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In this conversation, we chat with David McFarland, co-founder and CEO of Coterie Insurance – a US- based insurance entity focused on making risk transfer efficient for the small commercial P&C insurance space. Coterie uses industry-leading tech, deep insurance expertise, and product innovation to embed insurance into their partners’ existing products and workflows, leveraging data from multiple sources to turn small commercial accounts from an unprofitable obligation to a profitable opportunity.
Prior to founding Coterie, David served as Chief Actuary and Head of Insurance Product & Pricing at Clearcover, a personal auto insurtech. David is a Fellow in the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
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Timestamp
1’30”: An intro to Insurance & underwriting from the perspective of David’s careerpath
3’16”: Risk & Volatility – how the Insurance industry defines and uses these key metrics
6’00”: The core tools used in the Insurance industry to ensure predictability & how David learnt these over the course of his career
10’28”: A strange or unusual example of something somebody wanted insured
13’08”: The Insurance ecosystem and its structure
15’55”: Clearcover – An intro to its purpose and role in the industry
19’38”: A definitional breakdown of the roles of manufacturer, distributor, and carrier in Insurance
23’31”: The regulatory frameworks governing Insurance in the US and how they differ on a state vs federal level
26’26”: Coterie – An intro to its inception, purpose, and success to date
31’26”: Coterie’s differentiation via datasets and how it has used this to its advantage to muscle into a tight industry
34’07”: The strategic and business structure of Coterie
35’59”: Channels to use to connect with David and/or to learn more about Coterie
Sneak Peek:
David McFarland:
…And so, my thought being an idealistic youth was, can we just tap into this data that exists, and make the lives of everyone involved a lot easier? And the big answer was no, at that time. Because, insurance companies had a lot of technical issues that they couldn't overcome. And it would be complicated, and change up current processes. Et cetera, et cetera.
So, I was like, okay. What if we actually did build a new insurance company that could harness the data that exists today, to truly change how all this is done? Will we actually see different macro effects? For example, right now there are 32 million small businesses. Over half of them are uninsured. And it's because the agents and brokers don't make any money off of addressing that market. They lose money when these small businesses come in. And so, a lot of people have tried to change this, by changing how insurance is distributed. But you can only go so far if you do that. Because, you're so contingent upon the insurance manufacturer. The carriers and whatnot, who actually create the products. Because, you can't go faster than the product can be created.
And so, what we did was we said, all right. We're going to change how insurance is actually manufactured. And we're going to do that for the benefit of not just the end policy holder, but also the insurance distributors. The agents, the brokers. Even non-traditional partners. And in doing so, when we first launched, we brought the average buying time on these small policies from days to minutes. We were doing it in 7.9 minutes, in our initial launch. And now…
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