Tim Dillahunt is the head of personal lines underwriting at the Hanover Insurance group. He is diverse insurance professional with an Underwriting, Marketing and Sales leadership background. Over 25 years of experience at some of the country's leading P&C Companies.

Highlights from the Show

• When a pipe leaks, a hose breaks or some other preventable source of water damage to your home leads to a claim, you can rebuild, but you can never fully recover because of the likely loss of things like family photos and other personally valuable items. And while your insurer can cover the cost of fixing the damage, the emotional toll of being out of your home and dealing with the situation and uncertainty around it is also not something you can recover. That’s why Tim talks not just about the clear financial savings of using water leak detection and shutoff sensors, but also the innumerable personal savings that come with it.
• Stopping claims by identifying water leaks proactively saves money for everyone. It can reduce the size of claims, reducing costs for insurers and helping insureds keep their rates from increasing. It keeps businesses open because they don’t need to close their facilities due to water damage or construction. And it reduces the overall cost to insure a pool of risks, helping keep rates lower for everyone. Tim talks about the many ways people and businesses can save from the use of simple water leak detection devices and help control one of the few forms of property claims we cannot easily control, unlike things like wind, flood, hail and wildfire.
• What kinds of tools can you use to reduce your risk of having a homeowners claim because of a leak or burst pipe? Tim shares ideas from the most basic – a simple sensor that clips onto a pipe and can spot whether you have a slow leak or more catastrophic failure. You may be aware of a burst pipe without the sensor, but slow leaks often happen behind walls and in other hidden places you only notice once they’ve really spread, and may have lead to mold and other issues that are harder to contend with. And you could have avoided the whole thing with a simple solution.
• What happens with a pipe bursts in a home or business? What about a museum. Tim shares their first hand experience when a museum that had leak detection sensors installed was able to act immediately when a pipe burst, shutting off the water and mopping up what got out before it ruined any of their extremely valuable artwork and other items. And while there may be a monetary value to the lost items, many may be irreplaceable – like family photos or heirlooms if the same thing happened in your home.
• Water leak detection sensors can be simple and low-cost. A typical home may need $100 in sensors and $100 in monitoring services for those sensors. But what about the cost of a pipe or washing machine water hose leaking in your home? The Hanover sees that these claims average $7,000-10,000 or more, and could have all been avoided.
• Why does Tim say, “Water sensors are the new smoke alarms”? About 40% of non-weather loss costs are caused by water. It is the single biggest cause of loss than any other non-weather cause. And yet less than 17% of homes have any type of water sensor, while 80%+ have smoke alarms despite those homes being 6-7x more likely to have a water loss than a fire.
• Because of all of this, Tim is on a mission to educate people to change that 17% and stop people from suffering these losses.
• Tim wants everyone to look at the educational resources they've made available on their site at https://www.hanover.com/individuals/customer-resources/proactive-protection-against-water-damage

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Ryan Vigus leads CSAA Insurance Group’s personal lines products, including auto, home, umbrella, and pet. His team develops and manages insurance products and product experiences that serve the needs of AAA Members. Ryan’s responsibilities include Product Strategy and Development, Product Management, Actuarial, and Data Science. CSAA Insurance Group is a AAA insurer that serves AAA Members in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Ryan has served on the board of directors and various committees for the Insurance Institute for Business and Homes Safety (IBHS) since 2018 and currently serves as the chair of the board of directors.

He has a master’s degree in applied mathematics from Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Highlights from the Show

• California is a massive economy that has had a history of difficult insurance situations. Back in the day, Auto Insurance became a problem, with rates jumping and profitability suffering. California’s insurers looked to Homeowners to make up the difference to remain profitable. And then the wildfire situation changed dramatically, putting great pressure on the industry, leaving many with the need to dramatically increase rates, pull out of the state, or both.
• Homeowners Associations often put in place rules to govern how homes in the development look to uphold standards and consistency across homes. But what happens when those standards are at odds with the decisions that make a home more resilient to things like hail, hurricanes or wildfire? Can you install a better roof, plant different vegetation (or remove it), etc., if it means your home will still be standing when others may not? Colorado has made laws that ensure HOAs cannot restrict a homeowner from doing something that makes their home safer from losses like hail or wildfire.
• If your home falls victim to a flood or hail damage, and your insurer pays to repair the damage, what if there was a way to enhance how you rebuild so your house is less likely to suffer a loss in the future? Wouldn’t the time to make such upgrades be when you’re working on those items anyway, like upgrading the type of roofing materials you use when replacing a roof destroyed by hail? That’s not how insurance works today. But what if it could be? Ryan shares an interesting perspective as we discussed ways to combat the spiraling cost of buying homeowners insurance by homeowners and providing it to them by insurers.
• What can you do to materially impact the chance a home suffers a loss in a weather-related event like a hurricane, flood, hail storm or wildfire?At PLRB, we see the impact of better building codes on losses, and many areas have seen the benefit in how newer construction stands up to these weather events. Ryan discusses one hold up to making your home more resilient at a cost to the homeowner is the availability of subsidized insurance through state FAIR plans that allows people to still get coverage at a low enough cost to discourage investing in hardening your home to loss. This may be contributing to some of the issue states like California have in insurance affordability and viability.
• What is the long-term solution to making insurance affordable to buy and viable for insurers to sell? Do we have an insurance affordability problem? In California, Ryan believes we don’t. Instead, he says we have a “homes burning down” problem, and we in the insurance industry need to stretch beyond our traditional role of paying after a loss to thinking about how we stop the losses upfront and facilitate that.

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Dawn Walker is an associate director, Industry Relations (DUAE) in AM Best’s Strategy and Communications department. Dawn has more than 15 years of insurance industry and risk management experience, and joined AM Best in 2022, initially serving as a senior financial analyst, conducting performance assessments for Delegated Underwriting Authority Enterprises.

Previously, Dawn as a senior risk management analyst at MacAndrews & Forbes Inc., a global mergers and acquisitions firm in New York City. She also previously served as a senior account executive for Alliant Insurance Services, serving its ultra-high net worth book of business.

Dawn received her MBA degree with a concentration in Enterprise Risk Management at St. John’s University. She graduated Cum Laude earning a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Arizona. She holds a Property & Casualty and Life & Health Broker’s license, has earned an Associate in Risk management (ARM) designation and is actively pursuing a Charter Property Casualty Underwriter’s designation.

Highlights from the Show

• AM Best is known for many things, but mainly for the assessments and ratings they perform on players across the insurance industry.

• For the Delegated Underwriting Authority Enterprise (DUAE) space in particular, they are bringing transparency to help drive continued growth not only of the DUAE segment, but the product innovation that goes on within it.

• The level of growth in the delegated underwriting authority space has been huge, getting to $77B in the US alone, and making up 10% of the P&C market globally.

• The key areas they look at when assessing DUAEs includes Operations, UW Capabilities, Governance and Controls, Financials and Corporate Structure.

• This analysis helps bring transparency to the sector to help facilitate partnerships while also giving DUAEs a blueprint for how to optimize their operations for growth, stability and, ultimately, success

• Why do insurers work with Delegated Underwriting Authority Enterprises (DUAEs), like MGAs and MGUs? Can’t they just compete in the market directly?

• DUAEs bring expertise in niches and market segments that incumbent carriers may not be able to build efficiently given their scale, and the relative size of these niches being too small to support the operational cost of a carrier. DUAEs often come with expertise and distribution in the segment, allowing carriers working with them to access new spaces efficiently, quickly and profitably.

• What can support or stand in the way of the success of a Delegated Underwriting Authority Enterprises (DUAEs), like MGAs and MGUs? AM Best performs assessments of these entities to bring transparency to key success factors insurers would look at when deciding whether to work with a DUAE or not.

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Highlights from the Show

• Curtis shares about his work to increase education and understanding through his content is trying to help.

• His main work is as President of National Insurance Inspection Services, who not only helps carriers by performing underwriting inspections, but also developed a self-inspection app that carriers have embraced to increase their understanding of the risks they write and help homeowners reduce the risk they face.

• Insurers don’t get it right on every claim. Yet Curtis believes the industry as a whole does not systematically or intentionally get it wrong, despite the popular narrative in the media. There is a general lack of understanding and education out there that is degrading the general public’s sense of the insurance industry and the role it plays in the economy driven by the widespread, negative narrative that is not unlike the narrative that drives engagement in so many other areas. Negativity gets eyeballs and keeps them much better than positivity.

• Regardless of what drove the current situation with the cost of homeowners insurance and the insufficiency of rates, blame won’t solve the problem. That’s been the driving force behind the work Curtis does under the name “LO$$ RATIO”, including his viral raps and memes. As homeowners continue to struggle to find and afford coverage in many parts of the US and carriers struggle to sell insurance at an economically viable rate, Curtis hopes more understanding and conversation helps change the situation.

• What if insurers allocated even a small proportion of the overall ad spend of the industry to educate consumers and help improve some of the public perception of the insurance industry, and the knock on effect that has on issues like social inflation. That’s the dream Curtis has to help drive the necessary shift in the negative dynamic we are struggling with today.

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Highlights from the Show

• Andres shares what Plug and Play does for startups. Beyond just investing, they run programs to help startups find commercial success, even if they aren’t portfolio companies and without having to give up equity – both of which are critical to new companies trying to build their business in the insurance industry.
• AI is obviously a specific topic Plug and Play is looking at, whether that’s at ITC or outside of it.
• Rather than going after the type of buzz generating solutions we hear about like Anthropic or OpenAI, they are specifically thinking about different layers of the tech stack.
• That includes the foundation layer, like one of their portfolio companies, Archetype, built the foundation for an IoT solution.
• Andres shared some tips for founders, the biggest one centering around Patience.
  • The speed of change (and sales cycles) in insurance is very long, so you need to have the patience and runway to survive if you want to build something in the industry.

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Highlights from the Show

• Note

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Magdalena is a Senior Director and Global InsurTech Innovation Leader at WTW’s Insurance Consulting and Technology (ICT). She leads ICT’s inorganic growth strategy as well as its interaction with the external insurtech ecosystem globally. She joined the firm as a Senior Economist at Watson Wyatt’s Research and Innovation Center in 2005. She has 20+ years of experience in R&D and international strategy consulting and was WTW’s Global Head of Research and Analytical Services. Magda holds a M.Sc. in math. Finance and a PhD in Quantitative Economics and Finance. She also holds a professional certificate on Innovation from the MIT Professional Education Program.

For the past 10 years she has been solely focused on innovation and strategic consulting for the Insurance Industry, especially around digital transformation, advanced analytics, blockchain, emerging risks and #insurtech.

She was among the first to publish and discuss blockchain in the context of insurance and has focused almost exclusively on helping the insurance industry to understand and deploy new technologies since 2014. She is a well-recognized thought leader in insurtech and the implications of new technologies for the risk transfer industry. She has been a prolific public speaker in the past 10 years and in the past couple of years alone, Magda has had over 100 public speaking engagements specific to insurtech and blockchain at various international conferences and summits. She has also published multiple articles, blogs, interviews and audio/visual media on the topic. She sees herself as a blockchain and technology governance crusader and devotes significant time to educational activities, ranging from workshops for executives to sessions at elementary schools and trainings to empower #womenintech.

Her main areas of expertise include blockchain, technology and innovation, advanced analytics, MNC internationalization and innovation strategies, emerging markets, global governance, macroeconomic and socio-political risks.

Further, Magdalena has 14 years of teaching experience at European (Germany, UK) and Latin American universities. She also led many research projects for multilateral organizations on microinsurance, financial inclusion and innovation, including pre-2009 projects on alternative currencies.

• Note

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.

Highlights from the Show

• Wesley came on the show in Season 5 to share more of Sola's story, so be sure to listen to that for more background
• They recently launched a Wind & Hail product that like a hybrid Parametric/Indemnity proiduct in that it is data-triggered, but has validation of the loss through on-site inspection
• Their product speaks directly to an issue many insurers and homeowners are facing where providing traditional coverage is no longer financially viable yet homeowners are struggling to afford even high-deductible offerings that leave them excessively exposed – and mortgage lenders aren't comfortable with the coverage gap being created
• Sola's Wind & Hail product is cheaper than the money most homeowners would save by increasing their Wind & Hail deductible if they live in a hail-prone area, meaning they can get back to more complete coverage while saving money over what that coverage would have cost otherwise

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.