because I'm in a stage of my
life where I'm like, it's much easier if I can pick up the
phone or text somebody and say, get this done versus me
physically having to go like carve out a weekend to do it.
But you know, another thing, Valkyrie, that I wanted to ask
you about is I think there's a, I'll quote a cadence, like a pre
(18:13):
renewal cadence, A seasonality to things.
But then I also think, and I'm curious to know where your, your
vision for this is. And I'm going to use my dad and
I'm going to use my brother because they live in Fort Myers,
FL. So right there, you know,
they're always getting hurricanewarnings and I'm going to use
the shutters that they have to put out.
(18:34):
They like, so they have hurricane grain glass, right,
because they're, they're, they were built post Ida or Ian.
But the point is, I always will talk to my dad and my brother as
a storm, as being like it's coming.
It's coming. How's it going to turn?
And my, my dad and brother are both in the avionics business.
So hear me out. And it's always like the effort
(18:56):
of putting up the shutters versus the predictability of the
pattern versus the time in whichit may or may not emerge.
And they always get into this debate of, you know, you have
until this moment in time to decide, you know, like, right.
It's like, it's like, and then there's different people who
have different risk tolerances for like, what is that moment?
You know, maybe if you're elderly, you know, you may have
(19:18):
hired somebody to put up the shutters and blah, blah, blah.
And my dad always jokes that that he goes snowbirds will come
and put up their shutters, but then they, to your point about
fire risk, they're in New York and they won't take them off
because they've left the city for the storm.
So my question to you in a roundabout way is what would the
vision be? Or is there a vision for more
(19:39):
real time as events are unfolding?
Because there's the, I'll call it the hygiene that we need to
do. It's just like keeping yourself
healthy, right? And then there's the this is
emerging and Valkyrie, like, I just know.
And I'm yeah, I'm not giving youthis as an insurance
professional. I'm giving you this as like
somebody that listens to my family.
It's like these debatable moments.
(20:00):
And I'm thinking, I mean, I livein Georgia.
I would be like, put the shutters up.
What are you doing? I get them done.
Like get it like so. So how?
Do you know exactly? That too, Valkyrie.
And what is your vision for Flora in those moments?
Right. Yeah, No, I mean this is a
question we ask all the time andwe actually started to do a lot
of different testing around the weather side of what we do.
(20:20):
So you know as like a general primer like for a built, like
our team built these survivability models that say
for the structure and all the elements on this parcel, this is
the likelihood of survival for your, you know, independent
property. So it's saying here are
materials, conditions, resilience characteristics,
action items, things like that, that tell you what your risk is
(20:44):
in comparison to all the other properties and then also tells
you what you can do to to improve that score.
And so, so because we're not really focused as much on like
the weather data of will disaster happen in this area, we
can get way more specific on theactual structure itself and how
that correlates with the score in terms of survival.
(21:05):
Now with that, we, it's not us saying that we don't think
weather is valuable. Like we need to understand when
a disaster is coming 100%. And we started to experiment
with this idea of coupling weather alerts with what we
already know about the risk on the property to incentivize
people to do that work in the event of some kind of disaster
(21:26):
occurring. So like you can imagine, OK,
you're, you're in a hurricane prone area and you've done an
assessment, you did an assessment in December.
So you probably aren't going to be doing too much on your
property to like mitigate that, that property because you're not
thinking about hurricanes as much.
But let's say, OK, within the next week, we have a ton of
(21:49):
hurricane alerts that say, hey, in your area, there's likely to
be an event. We know that you have, you know,
shutters that you need to put upor, or different like flood
protection measures in differentzones or, you know, you need to
get your garage wind rated for something, you know, so, so it's
hey, we know you have these elements.
We know they could be better. Here are things that we suggest
(22:12):
you do in the next week to prepare for this incoming storm
that help reduce your risk. So it's like a more proactive
engagement that doesn't just say, OK, bring your car in in
the event of a hailstorm. It's it's, you know, there's a
lot of things that you can do that that can drastically reduce
your risk in all of these different fields.
And I think it's an understatement to say that the
(22:33):
insurance industry has an image problem in, in like the
traditional media. And that's a really great way
for for insurance companies and an agents to really advocate on
behalf of their consumers. It's, you know, we care about
your property, not from, you know, like it's, it's from a
monetary standpoint from us. Sure.
Like we're going to be transparent about that that, but
but it's also, you know, we're helping you protect your home
(22:57):
and, and the thing that is many people's largest asset.
So, so we're giving you the tools that you need to reduce
your risk and in the event of a disaster, here are things that
you can use to make it a much more survivable outcome for you
on average. Yeah, I think that's so
critical. Let's let's take it then into
distribution because I think of distribution often, you know,
(23:21):
the side part or neglected in this climate interface, right,
because we think of it as at point of sale and we often talk
about an insurance, how do we get continual engagement and
continual value. And so for me, I don't think of
distribution as just a sales function.
I really think it as you know, delivering resilience, like how
do we really use our agents in our distribution network, which
(23:43):
we are like most people coming in into insurance, just think
we'll connect to distribution network done.
And then they try for like they try, try, try.
And I'm sure far as experience this Valkyrie, it's like bang my
head against the wall. How do I get through?
Because it you think of it as a normal distribution function and
(24:03):
then insurance is kind of like it's own version of
distribution. But I do think it's really
important as agents still vie for non commoditized
relationships, right? Relationships that aren't direct
to consumer relationships are, that are not just done through
online commoditized shopping. And I've actually got a podcast
(24:25):
that's dropping after yours where we're talking about really
like the ROI beyond the obvious,right, which are all these
intrinsic things. You know, I think that with what
you're doing with the localization of AI, the
personalization of like knowing your risk on your property,
knowing the things that you can take action on.
(24:45):
Do you see the distribution channel being a partner in this
or like how do you see this working with distribution?
I'm curious. I mean, I think we, they
definitely have to be a partner,you know, in all reality.
So we've talked to quite a few, you know, companies that, that
are on the distribution side andwe, we get a couple different
pushbacks from, you know, from people.
(25:08):
The first thing is, is we know margins are, are slimmer for for
people that are in distribution.So we're trying to get them as
much business as possible for aslow of a cost as possible while
still creating that relationshipwith your with your clients,
right. So, so that's one part.
The second part is you don't necessarily want to be a big
burden on the insured because then that strains a
(25:31):
relationship. You might not, you know, get
them to to place properly. And then that's also a different
factor. So, so there's these two kind of
like poles at play where it's you want to give the customer
what they need to succeed to geta policy, but then you also
don't want it to be too much of A burden, but you want to pay
someone else to take off some ofthat burden.
(25:51):
But you know, it's pretty slim. So, so we know that these are
two kind of like forward facing battles that that we're coming
up on. And I think the reality of it is
now insurance companies are using way more data that agents
and brokers have to be more aware of that they factor into
their decisions. So like it's hard to place
(26:12):
business in a place like California right now.
And if you have to dip into the non admitted market to get a
policy placed at all, you know, like there's there's something
to be said about the fact that there's like more non admitted
companies that are popping up inthe space.
But, but it's really hard for for someone that gets cancelled
by their insurance company and has no idea why.
(26:34):
They just think they're in a, they know they're in a wildfire
zone and that's and that's it. That's going to become slowly
and slowly, like just one data element that they use.
Well, in Bob Green, like I used,I did a ton of work on the Gosh,
that's because I was kind of going down this geospatial track
right when I think, you know, wewent from 200 data points to
2000 data points with like hazard hub alone, right?
(26:58):
Like crazy volumes of data that the agents and the Agency
systems are just not equipped tohandle.
They they are unequivocally not equipped to handle data.
I mean, Valkyrie, they don't even have concepts like master
data management, which means they can't handle, you know,
source A said the roof type was this and source B said the roof
(27:21):
type is that. And as you and I both know,
there's lots of that, that sophisticated solutions like
yours and carriers and all theseothers that we've had to like
work our way through. But the one thing that a agent
does have to deal with is the risk of non renewal, the risk of
being priced out of the market and the risk of not having
coverage, right? So if you are an independent
(27:43):
agent and you are serving your customer, the last thing you
want is for that renewal to comeup and you to have been priced
out of coverage for your insuredto say I can't afford insurance.
Maybe I can just have a partial I'm making it up parametric
product. But you know like, hey, I don't
(28:06):
care what kind of deal you can get me.
I'm no longer air quote insurable.
And I think to me that is the hook.
That is the hook that distribution does care about
Valkyrie because their job is tofind solutions and offerings to
cover the risk of their customers.
So to me, that's why they can't be left out of this equation,
(28:27):
right? Especially as you articulated
it, right? Like there's these things that I
can do before renewal to show upto not come to that renewal
table and that renewal cycle andsay, oops, you've got brushed
underneath your house, you've got logs over here, etcetera,
right? Like, so I think that that's
going to be really important foryou all.
(28:48):
And there's always this interesting, you know, I'll just
go ahead and ask you the question because we can say that
on the hot seat, we can say whatever we want.
There's this interesting dichotomy, which is the carriers
and reinsurers have a lot of data, but because the agents are
independent, ergo they could useit for multiple.
Like, you know, I could place you on my competitors, right?
(29:09):
Because I'm an independent agent.
There's always been this, well, I'm not going to give you my
data. So that's actually a lot of the
reason why the distributors don't have the data that the
carriers have. Like if we're, if we're keeping
it real, right? It's cuz I always say, why would
I give you my car to take somebody else out on a date?
Uh huh, right. Like.
Yeah. So how do?
(29:30):
You think about that. Yeah, like, I mean it honestly
makes sense, right? Like if I'm an insurer and like,
I think we forget a lot of the time that if I'm an insurance
company and I cancel a policy, the likelihood of that like
policy holder, that home owner to come back to me, unless it's
like a very, very strict, you know, market where they can't
(29:52):
get anything else after that nonrenewal or cancellation is very
slim. Like when you cancel a policy,
you're losing that policy for life in in most cases.
And so it makes sense where, where you know, if you're trying
to win over a customer, every insurance company thinks that
they have better data that can they can help them in the
underwriting process. And from my perspective, the
(30:15):
carriers that start to use more survivability information and
like be more specific on the properties that they're that
they're looking at, those are the ones that will come out on
top in these markets. It's the ones that have left are
reevaluating testing in these different markets with
survivability information, with structure specific analysis.
And the reason why we got into it is because that is clearly
(30:38):
what we're moving towards. And a good way to solve the
problem. It's, it's the people that that
embrace that and then move that into these markets to take up
more of that share, that market share, like they're going to
come out on top. And at that point, then it
becomes more of a question of, OK, if I'm an agent, I'm working
with my clients on placing business in these areas.
(30:58):
I know some of these carriers have come back.
What are these carriers looking at that I've never looked at
before that now I have to educate my clients on like the,
the whole agent broker relationship is just so
education focused and we, we continue to adapt with whatever,
whatever the carriers are are using because that sets our
baseline. So the people that are in the
(31:21):
carrier space that use this information, they're going to be
way ahead of the game. And then the brokers and agents
that learn about that information as they get adopted,
I think they're going to be ableto serve their clients the best.
Totally, totally agree with you.Let's now take it into I always
have to talk about AI, right? And I think that you said once
(31:42):
that AI doesn't predict the future, it pressures the
present. Do you mind unpacking that a
little bit more? Yeah, I mean, so, so something
about which I love like, well, Imean like, like something about
just like the the AI space in general, specifically with
insurance is I have to do a lot of AI presentations in
(32:05):
insurance. And the question always comes up
of, you know, like, like lately,how do I, how do I explain this
to a regulator that I'm trying to use this for my pricing or
whatever algorithms and I'm trying to, you know, sift
through for that year. And from us, we have approached
FORA from a very non AI angle, at least initially.
(32:29):
And the reason for that is because when we first got a new
insurance and we were thinking about, OK, how do we structure
these models to the point where it, it makes the most sense for
the industry? That question came up all the
time. Like, are you going to be an AI
company? And the answer to that is no,
because that's like as big of a deterrent as trying to explain
to someone how we're different than a traditional climate
model. Like there's one hoop to get
(32:51):
over, which is you're, you're used to models telling you where
a disaster is likely to happen. We're telling you if a disaster
does happen, this is the likelihood of your structure
still being there. So that's like, that's a hoop we
have to jump through initially. And then you're telling me we
also have to jump through the hoop of like, this is a black
box? Explain ability, even the choice
of and credibility. It's like rating verifiability
(33:12):
and regulator approval. Yeah, good luck dude.
It's, it's like even the most transparent AI models, you're
still going to have to run into,into all of these different
things that, you know, help explain.
OK, In the 0.001% chance that there is some bias or something
that happens that we can't traceback or that we can't explain
(33:33):
or, or it takes us way longer toexplain because we can't
pinpoint. These are the things that go
into it like I, I, I think there, there's a lot going on in
the space that is making it veryclose to being a truly viable
solution for the industry. But there's a reason why we
didn't leap into it right away. It was, it was we have to prove
(33:53):
out the fact that that survivability data is necessary
and we're, and we're continuing to do that all the time.
We're like predicting survivability events with 95%
accuracy and we've been doing that for the last few years.
So, so once we get that across the finish line, then it's OK.
How do we optimize? And you know, there's.
I'm gonna interrupt you just to say like, yeah, exclamation
(34:15):
point on that. So Valkyrie and I'll, I mean,
I'm, I'm a I'm a born and bred accountant originally.
Like I, you know, I started withaccounting and whenever somebody
says like AI powered accounting,I look at them and I'm like,
like, are you mental? Like what are you even talking
about? So I always think about and I
think about things like event driven.
I think about things like dynamic.
I think about things like real time.
(34:36):
I think about like foundation. Then I think about like layering
the tooling as a fit for purposeto optimize.
So I love the way you're leaninginto that, which first of all,
by the way, anybody listening, if you're buying solutions, of
course, this is the non marketing reality of what people
(34:58):
should be building. If they're not actually saying
what Valkyrie is saying to you, then they are selling you like a
witchery brew on the corner. Because what she is saying is
you have to build a foundation and you have to build a
foundation in a reliable, credible way.
Now, does that mean that every stream of every data point that
(35:18):
Valkyrie is talking about doesn't somehow use a little bit
of seasoning of AII would say probably not because we're all
doing things like, you know, maybe we're reading a document
or maybe we're extracting, right, Valkyrie And I love that
you're not leaning with a like AI, you know, AI first or AI
native, like you're using it, I assume across your spectrum of
(35:41):
solutioning when it has a reallydecisive fit for purpose.
But you don't lean in and say it's AI you know first.
Yeah. Well, cuz at the end of the day,
like we're getting to the point in the next few years where you
say you're an AI company and it's like, So what everyone is
like, like that is not a differentiator at all.
I'm a tech company. Cool.
(36:01):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, right.
It's still very much a buzzword.I think it'll still be for the
next few years. But but everyone like it is so
accessible now and it's and I follow these trends of like
very, you know, young solo founders use AI tools to create
this company company and they grow it to 100 million in
revenue and sell it to a huge sell it to Google or Microsoft.
(36:26):
The reality of people creating things with these tools is
becoming more and more more and more of a reality.
And so I think we just have to remember that it's as as more
and more people use it, it becomes less and less
impressive. And it's not really even in a
big legacy industry like insurance, like it will be a
(36:47):
part of the conversation, but much less from like AAI is so
unknown to us and more of like, what are you actually doing with
this tool? I think.
It doesn't tell us anything. I think it's really interesting
and I'm going to kind of do a little rapid fire for a second
with you. And, and my first one would be
what's 1 belief the industry needs to unlearn?
(37:09):
Because I think it's actually packed in that, which is I'll
give you my view of that and then I'll ask you for your rapid
fire. My view is that we think of
everything as layering on top. And the thing that we have to
unlearn is we have to be able toactually RIP the muscle memory
apart and to actually create newmuscle memory.
And so I think of these things as foundational.
(37:31):
I think as an industry, we stilldo not have dynamic real time
processing and we are in a worldthat evolves dynamically every
single day. So my, my thing to unlearn would
be like, you know, you can't just massage the muscle.
You've actually got to RIP the muscle in order to break its
muscle memory and then go back and put it together.
(37:53):
So OK Valkyrie, now that I've put myself in the hot seat, I'm
going to rapid fire you. What's 1 belief you think the
industry needs to unlearn? Yeah, I think the insurance
industry thinks very downstream.And what I mean by that is, is
there's there's problems we can solve right now that in terms of
like underwriting efficiency andportfolio management and like
(38:14):
using tools to to make an underwriter, you know, know more
things in a smaller amount of time.
But at some point we have to think about, OK, the actual
policies that are coming in, arethey are they survivable or not?
Like our, the upstream approach to that is OK, not how can we
underwrite a policy as fast as possible, but how do we make
(38:35):
this policy one that doesn't need to be underwritten in 10
minutes, it can be underwritten in five, you know what I mean?
So just more of that really addressing the root cause of the
problem as opposed to even, you know, something like just trying
to be as profitable as possible in the underwriting department,
which I know is hard, but we canbe profitable other places also.
(38:57):
All right, so the next one I want to ask you is you could
just what's the one thing you admire about old school
insurance? Yeah, I mean, like insurance has
been around for a long time and there were a lot of questions I
had about just like why processes were the way it was.
And because I was outside of theindustry, I got to ask all the
(39:17):
dumb questions. But insurance is so like we have
thought about everything like like the risk engineering side
is, is just, it's just totally insane.
So insurance really knows what they're doing when it comes to
assessing risk and assigning those priorities.
And now I think we just need to to add more variable variables
(39:39):
to that and you know, make make those processes again more
upstream thinking. All right, So my last rapid fire
question for you before we splitstar signature call to action,
what was the moment you realizedbuilding this is not optional,
it's inevitable. I Valkyrie have to do this?
(40:00):
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I, I don't know if it
was actually. Yeah, it was a single moment.
It so so I, I started learning about just like Wildfire
originally and I was talking to all of these homeowners and I
was talking to this guy Paul, who his policy was cancelled.
He had had the same carrier for over a decade.
(40:21):
And to put it into perspective, he lived in Napa Valley, but he
so it was 100% high risk for wildfire.
But this guy was like treasurer of the Napa Valley firewise
community was like the guy that gave grants to people to reduce
their risk. Basically lived in a metal box
in the middle of the forest. Like this guy was not burning
down. And then he went through this
whole process with his insurancecompany to try to figure out
(40:43):
like, why did they cancel me, you know, right before wildfire
season 2. And he finally gets off the
phone after a few hours and theysend him an e-mail with a
picture of his home. Only it's not his home that they
flagged. It's his neighbour's because his
neighbors had some like, extra vegetation in their yard or
something. So like, at that point, I was
like, OK, there's clearly this is hurting people.
(41:06):
There's clearly something that we can be doing to improve this
process. And it's not like we don't have
the data know when there's vegetation in someone's yard.
But now we have to make it more transparent for people to a
understand what that means, but then also B do what they need to
do to fix it, to make it, you know, more profitable.
Part of that business, what a great inevitability call as
(41:28):
well. I I love that Valkyrie.
All right. So as my listeners know, on
every episode, our call to action is delivered by our guest
as a what we do advocate everyone start doing, stop doing
and continue to do so. It's over to you, Valkyrie.
Right, I would like everyone to start understanding where their
(41:53):
property is located. Like just just educating
yourself doesn't have to be a big hole project.
Just like like what is your natural disaster score?
Like what like what does my property look like?
Like this is obviously a shameless plug, but like you can
go to the Forrest site and take a free assessment and just like
understand what you need to do as a baseline for your property.
(42:14):
So just would love for people tojust like have that baseline
going into an insurance market or going into a, you know,
natural disaster season. Something I, I hope people stop
doing is after a natural disaster, going on social media
and claiming to know about the infrastructure around how people
(42:35):
respond to those events. Like after the Palisades fire, I
had to get off of my phone because there's so many people
talking about like, like there wasn't enough water there and
like, we don't have enough resources.
And there's, there's going to beNuggets of truth in post posts
and what people say all the time, but just directly engaging
with that immediately after people's livelihoods are are
(42:59):
screwed up for the next 5 years like that.
Just we got to stop doing that. It's my is my kind of message
there. And remind me, what is the last
thing? The last one is continue.
I think people need to continue like trying to learn a little
bit more about their insurance policies.
Like I, I've seen the trend of people starting to ask more
(43:22):
questions around insurance. And even now like, like
companies like Lemonade are marketing towards like younger
and younger people because of like the renter's market.
But that means that inherently younger people are learning
about their insurance process and we need to be able to ask
those questions. So I love the fact that people
are asking questions, doing these things that educate
(43:43):
themselves already and just making them more specific.
I think is is great. I love that and I, I love
hearing it from your lens. I first of all, to all my
listeners, if you do not follow Valkyrie and her for a team, you
have to. She is just not only dynamic,
but just everywhere. She's everywhere.
I would say that Valkyrie from aposition of respect because
(44:05):
usually people are trying to chase me around the world, her
team and Farah is setting the globe.
I won't stay on fire because I know we're going to use our
risk. Words.
We're we're. Energizing the globe with
everything that they're doing. They're showing up at Lloyd's,
they're showing up at conferences, they're on
webinars, they're on podcasts. And I tell you right now, we're
(44:27):
all going to look back to this moment and be like they were the
one of the energizers that we all needed.
So I'm very excited to say that I had you on my podcast,
Valkyrie. So thank you for being again,
you know, again, to everyone listening, just the the real
summary, we don't sell risk, we inherit it.
And Valkyrie is not waiting for a better model.
She's building one. I encourage you to put your
(44:51):
status quo thinking aside, to listen, to make it easier for
teams like Fora to get in the room and talk to you about new
ways of layering into the infrastructure in the industry
that we already have. She's not saying replace, she's
not saying throughout, she's saying like add this
dimensionality in and for all mylegacy experienced eras of
(45:16):
people out there, give them the time of day.
They have a message and it can help.
And for our distributors listening in, we need this at
the front end, wink, wink. You need to be sitting there
guiding your customers through this level of preparation and
risk mitigation. So, Valkyrie, thank you for
(45:36):
being a guest on Insurance Unplugged today.
And to all of our listeners, stay informed, stay curious and
stay tuned in until next time. Today's episode of Insurance
Unplugged, the AI and distribution series, is proudly
sponsored by Iris and Suretech, your gateway to the future of
insurance distribution. Iris harnesses the power of
(45:57):
generative AI to transform data processing and decision making
across the distribution landscape.
The Iris platform integrates AI driven decision engines, dynamic
form generation and configurableworkflows, all underpinned by
continuous data quality management.
Discover how Iris is powering smarter operations and more
(46:18):
efficient distribution with cutting Edge AI setting a new
standard of excellence across the entire industry.
Insurance. Unplugged in the hot seat where
the complex world of insurance is laid bare.
Hosted by Lisa Wardfall, this podcast promises an unfiltered
glimpse into the industry like never before.
Each episode invites you to listen in on the candid
conversations that usually happen behind closed boardroom
doors. From deep dives with industry
(00:22):
leaders and thought leaders to innovative discussions with
minds shaping the future of insurance, we bring the most
genuine talks directly to your ears.
Our guests take the hot seat alongside me to explore the
inner workings, challenges and triumphs of the insurance world.
If you've ever wondered what goes on in the shadows of the
insurance industry, from the boardroom banter to the behind
(00:44):
the scenes strategies, this is your chance for a front row
seat. Prepare for unguarded,
enlightening and engaging discussions.
That cover every. Angle of Insurance presented in
a way that's both insightful andaccessible.
Welcome to the conversation. Welcome to Insurance Unplugged
in the hot Seat with Lisa Wardbaugh.
(01:06):
Welcome to today's episode of Insurance Unplugged, proudly
sponsored by Iris Insurtech, your gateway to the future of
insurance distribution. At Iris, we harness the power of
generative AI to revolutionize data processing and decision
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Our platform integrates Gen. AI to provide not just insights,
(01:27):
but actionable intelligence, configurable workflows, and
dynamic form generation, all underpinned by continuous data
quality management. Discover how Iris is pioneering
smarter, more efficient operations in the insurance
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excellence. Let's dive into how Gen.
AI is transforming the landscapeof insurance distribution today
(01:50):
on Insurance Unplugged. Welcome to another episode of
Insurance Unplugged. I'm your host, Lisa Wardlaw, and
I'm so excited to be joined today by.
Valkyrie Holmes, she is the CEO and Co founder of Fora Valkyrie.
Before we get into it, because we have a lot of ground to cover
on climate, on distribution, thereckoning of AI and how we can
(02:14):
actually, I'll just say, cut thesustainability impact.
So as we think about all that's going on with coverage gap of
the traditional uninsured, of that gap rising, one of my
favorite things when I met you Valkyrie is just how you're
looking to practically solve for.
That. So if you don't mind, I I know
(02:36):
that I I just like. It's like a.
New car, I've seen you and then you're.
Everywhere. And your background is something
that I'm just like super excitedabout.
And you know, I won't give it away, but from everywhere you've
gone, from NASA to SpaceX to insurance, I'm really, really
would love it if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself to our
audience and just giving them a sense of why insurance, Like
(02:59):
there's so many places where youcould add value to our society
as a whole. And I am so grateful to know
with somebody with your conviction, passion, brainpower,
that you're also overtly choosing to come to insurance
and help us solve problems. So welcome to the hot seat.
(03:19):
Yeah, no, I mean like thank you so much for having me and I love
talking about this, especially for for people that are in kind
of the younger generations that are thinking about what is my
next move. And you know, the big thing that
got me into insurance and, and really had us thinking about,
OK, this is an angle that we can, that we can try to get into
from like a company building perspective or from a problem
(03:41):
solving perspective was the ideathat insurance underlies
everything we do. And if you think about it, like
everything you touch and interact with in your regular
life is insured in some way. And that starts to, you know,
pose a lot of really interestingquestions.
Like now I get on a plane and I know that there's, there's
towers and towers of insurance and I can buy insurance that's
(04:01):
for myself. And there's all these different
angles and companies and people we don't even see that are
helping sustain this infrastructure, this industry
that helps us all live more comfort several lives.
Like at the end of the day, we don't want people thinking about
the fact that, oh, I'm going to lose my property insurance this
year. Thinking about property
(04:22):
insurance all the time. You know, every day we want it
to be you get insurance and thisis something that you have, you
know, in case something bad happens, but that you don't have
to think about that every time you like go to an experimental
restaurant and have like raw fish or, you know, like, like
step in a car with so many cars on the road.
Like so, so that's one of the biggest things that I think is
(04:42):
just so fascinating is, is just there's, there's so much going
on and insurance that we don't even think about as regular
consumers, but it really sends alot of ripple effects.
So like you said, I am not from insurance, My family's not from
insurance. I did not come from any kind of
like academia type background. I grew up in Las Vegas and my
(05:04):
parents, even though they're thesmartest people I know, we're,
we're not in the in the realm oflike entrepreneurship or, or
anything, you know, even similarto.
So yeah. So I started getting into mostly
kind of innovation spaces withinthe space tech realm because I
got bored. Very standard tinkering in your.
(05:27):
Tinker with space, right? Why not?
I mean, and like, The thing is, I got the opportunity to which,
you know, I, I thank the stars everyday that I, that I got
that. And you know, when I was
younger, I, I got this internship with the NASA SEAS
Institute right out of high school, spent a little bit of
time on the geospatial side. I was monitoring low Earth orbit
(05:47):
satellites. And then I got recruited to go
to SpaceX on their commercial rideshare team by the previous
payloads director there. So, so it was essentially, OK,
what do companies need to get themselves into space?
How do we do those things and how do we customize the payload
for whatever experiment or, or companies we're, we're trying
to, to send there? And so I worked in in that space
(06:11):
for, for quite a little while. And then I wanted to work on
something in the climate area. That's something that a lot of
like, you know, Gen. Z thinks about.
But more importantly than that, it's a really interesting, like
very interconnected problem. And I think that was the thing
that excited me is not only doesthis touch every part of our of
our environment and you know, economy, but it is a problem
(06:34):
that consistently impacts peopleat the end of the day, like
people are are hit the most, youknow, impacted the most when a
natural disaster occurs, they lose all of their most valuable
assets, et cetera, et cetera. So I started getting to natural
disaster risk again when I was pretty young, more on the
wildfire side because I had donethis like tech hackathon that a
(06:56):
bunch of my friends did and it was around moon shot technology.
So like, how do we get somewherein the next five years and solve
a really big problem? And initially when you look into
something like wildfire, it's like, you know, we have federal
funding, we have firefighters, we have like we have, we have
things that can solve this. Like this is not a big issue.
This was like 6 years ago at this point.
But then you start to look into it and you're like, oh, OK, huge
(07:18):
population increases in these areas.
Because the population has been increasing so rapidly, we've had
to build buildings very fast, which typically means cheap
materials. And we have all this brush that
hasn't been cleared. So it starts to paint this
picture of oh OK, we actually have it's problem.
We call it good enough, right? Yeah, yeah.
(07:39):
And it's the good enough and it's the it's not gonna happen
to me. And we talk about that a lot in
insurance, but it's it's very, very real.
And we saw that with Palisades. It's an area that burns pretty
rapidly every 30 to 40 years. And we had this, you know,
misconception that it wasn't gonna happen again.
So, So wildfire was the first thing that they got me into this
(08:01):
space. And the connection between
wildfire and insurance is reallyaround, OK, we have this natural
disaster problem, we have a barrier to entry problem for
people to reduce their risk. Like people either don't know
what their risk is on their property or if they do, they
don't really have the means or afinancial incentives to to do
(08:22):
this work and maintain it year over year.
And so the great thing about insurance is that renewals
happen every year and it's something everyone relies on,
whether we like it or not. And that provides us with really
interesting existing infrastructure to try to create
some kind of solution around it.So fell in love with a problem.
Insurance is kind of the mode oftransportation for the greater
(08:43):
solution, which is ultimately how do we keep peoples homes
from burning down or getting blown away in some kind of
natural disaster. So that's a lot, but.
No, no, I love it. And I love, first of all, I love
the connection and correlation too, because I always say so.
I mean, we haven't talked about this before Valkyrie, but I come
from a liberal arts background and I was majoring in chemistry
(09:05):
and minoring in economics. I know that's such a weird thing
to do at a liberal arts school, but why not?
And I left chemistry and I endedup pivoting into my econ degree
and then I went into accounting.But the point of all that is
everyone always says, why insurance?
And I was like, because of the economic viability to, you know,
(09:25):
basic, well performing nations, it's all rooted in economics and
financial services, no matter what people think, because of
the assets that we own and the stability that we provide
economically is such a huge force of good.
And so I always think about thatand you know, like, I, I think
(09:45):
it's interesting. Clearly now the, the climate is
even more, I'd say a Gen. Z and, and societal purpose.
But to your point, it's always been an intricate, complex
problem to solve. It's not one-dimensional, it's
often multi dimensional. So I often think you get really
astute thinkers in insurance, really complex, dexterous Poly,
(10:11):
a lot of Poly mass trying to solve on all sorts of planes and
dimensionality because we can't just solve it one way.
So I really love what brought you here and it was one of the
things that drew me to want you to be on insurance unplugged as
soon as I heard you speak and say, let's go.
Like, I think a little bit deeper because I think that, you
(10:31):
know, as much as we say we want to solve for climate risk, a lot
of times people are like, okay, here we go again, AI and climate
risk. And I'll even stand up on stage
as I was at a recent conference where you and I were both there
at Climate Tech Connects. And I was like, listen, we're
not gonna solve for actually climate change in the immediate
(10:54):
term, right? That's a different trajectory
and there's amazing people working on that.
That's really not what I'm focused on.
I'm solving for this immediacy of affordability of coverage gap
of the ability to predict and prevent.
Or if we need to repair and restore, the people have the
means by which they can repair and restore.
So how do you think about this with FARA and if you don't mind
(11:20):
taking the the listeners througha little bit of what is AI based
survivability? How do you think of scoring?
Like what's different? Because clearly, you know,
generically our industry knows how to score.
So like I like how you were talking about like making it
something that people can actually interact with and use.
Give us a little bit of a sense of how you're thinking about
(11:43):
this in a different way. Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I, I think from from theclimate perspective, you're
right. It's a very broad kind of just
like amalgamous BLOB that like you say, climate change and some
people. Their brains shut.
Off they don't want to hear about it.
There's other people that are really engaged with a lot of
like climate policy. You know there's there's all
(12:05):
these different ranges, but we really at this point haven't
made it as interactive as I think we need it to be.
We haven't made it as almost kind of like in your face in
terms of how this impacts me as I think we need it to be.
So. So that's kind of like one of
the big goals with FORA is, OK, let's say you have a property
(12:25):
that's in a high risk area and you don't know what the risk of
this property is. So you're in this area that is
wildfire prone, flood prone, hurricane prone, whatever, and
have no idea whether or not yourproperty will will still be
there just from a pure like weather, extreme weather
perspective. So that's the first layer that
we need to get people to understand.
And and that's already happened in quite a few states.
(12:47):
Like, you know, if you're in theMidwest tornado Valley area that
you need to have certain retrofits on your property.
You know that if you're in Florida after a certain, you
know, year, the building codes are up to standard with
something like hurricane, very severe winds.
And the same thing is true with like California after a massive
earthquake, all those codes get updated to withstand the next
(13:08):
disaster that we're looking at. So, so that starts to happen as
a baseline. And then the second part of that
is, OK, I know I'm in a high risk area.
I know these things are in placeand I know generally what like
the risk of my area is. Now I need to understand, OK, if
a disaster does happen in this area, what is the likelihood of
my property to still be there after the fact?
(13:29):
And that's exactly what for I does.
So, so it's like, it's like. Making it real, it's like
looking at a prediction and saying what's my house going to
look like if this does happen? Exactly.
Yeah, because then it pulls us back to OK, not only is this
area maybe my neighbors, you know, maybe like the the city
that I live in, the town that I live in might be impacted by a
(13:51):
wildfire. But but not me though, because
because I'm in some other area or, or the winds won't come this
way and and you know, bring the embers to my.
Door facing, facing our own riskscore has always been whether
it's in mortality or property or, you know, you know, an
accident, your home or whatever.You know, we, we are great as
(14:14):
humans as denial, right? Like, not me won't happen to me.
So yeah, I think you're you're right, Like, right.
Like looking at it is very different than avoiding the
thinking of it. And like, even with that
baseline, right, like you, you understand you're in an area
that's wildfire prone and then, you know, and then that just
kind of becomes a part of your daily, daily life, daily
(14:36):
reality, which means that you don't think about it as much,
which means you don't do as muchmitigation or retrofit.
So, so we looked at that. We were originally, you know,
working in grant reimbursement agencies and nonprofits in these
very heavily disaster prone areas to say, hey, you as a
homeowner, this is what what your risk is.
This is the thing. These are the things you have to
(14:57):
do to reduce your risk. And then here are benefits that
you qualify for as part of this program.
So you could qualify for $10,000grants or you spend $5000.
You get that all back if you do these things for the next two
years, right? So there are different
variations of that, but what we found was that policyholders
(15:18):
when faced with these kinds of programs may do them, but they
don't necessarily maintain them.So like I always give the
example of like you can give someone $10,000 to reduce the
risk on their property, but two years later, it's right back
where it was. Because the grant programs like
that, there isn't any follow up baked into that process.
Like why would I continue to maintain if I've already done
(15:40):
this thing, I've checked it off,I'm good, when in reality you're
not good, right? We approached insurance.
So we started asking the question of like, OK, we need to
remove the barrier to entry of education and then we need to
remove the barrier to entry of cost.
So how do we get this information to people that's
customized to their property to make it real for them?
And then also how do we minimizethat like cost barrier that it
(16:01):
takes for people to actually know this information?
So we didn't want the consumer to to really pay anything in in
all reality to get access to this, to be able to reduce their
risk. And again, the great thing about
insurance is that every year youget renewed or you don't and
then it's a different question. And so in my ideal world, when
(16:25):
FORA is everywhere, in every disaster all over the US, our,
our goal is to say, OK, let's say I'm a homeowner, I live in
Napa Valley, 100% high risk for wildfire.
And March rolls around and I realized my insurance policies
renewing in May. And I make a plan.
I say, OK, by May, I have to clear the debris off of my roof.
(16:46):
That happened when, you know, the winter came by.
I have to prune back my trees, remove the logs from under my
deck. You know, like I do these things
maybe like 3 to 5 things to maintain my risk and therefore I
maintain my insurance policy. And now it's an active
partnership like it was originally intended to be.
(17:06):
Instead of you get insurance andyou forget about it and then you
realize you're not insured for the right things or, or you're,
you know, a wildfire comes through and you lose everything
when you didn't even really knowthat that was an issue.
You know what I mean? Yeah, You know, I, I think it's,
I think that's so important and I love the way you're breaking
it down because like psychologically, right, as
(17:28):
humans, even even as insurance professionals, we all avoid
things until they're imminent and in our face, right.
Like, right. Like the time to act is always
when it becomes, it becomes realwhen you make it real.
And then we're all like, OK, nowI've got to get, I mean, just
like I think of all the millionsof things I have to do with my
house and they all get de prioritized unless they're like
(17:50):
real easy, effortless and apparent.
And for me, it's also can I outsource that and get it done
reliably, incredibly right? Because I'm in a stage of my
life where I'm like, it's much easier if I can pick up the
phone or text somebody and say, get this done versus me
physically having to go like carve out a weekend to do it.
But you know, another thing, Valkyrie, that I wanted to ask
you about is I think there's a, I'll quote a cadence, like a pre
(18:13):
renewal cadence, A seasonality to things.
But then I also think, and I'm curious to know where your, your
vision for this is. And I'm going to use my dad and
I'm going to use my brother because they live in Fort Myers,
FL. So right there, you know,
they're always getting hurricanewarnings and I'm going to use
the shutters that they have to put out.
(18:34):
They like, so they have hurricane grain glass, right,
because they're, they're, they were built post Ida or Ian.
But the point is, I always will talk to my dad and my brother as
a storm, as being like it's coming.
It's coming. How's it going to turn?
And my, my dad and brother are both in the avionics business.
So hear me out. And it's always like the effort
(18:56):
of putting up the shutters versus the predictability of the
pattern versus the time in whichit may or may not emerge.
And they always get into this debate of, you know, you have
until this moment in time to decide, you know, like, right.
It's like, it's like, and then there's different people who
have different risk tolerances for like, what is that moment?
You know, maybe if you're elderly, you know, you may have
(19:18):
hired somebody to put up the shutters and blah, blah, blah.
And my dad always jokes that that he goes snowbirds will come
and put up their shutters, but then they, to your point about
fire risk, they're in New York and they won't take them off
because they've left the city for the storm.
So my question to you in a roundabout way is what would the
vision be? Or is there a vision for more
(19:39):
real time as events are unfolding?
Because there's the, I'll call it the hygiene that we need to
do. It's just like keeping yourself
healthy, right? And then there's the this is
emerging and Valkyrie, like, I just know.
And I'm yeah, I'm not giving youthis as an insurance
professional. I'm giving you this as like
somebody that listens to my family.
It's like these debatable moments.
(20:00):
And I'm thinking, I mean, I livein Georgia.
I would be like, put the shutters up.
What are you doing? I get them done.
Like get it like so. So how?
Do you know exactly? That too, Valkyrie.
And what is your vision for Flora in those moments?
Right. Yeah, No, I mean this is a
question we ask all the time andwe actually started to do a lot
of different testing around the weather side of what we do.
(20:20):
So you know as like a general primer like for a built, like
our team built these survivability models that say
for the structure and all the elements on this parcel, this is
the likelihood of survival for your, you know, independent
property. So it's saying here are
materials, conditions, resilience characteristics,
action items, things like that, that tell you what your risk is
(20:44):
in comparison to all the other properties and then also tells
you what you can do to to improve that score.
And so, so because we're not really focused as much on like
the weather data of will disaster happen in this area, we
can get way more specific on theactual structure itself and how
that correlates with the score in terms of survival.
(21:05):
Now with that, we, it's not us saying that we don't think
weather is valuable. Like we need to understand when
a disaster is coming 100%. And we started to experiment
with this idea of coupling weather alerts with what we
already know about the risk on the property to incentivize
people to do that work in the event of some kind of disaster
(21:26):
occurring. So like you can imagine, OK,
you're, you're in a hurricane prone area and you've done an
assessment, you did an assessment in December.
So you probably aren't going to be doing too much on your
property to like mitigate that, that property because you're not
thinking about hurricanes as much.
But let's say, OK, within the next week, we have a ton of
(21:49):
hurricane alerts that say, hey, in your area, there's likely to
be an event. We know that you have, you know,
shutters that you need to put upor, or different like flood
protection measures in differentzones or, you know, you need to
get your garage wind rated for something, you know, so, so it's
hey, we know you have these elements.
We know they could be better. Here are things that we suggest
(22:12):
you do in the next week to prepare for this incoming storm
that help reduce your risk. So it's like a more proactive
engagement that doesn't just say, OK, bring your car in in
the event of a hailstorm. It's it's, you know, there's a
lot of things that you can do that that can drastically reduce
your risk in all of these different fields.
And I think it's an understatement to say that the
(22:33):
insurance industry has an image problem in, in like the
traditional media. And that's a really great way
for for insurance companies and an agents to really advocate on
behalf of their consumers. It's, you know, we care about
your property, not from, you know, like it's, it's from a
monetary standpoint from us. Sure.
Like we're going to be transparent about that that, but
but it's also, you know, we're helping you protect your home
(22:57):
and, and the thing that is many people's largest asset.
So, so we're giving you the tools that you need to reduce
your risk and in the event of a disaster, here are things that
you can use to make it a much more survivable outcome for you
on average. Yeah, I think that's so
critical. Let's let's take it then into
distribution because I think of distribution often, you know,
(23:21):
the side part or neglected in this climate interface, right,
because we think of it as at point of sale and we often talk
about an insurance, how do we get continual engagement and
continual value. And so for me, I don't think of
distribution as just a sales function.
I really think it as you know, delivering resilience, like how
do we really use our agents in our distribution network, which
(23:43):
we are like most people coming in into insurance, just think
we'll connect to distribution network done.
And then they try for like they try, try, try.
And I'm sure far as experience this Valkyrie, it's like bang my
head against the wall. How do I get through?
Because it you think of it as a normal distribution function and
(24:03):
then insurance is kind of like it's own version of
distribution. But I do think it's really
important as agents still vie for non commoditized
relationships, right? Relationships that aren't direct
to consumer relationships are, that are not just done through
online commoditized shopping. And I've actually got a podcast
(24:25):
that's dropping after yours where we're talking about really
like the ROI beyond the obvious,right, which are all these
intrinsic things. You know, I think that with what
you're doing with the localization of AI, the
personalization of like knowing your risk on your property,
knowing the things that you can take action on.
(24:45):
Do you see the distribution channel being a partner in this
or like how do you see this working with distribution?
I'm curious. I mean, I think we, they
definitely have to be a partner,you know, in all reality.
So we've talked to quite a few, you know, companies that, that
are on the distribution side andwe, we get a couple different
pushbacks from, you know, from people.
(25:08):
The first thing is, is we know margins are, are slimmer for for
people that are in distribution.So we're trying to get them as
much business as possible for aslow of a cost as possible while
still creating that relationshipwith your with your clients,
right. So, so that's one part.
The second part is you don't necessarily want to be a big
burden on the insured because then that strains a
(25:31):
relationship. You might not, you know, get
them to to place properly. And then that's also a different
factor. So, so there's these two kind of
like poles at play where it's you want to give the customer
what they need to succeed to geta policy, but then you also
don't want it to be too much of A burden, but you want to pay
someone else to take off some ofthat burden.
(25:51):
But you know, it's pretty slim. So, so we know that these are
two kind of like forward facing battles that that we're coming
up on. And I think the reality of it is
now insurance companies are using way more data that agents
and brokers have to be more aware of that they factor into
their decisions. So like it's hard to place
(26:12):
business in a place like California right now.
And if you have to dip into the non admitted market to get a
policy placed at all, you know, like there's there's something
to be said about the fact that there's like more non admitted
companies that are popping up inthe space.
But, but it's really hard for for someone that gets cancelled
by their insurance company and has no idea why.
(26:34):
They just think they're in a, they know they're in a wildfire
zone and that's and that's it. That's going to become slowly
and slowly, like just one data element that they use.
Well, in Bob Green, like I used,I did a ton of work on the Gosh,
that's because I was kind of going down this geospatial track
right when I think, you know, wewent from 200 data points to
2000 data points with like hazard hub alone, right?
(26:58):
Like crazy volumes of data that the agents and the Agency
systems are just not equipped tohandle.
They they are unequivocally not equipped to handle data.
I mean, Valkyrie, they don't even have concepts like master
data management, which means they can't handle, you know,
source A said the roof type was this and source B said the roof
(27:21):
type is that. And as you and I both know,
there's lots of that, that sophisticated solutions like
yours and carriers and all theseothers that we've had to like
work our way through. But the one thing that a agent
does have to deal with is the risk of non renewal, the risk of
being priced out of the market and the risk of not having
coverage, right? So if you are an independent
(27:43):
agent and you are serving your customer, the last thing you
want is for that renewal to comeup and you to have been priced
out of coverage for your insuredto say I can't afford insurance.
Maybe I can just have a partial I'm making it up parametric
product. But you know like, hey, I don't
(28:06):
care what kind of deal you can get me.
I'm no longer air quote insurable.
And I think to me that is the hook.
That is the hook that distribution does care about
Valkyrie because their job is tofind solutions and offerings to
cover the risk of their customers.
So to me, that's why they can't be left out of this equation,
(28:27):
right? Especially as you articulated
it, right? Like there's these things that I
can do before renewal to show upto not come to that renewal
table and that renewal cycle andsay, oops, you've got brushed
underneath your house, you've got logs over here, etcetera,
right? Like, so I think that that's
going to be really important foryou all.
(28:48):
And there's always this interesting, you know, I'll just
go ahead and ask you the question because we can say that
on the hot seat, we can say whatever we want.
There's this interesting dichotomy, which is the carriers
and reinsurers have a lot of data, but because the agents are
independent, ergo they could useit for multiple.
Like, you know, I could place you on my competitors, right?
(29:09):
Because I'm an independent agent.
There's always been this, well, I'm not going to give you my
data. So that's actually a lot of the
reason why the distributors don't have the data that the
carriers have. Like if we're, if we're keeping
it real, right? It's cuz I always say, why would
I give you my car to take somebody else out on a date?
Uh huh, right. Like.
Yeah. So how do?
(29:30):
You think about that. Yeah, like, I mean it honestly
makes sense, right? Like if I'm an insurer and like,
I think we forget a lot of the time that if I'm an insurance
company and I cancel a policy, the likelihood of that like
policy holder, that home owner to come back to me, unless it's
like a very, very strict, you know, market where they can't
(29:52):
get anything else after that nonrenewal or cancellation is very
slim. Like when you cancel a policy,
you're losing that policy for life in in most cases.
And so it makes sense where, where you know, if you're trying
to win over a customer, every insurance company thinks that
they have better data that can they can help them in the
underwriting process. And from my perspective, the
(30:15):
carriers that start to use more survivability information and
like be more specific on the properties that they're that
they're looking at, those are the ones that will come out on
top in these markets. It's the ones that have left are
reevaluating testing in these different markets with
survivability information, with structure specific analysis.
And the reason why we got into it is because that is clearly
(30:38):
what we're moving towards. And a good way to solve the
problem. It's, it's the people that that
embrace that and then move that into these markets to take up
more of that share, that market share, like they're going to
come out on top. And at that point, then it
becomes more of a question of, OK, if I'm an agent, I'm working
with my clients on placing business in these areas.
(30:58):
I know some of these carriers have come back.
What are these carriers looking at that I've never looked at
before that now I have to educate my clients on like the,
the whole agent broker relationship is just so
education focused and we, we continue to adapt with whatever,
whatever the carriers are are using because that sets our
baseline. So the people that are in the
(31:21):
carrier space that use this information, they're going to be
way ahead of the game. And then the brokers and agents
that learn about that information as they get adopted,
I think they're going to be ableto serve their clients the best.
Totally, totally agree with you.Let's now take it into I always
have to talk about AI, right? And I think that you said once
(31:42):
that AI doesn't predict the future, it pressures the
present. Do you mind unpacking that a
little bit more? Yeah, I mean, so, so something
about which I love like, well, Imean like, like something about
just like the the AI space in general, specifically with
insurance is I have to do a lot of AI presentations in
(32:05):
insurance. And the question always comes up
of, you know, like, like lately,how do I, how do I explain this
to a regulator that I'm trying to use this for my pricing or
whatever algorithms and I'm trying to, you know, sift
through for that year. And from us, we have approached
FORA from a very non AI angle, at least initially.
(32:29):
And the reason for that is because when we first got a new
insurance and we were thinking about, OK, how do we structure
these models to the point where it, it makes the most sense for
the industry? That question came up all the
time. Like, are you going to be an AI
company? And the answer to that is no,
because that's like as big of a deterrent as trying to explain
to someone how we're different than a traditional climate
model. Like there's one hoop to get
(32:51):
over, which is you're, you're used to models telling you where
a disaster is likely to happen. We're telling you if a disaster
does happen, this is the likelihood of your structure
still being there. So that's like, that's a hoop we
have to jump through initially. And then you're telling me we
also have to jump through the hoop of like, this is a black
box? Explain ability, even the choice
of and credibility. It's like rating verifiability
(33:12):
and regulator approval. Yeah, good luck dude.
It's, it's like even the most transparent AI models, you're
still going to have to run into,into all of these different
things that, you know, help explain.
OK, In the 0.001% chance that there is some bias or something
that happens that we can't traceback or that we can't explain
(33:33):
or, or it takes us way longer toexplain because we can't
pinpoint. These are the things that go
into it like I, I, I think there, there's a lot going on in
the space that is making it veryclose to being a truly viable
solution for the industry. But there's a reason why we
didn't leap into it right away. It was, it was we have to prove
(33:53):
out the fact that that survivability data is necessary
and we're, and we're continuing to do that all the time.
We're like predicting survivability events with 95%
accuracy and we've been doing that for the last few years.
So, so once we get that across the finish line, then it's OK.
How do we optimize? And you know, there's.
I'm gonna interrupt you just to say like, yeah, exclamation
(34:15):
point on that. So Valkyrie and I'll, I mean,
I'm, I'm a I'm a born and bred accountant originally.
Like I, you know, I started withaccounting and whenever somebody
says like AI powered accounting,I look at them and I'm like,
like, are you mental? Like what are you even talking
about? So I always think about and I
think about things like event driven.
I think about things like dynamic.
I think about things like real time.
(34:36):
I think about like foundation. Then I think about like layering
the tooling as a fit for purposeto optimize.
So I love the way you're leaninginto that, which first of all,
by the way, anybody listening, if you're buying solutions, of
course, this is the non marketing reality of what people
(34:58):
should be building. If they're not actually saying
what Valkyrie is saying to you, then they are selling you like a
witchery brew on the corner. Because what she is saying is
you have to build a foundation and you have to build a
foundation in a reliable, credible way.
Now, does that mean that every stream of every data point that
(35:18):
Valkyrie is talking about doesn't somehow use a little bit
of seasoning of AII would say probably not because we're all
doing things like, you know, maybe we're reading a document
or maybe we're extracting, right, Valkyrie And I love that
you're not leaning with a like AI, you know, AI first or AI
native, like you're using it, I assume across your spectrum of
(35:41):
solutioning when it has a reallydecisive fit for purpose.
But you don't lean in and say it's AI you know first.
Yeah. Well, cuz at the end of the day,
like we're getting to the point in the next few years where you
say you're an AI company and it's like, So what everyone is
like, like that is not a differentiator at all.
I'm a tech company. Cool.
(36:01):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, right.
It's still very much a buzzword.I think it'll still be for the
next few years. But but everyone like it is so
accessible now and it's and I follow these trends of like
very, you know, young solo founders use AI tools to create
this company company and they grow it to 100 million in
revenue and sell it to a huge sell it to Google or Microsoft.
(36:26):
The reality of people creating things with these tools is
becoming more and more more and more of a reality.
And so I think we just have to remember that it's as as more
and more people use it, it becomes less and less
impressive. And it's not really even in a
big legacy industry like insurance, like it will be a
(36:47):
part of the conversation, but much less from like AAI is so
unknown to us and more of like, what are you actually doing with
this tool? I think.
It doesn't tell us anything. I think it's really interesting
and I'm going to kind of do a little rapid fire for a second
with you. And, and my first one would be
what's 1 belief the industry needs to unlearn?
(37:09):
Because I think it's actually packed in that, which is I'll
give you my view of that and then I'll ask you for your rapid
fire. My view is that we think of
everything as layering on top. And the thing that we have to
unlearn is we have to be able toactually RIP the muscle memory
apart and to actually create newmuscle memory.
And so I think of these things as foundational.
(37:31):
I think as an industry, we stilldo not have dynamic real time
processing and we are in a worldthat evolves dynamically every
single day. So my, my thing to unlearn would
be like, you know, you can't just massage the muscle.
You've actually got to RIP the muscle in order to break its
muscle memory and then go back and put it together.
(37:53):
So OK Valkyrie, now that I've put myself in the hot seat, I'm
going to rapid fire you. What's 1 belief you think the
industry needs to unlearn? Yeah, I think the insurance
industry thinks very downstream.And what I mean by that is, is
there's there's problems we can solve right now that in terms of
like underwriting efficiency andportfolio management and like
(38:14):
using tools to to make an underwriter, you know, know more
things in a smaller amount of time.
But at some point we have to think about, OK, the actual
policies that are coming in, arethey are they survivable or not?
Like our, the upstream approach to that is OK, not how can we
underwrite a policy as fast as possible, but how do we make
(38:35):
this policy one that doesn't need to be underwritten in 10
minutes, it can be underwritten in five, you know what I mean?
So just more of that really addressing the root cause of the
problem as opposed to even, you know, something like just trying
to be as profitable as possible in the underwriting department,
which I know is hard, but we canbe profitable other places also.
(38:57):
All right, so the next one I want to ask you is you could
just what's the one thing you admire about old school
insurance? Yeah, I mean, like insurance has
been around for a long time and there were a lot of questions I
had about just like why processes were the way it was.
And because I was outside of theindustry, I got to ask all the
(39:17):
dumb questions. But insurance is so like we have
thought about everything like like the risk engineering side
is, is just, it's just totally insane.
So insurance really knows what they're doing when it comes to
assessing risk and assigning those priorities.
And now I think we just need to to add more variable variables
(39:39):
to that and you know, make make those processes again more
upstream thinking. All right, So my last rapid fire
question for you before we splitstar signature call to action,
what was the moment you realizedbuilding this is not optional,
it's inevitable. I Valkyrie have to do this?
(40:00):
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I, I don't know if it
was actually. Yeah, it was a single moment.
It so so I, I started learning about just like Wildfire
originally and I was talking to all of these homeowners and I
was talking to this guy Paul, who his policy was cancelled.
He had had the same carrier for over a decade.
(40:21):
And to put it into perspective, he lived in Napa Valley, but he
so it was 100% high risk for wildfire.
But this guy was like treasurer of the Napa Valley firewise
community was like the guy that gave grants to people to reduce
their risk. Basically lived in a metal box
in the middle of the forest. Like this guy was not burning
down. And then he went through this
whole process with his insurancecompany to try to figure out
(40:43):
like, why did they cancel me, you know, right before wildfire
season 2. And he finally gets off the
phone after a few hours and theysend him an e-mail with a
picture of his home. Only it's not his home that they
flagged. It's his neighbour's because his
neighbors had some like, extra vegetation in their yard or
something. So like, at that point, I was
like, OK, there's clearly this is hurting people.
(41:06):
There's clearly something that we can be doing to improve this
process. And it's not like we don't have
the data know when there's vegetation in someone's yard.
But now we have to make it more transparent for people to a
understand what that means, but then also B do what they need to
do to fix it, to make it, you know, more profitable.
Part of that business, what a great inevitability call as
(41:28):
well. I I love that Valkyrie.
All right. So as my listeners know, on
every episode, our call to action is delivered by our guest
as a what we do advocate everyone start doing, stop doing
and continue to do so. It's over to you, Valkyrie.
Right, I would like everyone to start understanding where their
(41:53):
property is located. Like just just educating
yourself doesn't have to be a big hole project.
Just like like what is your natural disaster score?
Like what like what does my property look like?
Like this is obviously a shameless plug, but like you can
go to the Forrest site and take a free assessment and just like
understand what you need to do as a baseline for your property.
(42:14):
So just would love for people tojust like have that baseline
going into an insurance market or going into a, you know,
natural disaster season. Something I, I hope people stop
doing is after a natural disaster, going on social media
and claiming to know about the infrastructure around how people
(42:35):
respond to those events. Like after the Palisades fire, I
had to get off of my phone because there's so many people
talking about like, like there wasn't enough water there and
like, we don't have enough resources.
And there's, there's going to beNuggets of truth in post posts
and what people say all the time, but just directly engaging
with that immediately after people's livelihoods are are
(42:59):
screwed up for the next 5 years like that.
Just we got to stop doing that. It's my is my kind of message
there. And remind me, what is the last
thing? The last one is continue.
I think people need to continue like trying to learn a little
bit more about their insurance policies.
Like I, I've seen the trend of people starting to ask more
(43:22):
questions around insurance. And even now like, like
companies like Lemonade are marketing towards like younger
and younger people because of like the renter's market.
But that means that inherently younger people are learning
about their insurance process and we need to be able to ask
those questions. So I love the fact that people
are asking questions, doing these things that educate
(43:43):
themselves already and just making them more specific.
I think is is great. I love that and I, I love
hearing it from your lens. I first of all, to all my
listeners, if you do not follow Valkyrie and her for a team, you
have to. She is just not only dynamic,
but just everywhere. She's everywhere.
I would say that Valkyrie from aposition of respect because
(44:05):
usually people are trying to chase me around the world, her
team and Farah is setting the globe.
I won't stay on fire because I know we're going to use our
risk. Words.
We're we're. Energizing the globe with
everything that they're doing. They're showing up at Lloyd's,
they're showing up at conferences, they're on
webinars, they're on podcasts. And I tell you right now, we're
(44:27):
all going to look back to this moment and be like they were the
one of the energizers that we all needed.
So I'm very excited to say that I had you on my podcast,
Valkyrie. So thank you for being again,
you know, again, to everyone listening, just the the real
summary, we don't sell risk, we inherit it.
And Valkyrie is not waiting for a better model.
She's building one. I encourage you to put your
(44:51):
status quo thinking aside, to listen, to make it easier for
teams like Fora to get in the room and talk to you about new
ways of layering into the infrastructure in the industry
that we already have. She's not saying replace, she's
not saying throughout, she's saying like add this
dimensionality in and for all mylegacy experienced eras of
(45:16):
people out there, give them the time of day.
They have a message and it can help.
And for our distributors listening in, we need this at
the front end, wink, wink. You need to be sitting there
guiding your customers through this level of preparation and
risk mitigation. So, Valkyrie, thank you for
(45:36):
being a guest on Insurance Unplugged today.
And to all of our listeners, stay informed, stay curious and
stay tuned in until next time. Today's episode of Insurance
Unplugged, the AI and distribution series, is proudly
sponsored by Iris and Suretech, your gateway to the future of
insurance distribution. Iris harnesses the power of
(45:57):
generative AI to transform data processing and decision making
across the distribution landscape.
The Iris platform integrates AI driven decision engines, dynamic
form generation and configurableworkflows, all underpinned by
continuous data quality management.
Discover how Iris is powering smarter operations and more
(46:18):
efficient distribution with cutting Edge AI setting a new
standard of excellence across the entire industry.
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