Fifty Steps, and You Only Knew Two of Them

Introduction Ask an insurance operator to write down how a policy endorsement actually gets processed, and you will usually get about six steps. The real number is closer to fifty. The other forty-four live in the head of whoever has been doing the job longest, and they leave when that person does. Giancarlo Stanton, Co-Founder and CEO of Magiq, has built a company around that gap. His argument is that you have to know what the process actually is before you automate it, and most operations don't. The industry is buying agents to handle work nobody has written down, which is how you end up with a system whose decisions nobody can explain. In this episode, Josh Hollander and Giancarlo get into what it takes to pull a process out of a competent person's head, why the exceptions matter more than the normal path, and what changed in one support operation once someone finally mapped the work. Guest Bio Giancarlo Stanton is Co-Founder and CEO of Magiq. He started in complex commercial litigation, moved in-house, and became General Counsel and VP of Claims at Swyfft before serving as Chief Operating Officer at Cover Whale. Along the way he advised Obie, FRG Specialty, and Sunfish. That path put him in the back office of regulated businesses during periods of fast growth, which is where he formed the view that the minutiae are the whole game. He founded Magiq with Nick Eich, previously at Groupon and then on the engineering team at Kin, to build the thing he kept needing as an operator: a way to go from what should get done to proof that it actually happened. Key Topics -Your best people cannot describe their own jobs - When something becomes routine it becomes invisible, so asking an expert to write down what they do all day produces a partial answer at best. -The mirror problem - Magiq shows an organization its own process as steps one through fifty, and the response is almost always that leadership knew about step one and step fifty and assumed the rest. -Insurance runs as an ecosystem, not as silos - When billing misses a cancellation for nonpayment, claims pays a loss that should never have existed, which is why Giancarlo argues point solutions aimed at one function cannot fix the operation. -The exceptions are where the value sits - The flat cancel and rewrite that one person handles differently today than yesterday is what turns a bordereau into a conversation with your reinsurer about why the math doesn't math. -What mapping the work actually did - A support operation went from a one-in-five call response rate and an 8.8 day email response time to 96-97% call response and 5.8 hours, seven months in. -Sales is a process too - Mapping the inbound lead decision tree and empowering producers to end calls that were never a fit drove a 23% improvement in per-producer output and a $10 million gross written premium lift over a seven month engagement. -The staffing question - Giancarlo makes the case that doing more with the team you have lands better with buyers than headcount reduction, and that a business only profitable with no employees was never really profitable. Notable Quotes "You can't automate things you don't understand. And that, I think, is just objectively true. But that doesn't stop people from trying." "No one is sitting there running a business saying, I need more AI. They're saying, I need less cost, or I need more sales, or ideally both. And probably fewer errors." "People don't do things incorrectly because they want to. They do things incorrectly or inefficiently because they think they're doing them correctly, but it's eight thirty at night and it's their fiftieth endorsement." "If the only way your business is profitable is for there to be no employees, then you probably just don't have a profitable business to begin with." "It's really about making sure the mistakes don't happen, not making sure the people aren't there." Resources Guest: Magiq: https://usemagiq.com/ Giancarlo Stanton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giancarlo-stanton-1b011a59/ Magiq on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usemagiq Host & Organization: Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/ Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/ Insurtech Leadership Podcast (LinkedIn Showcase): https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show Subscribe & Review If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Podbean, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.