PLATFORMIFICATION
As a former CIO, Tim Hardcastle understands all the arguments as to why legacy systems can’t be changed. But as CEO of no-code insurance platform INSTANDA, he also knows those excuses are wearing thin INSTANDA’s co-founder and CEO Tim Hardcastle has a straightforward approach to transformation: he believes every insurer in the world can operate and behave like a Lemonade – the well-regarded startup that offers insurance driven by social good. That’s because the technology and processes that go with Lemonade’s transformative digital model are ready and raring to go. But many insurers are hampered by their reliance on IT systems that belong to the history books, says Hardcastle… and it’s time for them to reassess their organisational culture and embrace new technology. Infact, by leveraging the INSTANDA platform, Hardcastle, who was previously CIO at Hiscox, promises insurers will soon be able to go far beyond what Lemonade is offering. The company’s recent pairing with artificial intelligence (AI) firm Cytora, for example, will help underwriters price risk more accurately, while INSTANDA is also working on a hush-hush project focussed on better technology integration. Cloud-based INSTANDA is among a new wave of software providers that are shaking up the insurance world. But its innovative customer engagement platform is based on ‘no- code’ technology – an industry first. It provides insurers, brokers and managing general agents (MGAs) with a software tool that can easily be customised by insurance providers, allowing them to move swiftly from product concept to binding online in a matter of weeks. There’s nothing that looks remotely like an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all model, says the company,
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TheInsurtechMagazine | Issue 4
boasting: ‘No templates. No limitations.’ It sounds an exciting proposition, and investors clearly agree. INSTANDA recently completed a $19.5million (£15million) Series A fundraising round, led by Assembly Capital Partners. This investment will support the firm’s international expansion in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America as it looks to add to existing clients that include giants of the industry such as AXA, Hiscox, Aviva and Zurich. It also recently partnered with technology and consulting company Softelligence – its first link-up in Europe – as it expands its mission to digitally transform the insurance industry and expland across the continent. In May 2020, Steven Haasz, who has 30 years’ experience with Prudential, Chubb and AXA, was appointed as Partnerships and European Accounts Director to lead the charge.
Companies can use our platform to embrace Lemonade-like behaviour… to do the things that consumers are asking [them] to do better THE INSURTECH MAGAZINE (TIM): Let’s take COVID-19 off the table for a moment: what’s the biggest issue facing the insurance industry as a whole? TIM HARDCASTLE (TH): Let’s step back even further than COVID-19 and ask ourselves the more fundamental question: what’s the purpose of insurance? In principle, insurance, which has been operating for hundreds of years, has been doing a really good job of what it’s intended to do, which is to protect people, pool risk and ensure they don’t have to pay very much for this protection. In that sense, at the macro level, I think insurance will continue to work really well in terms of what it’s there to do. But there
are things it clearly could be doing much better. One common complaint is that insurers, on average, take too long to pay out – some companies spend far too long manually processing claims. Sometimes, it’s also not that easy to buy insurance – it’s too complex and there are too many questions. Or the cover that’s available doesn’t suit everyone’s needs. I may be a gig economy worker, or a business with particularly complex needs, and I don’t feel as though the cover I’m getting suits me. These problems, which are a complex mixture of perception and reality, aren’t necessarily new, but there is too much friction in the process and there are significant improvements that the industry, as a whole, could make. Technology will unlock these improvements. TIM: Earlier this year, INSTANDA announced a Series A fundraising round. Congratulations on that! What does this extra capital help you to focus on? TH: It’s given us another level of credibility and, more importantly for me as the CEO, ammunition to accelerate and further scale what we’re doing. When we’ve finished building it out, we’ll have one of the world’s most advanced digital platforms. This injection of capital has allowed us to put in place the cogs we need to underpin our growth and develop the platform’s capability. We’ll be able to offer different use cases that will help insurers to solve even more of their pain points, giving them a strategic advantage in the market that they didn’t previously have. There’s the platform extension, but we’re also investing far more in our partnership network. We’re rapidly onboarding new partners and building our internal team at the same time, so that we can have more conversations and get our solution in front of more people. We recently brought on a new EVP in the US, Greg Murphy, and his comment to me was: ‘You guys are far too humble. You’ve got this amazing platform and yet very few people know about it’. He believes there are thousands of companies across the US that we www.fintech.finance