The Future of Insurance – Wayne Slavin, Co-Founder & CEO, SURE (Return Visit)

Episode Info

Wayne Slavin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sure, a VC backed insurtech startup. Prior to Sure he was the VP of Product Management at Tapingo, TechCrunch’s Most Innovative Company of 2013. His other past projects and companies include NetStumbler, a consumer app with more than 1.5 billion downloads, the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader, Buddy Media (now part of salesforce), and BackupRight the enterprise SaaS company he sold in 2012. He has a Masters Degree from Columbia University.

You can see Wayne from his appearance on the show in April of 2024 in the final episode of Season 5.

Episode Overview:

• SURE's Role: SURE provides the technology infrastructure and services that enable large brands, including Fortune 500 companies and major auto manufacturers, to launch and manage their own digital insurance businesses. This allows these brands to control the customer experience and build long-term, durable insurance operations.

• Embedded Insurance: The trend of "embedded insurance" is driven by the fact that insurance is often a necessary component of a core product (like cars or homes) or can be a friction point in a sale. Companies are recognizing the value of offering insurance directly to their customers to enhance the overall experience and capture economic benefits.

• The "One-Stop-Shop" Vision: Many large consumer brands aim to be a comprehensive provider for their customers, whether it's for car ownership, homeownership, or financial well-being. Insurance is a natural extension of this strategy, allowing them to create a complete ecosystem around their core offerings.

• Structural Advantage: Brands that already have a customer base have a significant advantage. Acquiring these customers for insurance purposes costs them next to nothing, giving them better economics than external insurance providers.

• Evolution of SURE: Over the past year, SURE has focused on helping its partners achieve "permanence" in their insurance offerings. This means enabling them to build stable, long-term insurance programs that are not subject to the fluctuating appetites or market conditions of traditional insurers.

• Challenges for Traditional Insurers: The existing insurance industry has had ample opportunity to improve its technology and customer experience but has largely failed to do so. This has created an opening for new models.

• The "Build vs. Buy" Dilemma: While some companies attempt to build their own insurance carriers, this is capital-intensive and distracts from their core business. Partnering with a third-party carrier often results in a loss of control over customer experience and technology, leading to suboptimal outcomes.

• SURE's Sweet Spot: SURE offers a middle ground, enabling brands to have their own differentiated insurance programs with control and economic upside without the need to become full-fledged insurers or rely on inadequate partnerships with traditional carriers.

• Speed to Market: SURE can bring partners to market with approved insurance products in as little as 90 days, or even faster for simpler offerings, demonstrating a significant advantage over the lengthy internal development times typical for such initiatives.

• Industry Inertia: The insurance industry often suffers from a lack of incentive for long-term growth and innovation. Decisions are often based on avoiding blame (omission vs. commission) rather than proactively pursuing new opportunities. This makes it difficult for established players to adapt to new models.

• The Future of Insurance Distribution: The future will likely involve insurance being more deeply integrated into the customer journey, moving away from discrete purchases and towards seamless, embedded solutions. The current models of comparison engines and traditional carrier partnerships are becoming less relevant.

• Investor Appetite: There is a significant appetite from investors like private equity and sovereign wealth funds for insurance-like returns, especially for well-defined, scalable programs that leverage existing customer bases.

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.