The Thought Leader's Voice Podcast

Andrew Newby: Welcome to this iResearch podcast on maximizing innovation in FinTech spaces. My name is Andrew Newby, Director of Operations of iResearch, and I’m very glad to be able to talk today to Dr. Samyr Mezzour. Dr. Samyr is Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of House of Insurtech Switzerland. HITS for short, initials you’ll hear throughout this podcast. It was formerly known as Innovation Garage, which was and is part of Generali -The Insurance Group. House of Insurtech provides customer-centric and disruptive solutions to corporates operating in the insurance industry. Samyr has 18 years of experience of insurance and consulting including a center senior strategy consultant for management consultants – Roland Berger. Dr. Samyr welcome!

Samyr Mezzour: Thank you, Andrew. I’m happy to be here and to have the podcast with you.

Andrew Newby: Very much. Likewise, and I hope you’re very well today. So, in a quote, I found searching a Google Cloud article, but it seems to be sort of HITS sort of approved one about the following quote, “The insurance industry is ancient, but in many ways, its Ecosystem of Tech focused start-ups is still in its infancy.” Assuming you agree with that quote, sort of approved by a company, how do you foster the spirit of innovation and creativity in what is archetypally traditional industry?

Samyr Mezzour: Okay. Well, again. First of all, thank you for the invitation. Second, it’s HITS- House of Insurtech Switzerland. So, we call it HITS, like, get HITS done.

Andrew Newby: I was trying to be polite, but HITS is brilliant.

Samyr Mezzour:  And third, so yes, indeed, insurance is ancient. It’s 4000 years old that the first evidence of it comes back or dates back to the Babylonian times. It was engraved in the code of Hammurabi, which was Babylonian king, the concept of insurance that was already developed there. And since then, it has evolved, it has developed, it has been modernized by the Brits a few 100 years ago, and it has been re-modernized again, and this is what we hope that the Insurtechs of this world are given it another boost to make it more efficient in this age of ones and zeros in the 21st century.

So, yes definitely the industry needs some kind of a shake-up. You have the incumbents on the one hand side and then you have the small insurtechs on the other side. And in between them you have the big techs which are very fluent in terms of digitizations, in terms of AI and they are slowly getting a piece of the trillion heavy insurance industry. So, it’s kind of these 3 big parties meeting up and trying to bring the interest to the next level. I mean, it’s exciting times for the industry.

Andrew Newby: I’ve watched one of your podcasts. You make a distinction between born globals and traditional companies. I guess the born globals might be things like Lemonade or Pingham in the US and China respectively. Can you just further elaborate on what you mean by born global because I guess, part of your role is to, I guess, produce them in what you’re doing at the moment, or at least, or rather as well, sort of develop during this podcast to partner with them.

Samyr Mezzour: So, the concept of born globals is fairly simple. It’s basically a start-up company that have a conception of far reach, geographic reach. Like, and you could say that, for example, Swiss high-tech start-ups, they need to expand to survive, they cannot just stay in Switzerland for a majority of them. I’m not talking about 100% of them. But they need, to conquer markets outside of Switzerland, to survive and to grow.

And you find a lot of those born globals again, having to be using intangible or offering intangible solutions, because the fact that it’s a digital solution, you can export it fairly rapidly. Do we produce them I mean, actually no, we work with them, we co-create solutions with them. So here in the innovation garage, where we’re sitting here in Zurich, we work a lot of those kinds of start-ups that need to expand rapidly in the Insurtech space.

Andrew Newby: So, by partnering with or producing partnerships between corporates and start-ups, the corporates presumably get access to flexibility in your talent, they get speed and the start-ups basically get the customer base they find near impossible to find normally. And again, this is something we can develop during the podcast, but this sort of open innovation approach that HITS seems very much to be a champion of. Would that be an accurate reflection of your paradigm as an organization?

Samyr Mezzour: So, what we are trying to be, ‘HITS’ is to be some kind of a conveyor belt between the slow pace of an incumbent versus the high pace of a start-up. And to synchronize the speed of these two, so that these two so the incumbent and the start-up can manage to co-create something together because the Insurtech provides technology. They provide, okay, something that is very disruptive, but what they’re lacking is access to customers. And this is where the incumbent comes into place because the incumbent has access to millions of customers but does not have, okay, the resources to develop disruptive technology.

So, this is a match made in heaven when you combine both because the combination of both is explosive. But again, it’s two speeds. And this is where HITS comes in between and try, okay, to synchronize those two so that they can both use the enabler, the technology and the right position of the Insurtech and test it with our customers. So that, okay, at the end, we, HITS, being very customer centricity obsessed, we check, okay, with a customer whether she or he wants…okay, that solution at the end.

Andrew Newby: We did a blog a while back about innovation and customer needs where we stated that… Many companies jump onto the digital train, not so much because they need to be on the digital train, but because they just don’t want to be left out. So, what in your opinion most motivates innovation in established companies and how much should you be aware of your competitors in that process rather than just doing your own thing? What’s the balance then, sort of how to keep innovation continuous?

Samyr Mezzour: So, first, okay. There is… I mean, the word ‘Innovation’ is very dear to me, and it has been misused and abused because when people talk about innovation, they’re talking about…they’re referring to invention and not innovation. Let me maybe briefly elaborate on that. So, in my book, Innovation is, let’s say, ‘The successful commercialization of an invention’, and by commercialization okay, you can translate, massive adoption, or large revenue sales, or a lot of users using that solution. So, only if that happened, then you can call it innovation. But if you just launch a product, and you call it an innovation, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s an invention in search of success. So that’s maybe a first where we need to align on the definition of innovation. So, innovation is hard to reach.

Now, in terms of competition, I would rather we focus more on the customers than on the competition. And sometimes, especially in those times, we like to talk about co-opetition. So, instead of a competitor, okay, to reinvent the wheel in their corner. So why don’t we use, why don’t we co-operate together to not reinvent the wheel, but at least invent something that has…that brings benefits to both of us because that way we can double or triple or quadruple, okay, the budget or the investment for that solution and it would be okay. Shareholders at the same time…for some things, okay, it is possible that competitors work on something and for other aspects, okay, it is not possible. So, let me summarize this in one sentence. So, imagine, okay, this sentence, dear competitors, let’s co-operate to survive. Let’s differentiate to thrive. Co-operate to survive means let’s do things that reduces costs. I’ll give you an example.

Each incumbent wants to go to the cloud, right? So instead of each one of us, you know, doing an RFP for cloud providers, why don’t we, okay, just pull together and then select one cloud provider and we would be actually reducing our cost of doing that. But we had one thing, a cloud provider a big one. But so, we co-operate on that cost reduction kind of efficiency gain. But then, now that we are all in the cloud and we have, we can start to differentiate one from another and this is where we compete one another to produce differentiating value propositions, because now we’re cloud ready. We ensure you are cloud ready. We now spent, okay, hundreds of millions to be cloud ready? No, because we pull together with the competition and we spend maybe single digit or two digits to be cloud ready, but now we are on the cloud and now we can start innovating. We can start to develop solutions to differentiate ourselves. I hope that, that was clear.

Andrew Newby: Moving on. A month or so ago, we held a roundtable discussion at iResearch titled, “Forging the Future with Thought Leadership”, and we discussed the need for clients to be reassured concerning innovation, and how much they often wanted to innovate safely by identifying quantifiable risks.

That seems a very natural space for an insurance company because that’s what a traditional insurance company does, it quantifies risks. But how does that work when you’re… when you are working with start-ups and untried solutions? There must be an element of leap of faith, with what you do. I’m sure your innovation processes are extremely rigorous. Will you just take us through how you give yourself the assurance that what you’re doing is a measurable risk. It’s a reasonable risk, in terms of working with start-ups, in judging start-ups to be concrete.

Samyr Mezzour: So, when we founded HITS 3 years ago, so basically, we spun off the innovation function of Generali Switzerland to not only that they have the freedom of experimenting, but also to respond to a need of other countries of Generali countries or Generali business units be used to collaborate with them. So, for that, okay, I’m very, very thankful and grateful for not only for the top management of Generali Switzerland, but also for growth, the group innovation team in Milan, to support us in having that freedom and in experiencing in two horizons. So, horizon 2, and horizon 3.

So, horizon 2 are we take the new business models that are a bit away from the core business using disruptive technologies and horizon 3 are the moonshots. So, they’re a very risky thing. And the fact okay, that, as you say, we’re in the business of measuring risks to give us, okay, this kind of risk proneness and given us, okay, that freedom to experiment is extremely invaluable. So, and we do that day by day, but at the end, they are, let’s say, two key focal points. One is it needs to adhere to the Generali strategy, and its ambition of becoming a lifetime partner for its customers, that’s one. And two is our mantra is to be customer centricity obsessed, because this is how you create innovations. This is when the customer wants that solution.

Andrew Newby: That links back to your HITS three pillars of Opening, Connecting and Doing the customer centric framework for….

Samyr Mezzour: Exactly!

Andrew Newby:  …for letting start-ups flourish and scale through innovation. So, how does that work with customers then in terms of, could you really have the same versus of ideation, POC, minimum viable products, iterations with the clients and then a final viable product. How long will it take you to do that? Do you…How do you do that? Do you do that traditional…sort of traditional in quotes and so, how long would POC stage take? Weeks, Months? Couple of months? To sort of, getting the products out there. 3 months, 6 months, 12? How does that work?

Samyr Mezzour: So, POC, yeah, it’s variable. It depends from innovation product to innovation product. Some can be shorter so it could be a month, a month and a half but it could also last 6 months, okay, depending on what we’re doing, but yes, the sweet spot is around 3 months for the POC. For an MVP, okay, now we’re talking about a bit longer. Yeah, I would say, okay, around 4 to 6 months for the MVP again, depending on what you are doing. Now how do we approach, okay, how do we make sure that it is customer centric? It’s well very simple in the sense that we need…before we start our engineer are from background and engineers are stereotyped to just develop solutions, okay, without asking the customers.

That’s a heavy stereotype just because, okay, I like the solution. I just want to develop it and then, oh! I’ll talk to the customer later. Oh! the customer doesn’t want it. Oh! Shoot. So, I spent a lot of time, okay, let’s say, not having that urge of developing something that I find cool. But I learnt really to listen to the customer, to understand the needs and sometimes understanding the root cause of a need is even more important. So, I tend to disagree with Henry Ford quote. If I ask the customer, he or she will ask me to add faster horses. For me, it’s a misleading quote because as an innovator, what you need to interpret from that quote is, someone wants to go faster from A to B. Do not put the solution faster horses in the equation.

You have to understand the root cause of what the customer is telling you. So, and this is my job, okay, to go deeper than what your customer is telling you. So, once you understand those needs, and the root cause of it, then, okay, you can start to prototype the solution and then iterate like you said, with the customer up until he tells you, oh, I like that. Oh no, I don’t need that. Oh, that’s too much. Oh, I don’t understand that. Wow, I love this thing. And this is where you try to find something customer-centric and then you start the growth hacking.

Growth Hacking, okay, just to define properly is when you go out there you simulate that you have the product using social media. And then you see, this kind of ad banner and, okay, the message I like, I click. I go through it, I read. I like what I see. Okay, I want to buy it. I click on ‘buy’ and then comes, okay, the surprise that says, okay, look, we’re working on the product, but in few months, okay, we’ll have it, so put in your email address here and we will contact you. So, the combination that I told you earlier developing a customer-centric prototype and growth hacking later on because those persons, okay, click on ‘buy’ so they have the intention to buy it. This combination gives you the evidence that you’re onto something, you’re onto a potential path to innovation, and this is, okay, how we operate.

Andrew Newby: Right. So, in summary, it’s the customers issue or a pain point. You start there. There’s something that, you know, is not optimal. You find a solution that’s suitable for that customer. And if you’re, you know, you’re walking the walk and being truly customer centric, you will innovate. Is that…it simplified?

Samyr Mezzour: Customer centric but also customer eccentric sometimes…

Andrew Newby: So, you’ve got all the words, haven’t you?  You’ve got all the…

Samyr Mezzour: …..I mean it. This is how it goes. Yes.

Andrew Newby: Now, that’s fascinating. So, coming to the topic of Thought Leadership and just getting your message out there Samyr, how does it work for you? Presumably you have an ambassadorial or championing role with Generali group itself. Would you care to elaborate on, sort of, how if at all thought leadership works for you or how you work with it?

Samyr Mezzour: Absolutely. I mean, I think Thought Leadership is extremely important in the sense that it inspires you. It stimulates, okay, the corner of your brain that has thirst for curiosity and to see something different. It is… Yeah, I need to have, okay, that kind of thought leadership coming from different sources. And I am somehow okay. I am okay in terms of in my job of innovation, but this is what we all do at HITS. We are the conduit of those kinds of a thought leadership that we are reading or seeing also in a conference or a report. We are the conduit, okay, to transmit it to the organization, to Generali because we need to show that freshness.

We need to show, okay, actually where to go… where the world is going. Where the consumer is going. I mean he or she, okay, has a pain point or actually is enjoying a specific solution but that solution, okay, we don’t have in house, and we need, okay, to bring it home. And for that yes, we use different… we need different channels within Generali, okay, to convey those messages coming from thought leadership through different calls that we have internally, innovation calls or this development calls, or some internal webinars that we are doing and so on and so forth, to inspire people and also for people to come to us and tell us; look, you spoke about that, and I think we have a need with our business in here. Can we talk? So, it can be the start of an innovation project.

Andrew Newby: Do you have…So, you need to get buy in from stakeholders across Generali. Do you have innovation managers or innovation savvy managers who you speak to? So, what’s their profile in terms of reason for talking to you other than your obvious expertise in doing this? So how does it work institutionally?

Samyr Mezzour: Within HITS, you mean?

Andrew Newby: Well, Generali as well, presumably they’re your…

Samyr Mezzour: Yes.

Andrew Newby: They pay for the innovation funds, I assume…or partly pay for them.

Samyr Mezzour: It’s actually…So, we have an Innovation Fund. A central innovation fund that actually to whom we submit our applications for innovation projects and then, okay, we have to pitch to see whether it makes sense or not. Or, if the Innovation Board sees an opportunity, okay, for us to pursue that product, yes, or no? So, they decide at the end. And these Innovation Board members, they come from different countries of Generali, different business units, and they have to cast the vote, okay, whether that project okay, will be funded. That’s one part of the equation.

The other part is assuming we got the funding, we need to work with that country. So, and we need to have innovation and address onboard from that country but also the sponsor, which is the business and not the innovation team of that country. So, it’s the business representative of that country that works hand in hand with us, and at the end HITS is responsible for that product to deliver what was promised initially, so this is how it works. Summarized, you have the business who comes with a need, you have HITS that listens to that need and make it let’s say, seize an opportunity together with the business. Okay, we apply to the Innovation Fund, if successful, okay, we get the funding. And then, okay, we work with a start-up that will act as an enabler towards the development of a solution that responds to the needs of the business.

Andrew Newby: Are there any practical tips you could pass on to our listeners in terms of the way you or they, sort of started on ventures, the way they should pitch. You know, it sounds like you pitch or give business cases for all that start-ups, business cases for their ventures of any sort of things you’d say you should avoid doing or should definitely do having a very, very tight brief to present. You know, vital. Are there any sort of political or some practical tips? You know, you’ve mentioned in our discovery call, sort of, breakfasts, Insurtech breakfasts that you host.

Samyr Mezzour: Yes. So, this is in line with what you meant with the thought leadership part. So, this is the conduit, okay, to where we identify a fascinating start-up that can actually, through an Insurtech breakfast that we usually have, okay, on the Friday at 9am, it’s open to everybody to dial in and to listen to what this start-up okay, is doing and when we check, okay, the analytics, okay, we see that it’s not only Generali people that are dialling in, which is great because then they know what we are doing with that start-up.

And what we have done with this business unit, okay in this country, might be relevant for another country that did not hear about our projects. Okay, hey, why don’t you do the same for us? So, from a simple webinar, it could be a great opportunity to scale the solution that we co-created together to other business units, but it’s not only a Generali audience, you have also external auditors, you have even the competitor listening to our Insurtech breakfast. As I said, it is pretty open in the spirit of open innovation. And you have external start-ups.

So, start-ups okay, that we don’t even know that also dial in and listen to us. And then they knock on our doors and say, okay, hey, I love your Insurtech breakfast. And I heard, okay, about what you’re doing in your innovation garage that you’re hosting, okay, these start-ups and this is what we this is what we offer. Would you be interested in a call? So basically, we are also sourcing new start-ups to join our HITS network. So, I mean, this kind of a thought leadership kind of sessions bring multiple benefits on the way.

Andrew Newby:  So, it sounds like the motto is just network. Get yourself out there and…

Samyr Mezzour: I did say the word…ecosystem, if you noticed.

Andrew Newby:  Say the word, ecosystem. So, yes. The key words of the day. So, we’ve talked about the ways of HITS works and its customer-centric framework. The emphasis on digital transformation innovation, your ecosystems. We’ve sort of talked about open innovation and working with competitors and perhaps the big tech, I notice you work with Google and Salesforce, so you’re not afraid to work with the big boys in Tech as well as competitors in other industries.

So just trying to pull that all together, just on the technological front. First, what are the yawns, just saying AI and so on. What are the technologies that are most important in terms of innovating broadly, within FinTech broadly over the next 3 to 5 years? What are you looking at as either threats, distant threats, and the distance or by the sound of …. possibilities is probably more likely a view you take on them. So, what’s exciting you at the moment?

Samyr Mezzour: So, you have 2 questions there. So yeah, the question on which technology and another one on which other threats?

Andrew Newby:  No, no. Which technologies do you think are most effective? The most powerful in terms of promoting innovation within FinTech at the moment more broadly?

Samyr Mezzour: I’m having a difficulty to get answer the question because again with my…with the customer-centricity obsession, it’s like, okay, you’re asking me the question, okay, which hammer is the most efficient or effective and sometimes…

Andrew Newby:  It depends…it depends is the answer.

Samyr Mezzour: Yes, definitely, it depends on what is the use case at hand. So, AI is a fascinating, okay, technology but do you need AI for everything? Do you need blockchain for everything? Do you need cybersecurity, or I don’t know, quantum computing for everything? So, again, sorry to disappoint you with the answer. So, it truly depends.

Andrew Newby: Maybe, they just want a simple payment system that works.

Samyr Mezzour: Exactly, exactly! And sometimes okay, it’s just because the process is wrong. It’s wrongly designed that you just indicate to take a piece of paper and redraw the process and make it simpler, and it can still remain a manual, but very efficient, okay, process that needs some kind of human touch and there’s not a mobile phone as a solution. So, it truly depends on the use case. Now in terms of risks or threats for the next 3 to 5 years, that was a question as well, right?

Andrew Newby: Yeah. I’m still trying to frame the technology question in a meaningful way. Talking about threats and opportunities, but let’s go there. A bit of SWOT never hurt anyone! So yeah, so what’s the ‘O’ and what’s the ‘T’ in that SWOT?

Samyr Mezzour: Okay, so now I’m trying to have the bird eye view and really be as generic as possible. In terms of threats, definitely, okay. You hear it. I think that there is an issue of The Economist is the target of reducing 1.5 degrees. So, climate change is the issue, the big issue, just to be clear, and that reducing, the cooling temperature by 1.5 degrees in the next decades. It’s something, okay, that we will not be able to reach. So, we’re beyond that point.

We’ve tried several times, okay, to reduce it, but it’s not happening. I think this is the cover page of The Economist of this week. So definitely, I mean climate change, and climate change is a…It’s actually is a…it’s a PR word for global warming. It started with the Bush administration to make it softer, but actually we should be talking about global warming, because the temperatures are rising, and they generate climate change all over the planet. So big threats, climate change.

Another big threat that I see is the financial wellbeing of people because we are getting…I mean longevity is higher, people are living longer, still have their pension at 65. They have savings for 10 years, but so basically just 75 but they will be living to 85, so what do you do with being penniless for 10 years from 75 to 85? Basically, you’re just, you know, with the age pyramid, where the base is narrowing and narrowing and having the baby boomers getting in so the whole social system is not sustainable. My kids that are born, I mean, 10 years ago, they don’t have a life expectancy of 100 years. So, with the pension at 65, so if you do the math, this doesn’t compute. So, financial wellbeing is a big threat. And I would say, okay, digital disinformation is another big threat, which impairs our democracies. And these are, I would say, my top 3 at the top of my head for the moment.

Andrew Newby: By Digital Disinformation, you mean, just the general misinformation. I’m not trying to correct you. I’m just trying to put it in the wilful or objectively wilful distorting of information, and its effect on the political system and by partisanship and yeah…

Samyr Mezzour: I mean, wilful or not wilful…I mean, take the example of the recommendation algorithms of You tube. I mean, is it wilful? Yes and No. I mean, it was meant to be serving you to recommending something that you like so, you might like this as well, but if you type once, I don’t know…something around racism and there was a racist act that happened yesterday, and it had millions of views and you click on it and then, okay, the next one, okay, you will see…I mean all the time some racist videos so which will make you…which would polarize you towards becoming a racist.

So, I’m an adult. I can think critically but if my kids would watch these kinds of videos, then my kids might become racists because it was all the time recommended to them in that direction. So, and kids are very impressionable. And YouTube is their truth, and how can we fight that and find solutions that counter these kind of things, and critical thinking is key in here. And how do we teach or find solutions for… not even kids, not only kids but also adults to think critically. These are some of the things that we need to look into to think about.

Andrew Newby: Some of our listeners might be getting a bit kind of disheartened at this stage. The bleakness of the scenario is all to likely very…likely to rile up. Let’s end on the opportunities, Samyr.

Samyr Mezzour: Exactly. We will get to the opportunities. This is why I love to work in this industry because it’s about protecting. And we tend to forget that insurance is about, okay, protecting people against danger or if that danger happened, how to help them and support them to come back to their normal life, and this is, okay, where the great, okay, part of my job is to find solutions to those threats or to prevent those threats and being creative, okay, with the team here to address those threats and come with customer-centric again solutions that address them and if that threat, that danger, okay, actually damage life, okay, to help you get out of that danger and come back to your usual way of life. So, these are the opportunities that we love to address because the threats are an immense source of creativity for us to start working into sustainable solutions, that eventually hopefully will become innovations.

Andrew Newby: And your open innovation paradigm if one may call that is also arguably a source of optimism. The competitors will come together. Your co-opetition. Is it?

Samyr Mezzour: Yeah.

Andrew Newby: Co-opetition. I got it in the end…didn’t I? You know the idea of partnerships of, you know, not all being a zero sum game and you’re trying to wipe, you know, new entrants or competitors out of the game that you actually work with them, you know, without compromising your own commercial proposition, but that we can actually work together and be creative without sounding hippy about it, but the partnership and collaboration are and will continue to be very, very important within FinTech and crossover industries.

Samyr Mezzour: Absolutely. I mean, this is a call to our competitors, if they want to come and visit us here in Zurich and look how we work. They’re absolutely welcome to come into our innovation garage. Look into our innovation funnel, how we work and what products we are currently working on with which start-ups and we have been doing this since 3 years. Okay, Pre-COVID, we used to have like I think 12 corporates visiting us per month including competitors for different reasons. So first, okay, out of curiosity, so they want to see, okay, how we do innovation within Generali. Two is because, okay, they are also curious to see, okay, what kind of start-ups are out there. Maybe they can work with those start-ups. And for us, it’s even better if one of our start-ups to be clear, these are independent start-ups. Sometimes we’re invested in them, but not all the time and they can also work with those start-ups. So, we very welcome, okay, that fact. And three, and this is, okay, the third open innovation point is we’ll look at working on this project, might be relevant for you. How about okay, we work on it together? Why not? And, yes, so, with that mindset, in that spirit, please come to us and have a visit.

Andrew Newby:  An excellent note to end on. And also, look up Dr. Samyr Mezzour’s amazing talk online to inspire you. Dr. Samyr, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts with our audience. Thank you so much and may the rest of your day be excellent.

Samyr Mezzour: Thank you, and thank you, for your audience for listening. And I wish you a wonderful rest of the week.