The Leadership in Insurance Podcast - Insurtech & Innovation

This week, host Alex Bond is joined by Michael Nadel, Global Practice Lead at Simon-Kucher, to unpack how AI is upending pricing and monetization in insurance.

In this conversation, Michael shares:

✅ Why AI is breaking the traditional per-user-per-month pricing model and forcing carriers and vendors toward outcome-based, value-aligned pricing instead
✅ The hard truth that AI speeds things up but doesn't always cut costs
✅ How to manage pricing transitions without alienating existing customers
✅ The State Farm AI claims lawsuit as a cautionary tale for deploying customer-facing AI in a regulated industry
✅ Why he believes specialized judgment and expertise will remain valuable in consulting, even as AI commoditizes more technical knowledge

It's a conversation about the gap between perceived value and willingness to pay — and why pricing strategy is really a signal of who you are as a business.
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This week, host Alex Bond is joined by Dax Craig, co-founder and CEO of Comeryx — a serial insurance entrepreneur.

In this conversation, Dax shares:

✅ His journey from a wireless start-up in grad school to founding two prior insurance ventures and why he came back for a third
✅ Comeryx's AI-native approach to small commercial insurance, targeting hard-to-place ENS risks through wholesale brokers with no-touch processing from submission to renewal
✅ How a five-person team is aiming to deliver the output of 50-75 employees and why profitability matters more to him than growth for growth's sake
✅ Why MGA structures beat traditional carriers on speed and innovation and his warning against MGAs drifting into becoming carriers
✅ What's really overlooked in small commercial insurance, and where investors are repeating mistakes from the mid-2010s

It's a conversation about building lean, staying disciplined on profitability, and why real distribution expertise still beats hype in Insurtech.
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🎙️ NEW EPISODE: Leadership in Insurance Podcast

This week, host Alex Bond is joined by Balaji Devarasetty, CTO of Vertafore, to talk about bringing AI and outside-industry thinking to insurance technology.
In this conversation, Balaji shares:

✅ His path from banking to payments to crypto — and how that cross-industry experience shapes how he approaches insurtech
✅ Vertafore's vision for the "Agentic Agency," using AI to modernize the tech stack without ripping out legacy systems
✅ How the Orange Partner Program's 40+ partners and hundreds of APIs let agencies of every size extend their platform, rather than building everything in-house
✅ How AI is closing the gap with other industries — cutting regulatory updates from days to hours and commission reconciliation from hours to minutes
✅ Why attracting the next generation of insurance talent means rethinking user experience, not just technology

It's a conversation about modernizing legacy systems without ripping them up, why the best insurtech ideas often come from outside insurance, and what it takes to build technology the next generation really wants to use.
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🎙️ NEW EPISODE: The Leadership in Insurance Podcast

This week, host Alex Bond is joined by Peter Colis, co-founder and CEO of Ethos — the vertically integrated platform that's rebuilding how life insurance gets underwritten, sold and serviced in the US.

In this conversation, Peter shares:

✅ How Ethos went from a Stanford dorm-room idea in 2016 to the largest direct life insurance marketer in the US
✅ The three pivotal decisions behind Ethos's growth — from vertical integration to automating 95% of underwriting decisions instantly (vs. a 20-30% industry average)
✅ Why building a real competitor to Ethos is harder than it looks, and what makes their culture different from traditional carriers
✅ His view on where LLMs will (and won't) fit into life insurance distribution
✅ How Ethos's agent platform is democratizing access to life insurance for the mass and middle markets

It's a conversation about innovation, execution, and building a category-defining company — as told by someone who's done it twice over: through years of private growth and now as a newly public company.

#LeadershipInInsurance #InsurTech #LifeInsurance #Leadership #Ethos #Innovation

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🎙️ NEW EPISODE: The Leadership in Insurance Podcast

This week, host Alex Bond sits down with Bill Harris, co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of ITC (InsureTechConnect), ahead of ITC Vegas 2026 (Sept 29 – Oct 1).
In this conversation, Bill shares:

✅ How InsurTech has evolved over 10 years — from disrupting legacy carriers to helping them adopt technology at scale
✅ The AI investment numbers reshaping the sector, and why he's excited (with eyes open) about where it's heading
✅ What's new at ITC Vegas this year, including dedicated Cyber and AI summits
✅ Why 80-85 of the top 100 global carriers now show up — and what keeps 9,000+ attendees coming back
✅ His take on why the best opportunities at ITC happen outside the formal agenda — in the hallway conversations and serendipitous meetings
It's a conversation about scale, connection, and why ITC has become the industry's annual homecoming.
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