The Future of Insurance – Joseph Ziolkowski, Founder & CEO, Relm Insurance
Release Date: 01/06/2026
The Future of Insurance - Caroline Thompson, CUO, Operations, At-Bay
The Future of Insurance
Episode Detail Cyber insurance has changed what it delivers to policyholders twice in roughly 15 years: first with breach response, and then with outside-in scanning that helps a business become a better risk before it is ever quoted. Caroline Thompson helped build both. In this episode, Bryan Falchuk talks with Caroline, CUO, Operations at At-Bay, about what she saw at the forefront of those shifts, how At-Bay's InsurSec model pairs every policy with security services for small businesses that lack the people to defend themselves, and why VPNs became one of the clearest signals of risk in...
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The Future of Insurance – Guru Vasudeva, SVP & CTO of P&C, Nationwide
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Episode Detail Guru Vasudeva leads technology for Property & Casualty at Nationwide, a business that spans personal lines, commercial lines, Excess & Surplus, and agribusiness inside a company spending well over a billion dollars a year on technology. In this conversation he lays out how Nationwide thinks about AI in three layers: everyday tools for more than 25,000 associates, a rebuilt approach to software engineering, and the transformation of Underwriting, Claims, and customer service. Guru shares specifics on what happened when close to 5,000 people in software engineering...
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The Future of Insurance – Making Tough Relationships Work Better
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Episode Detail Claims professionals often begin a conversation already cast as the adversary. Many claimants have been primed to expect a fight, so they arrive ready for one, and the person trying to help has to find a way through that before anything productive can happen. In this solo episode of The Future of Insurance, Bryan Falchuk shares the framework behind his keynote at the Western Loss Association Fall Conference: the 50 75 100 Solution, an approach to making tough relationships work better by recognizing how much of any difficult interaction is within your influence. The episode...
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The Future of Insurance – John Kellington, CEO, ACORD
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Episode Detail John Kellington has spent his career on every side of the same question: how does data move reliably across an industry built on thousands of separate systems that all need to talk to each other? He’s built the standards, lived by them as a carrier CIO, and now, as the new CEO of ACORD, he’s back to run the organization that sets them for the entire global insurance industry. In this conversation, Kellington and Bryan dig into what ACORD actually does beyond its well-known forms library, why AI in insurance can only be as trustworthy as the data underneath it, and how a...
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The Future of Insurance – Ensuring Trust at a Time of Mistrust (Live from ACORD CONNECT 2026)
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Episode Detail Three voices, one shared problem: the insurance industry calls itself data-driven, but trusts almost none of the data it runs on. This episode is a live panel recorded at ACORD Connect 2026, where Bryan sat down with Russell Sommers of Baker Tilly, Meredith Barnes-Cook of Datos Insights, and Spero Zacharias of Chubb to talk about what happens to that trust problem once AI starts doing the interpreting. The conversation moves through where AI genuinely closes the industry's biggest data gaps and where it just introduces a new category of things to verify, why the fixed-field...
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The Future of Insurance – Stay Tuned for Next Week
The Future of Insurance
We're taking a quick break this week as we ramp up with a lot of interviews being recorded in the next month. Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe you catch them when they start dropping on September 22nd with Season 9 Episode 6!
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The Future of Insurance - Agents & AI: Same Channel, Different People
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Episode Detail This episode is a discussion of the thought on a pressing an important question the industry is facing today – will AI spell the end of insurance agents and brokers? AI is not going to kill the insurance agent channel. That’s not really in dispute, and it was never the right question. In this solo episode, Bryan Falchuk argues that the public debate over AI and agents has been fought almost entirely on the wrong terrain — demand — when the real disruption is on the supply side. Buyer demand for a trusted expert on a complicated, high-stakes decision is as durable as...
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The Future of Insurance – Mike Zukerman, President & CEO, CSAA Insurance Group
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Episode Detail When wildfire risk pushed many insurers to retreat from the California homeowners market altogether, CSAA Insurance Group chose a different path: reward the homes that actually harden against fire with a three-year rate guarantee and a discount of up to 30 percent, and keep writing business through it. In this conversation, Mike Zukerman, President and CEO of CSAA Insurance Group, joins Bryan Falchuk to talk about what that choice has actually looked like inside a company that insures around 600,000 California homes, why he believes a healthy, competitive insurance market...
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The Future of Insurance – Kim Garland, Insurance Industry Veteran
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Episode Detail Insurance carriers have quietly lived with a roughly $50 billion problem for years: a level of fraud baked so thoroughly into homeowners and personal auto pricing that the industry simply calls it the cost of doing business. In this episode, Bryan Falchuk sits down with Kim Garland, Industry Executive & Advisor, to size that number for real and ask why an industry built to manage risk has been so slow to manage this one. Garland spent more than three decades inside carriers, from GEICO and Safeco to AIG and State Auto, before stepping outside day-to-day operations to advise...
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The Future of Insurance - Graeme Dean, Founder, Hotspot Cover & Trigger Parametric
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Episode Info
With nearly 15 years of insurance industry experience, Joe Ziolkowski has navigated both US and non-US regulatory environments in the establishment of Property & Casualty and Life insurance company infrastructure.
In 2019, Joe founded Relm Insurance, Ltd. the first insurer licensed under the Bermuda Monetary Authority’s new “innovation” framework. Under his leadership, Relm has become the leading insurer to companies operating in the digital asset/Web3 space and has provided insurance to companies in more than 35 countries around the world. Relm has pioneered the development of innovative insurance products including coverage for staking/slashing events, property exposures for Bitcoin miners, directors and officers liability insurance for token issuers and smart contract failure.
In 2024, Joseph spearheaded Relm’s expansion into the MENA region through a strategic partnership with Liva Group, enabling the launch of tailored insurance products for businesses in the Web3, AI, and space economy sectors across the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. Relm now operates through its Dubai-based affiliate with a Category 4 license from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and approval by the Central Bank, marking a pivotal step in the company’s global growth strategy. This move reinforces Relm’s position as a go-to insurer for emerging industries underserved by traditional insurance markets.
Joseph holds a BS in Management & Business from Skidmore College and carries the CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter) and Associate in Underwriting Management designations from The Institutes.
Episode Overview:
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Foundation and Vision of Relm Insurance:
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Relm Insurance was founded to address the gap in the insurance industry for innovative sectors. Joe emphasizes the company's vision of making innovation resilient.
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Challenges in the Insurance Industry:
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The episode discusses the slow pace of innovation in the traditional insurance market and the need for companies like Relm to support emerging sectors.
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Joe highlights the challenges of underwriting for new and innovative sectors, which require a unique approach.
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Relm's Approach and Strategy:
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Relm's strategy involves deep engagement with clients to understand their needs and tailor insurance products accordingly.
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The company uses its differentiated risk appetite to support sectors like digital assets and advanced technologies.
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Cultural Insights:
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Joe discusses the importance of a learning culture at Relm, where employees are encouraged to continuously learn and adapt.
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Industry Evolution:
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The conversation touches on the need for the insurance industry to evolve and respond to new economic challenges and innovations.
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Conclusion:
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Joe expresses hope that Relm's efforts will push the insurance industry to better respond to innovation, ensuring that insurance remains a key enabler of progress.
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The episode concludes with Joe's optimistic outlook on the future of the insurance industry and the role of companies like Relm in leading the charge.
This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance book series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.
Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.
Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.