Henri Winand: Developing an electronic marketplace

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Henri Winand, co-founder and CEO of AkinovA, an electronic marketplace built to ease the transfer and trading of insurance and insurance risks. During the conversation, Sabine and Henry discuss the importance of strong taxonomy when moving into multi-party electronic placements, tangible and intellectual assets, transition risk, cyber risk, NFTs, and driving liquidity in illiquid markets. KEY TAKEAWAYS The whole objective of building our marketplace is to access a larger portion of the market. The market is there already, and our goal is to help clients or anybody in the value chain feel that we can do a better job of providing transactional transparency. I’ve done that in the world of energy and in the world of transportation. I’m an engineer who likes to solve problems; more to the point, I really love to build teams that can solve big problems in this world. The challenge for FinTechs and InsurTechs is that sometimes you can’t patent things because they fall in the business idea realm. Being able to then keep a trade secret – maybe with some patents around it -- which we are exploring big time by the way for a few of our concepts – is a way to not signal to everyone what you are doing, so you can keep the trade secret for a while. But equally, there are some pieces that I believe, patent attorneys believe too, can be patented. This is quite important because it gives you the ability to have a discourse with very large organizations if they try to replicate your IP. IP = value. It is not about sticking a licensing reminder that tells someone they’re infringing on your IP and that they owe you money; that’s not the point. The point is you arrive at an asset that can be valued by clients and investors, which then allows you to have a value-based conversation with your partners, too. The question is: How do we, as an industry, attract the right talent? Our industry has to be exciting. I got into insurance by accident, and insurance isn’t the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning unless you have to. What do we need to change to be part of the client's journey? If you break down insurance, you have to start with the risk that needs to be reduced and managed. First, I’ve got to make it easier for the person we engage with and who has a problem we can solve.  Second, they need to be able to articulate it clearly to ensure it is well evaluated. I then need to be able to say what it’s worth and how well or badly it could go based on the information gathered. BEST MOMENTS ‘An idea is a cost center until you make money out of it. Once you start making money, that idea can then become a profit center.’ ‘Time is everything, not money or attending meetings. The only commodity we have as human beings is time. So invest your time wisely.’ ‘I’m hoping things won’t change for the worse when we look at the current economy. Still, I think some clear fundamentals have changed. So let's make the best of what we know for now.’ ‘When you’re coming up with an idea, the cleverest people in the room are the ones who question the idea. So, if you want to look clever in a group, don't come up with an idea, come up with critiques.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Henri Winand is a growth- and change-oriented CEO with a passion for scaling businesses across a broad set of technologies, using diverse business models and team-based delivery.  Henry now serves as CEO for AkinovA, an insurance technology company that he co-founded with a specialist in ILS (insurance-linked securities and related insurance products). He is also a City of London-based fund manager.  Prior to this, Henry served as CEO of a British tech company listed on the London Stock Exchange Main Market (Intelligent Energy, a $1bn tech IPO) with in excess of $200m raised from a broad range of sources, leading to strong top-line growth, largely from internationally-based customers. Today, Henry serves on several Boards in the UK, Singapore, India, Japan, and the US in the energy, software services, film content publishing, and automotive sectors.  Henry also served on the Board of an EU-funded PPP valued at €1bn+.  Those also included several advisory bodies to Ministers, Secretaries of State, and Officials in the new energy, automotive, and materials science sectors in the UK, as well as on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Warwick Business School and of the University of Cambridge. Henry owns more than a dozen granted and pending patents and has several papers published in well-known, peer-reviewed scientific journals, covering topics including composite materials, neutron diffraction, and processes to improve industrial product development cycles.  Henry is regularly invited to speak at international conferences and has spoken in the US and French Senates, too. Henry provides advice to selected major global institutional, venture capital, and private equity funds. In addition to meeting several Heads of State, Henry made several appearances on live TV and recorded TV and Radio programs (e.g., Live CNBC TV, Live Bloomberg TV, Live BBC Radio 4 “The Today Programme”, recorded BBC and other programs, provided thought leadership, and quoted articles in broadsheets, e-newspapers, and The Huffington Post.)  Henry is married to Anne. They both have one child called Alexander. AkinovA is building an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of (re)insurance risks. By working in collaboration and partnership with the insurance industry, AkinovA helps optimize the risk transfer value chain by providing a capital markets-grade, industry-regulated trading platform and clearing house. AkinovA provides valuable data and analytics to participants and regulators from the aggregated data that passes through the marketplace. AkinovA grows the overall size of the insurance marketplace by enabling new participants to enter and existing participants to transact more business. There is significant pressure from the Capital Markets wanting an appropriate mechanism to access insurance risks that are de-correlated from the bonds and equity markets. Creating an effective secondary market for (re)insurance risks to enable their trading will dramatically increase the volume of business transacted across the marketplace. AkinovA is working with a number of brokers, who act as key channel partners for the existing industry, to kickstart liquidity in the marketplace. AkinovA provides them with a venue to service their clients’ needs in a more efficient and timely manner as well as gives them access to new clients entering the market who would benefit from their advice. AkinovA’s goal is to remain an independent marketplace enabling it to attract and work with all trading parties without undue influence from industry participants. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]