Welcome to The Voice of Insurance.
00:01:13 Rosie Denée
Mark, thank you. It's a real pleasure to.
00:01:15 Mark Geoghegan
Be here for anyone who doesn't know you. Why don't you give us a quick rundown of your career today and.
00:01:19 Mark Geoghegan
How you ended up in this fantastic job you've got, yes, so.
00:01:22 Rosie Denée
I think with all good stories, it's probably worth starting at the beginning.
00:01:25
We.
00:01:26 Mark Geoghegan
You could start with.
00:01:26 Rosie Denée
The flashback with the flashback Flash forward flash forward. I definitely had a lot of question marks about what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing with my career when I was trying to work out which part of the world I was going to end up in that then I had a real passion for marine biology. I can tell you now.
00:01:42 Rosie Denée
I didn't follow that path. Yeah, I love diving. It was like everything for me.
00:01:43 Mark Geoghegan
Just did you do a degree in that or?
00:01:48 Rosie Denée
But I think for me, I had imposter syndrome from pretty early on and I was looking around and realised it was incredibly competitive. Anyway, I ended up through pure chance doing some work experience in insurance and my big takeaway from that work experience was all you need to do is hold a conversation and you'll be OK.
00:02:08 Rosie Denée
And for me, that was just a real light bulb moment.
00:02:10 Mark Geoghegan
You could be really good on a.
00:02:11 Mark Geoghegan
Podcast then basically.
00:02:13 Rosie Denée
So through that, I essentially fell into an insurance. It's not a novel idea to fall into insurance. I broke in. So I broke for 10 years and specialised in structured credit and political risk, which was a fantastic first.
00:02:18 Mark Geoghegan
It was breaking.
00:02:25 Mark Geoghegan
Job. Well, I never really understood the structured part of anything when, whenever sort of that structured, my eyes glaze over. I was a broker as when I but no one ever showed me one of those.
00:02:33 Rosie Denée
I think structured in the fact that there is a structure to the kind of financial tool as it were, or the financial offer.
00:02:40 Rosie Denée
The kind of most exciting day I had was when I received an inquiry from a radio station which was a pirate radio station based out in the sea just off Egypt, and they were obviously hoping for insurance coverage against the Egyptian government.
00:02:56 Mark Geoghegan
The Egyptian Navy just taking them offline.
00:02:57 Rosie Denée
Yeah, completely shutting them down didn't manage to secure any insurance. Surprise surprise for that. But that was a a kind of real standout moment, but I think.
00:03:05 Rosie Denée
After 10 years, I just actually really want to do something different. I was doing everything which wasn't my day job. I had set up an innovation committee at the Broken House I was at, was doing a lot of work around DE and I and work around cross class business selling. So essentially anything which wasn't my day job. I was also training on the side to become a psychotherapist.
00:03:27 Rosie Denée
And say joined Lloyd's with a view to continue that education. I started masters in psychology and neurosis.
00:03:34 Rosie Denée
Science and I thought Lloyd was a fantastic platform to go and try and do something different. The lab really appealed to me because of the innovation piece and I actually fell in love with insurance while I was here, which I did not expect to be the outcome, but really was.
00:03:48 Mark Geoghegan
The outcome where you were at the lab right at the beginning?
00:03:51 Rosie Denée
So I joined the lab 2 years into its journey, so I've been in the lab coming up to 4 1/2 years.
00:03:56 Rosie Denée
Now I've still doing my masters, but it's now a pet project and I absolutely adore what I do. I have found gold when it comes to insurance for me.
00:04:06 Mark Geoghegan
Say if you're in a bar or something and intelligent and friendly person asks you sensible question about what you do, what's your job? How do you describe the Lord's lab to them? Are you a non insurance person?
00:04:16 Rosie Denée
I think the answer changes every time I answer the question because it's so varied. I think my lead line is I helped the insurance market create new insurance products and I get to work with some incredibly smart people who are looking at the world differently to do.
00:04:29 Rosie Denée
Of it who haven't come from insurance and I help them navigate their route into the Lloyds market.
00:04:34 Mark Geoghegan
There's a word like incubator and accelerator, and they're very sort of techie words that if you hadn't worked in tech, well insurance, people wouldn't know what they are and what the difference between them is. But is it an accelerator or because these are companies that already exist, you didn't. You don't start up companies.
00:04:47
Yeah.
00:04:49 Rosie Denée
No, we.
00:04:49 Rosie Denée
Don't we?
00:04:49 Mark Geoghegan
You don't help them, so they have to already exist before they come in and have a word with you and come on a cohort. It is right to say it's then. Therefore it's an accelerator and it helps them really get on with what they're wanting to do.
00:05:01 Rosie Denée
Yeah. So we're definitely not a venture builder, which you were alluding.
00:05:04 Rosie Denée
To with.
00:05:04 Mark Geoghegan
We haven't got any money, obviously not.
00:05:05 Rosie Denée
Giving the money. No, no, there's no money. Which exchanges hand.
00:05:09 Rosie Denée
I think ultimately if I describe the lab today, we are an innovation hub which we have built out over the 6 1/2 years. We have an accelerator programme, which is our flagship, but it's definitely not all we do. We're here to serve the market when it comes to innovation, we're here to.
00:05:28 Rosie Denée
Greater fertile ground for innovation to happen in the market and we're here to champion the wins of the market as well. The accelerator programme is something which gets recognised across the globe for its success and quite right.
00:05:42 Rosie Denée
So, and I think we are safe to say, recognised as a powerhouse for innovation in insurance now, but the accelerator was where we all started with it. Our humble beginnings.
00:05:52 Mark Geoghegan
So it's bigger than that now, I was very lucky to be invited along to your 5th birthday party, which was fantastic. It was in the atrium meal by Lutine Bell and everything and John Neilston speech. And it's fantastic. It was over 100 had come through, I think by then. So what?
00:06:04 Rosie Denée
Are we up to now 130 alumni so?
00:06:07 Mark Geoghegan
How many cohorts is that?
00:06:08 Rosie Denée
So 12 cohorts, so we call our graduating companies, our alumni.
00:06:13 Rosie Denée
And we actually started cohort 13 this week. So we've got another new 10 companies coming through the.
00:06:18 Mark Geoghegan
Programme and how long is it? It's about 3 months, something like that.
00:06:21 Rosie Denée
A bit longer, so the programme itself is 10 weeks. It's a really short, intense 10 weeks for the company to come onto the programme for the lab team. It's a bit longer. The amount of prep and work which goes on behind the scenes. Not everyone gets to see it.
00:06:33 Rosie Denée
But it's all slick machine.
00:06:35 Rosie Denée
Now and we have definitely articulated and evolved the process over time, but yeah, the programme itself is just.
00:06:41 Rosie Denée
10 weeks and.
00:06:42 Mark Geoghegan
All for the benefit of the Lloyds market, isn't it? It's so that Lloyd's businesses can benefit from collaborating with these amazing interesting, very original new ideas where they can help each other. I suppose they can come with crazy ideas. Well, maybe not crazy ideas. Hopefully not too crazy to advance that way.
00:06:58 Rosie Denée
100% and I think our North Star as the Lloyd's lab is to increase the pace of successful innovation into the Lloyds market. So as long as we're meeting that we are going on the right course. And so when it comes to the access.
00:07:12 Rosie Denée
Greater these companies who are coming in there are weird, wonderful and wacky sometimes, but as it should be, these are kind of new ideas. We want people thinking outside the box. We don't want people thinking in set squares. It's here to challenge what we know and understand as our world as the insurance market or the Lloyds market. So through that process that 10 week.
00:07:33 Rosie Denée
Process. There will be partnerships which develop out of it. We ask the companies to ensure tech, the tech companies that start up to come through to focus on product development through that programme, so that ten week programme they have partnered with mentors.
00:07:47 Rosie Denée
The mentors, being the experts from the market, so our underwriters are brokers, anyone who works within our market and having many bright minds around the table. So you have the tech company who will be a deep expert in a specific area, maybe something related to a weather peril, maybe a new technology, but then you've got the insurance.
00:08:07 Rosie Denée
Ends through the mentors and the mentors are stretching these products in ways that they wouldn't actually be stretched otherwise. And through that we are actually creating solutions which will really fit the market.
00:08:18 Rosie Denée
Need. Hence there is a high commercial deal rate once the programme has finished or the cohorts have finished, but also things have failed. And that's also a success. I think thinking from recent memory, there are some companies which will never get into the Lloyds market. That's all right. But what we have done in that process is actually move the market.
00:08:39 Rosie Denée
Thinking so, not everything needs to be a success, and the wonderful thing is we're here to serve the market. So through economies of scale, the market don't need to do this. We have a safe space for them to come together, collaborate, test new ideas, get together and just challenge what they think should be.
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00:10:00 Mark Geoghegan
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, or you can't go on a long journey without making a couple of wrong turns along the way. So this has been interesting for you because you know, scientists also psychologists. When you're going to have your annual appraisal, how do you define that success? Is it? It's led to a deal. It's led to one of the managing agents partnering or consortium or something.
00:10:20 Mark Geoghegan
Or somebody buying this new product or service that they've got because obviously some will be to do with underwriting, some will be to do with claims, some will be to do with.
00:10:27 Mark Geoghegan
Modelling and some would do with whatever you know, data analysis to help inform underwriters, or some things would be more sort of out of a box type of service that under us might sign up to. So for you, is it that the fact there's end up being?
00:10:38 Rosie Denée
A commercial deal at the end of it. So I think you've given a really great summary of the types of products and companies who come through the programme. It is literally everything, so anywhere.
00:10:44 Mark Geoghegan
Is everything, isn't.
00:10:47 Rosie Denée
That there is a value to an insurance, so it could be process optimization, new forms of data, actual new products, mgas or.
00:10:55 Rosie Denée
The holders, so it's not a one-size-fits-all. It's a very, very different proposition for different companies. So what we have to do as a lab is look at it through the lens of the market and the impact it is having on the.
00:11:07 Rosie Denée
Market because that's where our success.
00:11:08 Mark Geoghegan
What, you ask the market is this successful or not? Rather than hey, we signed a deal, but no one.
00:11:12 Rosie Denée
I mean.
00:11:13 Rosie Denée
Actually uses it. We do do that, but we do things like we can track premium figures into the market through the MGA's, which have been created or the cover holders and they are trending up, which we would hope to see, especially if you look at an innovation life cycle when it comes to a new product, those first two years. So we're 6 1/2 years old.
00:11:31 Rosie Denée
Now, but those first two years are really about trialling a product.
00:11:34 Rosie Denée
Year 3 is scale or fail. Once you've got some data, you're really understanding where this is going, and then years 4:00 and 5:00 if you're deciding.
00:11:43 Rosie Denée
To scale you.
00:11:44 Rosie Denée
Are going to start seeing some actual premium numbers coming into the market. So we're now at 6 1/2 years old beginning to see that premium number creeping up and actually quite significantly.
00:11:54 Mark Geoghegan
They tend to be the ones that were year one, year 2, that are really maturing, or if you had something, the occasional one that's a bit of a moon shot and just.
00:11:56 Rosie Denée
Yeah.
00:11:58 Rosie Denée
Exactly.
00:12:01 Mark Geoghegan
Scaled really fast, it just won't.
00:12:03 Rosie Denée
Happen I think because we've had brand new insurance products created through this lab programme. We've had parametrics, which is a cloud down business interruption insurance cover we've had Gaia, which is facility insurance these and exist for the lab and these are sorts of products that we're seeing coming to market. No one's got any data on this I mean.
00:12:21 Rosie Denée
Everyone in our market or the actuaries and the underwriters, they're trained with that protected mindset on. They're not going to want to scale something at 100 miles an hour without actually seeing the numbers.
00:12:31
But.
00:12:31 Mark Geoghegan
I've recently had a fantastic podcast with Keita, but there was a moment where we really because it's not a mature business because I asked about have we had any claims yet and the answer was no. So yeah, that's not at the.
00:12:41 Mark Geoghegan
Stage of mature business is it quite yet.
00:12:42 Rosie Denée
No, no, exactly. So you're coming back to your question around how we measure success. I think the real challenge is when it's those process optimization.
00:12:51 Rosie Denée
Companies man are saved or claims avoided because of new data. How do you measure that when we don't even own that data? Those commercial relationships are happening with the market, but interestingly Obsoletes who came through. I think maybe cohort four or five, they partnered with Lloyd straight away and they were able through.
00:13:11 Rosie Denée
The catastrophe risk reporting peace Save 1300 man hours within the first year of working with Lloyds, we could capture that data because they were within our ecosystem as Lloyds. They were working for the corporation.
00:13:24 Rosie Denée
Those are the types of things that we can't actually calculate, but when you look at the cohorts and when they go through the programme, the commercial contracts is a really good sign. So our last cohort Hall 12 finished or graduation quite recently within the preceding couple of months, there were 20 commercial contracts already with the Lloyds market out of 12.
00:13:44 Rosie Denée
Companies going through the cohort that is.
00:13:46 Rosie Denée
Huge. So our overall stat is 85% of the companies who've gone through the lab accelerator programme have commercial relationships, but that speed is getting faster and faster.
00:13:58 Mark Geoghegan
Do you think because you're getting better at doing it?
00:14:00 Rosie Denée
We're getting better and doing it, but we're also shifting the culture. People are ready, they're coming ready and prepared to actually meet the companies coming through the programme where they need to be met. So Purement teams have been involved at some of these managing agents. We've got dedicated teams within the managing agents looking at this. So that is a great number and stat.
00:14:20 Rosie Denée
For us, but other things that we can do to also prove our value as Lloyds, we're not-for-profit. We're not here to look at the P&L as an accelerator. We don't take equity, which is really rare and nor will we take equity in the same way other accelerators do because we're here to regulate the market as Lloyd. But one thing we've started doing is making investments.
00:14:41 Rosie Denée
Our central fund, so this is something that we started last year and we have a ring fence pool of capacity from the centre.
00:14:51 Rosie Denée
Or fund purely to make investments in companies that have gone through the lab programme.
00:14:56 Mark Geoghegan
But there's actually investments, so is that capacity?
00:14:58 Rosie Denée
Equity investments. So that again is trying to support the narrative that we are additive to the market and we are adding value. So any of the returns will go back into the central fund and we are only making investments into those companies which.
00:15:12 Rosie Denée
Our service providers or providing new forms of data, so no company that we would ever regulate would be able to get investment. Yeah, so no conflict of.
00:15:20 Mark Geoghegan
Right there, I get that there's absolutely no conflict.
00:15:23 Mark Geoghegan
Interest. Yes, other that that really wouldn't work, wouldn't it?
00:15:25 Rosie Denée
No, no, no. And then we can kind of look outwardly at more factors. We were recognised by the Financial Times as being one of the leading innovation hubs across Europe and that's a phenomenal win for us having the Financial Times saying these are the guys are doing something pretty cool here and it's really working I think to us is 2 thumbs up.
00:15:43 Mark Geoghegan
Well, it's really.
00:15:44 Mark Geoghegan
Good. Once you get in the Financial Times, you know?
00:15:46 Mark Geoghegan
You've arrived.
00:15:48 Mark Geoghegan
We have to say that.
00:15:48 Rosie Denée
It was a happy morning.
00:15:50 Mark Geoghegan
We know some businesses are gonna fail, and we've already said we know that some have to fail. It's sort of almost that they have to also maybe starting a business is really hard and it's just cash flow, just base people always underestimate. They're gonna need more money than they think just because it's gonna take 3 or 4 years for any income to come in half the time. Even if you've got the best products in the world, you need to be properly funded.
00:16:10 Mark Geoghegan
When we had your 5th birthday, it was quite interesting, you'd said of that hundred, it was quite a high number that was still going strong and that only small number would fail.
00:16:19 Mark Geoghegan
Where do you calibrate it? Because obviously there's a risk reward sort of spectrum, isn't there? Suppose you could say, wow, we'll have 1000 moon shots and only one will hit it, but that will be the one will be 100,000 and it'll pay for all my other failures in that. So if you look at in the venture capital type lens or you could say I shall come much later stage when all the ones that we're going to die have already died.
00:16:38 Mark Geoghegan
And then all the ones are now in a much lower probability of failure at this point, cause they've kind of proven themselves. They've got through the difficult first couple of years perhaps and I have to worry about them running out of cash and that kind of stuff. Where do you sit? I feel that perhaps you're sitting slightly on the less risky.
00:16:55 Mark Geoghegan
But then the further you sit on, the less risky end, the less excitement you're going.
00:16:59 Mark Geoghegan
To have.
00:16:59 Rosie Denée
To answer this question, we've got to be mindful that we're operating to serve a marketplace rather than a single entity being at a VC fund or another corporate.
00:17:07 Mark Geoghegan
Because you can't have. You can't introduce someone to the market with this brilliant service and then they run out of cash.
00:17:13 Rosie Denée
Yeah.
00:17:13 Mark Geoghegan
Minute after someone installed this thing and think, and now who's going to service this product? And I don't know how to update it and there's.
00:17:18 Rosie Denée
No software updates and whatever, exactly. And I think the fact that we have within the market over 50 insurance companies, over 300 brokers within that, there's a huge pool of appetite, a huge pool of different ideas and a huge pool of talent.
00:17:33 Rosie Denée
So you're never knocking on the same doors to try and get excitement for it. The market are heavily involved in our selection process, so our selection process is usually rigorous, but it's also really open in the sense that we have a very global programme. Anyone from around the world can go through the programme, but the market.
00:17:54 Rosie Denée
Is our primary stakeholder. We need to make sure that they see value in products that come through. So typically our biggest pool is around that seed pre seed stage. So companies who have perhaps been going for less than three years, definitely less than 10 employ.
00:18:07 Rosie Denée
Trees. They are very moldable at that stage. So through our mentorship or the mentorship that they get on the programme, if they're doing it right, they're listening to the market and then they are actually feeding that back into their product design. If you leave the lab and you've done it well, you've probably know what your road map looks like for the next three years.
00:18:27 Rosie Denée
You've really listened to the market, you've validated your idea, your concept, your product, and you know what to actually concentrate on. Things have failed in the lab pretty quickly. If the market don't see value in it, they will push the real value add pie.
00:18:42 Rosie Denée
Uses and they will advise on distribution. How to get around procurement teams. All of this insight that you just don't get when you're outside it really opens doors left, right and centre and you are left with a huge network. Those water cooler moments happen if you come and position yourself in the lab. We're sitting in the lab today. We've got cohort 13.
00:19:01 Mark Geoghegan
And then literally just behind you, you can't see the door and they were in those classic sort of goldfish bowl type meeting rooms. And yet now I've already recognised and nodded to three people.
00:19:09 Mark Geoghegan
Who walked past?
00:19:10 Rosie Denée
Exactly. You know, that just happens because we're in this collaborative space where we've got this ecosystem.
00:19:16 Rosie Denée
Around us. So coming back to how we calibrate ourselves, I think it's the market which is doing it for us all through this process. They're selecting who comes onto the programme once the companies and insurers are on the programme, they're telling them what success looks like and how to achieve it and they're supporting them through that journey. And then once they graduate, we actually have a really supportive.
00:19:37 Rosie Denée
Alumni programme, which I don't think other accelerators have companies position themselves and base themselves from the lab itself. We have companies who work here full time with their entire staff. We have companies who are obviously from around the world. They will come here every time they are in London to work from here.
00:19:54 Rosie Denée
We have meeting rooms where they can meet people, but we open up our global network so we have as Lloyds obviously this big global network, we're here to service global needs when it comes to risk and in terms of growth ambitions, we will set them up in our local offices. We will put them in touch with regulators if they're having issues with the regulators, we will put them in front of clients where we think that they will actually answer clients needs.
00:20:17 Rosie Denée
We really go above and beyond to make sure they are in the right rooms during the right conversations at the right time.
00:20:24 Mark Geoghegan
Remember interviewing.
00:20:25 Mark Geoghegan
Bricks in this building, but they're. Yes, they're a graduate of this law. It's a, but this is still here. It's wonderful. It's almost like a big we work for insure tech people.
00:20:32 Rosie Denée
Exactly. And we're expanding our lab space because of that because of the success. So we've already expanded at once this year, but we've outgrown our expansion. So we're having to re expand our lab to actually home all of our companies. You've gone through the programme, they want to be here. It's a really, really bubbling high energy community who.
00:20:52 Rosie Denée
Are doing amazing things.
00:20:54 Mark Geoghegan
In your job, so you get one cohort in, and then you're already on the next one. You're out there banging the drum and letting these companies know through the right channels how to apply. Because of that, you must have a fantastic sense of what is out there at the moment, and technology is quite interesting. Well, it's not all technology, it's just ideas. But they do go in.
00:21:14 Mark Geoghegan
Fashions or that, you know, the tide goes in and out on different ideas and different things that certainly some things are more easier to fund at certain times than at other times. So I just wanna ask you some where's the wind blowing and say if it was three years ago, it would probably have been blockchain order, but what are they putting on their sort of resume? Is it all AI?
00:21:30 Rosie Denée
Today we are still very much in that AI bubble and riding that wave. You're right, it comes in trends and waves and we definitely see different waves at different times. So I think looking at recent times, we've fallen off that pure ESG kind of trend which was looking really broadly at ESG. We're now very much seeing resilience.
00:21:51 Rosie Denée
Coming to the fore, be it cyber or weather and climate resilience, so a lot of new forms of data around how to actually articulate some of the changing weather systems that we're seeing around the world, the the wildfire, that's a really hot topic.
00:22:04 Rosie Denée
Like and in terms of technology AI, I mean, yeah, you're right. Blockchain died a long time ago. No one talks about blockchain anymore. So.
00:22:12 Mark Geoghegan
Just looking like, yes, I'm from another planet.
00:22:14 Rosie Denée
Now exactly. But IT I think is interesting. IT is one of those things where it definitely had a huge, huge kind of surge of interest and excitement. And it it silently still there.
00:22:25 Rosie Denée
Under the radar, I guess people just don't talk about it anymore because it's so.
00:22:28 Rosie Denée
Normal IoT devices providing data consistently about.
00:22:33 Mark Geoghegan
This is, you know, your your fridge, talking to the six markets like.
00:22:35 Rosie Denée
Exactly. You know, like no one cares anymore. Everything's IT. And you know, with IT, we definitely saw a real rise in parametric products because we had a new way of actually validating a trigger as and where and. But again, I guess that's just.
00:22:47 Rosie Denée
Like old fry now.
00:22:49 Mark Geoghegan
It's business as usual. That is the world Evans used to.
00:22:50 Rosie Denée
Yeah, it's. Yeah. And I think with AI, the interesting thing is also we're seeing a lot of interest.
00:22:56 Rosie Denée
Around how to ensure AI and the models that themselves and.
00:23:00 Mark Geoghegan
Certainly I saw some pitch I haven't been to the last cohort pitch, but the one before I think some was pitching on about.
00:23:05 Mark Geoghegan
Of almost ensuring the efficacy of the AI of the algorithm. Yeah, I thought that was way beyond. I don't know if that got.
00:23:08 Rosie Denée
Exactly.
00:23:12 Rosie Denée
Anywhere in the end, The thing is, it is way beyond, but it's actually a real issue and I think it comes back to the heart of why the lab exists. The lab is the home for the innovative spirit of Lloyds. Lloyds has always had that spirit about looking at the world.
00:23:25 Rosie Denée
And meeting the changing world, the world's changing even quicker than it has across the 300 year plus history that Lloyd's.
00:23:33 Rosie Denée
Had so it's right to have a home and a face for innovation to make sure that we are creating this really rich environment for innovation to happen. And AI is a great example like the risk is here today, we can't touch it. It's not physical, but it's still a risk and we still need to work out how to ensure it because our entire world is fast becoming underpinned by this technology.
00:23:55 Rosie Denée
And it's going to be a huge systemic issue. At some point. We're not probably quite there yet, but we're very.
00:24:00 Rosie Denée
Knows like we should be looking at this and this comes back to also like moving the dial of people's understanding. These might not be the right products. Right now we've had a number of AI model insurance policies or looking at the risk of come through the lab. But if we're moving the dial in the market in their understanding of this as an inherent risk.
00:24:20 Rosie Denée
We are still doing.
00:24:21
Jobs.
00:24:22 Mark Geoghegan
Since you can't just close your eyes to it, just cause it's.
00:24:24 Mark Geoghegan
Too.
00:24:24 Mark Geoghegan
Soon.
00:24:25 Rosie Denée
Exactly.
00:24:25 Mark Geoghegan
It was too soon yesterday, but now it's it's too late. I think you're to say that because of technology, the rate of change is accelerating all the time, isn't it?
00:24:32 Rosie Denée
It's scary sometimes.
00:24:34 Mark Geoghegan
Interest. But I'm really glad I asked you about that because, you know, you really do get to look out into the future. So what is out there right now and how's that changing compared to four years ago? And if it's changed?
00:24:42 Mark Geoghegan
Got back to that advice, I forgot me was that if there's first unlucky of some, what do you think would be the learnings when you'd say, well, what was it that we've identified, the things that are more likely to make you successful. I think we've already identified a couple of things. You gotta listen to what the market actually wants. Don't come with this product and say it's the greatest thing to slice bread 1. You want my sliced bread? No, we don't. We want it to be too.
00:24:44 Rosie Denée
A work cohort 13.
00:25:03 Mark Geoghegan
It and we want jam on top or whatever. So, but you really gotta listen to what the insurance market wants. But any other things that you think you gotta come with and also from.
00:25:11 Mark Geoghegan
The other side well, I think.
00:25:13 Rosie Denée
It all really boils down to one thing at the end of the day, and I mentioned earlier that I'm studying part time psychology and neuroscience, and they're hugely interesting areas. For me, it comes down to people and that is.
00:25:24 Rosie Denée
The fundamentals of everything, and I think we get such an insight here in the lab. We see all the.
00:25:29 Rosie Denée
Relation teams in the market. We see all of the companies who come through the lab. We're seeing a huge holistic view of innovation across a huge number of companies and different size entities. And it's different drivers at different sized companies. But for the smaller and shortex or early stage companies, you really need to get your founding team to actually complement each other.
00:25:50 Rosie Denée
To have the right skill set on the table. If you can't sell your product well, you can't convince people that your products worthy. You're never gonna get anywhere. And I think it is one of the biggest things to failure.
00:26:01 Rosie Denée
Is not having an effective team from the get go and I think that also then kind of feeds up to the investment point and you mentioned this earlier, investment is huge for these companies. Insurance is really, really different.
00:26:14 Rosie Denée
To what we.
00:26:15 Rosie Denée
Probably kind of term classic fintech, and sometimes in short, tech and fintech, especially in the investment world.
00:26:21 Rosie Denée
Wrote to.
00:26:22 Rosie Denée
Together and fintech seen as the kind of more powerful cousin and insurtech the lesser cousin. Ultimately they run different cycles. They have very different drivers. If you get an investor on board who doesn't understand insurance and the insurance life cycle, you are going to kill a company really early. So you really need to have that understanding.
00:26:44 Rosie Denée
From investors. So for me it always comes down to people.
00:26:47 Mark Geoghegan
Would you say a really good person with some fairly average?
00:26:51 Mark Geoghegan
Is giving more success on some of the best SEC in the world, but they just don't.
00:26:55 Mark Geoghegan
Get on with people.
00:26:56 Rosie Denée
Definitely. You know, yesterday I was actually sitting in a broker office and I was sitting in their area waiting for my meeting to happen. And it's so funny. And because I came from the breaking world and it's really funny visiting it again from this point of view, the amount of interactions I saw in that 5 minutes where I was just waiting for my meeting.
00:27:16 Rosie Denée
Happen where someone came up to a broker who they were meeting and it was like. Hi mate, how are you? And it was that relationship driven piece and as we all know our market is so so dependent on relationships as well as the amazing knowledge that our market has.
00:27:31 Rosie Denée
And if you can't create these relationships, it can be really hard for you to actually then move your product forward. So coming back to your original question, you can have the best tech in the world, but if you don't have the ability to build these relationships, no one's going to necessarily buy.
00:27:45 Rosie Denée
In next we've gotta.
00:27:46 Mark Geoghegan
Got to trust you and all that.
00:27:48 Mark Geoghegan
It's good to hear. So that's the psychology part of it, rather than marine biology.
00:27:51 Mark Geoghegan
Part of it.
00:27:52 Rosie Denée
Yeah.
00:27:53 Mark Geoghegan
You mentioned before that Lawry's lab is going global. How's that manifesting itself and how's it?
00:27:58 Advert
Right.
00:27:59 Rosie Denée
It was the right time, I think, under my leadership, I've always been really, really conscious not to build too big. We have to have really strong foundations to go on to the next level and I think we still have it untapped. The huge amount of potential that the lab and innovation has at Lloyds. But we are very much on that journey. So it was always going to be.
00:28:19 Rosie Denée
The right thing to do, but it just needed to wait for the right time to take us global.
00:28:25 Rosie Denée
And through taking US global, which we've done over the last two years, we've tapped a whole new audience and really beginning to dig into local regional problem statements. So we started with Europe, we went to Asia Pacific, then Middle East and Africa and Americas and that and we're going to go to Bermuda for reinsurance in cohort.
00:28:45 Rosie Denée
14 But it's given us this huge opportunity to really understand some of these local challenge statements. We were ready. We've been going for enough years. Then the accelerator programme has a really strong identity. People were wanting us to move to these different regions.
00:29:02 Rosie Denée
As well, and there was a huge amount of demand for it. So we've done it through the medium of having different regional themes to our accelerator programme and having really specific challenge statements and challenge problems for each region and really pushing for local sign ups. So you know, we really wanted to drive.
00:29:22 Rosie Denée
The fact that we are a programme for everyone and it there should be no barriers to entry to actually.
00:29:28 Rosie Denée
Lying.
00:29:28 Mark Geoghegan
When you sent to those companies sitting in the Lloyds Lab in London, you've got to go listen to that market and then some. You're challenging yourself as Lloyds. Well, we don't know what all the problems are in the world. We we need to go and ask the actual original customer around the world what their problems are.
00:29:36 Rosie Denée
Yeah.
00:29:44 Rosie Denée
100%, you know, we should push ourselves out of our comfort zone, but I think with that kind of around the world and going global peace, we're moving into our next phase. We've got two memorandums of understanding signed, one with Bermuda, the regulator over there, the BMA and the second in Dubai with the Department for Economy.
00:30:02 Rosie Denée
Tourism and they were purely driven by innovation and the lab. People want to understand what our secret sauce is and understand how we can then impact that to local economies.
00:30:13 Mark Geoghegan
So do you think you could see physical Lloyds Labs wherever there's a Lloyd's office?
00:30:18 Rosie Denée
It's not an.
00:30:18 Rosie Denée
Impossibility. But we also need to work out.
00:30:20 Mark Geoghegan
We're the best club in the.
00:30:21 Mark Geoghegan
World.
00:30:23 Mark Geoghegan
So I'm just gonna get to make you buy.
00:30:24 Mark Geoghegan
Branch.
00:30:25 Mark Geoghegan
And you know my Singapore branch and my, you know, my Rio 1.
00:30:25 Rosie Denée
Can you imagine? Yeah. Exclusive membership? No, not at all. We're not about that. We're about, really.
00:30:32 Rosie Denée
Indoors. But for us, the challenge is is really understanding the local dynamic and where we actually play best. So what we have in London, we shouldn't and won't recreate around the world because we have a marketplace here. The factors that drive our success here will not drive our success in other regions. So our big challenge is to work out.
00:30:52 Rosie Denée
Where we actually can play with real benefit and we're beginning to work out some of those answers. And when we've worked out those answers, that's when we will then build those outposts.
00:31:03 Mark Geoghegan
In Lloyds, we've just had the innovation class and now the transit.
00:31:07 Mark Geoghegan
Class sounds like an absolute validation of all the work you've been doing. You know that Lloyds is giving permission for innovation. Actually, it's only when you name something that you start to see progress made on it, you start to measure something. You start to see it being changed. And of course probably manipulated as well, which is the other thing. So we've named innovation here in the Lloyds Lab 6 and half years ago and we've now of course.
00:31:20 Advert
Exactly.
00:31:22
Yes.
00:31:28 Mark Geoghegan
And behold, we've seen innovation because we've given permission for it to happen. Now seeing innovation actually as 5% of.
00:31:34 Mark Geoghegan
Is allowed to be in addition another 5% for specific innovation around transition. So Lloyd Syndicate managing agents are being given permission to go and do that. Presumably you must be over.
00:31:45 Rosie Denée
The moon? Well, the initiative that actually came out of the lab. So one of our big things as a lab is to understand the barriers to innovation. So be it within our marketplace.
00:31:48 Advert
Ah.
00:31:54 Rosie Denée
Beyond our marketplace and then work out how we can then create a hurdle over that barrier. So the IC X innovation came out of conversations that we were having around real tension.
00:32:05 Rosie Denée
Within people's business plans, you know, we have to have business plans submitted at Lloyds and you have to articulate where you're going to put allocated premium. And as we all know with innovation products, there is no guarantee of a return. You are actually trying to experiment and so there was tension happening inside managing.
00:32:26 Rosie Denée
Agents about where they would put premium and they weren't prioritising innovation. No, no.
00:32:28 Mark Geoghegan
Yeah, cause it's sort.
00:32:29 Mark Geoghegan
Of you don't want your bonus to be predicated on something blowing up, so you could become a bit of a hot potato. So, but no, no, I think property should.
00:32:33 Rosie Denée
Exactly.
00:32:36 Mark Geoghegan
Have it no cyber should have it.
00:32:36 Rosie Denée
Exactly. Those were the conversations are happening in our market thinks in 12 month cycles.
00:32:41 Rosie Denée
And innovation goes beyond 12 month cycles. You need to think in five year cycles really to make innovation happen. So that's where the innovation CX code was born. But this really is a testament to Lloyd's want to actually support our market when it comes to innovation and create the right environment. So it now sits quite rightly in Rachel, Turks world and we now have increased the number from 2:00 to 5:00.
00:32:46
Exactly.
00:33:04 Rosie Denée
Percent because the market are really utilising it, we are having 100% year on year growth within the numbers which are coming into the IC X pool and TCX is the right way to go. We really want the market to innovate and ultimately with these numbers, the market isn't going to blow up. And I think that is no more message. You know it's a safe space to experiment and it will remain a safe space to experiment.
00:33:26 Rosie Denée
To your previous point about psychology, I think it's also putting it front of mind, right? If you talk about innovation enough and you talk about an innovation class, then people are gonna be thinking about these opportunities. If you're not having the conversation, then people won't be thinking about the opportunities.
00:33:43 Mark Geoghegan
300% loss ratio sounds absolutely terrifying. If it was based on the 60 billion premium of Lloyds market. But if it's just 100,000, it's more manageable, isn't it?
00:33:52 Rosie Denée
Exactly, exactly. We can all manage and we can all sleep.
00:33:54 Mark Geoghegan
At night, exactly. You think? Yes, we'll definitely fix this. We'll probably be under charge for this product now, but it's still a good product and we'll probably need to.
00:34:01 Mark Geoghegan
Calibrate this bit better. What about?
00:34:03 Mark Geoghegan
Looking back, it's unfair to ask people what are their favourite children, but any memorable ones you think? Ohh that was great. What was it this still our great and you want to pick up any of the cohorts that you've had? Any particular ones that stand out for you?
00:34:14 Rosie Denée
It's a really difficult question, but.
00:34:15 Rosie Denée
I will answer it because hey.
00:34:17 Rosie Denée
Why the hell not? For me, it always comes back to the people rather than the actual companies, and I think to really stand out for me, the first one being guy, which I've already mentioned Gaia, it was a really personal story to a couple who went through fertility treatment, IVF.
00:34:34 Rosie Denée
They unfortunately ended up not knowing what the journey was going to look like. Spent quite a sizable portion of their life savings on trying to realise their dream of having a family and through this experience, which was not a positive experience actually came out and was like we want to do something with this. So through that they built the IVF insurance products.
00:34:54 Rosie Denée
They came to the lab and they have a finance platform which goes with the insurance product, that whole.
00:35:00 Rosie Denée
Ethos is to really try and create this experience to be a better experience, so the products itself offers also mental healthcare in the event that you don't have a baby. It's really, really shaped around people. So today they've created over 100 babies, so they've had a really positive impact on 100 families and that's really meaningful. And it's a really wonderful story.
00:35:20 Rosie Denée
I think another story for me is a company called.
00:35:23 Rosie Denée
Clear connect, the founder came through Cohort 8 and again with a drive to try and make a bit of the world a better place and it was all around trucking business in the US So there's fleets of trucks which Lloyds ensures actively through the platform clear connect. It's basically a data ingest platform which then advises you on how to underwrite.
00:35:43 Rosie Denée
Your portfolio better. What you should be looking for, even down to the driver details. If a driver's got a bad history, it will flag it. But through this they are opening up insurance capacity which has never been opened up to noise before.
00:35:56 Rosie Denée
They are teaching the drivers how to drive best and safe, and having an actual movement on peoples behaviours and I think this is where insurance is really cool. You can actually impact and positively affect behaviours. So their aim is to try and get to a world where there are 0 crashes on the roads because of something which has gone on. Maybe the driver hasn't.
00:36:15 Rosie Denée
Slept enough or?
00:36:16 Rosie Denée
Whatever it is and their whole ethos is around trying to put people safety first, but through this are able to open up a huge piece of the pie for the insurance market.
00:36:26 Rosie Denée
Over I think 75% of trucking business written through Lloyds is now going through the platform. It's amazing and that was because someone wanted to make.
00:36:35 Rosie Denée
The world a bit better.
00:36:36 Mark Geoghegan
And that's been a difficult class that's lost money at different times and been quite a dislocated class is actually a really good opportunity. Yeah. And who wants to be?
00:36:43 Mark Geoghegan
Hit by a truck. Exactly.
00:36:46 Rosie Denée
We cannot have that as our own, no.
00:36:47 Mark Geoghegan
But yeah, it's certainly with the guy. It's I think it's.
00:36:49 Mark Geoghegan
Really hard.
00:36:50 Mark Geoghegan
Not to empathise with, yeah, it's a human story. And then you're just touching a bit of insurance to it. But it's it's just a compelling story, isn't it? You can't not.
00:36:57 Mark Geoghegan
Relate to it.
00:36:58 Rosie Denée
Yeah. And it makes insurance relatable. And I think sometimes insurance seems really distant and.
00:37:03 Rosie Denée
Relatable and I think this is also where the lab is fantastic because it's about bringing diversity of thought and understanding to the market, really reducing those barriers, but also getting the next generation excited about insurance. It can be quite a hard thing to do, but actually the stories that we can tell can actually really paint insurance in a different light in a really positive way and actually get people.
00:37:24 Rosie Denée
Perhaps you wouldn't be naturally excited about insurance, excited about insurance.
00:37:29 Mark Geoghegan
What about anyone listening? Who's thinking I like this Lloyd's lab thing. This and sure takes really interesting. This could be really, really great opportunity. And now they can see there's a well trodden pathway. They know that this is gonna be good.
00:37:40 Mark Geoghegan
They really want to impress you with their submission. How they go about it in a way that is going to get your attention and increase their chances of success and getting onto a pitch day.
00:37:49 Rosie Denée
But number one, it's not about impressing me, it's about impressing the market. So I think that should be the kind of guiding light for you, but it's really simple. We have a very simple scoring criteria. We're not making investments in these companies. We're not doing huge amounts of D on their background and that's.
00:38:06 Rosie Denée
And what we really care about is product programme and team. So the team piece is really important. We want to see that they have got a sizable enough team to actually manage the lab. As I mentioned, some of these companies are less than three years old. So have smaller team bases, but that's alright. But you also need to be an expert in the field that you claim that you are.
00:38:28 Rosie Denée
An expert in equally if you're a large company, we would expect to see C-Suite support for a lab application. We don't want a company who has a huge amount of employees and someone at the very kind of mid level to come in because.
00:38:43 Rosie Denée
People should want to come onto the programme and really use it to leverage their move into the Lloyds market, so it needs to be taken seriously product, is it relevant for our market, it's a specialty market, specialty commercial business. We need to make sure that there ultimately is a home for you in our market. If you go through our programme.
00:39:03 Rosie Denée
And programme you actually want to come and build better products alongside our market. It's super simple.
00:39:09 Rosie Denée
Sometimes we get people who want to come in and sell, sell, sell is their mantra, and that's just not the programme for you. We do have roots for that. So in terms of other programmes, we've got programmes centred around pure innovation, insurance capacity, deployment, Lloyds product, Launchpad. We also have programmes around training so we're training.
00:39:32 Rosie Denée
Our market in the innovation kind of mindset, so if you've got a specific skill set, we can help in that area. And as an outsider, we can put you in touch with the right people, but the lab accelerator is about just building products for our market.
00:39:45 Mark Geoghegan
Rosie, I've really enjoyed our chat. Is there anything you'd like to add that something we forgot?
00:39:50 Mark Geoghegan
To talk about.
00:39:51 Rosie Denée
Oh gosh, that's always a good question. The biggest thing for me and the biggest learning I've had in the 4 1/2 years that I've been in the lab is that insurance can be really exciting. I love my job, I love the people. I get to hang out with.
00:40:05 Rosie Denée
And I love the fact that I'm sitting around people who are challenging the insurance market that we're in. And if you want to try something new, we're here. We are here for you and we're here to support doing something new in insurance.
00:40:18 Mark Geoghegan
Rosie, before we started, you said you weren't feeling that well today. You were absolutely beaming, you know, and.
00:40:22 Rosie Denée
I.
00:40:23 Rosie Denée
I know I think I might have.
00:40:24 Rosie Denée
I slept. Really.
00:40:25 Rosie Denée
Badly last night definitely got out on.
00:40:26 Rosie Denée
The left side, not the.
00:40:27 Rosie Denée
Right side this morning which.
00:40:27 Mark Geoghegan
Yeah, but when he starts talking about innovation and insurance, you absolutely light up. So thank you so much and keep doing it.
00:40:31 Rosie Denée
Exactly.
00:40:32 Rosie Denée
Brilliant. Well, Mark, thank you. It's.
00:40:34 Rosie Denée
Been a real pleasure.
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