The Power Brokers on the Future of Insurtech

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home hello everyone and welcome back to the show today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you and it is it's a multi-guest show i don't do a lot of these because sometimes when you don't have a good flow they can be a little distracting but today's episode is just it's just wonderful two former guests steve anderson ceo of catalit and peter mcdonald co-founder and ceo of wonder right as well as a first timer someone who we are going to have on for his own solo episode at some point but this is the first time he's on the show andrew winn co-founder of ascend and you've heard me talk a little bit about on the show about ascend payments and how they've been a big part of our success here uh in the second half of 2021 moving into 2022 and really uh these guys reached out to me said hey we really want to have this conversation i would love to do it on your show and we want to talk about the future of insure tech and that was just music to my ears uh excited that they would think about this show this this my audience you guys as a group of people that um they would want to speak to and have this conversation in front of uh such an honor it's a wonderful conversation you're gonna learn a ton uh get a bunch of really cool ideas and hopefully get your brain spinning here as we continue to run into 2022 on our collective and individual paths to world domination all right before we get there i want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of this show the people that make this show possible pay the bills and that is a podium podium if you go you want to see podium in action go to rogress.com check out the web chat uh we use a couple different features a podium but the one we use the most is the web chat and the reason for that is we get like a 95 plus response rate to people who use that web chat because they fill out the web chat on their phone or or whatever online and then when we respond it hits their text message so you know texts text response is uh way way higher than any anything else phone you know whatever um and for that reason this allows us to get in front of people and really what we're able to do is vet people quickly on the fly through a few questions in the chat the podium chat before we move them into our pipeline uh we're able to either send them to you know refer them out to where they need to go or uh put them into our process and start working them through rogue so uh love podium big fans uh very happy that they've chosen to be a part of uh our show here and i want to give a quick shout out to coterie coterie is a company making things happen small business insurance guys if you're struggling to get appointments with some of the big uh traditional carriers because they want to give you a bunch of garbage about an appointment costs money and time and blah blah blah and all this crap um which to me i just struggle i had a carrier the other day say uh you know we can't appoint you in that state because it costs us 250 dollars to appoint you and i'm like 250 bucks really like the barrier to me getting appointed in this state and writing business with you is 250 dollars come on i mean guys what are we doing here so that's not the case with coterie coterie is appointing agents they're looking for people who want to break into small business or are already doing small business um they have a wide uh breadth of appetite their platform is so easy to use it's good coverage guys i can't recommend coterie enough go to c-o-t-e-r-i-e c-o-t-e-r-i-e coterieinsurance.com check them out get a point and start writing more small commercial today all right with that let's get on to this absolutely tremendous episode the power brokers on the future of insure tech i'm so sick of covid i know dude i'm so done with it at this point like even if i were ever actually scared of it which i wasn't i just can't take it anymore i couldn't take anything i couldn't take anything this long i was definitely a little scared in the beginning there in like march it was like i was like thinking of that matt damon movie i was just like oh my god we're all gonna die i think you get to like i think you get to like the end of june if you were scared to like the end of june like real scared i think that's legit but you know this point it's just that was a year and a half ago yeah now it's just a business model i mean now we're like now there's going to be like nba classes on like hey want to set up an annuity here's a really cool business model what i'm scared about now is like just mutations it's like yeah you know we don't have vaccines going out and whatever i don't know but like just gonna keep mutating it's just weird i don't know yeah but i don't know i won't i won't get into all that i know i know i know i follow you on twitter so i between your football commentary and weight lifting and everything i just can't help it i think i said to my wife the other day i was like i was like i tried so hard for so long to not have an open opinion on this and i just i can't handle it anymore like i can't take it like like it's gonna i'm gonna explode if i don't have one channel that i can voice my feelings on this particular topic and um so i she's like it's like my wife is badass she's like okay let's do it who cares what do i what do you care i'm like all right all right sorry steve you woke it you walked into me uh pontificating about the vid uh so what's up what are we uh what are we talking about here today again this is like a this is like a powerhouse show that we got going on here um i can't hear you steve by the way are you talking yeah steve your mic's not working um the uh i i love when i get emails who sent me the original email was it you andrew that was like hey we want to do this show i got all these guys together can we use can we go come on your podcast i'm just like this is my favorite yes like why would i say no to this that would be crazy so what are we uh what are we talking about here fellas yeah and wanting to wait to see it we can hear steve oh see oh steve are you not steve this does not look good for catalate this does not play well exactly first tool of cattle is going to be uh ip phone system about now yeah now there we go there we go there we go there you go it's amazing when you actually turn the microphone on what happens yeah yeah i have to leave my you know and i figure i just got people snowed about catalate so you know no big deal so oh yeah you know that's actually the advantage of being around so long you know it's just like hey you know it is what it is yeah i got this thing i well i've been snowing people about my understanding of insurance for about 16 years now so i'm right with you i i feel like um i feel yeah i feel like i got that one um so all right so so so so guys what what are we uh what are we talking about today we got three complete power brokers on the show and uh and i have literally no idea what we're talking about which is makes me very happy i think and you had approached you know we were chatting about something we had connected about a year ago um and we were chatting recently with steve and with each other and we're like you know it'd be great to do a podcast kind of discuss the future of insure tech i think there's been a lot of thinking and agents in the beginning about you know where's my place in all this there's all this sexy stuff happening all these companies like lemonades of the world are happening and what's happening with us and i think that we wanted to kind of set the record straight that or you know people are already on board obviously but um the future of insure tech is really about empowering independent agents you know there's a future there and i think we're you know steve's unique background and experience of knowing all the different tools that's out there comes into play is he can talk to that and also you know it's an interesting conversation point for um you know for the for catalytic which is i think having a big year this year talking about how to help agencies you know simplify and understand yeah we are having a big year actually literally today we signed another state on board so congrats they're dropping like flies that's awesome so let's do this for for those listening at home who who may you know let's do like again and and no grandstanding here um i know we're all proud of the things that we do but uh let's do just quick quick sound bite on whatever your thing is we'll start with steve we'll go in reverse so we'll go reverse for me steve andrew finish with peter um just quick you know what's the thing what is what is catalytic where can people get more and then obviously we'll we'll do all that at the end and stuff too but for people listening right now like hit them hit them hit them hit them with your the elevator pitch just so we can level set everybody sure um i can probably do that so uh i'm steve anderson uh co-founder and ceo of catalytic a new uh for-profit entity formed by seven big i state associations along with uh a growing number of other states that have partnered with us to provide technology resources and information to their members uh the way i describe it is we help agents discover evaluate select and implement the technology they need to continue to thrive gotcha i love that it's like a trust a trusted source for all their tech concerns questions problems who's out there who should i pick how do i do it how do i not make a mistake yeah yeah good well good cost me what what what ryan cost you 500 000 2 000 multiple thousands of dollars if you make the wrong choice and the time and the brain cycles that's the part that time is the biggest yeah yeah the cost is like i mean i think the cost is the easiest thing to feel frustrated about but like it's the time and in the and you know i always think in terms of brain cycles like like how much energy do i have to give to this thing to do it and like when you change a big system man it takes a lot of focus and a lot of attention and uh if you know if you end up making a mistake or get something you're not happy with or something that can't solve your need man that is a killer i mean you just want to you know that's when i popped the bottle of buffalo chase behind me and you know exactly well and the message well the message we'll have this year frankly is we are a fractional cio for the normal independent agency so large brokers have one or multiple positions that their full-time job is to do that you know the traditional normal you know agent doesn't have the resources to do that we become that for them at a very reasonable monthly fee that's great i love that i love it that's a great okay cool well good so uh andrew on to you what the hell yeah thank you uh i'm andrew is this your first time on the show by the way i don't think it is yeah oh that kind of funny these guys have both been on steve's been on a ton of times talked to him too much so uh uh okay well so that we got to do an individual show too but okay we'll do that later yeah yeah okay uh well thanks for having me for the first time looking forward to the others uh i'm andrew win one of the co-founders of ascend ascend is the first modern insurance payments platform we're an all-in-one payments platform for uh independent agents so we allow you to do premium finance digital payments uh automating payables things like that uh to steve's point earlier it's really about saving you time and helping you um do what you know matters to you which is sell insurance and help people find the right coverages and not worry about all this other paperwork and stuff associated or traditionally associated with selling uh insurance yeah and guys at home you've you've heard me talk about ascend a little bit um obviously adrian has been on the show yet so we'll do we'll do a solo episode coming up and do a deep dive but uh uh rogue is a is a ascend client um and uh we i processed a payment with them today it's to me there is no easier system on the market for capturing payments and the fact that you can do the payment like just a straight payments you know kind of standard payments or do the premium finance that to me in the ease of it right the the just send out a link and you guys kind of take care of the whole thing like i don't even have to send the email anymore there's like a button where once it's all set up i just click go and then you guys take care of the email and the reminders and um you know i i i have it's been a game changer for us and uh you know i i appreciate it and then you obviously pay the brunt of that in terms of all the slack messages that i send with different insights that i have we'll call them no no we appreciate it we appreciate it but yeah i mean that's that's really just want to take that that muscle memory away of deciding hey should i offer premium finance if so blah blah blah let me get a quote let me go to the systems we push that to the customer so they can decide on the fly hey do i want to finance this or not if so you know i'm going to choose and you don't you as the as the agent don't need to be in the loop of that and we handle the rest so really saving you a ton of time yeah very cool very cool okay peter you're up yeah so um my name is peter mcdonald i'm one of the co-founders of wonder right we built what i think is the best experience to fill out applications with your customers um so quick background i was an agent for seven years i wish steve that catalate existed you know five years ago we were literally looking for a fractional cio and andrew i i love the concept of you know ascend and um knew i had a use for that in my own life as an agent as i did for an easier way of filling out applications because i used to fill them out with pen and paper it was literally the fastest way to do it and it drove me crazy to think that i would work so hard to win deals and then fill out apps with paper or adobe acrobat or whatever so best easiest fastest way to fill it out collaboratively invite your customers you know click a button to send them an email etc yeah uh i will also give another disclosure that we are a paying client of wonder right neither one of these guys or any of these guys are sponsors of the show um and this is this is a real story and and here's anything i'm stroking his ego but it's not um so we hired a new account manager for our team called client success associates and um she'd come from a standard agency and she needed to do something in the cord form and she's like can i get a login to adobe acrobat to to manipulate this form or whatever right and i said no no you don't need to do that and she goes what do you mean i go so i we zoom and i do a screen share and i go we use this tool called wonder right to do that so we get about two minutes in the thing and she literally goes ah and she has like a uh uh uh uh reaction like a physical and audible reaction and she goes holy shit this is so easy and i said well you know use the tool and you know make sure or whatever but but yeah this is what we use now and it's crazy how um quickly people take to that to that process and we've we've we've enjoyed we use it every day uh pretty much so um so i just i just want to put that out there that when people hear me talk about it i do you know none of these guys are sponsored i use their tools um so cool all right so love it now that we've gotten all that nonsense out of the way um let's talk about the future of insure tech and i want to start with steve because um steve's the oldest has the most experience and um only by a couple years so yeah well and yeah um i also couple of digit years but yeah steve's also probably the smartest out of all of us so let's start that's for sure yeah um so steve you know you you have uh you know uniquely have this breadth of experience in our space really starting from when tech really first started to infiltrate into the into the industry to now where you've kind of lived through multiple iterations of everyone's gonna go away and there's not gonna be agents anymore and you know and then we cycle through that kind of phase and um and then come back and uh you know it does feel like we're in a fairly unique period uh in that uh technology is starting to be built like to the two guys that we have on the show it's starting to be built with agents in mind from the very start not trying to disintermediate them but strictly trying to take them to the next level outside of the standard kind of technology players that we all had to use for so long so uh it's kind of a really interesting innovative time and i'm just interested in in your take and kind of how would you kick this conversation off what's what's going through your coconut um i think the phrase is kind of hitting me right now is the democratization of technology so when i started literally in the 80s you know it it there were few options they were expensive and were not at all customizable um and again like you said ryan i mean i even presentations i would do in the early 2000s you know really was agents you need to get a website you need i mean this is what's coming um there were a lot of people talking about you know not needing an agent anymore and i think perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of today is the fact that i want to i this may not be accurate you can fact check me on this but i feel like every direct-to-consumer player all of a sudden has recognized that oh agents are there and i actually think there's a very specific reason why that's happening um because i've been trying to figure out for a while you know a year whatever 18 months kind of what was the change or why does that mindset why is that mindset changing and then i think also and again like you know peter and andrew platforms processes procedures you know tools coming out specifically designed to help the agent you know move forward and it's not about technology it's about um it's about meeting the customer where they want to be so kind of stop there i've got some stories and things like that i could talk about but i feel like democratization of technology meaning even some of the smallest agents today have tools available if they're willing to think differently um they can do amazing things today and and i think that's part of what's different yeah i um you are our fact checkers so the fact that you said it means that it must be true so just and uh no i think i think you're right i i uh i have loved secretly considering how much of a jerk he was to all of us when he first came in watching lemonade and their ceo start to placate to agents now being that they can't crack 40 what is it 43 retention or whatever i think on their last quarterly you know to me i find that hopefully humbling to him although he's probably on some yacht and some caribbean island at this point um but you know that that to me is is interesting because uh they they were really that the case study for um uh an app a personified bit of you know what they called ai which was really just you know uh css code um that that you know could this replace the interaction that someone has with a human and they have proven the case that it just doesn't and that to me uh i i you know i'm not a behavioral psychologist but to me it's how many how many of these case studies do we need before we all start to realize that it's some way to differing degrees humans have to be part of the process and it just there hasn't been a case study to the to the former other point yeah and again i always like to be careful too that agents can't just sit back and go hey you know i've been successful i don't need to make any changes either so that that's sort of the interesting kind of balance act there yeah that that i think we need to keep in mind yeah yeah i was just going to say that you know that point the lemonade point was proven with arguably the the simplest insurance product right so if you can't do that in in renters how are you going to do homeowners auto commercial right it just gets much much more complicated and you definitely need a human in the loop um but but i i agree with you steve like um there i think we're actually in a really great time for technology inclined agents and customer experience or maybe even customer obsessed uh agents to come and capture a ton of business right because people are going to be a lot more efficient and effective than they have been able to be historically using technology and if they're willing to adapt they're going to be you know we're going to have these super agents people like ryan right who are going to be able to come and clean up a ton of business um and i think it's going to be a really special time for folks moving forward yeah i i i'll tell you what in particular wonder right and ascend as tools have done for us is open up the ens market right for so i was told from the beginning don't go out for small business there's too much ens there's too much ens you can't make money doing ens it's unprofitable but on and i mean i must have heard from two dozen agents when i explained to about a year and a half ago uh about six months in a rogue i did a solo episode where i kind of said hey we got our butt kicked by covid we're pivoting this is what we're doing here's what we're doing going forward and i just kind of shared that idea and i get a ton i got a ton of feedback and everyone said that sounds great except for ens is going to destroy you you're not going to be able to have a business and and what is exciting is that with you know we now have eight people but for most of our history you know except for the last three months we had only three people right we've added five in the last three months but for most of our history we've only had three people and almost 50 of our business is ens and it's because of tools like ascend and wonder right that are so accessible even to a small agent that now ens which has been this thing that no one wanted to touch has i mean i'll take an ens account just like i'll take any other account it means nothing to me i mean literally we don't go in our head ah ens no we're just like oh this is what we do bing bing bing we put it in here we get the accords we send them into this company we use it this for payment it means nothing to us and and i think those are the kind of opportunities that today have opened up for even small agents that were really only accessible to bigger agencies who had a workforce to handle all that stuff and that's what to me is a game changer absolutely i think you look at ryan some of the biggest companies that have really verticalized in the space and like what is what is the best version of this company look like and i don't know i kind of think about it's like watching a football game you know the play i was coming to the playoffs it's like is there gonna be a playoff game where you don't see an ad for like a big insurance company like no they're always going to have ads these companies have always been around they're always going to be around um in some ways are kind of the exception rather than than the rule because a lot of the business that independent agents are writing to your point it's not standardized it's it's written it's regulated at a state level it's written regionally there's these different niches and pockets i think insurance agents like yourself you've always had a take on customer experience it's always been a top priority for agencies always and i think you know a lot of agencies have always known it could be it could be better it could be way better and i think you see this not just with wonder right but you know with companies like tarmica agency zoom or glovebox was literally literally founded by former agents who just knew there had to be a better way and so i think back to steve's point of democratization um we're at a point now where the tools that i think some of us agents wanted five ten years ago are finally coming out and so now as an agent you have those tools and the barrier to entry is not super high yeah yeah i mean the the i know there's a lot of talking i was talking with uh well it's probably a couple months now but i saw carrie wallace down in north carolina and she was talking about agency valuations and all this m&a activity and all this stuff is going on right and she's she's you know she's doing these valuations and she's like oh we're gonna crest a thousand and i think we easily crest a thousand right we were pushing up towards like almost 1200 well what's really interesting to me is despite that the number of agencies has stayed flat or even i i've seen a couple reports where it may have even increased because the barrier to entry for agents with these types of tools that you can be remote work out of your house right like we don't have an office right um but but we can still provide an incredibly professional experience and that's exciting because now you have all these new people popping up and some will be successful fail just like anything else but but they get to take this shot that even five years ago i don't know that they could have launched these types of agencies or going after some of these niche markets because the tools just weren't available or or to steve's point they weren't democratized enough that they could customize them in a way that would work for them they had to kind of play within the same rules uh that everyone had to play in i've definitely felt that and to follow on that go ahead peter yeah i was just gonna say i've definitely felt that energy i was down at the iaoa in florida and man ryan the energy was was awesome it was just a ton of like new agents buildings building from scratch um starting scratch agencies and like if you want to talk about entrepreneurship like that is just exciting you have people in every pocket of the country starting every niche type of agency imaginable um you know first generation insurance agency it was really a lot of fun and refreshing as like a you know millennial insurance former insurance agent yeah well my comment was the the most recent future one study identified approximately 36 500 independent agencies in the united states and again that number is fluctuated not by much over the last number of years what was really interesting to me is 14 of those agencies are five years or younger wow so and i believe the m a is actually throwing off agents you know you know producers staff who don't want to work for a large organization they like the smaller feel it's whatever that looks like and again more and i agree with you the tools they can utilize today are cheaper better um more useful more customizable than they ever were before um all right so i have a question for i'm going to throw this at andrew because he hasn't had a an episode on the show and it's just something i'm interested in like when you were evaluating you know starting you know starting ascend right and you're looking at the space and you're and you're looking for opportunities and you see payments is is a problem and payments was a huge problem i mean the fact that premium finance companies got away with operating the way that they did for so long is absolutely bananas and i'm glad that they can't operate that way anymore because you guys and and to be fair there are a few who have you know who put some improvements in so it's not like you're the only game in town but you know obviously i'm a big fan so when what what was it when you when you started evaluating was it just you knew payments had you been thinking about payments for a while did you do like an analysis of the industry to find gaps like like what did that look like when you were trying to find a place where you could add value or build a company was it was it payments were already in your mind did you figure out payments like how did that how did that come to be yeah so you know praveen and i started from the place of i would i would almost argue like a uh the opposite place of um peter um where we were working at a full stack carrier insurtech where we you know we'd sold our last business to and we'd actually seen firsthand like gosh like the agent channel continues to perform the best we believe that there's a real opportunity to build and and the you know the words we were using at that time was sort of in the infrastructure for insurance uh as opposed to coming and trying to build everything end to end and replace you know from distribution through underwriting through you know the whole stack as a lot of full stack um uh insurance insurtechs are doing and we said gosh there's a there's a huge opportunity to specialize so what are areas where there is uh an uh a very industry specific problem and payments and insurance are hugely industry specific it's not e-commerce right it's not let me collect my money and then it's my money and i do whatever it's i have commissions i have endorsements i have payables i have premium finance right premium finance doesn't exist in other uh industries so we know it was very complicated at the industry level and industry specific but it wasn't we were also looking for something that wasn't uh brokerage or carrier or mga specific so you know pretty much everyone has the same problems with payments and insurance it's not like everyone does it very differently and so that's how we we kind of arrived on payments as an opportunity what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show in exchange for that i need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether you're watching on youtube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform i would love for you to subscribe share comment if you're on youtube leave a rating review if you're on spotify or apple itunes etc this helps the show grow it helps me bring more guests in we have a tremendous lineup of people coming in men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance leadership growth sales the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business but they all check out comments ratings reviews they check out all this information before they come on so as i reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you i need your help share the show subscribe if you're not subscribed and i'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because i read all the comments or if you're on apple or spotify leave a rating review of this show i love you for listening to this show and i hope you enjoy it listening as much as i do creating the show for you all right i'm out of here peace let's get back to the episode did you see and and uh thank you for that um that was kind of a setup question to what i really wanted to ask you which is in that analysis did you see any other places like was there was there other segments other little dark holes of that that that may exist that you're like you know hey here's some other things or you know that that evaluate i'm always interested in that evaluation process because you know i'm i'm not necessarily one of those people who would just um come up with an idea for for forms or come up with an idea for payments like so i'm always interested in when you do find it like what does that evaluation process look like because you know i'm sure for steve and then you know i'll pass over to steve too like you know you're looking for all these ideas steve like you're trying to to be that aggregator of all this information so was there anything andrew else that you saw that you're like yeah that'd be interesting but maybe that's the next business or we'll start that once ascend is kind of matured or is there any other opportunities that you saw or maybe or you know and if you don't have any maybe just throw that out to the whole group yeah we i mean we looked at a bunch of stuff and obviously nothing we thought was as compelling as as payments which is obviously where we ended up um we looked at you know i think the tpa space has a huge amount of opportunity uh but the lens by which we look through it is kind of on the business model and and monetization right like there's a lot of there's a lot of problems to be solved in insurance and not all of them will be able to sustain a meaningful large business um and that's kind of a i think you know a consideration as people are thinking about starting in you know agency tooling or insurance infrastructure type businesses um so we looked at a bunch of stuff that we didn't think would have a be a sustainable enough business yeah i'm curious what other people think yeah yeah yeah yeah you guys have you guys you know and i don't you don't need to give away like your pocket business that you're it's going to be your next big rocket ship but are there any other sectors or spaces that you've just evaluated or come across where you're like geez i'm i'm really excited for someone to solve this problem or this area well i will say as i'm kind of you said continuing to evaluate kind of where things are where things are going um i think there is a very interesting opportunity uh again for the smaller agent in uh machine learning um and i do not very specifically use the phrase artificial intelligence because we don't have it right now that is a term i i'm on a campaign to eradicate um and we won't have it for probably 30 years so but machine learning pattern matching um and there's some really interesting again i have a thinking of a slide i had in a presentation i do again democratization of machine learning between google cloud aws uh maybe microsoft you know azure there are so many tools that again are accessible it takes a bit more technical something um but just as a simple example on my website i have a amazon tool called amazon poly that whenever i post an article the tool automatically converts my text into voice and i get to choose the voice and i get to choose the country and the language and etc and puts a bar on the top of my article that says click here to listen automatically it also automatically and it's same kind of process can do a couple things one it can actually convert that to a podcast so again text to podcast which i didn't do because you know that's not the experience i want but it also then can be a skill in alexa so you could ask alexa to listen to steve anderson's tech tips um now are those you know i i always are those um gee whiz shiny object things or are they worth experimenting with to find out where the right sweet spot is and and so so some of those things and i think machine learning and automated account reviews i i'm working with a vendor right now and developing some stuff for catalyt there's just some interesting opportunities and again you know staying within the insurance industry for me it's key because there's you know i i always jokingly say to people you know insurance is a great industry to be in because they're five to seven years behind everybody else so when i talk about something everybody thinks it's oh wow you know and the rest of the world goes oh yeah we did that you know x years ago yeah um so i i probably am sound smarter than i actually am just because everybody else is farther behind come on steve steve um follow-up question to that is uh what accent did you what did you what did you choose i did a male um uh us but you could do british you could do australian you could do and by the way the other thing i do is i actually translate that article into four different languages yeah now i mean think about that depending on where you are in the country yeah you know could be spanish could be vietnamese could be polish could be i'm thinking the different areas of the country that have larger populations that speak a different language and your site could be yeah could be southern drawl could be steve i i saw something like this in practice actually recently we changed our health insurance for our company this year and um i went on to the portal they give you a free fitbit because they want to track your data or something make you healthy make sure you get your steps in but there was a video review of your insurance policy and it was like hello peter here are your family members and it put their names on the screen and then it's like here's your coverage and here's the terms and it was like a whole video customized to me and it was definitely cool you know i've heard about this i've thought about it in our own sales demonstrations um but it was really cool to see like an insurance company actually implementing that you know for the first time so i yeah definitely interesting you know what's what's funny is um so we use neoteric agent which i love grant botma but that's the worst name of any tool that exists in the industry um and grant i love you but your tool has a terrible name um but i love the tool and i use it almost every day so it's a video proposal tool there's a couple of these out here it's just it's the one we use and i and i like it um and we do a simple thing right we set an expectation before we sell we say hey the next after i gather the next thing that's going to happen is i'm going to figure out what company program coverages i recommend i'm gonna send you an email the email has got three parts it's got a high level overview it's got you're going to get the download the pdf right from the company so you can see exactly what i see i'm gonna do a quick video right just breaking down why i chose this company and the coverages whatever people lose their minds that i'm and and and they're like i've never seen anything like this before this is amazing i can't believe you took the time to do this took the time it was like five minutes i mean literally that's it imagine a normal sales process is 45 minutes across the table and you're pushing paper and you got like an easel chart that you're doing graphs on and stuff and like this is five minutes of me just in front of a camera half the time i'm in a hoodie and people lose their minds so when you talk about like technology that in our industry is mind-blowing that in other industries is like run-of-the-mill video proposals which is it just to me seems so remedial absolute people lose their minds they lose i mean i get people just like i don't even care what the prices i'm in this is amazing i'm in the emails that we've gotten back and it just it's it's bewildering to me but i mean i guess that's why there's opportunity well i think that's right ryan it's that that is why there's opportunities and i i was going to say when i was putting catalyt together and we were doing you know estimates of you know what penetration would we have with independent agents part of what i i did was i actually took about 20 or 25 of our universe off because i figured that's about the right number of agencies that don't care about technology never will they're not going to invest they know they're going to sell that's not my audience um and so you know it again i like to try and convert them but i've decided you know what i don't have time anymore to try and do that if they don't if they don't buy into that's not a catalyt ideal agency it is the agency who's willing to go gosh that sounds interesting i'm willing to test that or i'm willing to try it or i i want help in figuring this out or how do i do this so um you know i think that's and i'm i think i'm hoping that percentage will shrink again m a right all this all the changes going on in the agency world um with that but frankly even some of the bigger organizations that you know everybody thinks they have the resources but they don't have the mindset to actually be willing to experiment and fail and experiment and fail and experiment and get a big hit so no i agree um andrew when so in launching ascend into the marketplace and peter i'm going to ask you a similar question too if your answer is different you can say if it's not um what has been like you so you're giving people this piece of technology it is you know you someone can say they don't want to use ascend or maybe it's not right for them but there's no denying that you're saving people time and it's an efficiency tool and all that kind of stuff so you know what i mean like what is the what has been one of the most interesting pieces of feedback you got either adoption or you know like has there been anything that you've been like geez i didn't see anyone saying that about this or or man i wouldn't have expected people to go this path or that path is there been anything unexpected about the process of rolling technology out to independent agents i mean that's part of the fun of of doing this work right and like you were just saying steve it's about the experimentation and learning and and readapting so uh we've learned a ton as we've as we've gone to market um and again not coming from the insurance the independent insurance agent background we've learned just a huge amount about the process of how uh you know typically client interactions are working and payments are collected and uh what that that generally looks like and i think um we get to bring a pretty unique perspective because we don't have the the sort of fixed mindset or that this is how it has been done and so we're able to sort of mix in the feedback of hey this is how we have been doing things with a sort of first principles look and so i think that's part of the the reason ascend has come to this uh or you know is able to save to save folks time um in terms of specific uh surprising things um i mean i think you know the thing that surprised us most is the highest level i guess part of ascend which is just the feedback we got on the novelty if you will of putting pay in full or rate plan digital payment collections alongside premium finance in a single tool um you know that was pretty foreign to folks in the market who were working with multiple providers whether you know it's someone who is just uh for digital payments or someone who is just for premium finance and putting those two things together um we had to explain that a few times to people before they were like wait so it's one thing or like yeah it's one thing um and that was always that was pretty fun at the beginning how many people get into you guys asked so we're i don't know if i don't know if we're in a slack channel with the team from ascend and we give them a lot of feedback and we've been on the tools since i think august now right i think we've been using you guys since august and you know in the and you know we're like hey we'd love to have a button here or something you know and whether they do it or not we're just giving them feedback and one of the questions they asked was like how does our interest rate line up against others i was like i was like i i couldn't imagine and i'm sure there are agencies that do this uh um i just could not imagine because and and frankly since you asked me that question i have now pinged some of my like little networks that i'm in to get feedback on this and there are literally people who on like a week-to-week basis will compare the premium finance interest rates from different companies as to like whose is the best and like where they place the premium finance and i'm like you do what you spend how much time on what what are we talking about like i i said to them i was like it's so easy i i don't even i couldn't even tell you what your interest rate is i just create the link and i send it off and if someone has a problem you know we'll figure it out i mean they got to pay the premium i don't know like it's just it's funny where we as an industry to me it's funny the places that we're like willing to invest time versus like something you know the things that you guys have created and what steve's been talking about for for how many years all these little efficiency finders and tools but someone at an agency who makes real money who owns that agency will be like you know what i'm gonna do today i'm gonna figure out which one of my premium finance companies has the best interest rate that that seems like that seems like a useful that seems like a useful use of my time i just it just blows me away i mean well yeah no i mean i i like i get it right because it it impacts your customer experience right if you're you want to be able to provide your customer the best possible uh experience and rate of premium finance is certainly one of those vectors um and that's part of the reason you know we we wanted to build a product that was much more than just premium finance and provided a much better customer experience we for two reasons one we didn't want to just compete on rate you know that's what premium finance incumbent premium finance companies to do do today and that's where their focus goes as opposed to building better customer and product experiences that actually um you know differentiate and so we wanted to build a product that delivers that better customer experience while staying competitive on rate and i think you know we're happy for people to compare our rate to other folks like yeah we're good there too right and it's not that we just don't want that to be the only reason that people would choose to use the scent i just couldn't imagine and and i i'm i you know i'm aware that maybe i just think differently about some of these things but like i just couldn't imagine going through like the traditional premium finance for like like someone's someone said to me the other day we're gonna be a quarter point lower than whoever you use no matter what you tell us who you use and we'll be at least a quarter point lower right that was their pitch to me a random cold email and i just was like you couldn't have pressed the button that i care about less than what you just said to me because i know that it's not as easy as that and my time is worth that quarter point and if that business owner cared so much about the rate on the premium that they're paying they pay the thing in full and not be a cheapskate so you know i don't you know i don't know it's just to me it's just crazy where we spend our time like if people had just listened to steve for the last however many years how much freaking further along would we be but they don't they think about stupid shit like finding a premium finance company with a quarter point less than the one they currently have like i don't know peter what um what about you man i mean you're doing the same thing you're you're uh you know people go well why do you use wonder i had someone asked me the other day why do you use wonder i was like accord forms i go well yeah my agency means i didn't go yeah but one it's easy two it has all the supplementals which you don't have that that's a game changer for me and three your customer can fill it out alongside you right those three things that's kind of how i pitch wonder right people ask me none of those things really at face value seem like game changer ideas but put together saving a lot a tremendous amount of time for people how like what have you gotten for feedback what has been the most interesting thing you've heard from someone who maybe did or didn't you know decide to use wonder right yeah i think the top thing is make it easy and and the reason i arrived at this is you know i think where andrew was very thoughtful probably about how he created ascent i think i was an agent and i was like there has to be an easier way i was banging my head against the up against the desk or i was having my account manager yell at me or be angry at me for not filling out applications and that's how i started out to create wonder right out of like sheer brute force like i'm going to do this i'm going to teach myself to code to build this thing um and i so i had very opinionated ways about the way that i like to work and that's built into the software you know i have a lot of insurance designations i made cold calls of sold policies and so i'm opinionated um and i think we get great feedback from our users sometimes they say nice things to us most of the time they say nice things to us and they don't always tell us the bad things and so we actually ryan um we kind of track how people use the software we anonymize like their mouse movements and what they're typing but we can kind of play back randomly videos of like when things don't go well for them like a user experience software exactly yeah and i didn't even know this thing existed until our product person's like we need to use this to make the software better we're we're super tuned into both the feedback we get whether it's written or recorded video or a slack message or intercom but even more so it's like how about when people actually use it and maybe they're not like filtering their opinions and um seeing people get stuck is really painful like you think it's pretty simple there's like there's two buttons on the screen and they're like which button do i click um and so the message is like there has to be you know one button and it has to be right in the middle of the screen and flashing red i mean not really but you know basically that's what it has to look like because to your point like you like one right because it's easy it's fast um i think in the old days to steve's earlier point people would put up with these softwares where you'd have to onboard you'd have to take classes there are even coaches you could hire to like you know walk you through how to do xyz and today my own patients included i have about 30 seconds to a minute of attention span when i'm using a new thing and if i can't figure it out in a minute i'm like dude i can order a tesla in a minute yeah like why can't i get an insurance policy why can't i fill out a form and so we just want one right to be so easy there there doesn't there shouldn't have to be a user manual it should be like hit you on the head obvious but at the same time it's really like really powerful because insurance gets to be kind of complex and there has to be a lot of complexity behind like that easy interface so that's been i think one of the the the hardest lessons has just been seeing people use the software seeing them get stuck on something that i thought was obvious my own dad included who has an agency and you know he's a big fan of ours and he uses it and it's painful when i see him use it and he gets stuck and i'm like yeah you got stuck there you know i probably got stuck too i don't know how we released this but we gotta fix it i think the the important thing to um or i shouldn't say the important one of the things that i think is the most promising and one of the um trends from like the 2015 2016 like uh disintermediation or whatever uh words all the words people are using um to today is the openness and transparency of the evolution of products right like like today you know i get to give andrew direct or his team you know his team direct feedback on like like the other day there was a screen and it didn't have the name of the account on right this is a super simple thing and i can see if you're building this software you just and i just said hey guys like it would be super cool like the name of the account was on this screen i sent him a screenshot i said like like right here you know whatever and you know whether they do it don't put it someplace else doesn't matter but the fact that i can and and i know i'm not the only one i'm sure there's a collection of agencies that are getting feedback can now you know write to the source say hey this would help us do our job better if we get that was never the case never ever the case with these other you know like i'm it took me two weeks to get vertifor to add a user to my pl raider account i mean i just i'm like i want to pay you more money and it took two weeks and two phone calls to get that done and like you're just like what is everyone doing i'm trying to pay you more money and you won't you know and and it's like that that mentality of the openness and the iterative changes and like i love how better agency every two weeks was putting out this list of updates and you know you're just it was almost hard to like keep up but it was cool to see both they had a list of like here's what we launched and here's what we're working on the next sprint and like that kind of transparency really you like feel like you own you know you own the development of this platform like you become emotionally invested in its success and that has been an enormous change in our industry that i think is very very positive yeah absolutely i i remember being the agent sending out lots of emails to different technology vendors to fix xyz thing and i get it you know it's it's tough it's um there's been some learnings along the way it's it's tough when you're on the other side of the table and you're trying to manage all the demands um but i think and steve could probably speak to this more but with the proliferation of new companies and new startups the most important thing for us is that our users are having a great experience in most cases and and they're coming back and they're telling their friends about it because it's it's making their lives easier yeah yeah yeah one point on that which is really i think interesting and important to remember is you know ryan you're our customer agents are our customers but what and we obviously hugely value and care about what you think but the question behind the question is what are what are the purchase the buyers of insurance what do they want right and you guys are the conduit for that and ultimately we're all working toward you and us right to better serving those customers because that's how we win business right that's how you that's how you succeed and then that's as a result how we succeed and so we can't lose uh focus on that that end customer and i think a lot of you know even some agents right some of the i would argue some of the folks steve was talking about earlier and that 25 percent he cut off but also a lot of technology providers have lost that focus um and once you've done that i think it's kind of game over and we all need to really maintain that obsessive focus on that end uh customer yeah steve have you seen um and i know where we're talking about a very uh there's a there's a very big gap between say those 25 percent that you said just are never going to be catalytic customers or or whatever um versus maybe some of the people at the bleeding edge right maybe more than most industries we have a very broad spectrum but have you seen um and this is probably pushing more towards the the more technologically advanced have you seen people almost demanding more out of their providers has that been a general trend that you've seen is is where before we would just be like well this is what it is you know this is what we got to do now it's almost like uh like like there's there's actual demand there's pushback coming from the the agent marketplace as to what they'll accept from it have you seen that at all yeah very definitely um and i actually think first of applied um and api and you know open access and you know that that historically have been very resistant to allowing third-party connections i think a couple things changed there one i do think customers in it because i talked to them in some of the big ones right push back on what they're trying to develop and um and wanting more openness so i think that's one thing that that helped them i think the second thing that helped them is their new ceo taylor rhodes came from outside the industry and i remember actually my first conversation with him was before he took the position he was researching it and i didn't know it you know and when he actually became ceo i was i talked to him and i said like okay did i say anything really bad but you know he said from that very first conversation when he took over it was that he came from apis were a no-brainer you had to have them mindset not a we have to protect our walled garden mindset and and it's taken some time but that's mindset is starting to change we'll see how fast right that's always the question but i think vertifor too with their orange partner program again is feeling pressure um and that's trickling down you know certainly for other management system vendors so um there i think there's no question that uh more agents voice their and that's what's going on and that's what's going on and that's what's going on and that's what's going on and i think that again goes back to my first comment on the democratization of technology it's you know there are a whole lot of people that can do things today that never would have considered themselves you know technology uh focused or friendly or capable uh that that yeah definitely are doing things today it definitely seems like the taylor rhodes applied is not the applied of the past i no question i i haven't had a conversation with taylor yet i've heard some interviews that he's been on things about him i do not know him um but not sure i'm ready to trust them yet um absolutely appropriate right but uh i do think it's a good thing i mean there's so many agents that are on them and you know people i get asked the question a lot um about agency management systems and i'm not an expert but i certainly have opinions and um and i'm on now certs which i don't want to talk bad about them but it does seem like they don't understand what they're what they've built um an agency management system that people actually pay them for um so so that all being said you know there is no better agency management system than epic if you want agency management system that works that is going to do what it's meant to do that's not going to break and blow up and throw all kinds of crazy stuff at you the downloads are going to work that's going to be accessible and scale there's no better in my opinion agency management system that being said the unfortunate part is until they change the the perception outside of their culture digital agencies and and which i believe are going to be predominantly the agencies of the future are not going to use their system because you look at it and you go man i'd love to plug hubspot into that nope or or yeah sure for 100 grand and you're like if i have to pay you to integrate with you when i'm paying you for the system like you know that was one of the things that you know i said to because i was looking at uh ams 360 pretty hard and i couldn't get past the 1987 um font and the way the system set up i just couldn't get past that but you know the whole like paying for integrations thing i'm like i'm paying you to use your system and i want to send data into your system and you're telling me i have to pay like i don't i don't know i just to me it's just completely the wrong mentality it's still that you know you know best you do what we say kind of mentality and i don't think the next generation of entrepreneurs in our industry are going to abide that i think that's why you see platforms like better agency and you know you have um there's this woman in virginia beach who builds custom uh salesforce installations and she's like book solid for like a year because everyone just wants they don't want to have the rug pulled from them and you know that's the part that i think is really interesting you know i think i know for a fact everyone's scared about your two companies they're like they great today but what happens when applied or vertifor buy them what are they going to turn into i mean that is literally you guys have probably heard that from people already right like every platform that's exciting and young and fun and is growing and adapting and listening to agents gets to a certain size and then vertifor applied come in with a big check or zy wave right and then it becomes garbage and that like when does that cycle get broken and who breaks it and how do we break it because those three options i i struggle to believe those three options are the future of our industry i think they're part of our industry forever and i'm not saying they shouldn't be but like how do we keep independent technology independent i know the founders got to get paid i completely believe that i completely believe that the risks that they took and all that i completely understand but like how do we keep independent insure techs independent in a way that allows them to still be customer focused without the only exit strategy being one of the big three and then the tool that they built and their legacy turns to crap which has just happened over and over and over and over and over again that's what concerns me yeah i think you're absolutely right and we've heard this from the beginning we've thought about it um you know nick from better agencies posted about it with agencies um acquisition recently i mean it's out there right and it's um it's no secret um i think that with the amount of funding right now going into insure tech and the amount of new solutions i just think there's there's a better opportunity now than there's ever been to have real new options i think with the creation of broker tech ventures which we were a part of it's actual agencies investing in tech because they're like we want to can we you know in the best possible way which is you know financial based returns on the investment but it's um you know they want to have a say and a control of what's happening and i think that's been helpful for us and i think that as an industry we need to have that ecosystem to support the tools that we want as agents and so we're excited about the future and um yeah yeah that's good i i think you're right what about you andrew you're like give me that paper i can't wait send me that term sheet baby no no i'm kidding i'm kidding not at all andrew's not like that guys i'm just busting his chops like no we're in this one and and i think um yeah like it's a there's a lot a lot a lot of of value to be created and and that's obviously a huge reason why some of these big companies snap up in insure techs but i think as more and more folks continue to adopt technology in a faster way thanks to things like catalyt and steve um i think some of those teams building insure tech will actually start realizing like gosh we're it is worth being in this for the long haul as the adoption increases and we don't need to just tack our product on to applied existing customer base for example we can go and do that ourselves and i'm really really hopeful for that uh and that's certainly the the approach we're taking yeah that's cool i i uh i think it's a great i mean look when you build a great product it is a great problem to have as to you know you have all these people interested in big platforms and i think that that's tremendous i um i guess my you know when i think about independent agents and i think about where we're going as an industry i know everybody says the same thing about every new tool right they say it about better agency and nick and nick's you know nick puts all that out there they say hey eventually someone's going to come in with a big enough number buy them up destroy the tech and you know we'll have to wait for the next iteration of the startup agency management system and that um you know i think that's sad i i would love i i don't know how you do it um you know i i you know i love that i do i i've seen agents investing more and and trying to be more involved in the the investor cycle for for startups and different insure techs for that reason um but it's just uh it's a good problem to have that we have so many companies doing amazing things and building and hopefully there there becomes a path for founders to to reap the benefit of the risks that they took which i absolutely positively believe that they should be able to do while staying independent from these large conglomerates and whether it's just a better ecosystem a more connected ecosystem where you don't have to be bought um maybe it's it's platforms like steve's who are able to to get everyone in the same room and and and allow for that um but i think it's a very exciting time yeah one other kind of comment too and and it really is a result of my work with catalyt and getting that going but uh it's interesting to me how many um bigger than i realize state associations are actually investing in some startups um helping them get going having you know again part of it is financial return part of it is service and benefit to their members part of it and um you know i've always seen potentially catalyt having some kind of role in that i don't know what that looks like at this point we got to get going but um you know again i it's it's interesting and i think some of those are kind of investments are not as focused on um what's the right phrase i can't think of it um buyouts and you know um cashing out as much as are we serving our members and are they getting the help that they need and so i think that's another interesting aspect of not just the you know the big boys playing and and and taking it over but again investment from agents themselves but also i see it associations too and there are a handful quite a few actually who are able to and are making some of those strategic investments yeah i think uh so i want to be respectful of your guys time and of everyone listening um i'll just give everyone a a final thought here to to just comment on and um you know if i were to kind of surmise this conversation and in the concept of the future of insurtech it's um that you know highly valuable products are now becoming downstream available at cost for agencies of any size to really build the type of agency that they want which makes this one of the most exciting times to be in our industry that have ever existed is you know that that's kind of my take and and and you know knowing knowing individuals like yourselves and and many others who are playing similar games um this is it's a lot of fun i mean this is you get to build whatever you want you know and that wasn't the case not too long ago and that's that's really really fun so i just want to say thank you to you guys um for everyone listening i'm gonna have links to linkedins and websites and any other contact or resources that these guys send to me um you know on my website but also just just google these guys you'll find them linkedin them connect with them um if you're not already and uh i just couldn't recommend uh the the insights thoughts and the in the tools you guys are building uh anymore and i just want to say thank you to three of you for choosing the show to come on and have this conversation with it's been such a pleasure ryan it's been fun yeah very fun thanks ryan appreciate it thanks for having us been a great time thanks for it and i'm looking forward to the next one absolutely close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients in under three years during the pandemic no fluff no endless follow-ups just results fast based in behavioral psychology and battle tested the one call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible if you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning visit master the close.com that's master the close.com do it today Thank you.