PolicyMe with Andrew Ostro (CEO) | E44

Summary: During the 44th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, sits with Andrew Ostro, Co-founder and CEO of PolicyMe. Andrew shares how his digital tool, Policy me, is changing the face of life insurance. Jason and Andrew discuss how the tool is streamlining and reinventing an industry that has a bad reputation of customer service and margins Show Notes: ● :30—Introduction of Guest Andrew Ostro, CEO of Policy Me ● 1:00—PolicyMe is a digital life insurance advisor. They allow the customer get the best price for what they need. ● 1:50— Andrew worked as an actuary and within the insurance industry. Insurance is historically technologically behind. ● 3:00—There are some principles of the industry didn ́t influence change. ● 4:20— Agents tend to maximize their revenue rather than focusing on the clients protection. ● 5:00— Meeting with advisors can tend to be a large time suck. Policy Me tries to reduce the time spent on finding the ideal policy for you. ● 6:00— If insurance is expensive, they shouldn’t buy what they don't need. Policy Me is advising on this. ● 7:47— Policy Me is supported by companies because they act as a broker (middleman) rather than replacing. ● 10:15— Intelligence behind risk factors doesn't necessarily do much for the policy. No good data on companies accepting risks. ● 14:00— Policy Me is currently focusing on advice and later moving to the product solution. ● 15:00— Policy Me seeks to optimize their questions to give quality advice in less time. ● 16:00— The advice of the tool is based on customer objectives. ● 21:00— Policy Me has a streamlined process that speeds up issuing insurance policy. ● 22:18— The break down the process to make it simple. Their focus is on the onboarding/activation side. We recognize that the process needs to be supported by a human advisor. Customers can contact them 24/7. ● 24:20— A lot of customers are going through the tool and enrolling immediately. There is always room to improve the process. ● 27:08— The biggest challenges starting this was trying to do too much too early. It was culturally hard to overcome as a mindset. ● 29:30— The major thing to improve in the insurance industry is streamlining the process. ● 32:00— Policy Me wants to get it across that they are trying to give quality advice. The strategy to do this is with marketing and branding. ● 33:00— Life insurance can be the difference between a family going into poverty after a death and surviving the hardship. 3 Key Points: 1. Life insurance has tended to be a clumsy industry where advisors put their profits ahead of their clients objectives. 2. Meeting with an advisor can be time consuming. PolicyMe is a digital platform that allows you to compare, pick, and enroll in a life insurance policy while getting the best price. 3. Life insurance can be the difference between a family overcoming a hardship or entering poverty. PolicyMe prides itself in providing quality, unbiased advice that clients can take action on immediately. Tweetable Quotes: - “If you are proud of your first launch, you launched too late.” –Andrew. - “The big issues we are seeing with life insurance is 1- getting bad advice 2- customer experience wasn’t great.” – Andrew. - “Life insurance is an incredible product when you look at what it does for society. It can be the difference between a family going into poverty or continuing to live their life after death” – Andrew. Resources Mentioned: ● The Fintech Impact ● Itunes to access the podcast ● Refer to Jason Pereira ́s Linkedin for Information about the Fintech events ● Woodgate Financial ● Andrew Ostro ● PolicyMe