Profiles in Risk

On a very special episode of Profiles in Risk featuring our friends that are joining us at the Insurance Nerds reception at ITC, Monday 6 pm at Mandalay Bay, I chat with Saurav Basu and Chuck Gomez at Exavalu, a boutique tech services and professional services firm created to serve the insurance industry specifically.Saurav Basu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sauravbasu/Chuck Gomez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gomezchuck/Exavalu: https://www.exavalu.com/

Tony chats with Reda Jarir, Co-Founde & CEO at URLab, they offer a new operating system for actuarial risk. It's a whole data platform/ecosystem including coding for actuaries. It includes an actuarial knowledge base and AI agents specifically designed to help actuaries.Rada Jarir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reda-jarir-0782502b/URLab: https://www.urlab.ai/en

Tony chats with Sunit Shah, Founder & CEO at Soteris, historically insurance has been a probabilistic game of large numbers. We can't predict which policy is going to be unprofitable, but if we write enough policies of similar characteristics we can predict the total losses of the portfolio and manage that risk. Soteris is aiming to predict what was considered unpredictable and predicting profitability on a policy by policy basis starting with auto. This would be a huge change of paradigm for the insurance industry! A fascinating conversation you shouldn't miss!Sunit Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunit-n-shah/Soteris: https://soteris.ai/

Tony chats with Santi Jaramillo, Co-Founder, Co-CEO & AI Transformation Lead at Pragmatico. They embed a full AI function within client organizations to drive AI cultural change, leadership behaviors, and proficiency measurement that make AI adoption sustainable and measurable. They have had AMAZING results helping even very traditional insurance carriers. A fascinating conversation.Santi Jaramillo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiagojaramillo/Pragmatico: https://www.pragmatico.ai/

Robert Lewis, CEO and Devon Ellett, COO at INTX Insurance Software will be joining us for the Insurance Nerds Reception at ITC Monday, September 28 at 6 pm at Rhythm and Rifts. INTX they are the only platform built to run ceded and assumed reinsurance with policy, claims, and billing unified in the same system.They are looking forward to meet you at ITC! Don't miss our reception!

Tony chats with Carl Ziade, Co-Founder at Gaya, they are focused on super copy, super paste for insurance agents, they have created a browser extension now being used by 300+ agencies. It helps agents quote in multiple carrier portals 3-5x faster with some very exciting new agentic features coming soon.Carl Ziade: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlziade/Gaya: https://gaya.ai/

Tony chats with Wayne Slavin, CEO at Sure, they are a technology infrastructure company helping the world's biggest brands build insurance operations to serve their customers.Wayne Slavin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayneslavin/Sure: https://www.sureapp.com/

I chat with Sean Steigerwal, Founder and CEO at CustomerIQ, they are a revenue intelligence platform for agents and brokers to help speed up deal cycles and improve service. They do this by direct integration with their inbox, VOIP system, and AMS. A very innovative approach!Sean Steigerwald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-steigerwald-77120272/CustomerIQ: https://www.getcustomeriq.com/

Tony chats with Alex Martin, Co-Founder & CEO at Clearspeed, they came from the military side and developed a revolutionary technology that helps insurance organizations detect fraud and establish trust through analyzing signals in voice conversations.Alex Martin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandersmartin/Clearspeed: https://www.clearspeed.com/

Tony chats with Jay Bell, long-time insurance executive and author of Author of The Goat in the Machine. Jay will be attending the Insurance Nerds Reception at ITC 2026 and will be signing copies of his book.Jay Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaybbell/The Goat in the Machine: https://goat-in-the-machine.kit.com/

Tony chats with Jesse Benedick, CEO & Co-Founder at Chainmail Solutions, an insurtech MGA helping protect the gaps especially around hurricane deductibles using an IoT grid that helps verify the exact conditions at the property.Jesse Benedick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-benedick-b436833/Chainmail Solutions: https://www.chainmailsolutions.ai/

Tony chats with John Brunette, long-time insurance expert and insurance education consultant. We chat about his career, about the future of insurance talent, advice for the next generation, and more.John Brunette: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbrunette/

Tony chats with Jeppe Norregaard, Founder at InReality, a tech company that provides technology to guarantee something is real, a video, a photo, or anything digital. Security from glass to glass, from the camera to the final person seeing it to identify what's fake or synthetic. It's a unique approach, instead of trying to identify fakes, they secure the data with encryption the moment the photo or video is taken.Jeppe Norregaard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeppe-n%C3%B8rregaard/InReality: https://inreality.io/

Tony chats with Karmina Szymanski, Head of Communications at District Cover about their Urban Risk Report, a deep dive report highlighting the growing insurance protection gap and capacity pullback affecting metropolitan business communities. A fascinating report. We can expand coverage to traditionally underserved businesses!Download the report: https://www.districtcover.com/urban-risk-report-2026Karnina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karnina-szymanski-47610312/District Cover: https://www.districtcover.com/

Tony chats with Sat Ramphal, Co-Founder & CEO at Maya AI, they are a conversational AI platform to help agents with retention and performance.Sat Ramphal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satramphal/Maya AI: https://mayaknows.com/

Tony chats with Craig Bender, CEO at InsureU2, they help insurance organizations through modernizing operations to improve performance and scale intelligently.Craig Bender: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-bender-6165a7183/InsureU2: https://insureu2.club/

Rich Cooper, Global Head of Market Transformation at Fusion Risk Management, they provide an enterprise resilience platform used by most of the large carriers and much of the financial services industry. We discuss their newest Enterprise Resilience Report.Download the Enterprise Resilience Report: https://www.fusionrm.com/whitepapers/the-enterprise-resilience-report/?utm_source=profiles-in-risk&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=dprRich Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-cooper-a2782b/Fusion Risk Management: https://www.fusionrm.com/

Tony chats with Kevin Finn, Co-Founder and Reuben Vandeventer, Co-Founder and Head of Research at Tessera, the new product management operating system for P&C insurance.Kevin Finn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-finn-13b4852/Reuben Vandeventer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reubenjvandeventer/Tessera: https://mytessera.ai/

Tony chats with Spencer McDonald, CEO at Expert Insured, a systems providers focused on MGAs, Wholesales, and Carriers. They offer a modern Policy Admin System at a priced that is reasonable from a startup MGA to organizations with 1,000+ employees. It includes documents, policies, accountings, everything all in one. A end-to-end solution for the MGA space.Expert Insured: https://www.expertinsured.com/Spencer McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdonaldspencer/

I chat with MJ Saffer, Founder & Owner at EthosVAS, they help insurance agencies scale without losing margins or risk compliance issues through highly specialized Virtual Assistants. They build custom back-office solutions using trained, compliant virtual staff supported by proven processes. All with a strong focus on compliance.MJ Saffer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mj-saffer/EthosVAS: https://www.ethosvas.com/

I chat with Jon Dewald, CEO at HelixIntel, they are building the predict and prevent engine for equipment breakdown and P&C. Their platform connects insurance companies directly with the maintenance departments of the large commercial property risks they insure in a way that helps prevent losses before they happen. It can lower preventable losses by up to 70%.Jon Dewald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-dewald-942b2916/HelixIntel: https://helixintel.com/

Tony chats with Yo Sub Kwon, Co-Founder & CEO at Voltaire, a technology provider that automates the writing of claims correspondence. They help make the fastest way to close the claim the highest quality one. It generates accurate and compliant letters, in as little as 30 seconds.Yo Sub Kwon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jchysk/Voltaire: https://voltaire.claims/

I chat with Vinod Kumar, Head of Product Marketing Agentic Location Intelligence at TomTom. They have evolved from a navigation company to a B2B company offering location technology that can be invaluable for auto insurance. A fascinating conversation!

I chat with Bobbie Shrivastav, Co-Founder & CEO at Solvrays, they allow back office operations unifying data, documents, and systems so that when work comes in it makes it easy to understand, decision, and complete. All on top of the systems you already use, without having to rip and replace.Bobbie Shrinivas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbieshrivastav/Solvrays: https://www.solvrays.com/

I chat with Raj Utraja, Founder & CEO at Persisto.ai, they are a Commercial Underwriting platform that empowers you with AI Agents that work as your Junior Commercial Underwriters. They can analyze the files like a human would, assess the risk, rate, and send it back to the broker. A very interesting conversation!Raj Utraja: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajnishutraja/Persisto.ai: https://persisto.ai/

Steve Johnson, Founder & Chief Product Officer at Insured.io and author of the Insurance UX Survival Guide. They are a complete customer experience platform, providing all of the channels that an insured might use to interact with an insurance company, as a bolt-on solution to any carrier management system. It allows you to easily deploy a policyholder portal, inbound and outbound text messaging, AI virtual agents, FNOL, etc. It allows smaller carrier to rival the experience of larger carriers at a significantly lower cost.Steve Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-johnson--/Insured.io: https://www.insured.ioThe Insurance UX Survival Guide: https://www.amazon.com/Insurance-Survival-Guide-Experiences-Expectations/

Tony chats with Dylan DiMarchi, Co-Founder & CEO at Eventual, they are the NY based insurtech behind PremiumLock, they provide a 3-year price guarantee for US admitted homeowners insurance policies. Since 2021 the price of home insurance dramatically accelerated and it's becoming a huge deal, PremiumLock helps homeowners have predictability.Dylan DiMarchi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylandimarchi/Eventual: https://eventualclimate.com/

Tony chats with Kat Gordienko, Co-Founder & CEO at Builty, a building permits intelligence platform that translates permits into usable data and risk signals. This is a whole new way to underwrite property and it's very interesting!Kat Gordienko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katgord/Builty: https://www.builtydata.com/

Tony chats with Sean Eldridge, Co-Founder & CEO at Crosstie, they are a workflow automation platform bringing to life the best AI solutions to reduce the admin burden for claims and service pros helping create a better experience for clients and policyholders.Sean Eldridge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seangeldridge/CrossTie: https://crosstietech.com/

Tony chats with Mark Tepper, Co-Founder & CEO and Andrew Anderson, Co-Founder & Head of Sales at OraClaim PIR Final. They are an AI native platform specifically built for responding to and defending claims of any kind that have significant exposure. The enables great collaboration between defense attorneys and claims teams.Mark Tepper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-tepper/Andrew Anderson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyandersonai/OraClaim: https://oraclaim.com/

Tony chats with Edgar Harutyunyan, CEO at Wamy, an AI Claims analyst for property insurance claims. It can bring down claims handling time from 20 hours to a few minutes.Edgar Harutyunyan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edgar-harutyunyan-b600a8368/Wamy: https://www.wamy.com/

Tony chats with Rafael Broshi, Co-Founder & CEO at Notch, an AI platform to build agents for complex use cases where the cost of mistakes is very high. The platform guarantees no hallucination and is deterministic instead of probabilistic.Rafael Broshi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-broshi-435a77105/Notch: https://www.notch.cx/

Tony chats with Juan Garcia Fernandez, Co-Founder at Tuio, an AI-Native insurtech carrier in Spain targeting the younger generation. A very interesting origin story and a must listen-to episode!Juan Garcia Fernandez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanga2/Tuio: https://www.tuio.com

Tony chats with Mehdi Lhadj, Co-Founder & CEO at Floapi, they are a Montreal based company doing automation for MGAs and Agencies. They integrate into your AMS/BMS and phone systems and help eliminate manual and repetitive tasks.Mehdi Lhadj: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehdi-l-08b847204/Floapi: https://floapi.ca/en/insurance-broker-automation/

Tony chats with Suren Pillai, Digital Marketing Consultant at Insurance SEO SEM, they are a digital marketing agency focused on insurance SEO. After leading SEO lead generation for AXA and Sompo he now makes those services available to all areas of insurance.Suren Pillai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/surengyana/

Tony chats with Steve Pieroway, Principal at Benevolent Marketing, a marketing firm specialized in helping insurtechs. We also discuss the 2026 Benevolent Insurtech Trust Index and its findings.Steve Pieroway: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepieroway/Benevolent Marketing: https://benevolentmarketing.com/

Tony chats with Mitch Cohen, Founder & CEO at ClearLine, a crisis communications readiness and response platform. They help companies manage reputation risk at the enterprise level. A very interesting conversation on an area of risk we don't think about often.Mitch Cohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cohenmitch/

Tony chats with Kelvin Johnson, CEO at Brevity Pitch. They offer a platform for people to practice high-stakes conversations with avatars that sound like a real human. They also offer AI roleplays and coaching. This can be a huge difference maker for sales teams!Kelvin Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelvin-johnson-cpa/Brevity Pitch: https://www.brevitypitch.com/Video Version: https://youtu.be/Lg5U44rmwAI

Tony chats with The Salty Adjuster, host of the newest podcast in the insurance world, hosted by an anonymous adjuster with lots of heart. A fantastic conversation.The Salty Adjuster: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-salty-adjuster/id1896769744

Tony chats with Joel Plofsky about his career from actuary to a long career on the systems side and product side. A fascinating conversation with great advice for the next generation.Joel Plofsky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelplofsky/

I chat with Hayden Robinson, Venture Manager at Creative Destruction Lab. They operate in 10+ countries and have 16+ locations across the world. They are a startup accelerator and incubator specialized in a number of streams including Risk which includes all things risk and insurance. A new cohort starts soon, so you want to apply now! Watch it on the Insurance Nerds YouTube Channel or listen to it on the Profiles in Risk Feed on your favorite podcast app.Hayden Robinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haydenhillrobinson/Creative Destruction Lab: https://creativedestructionlab.com/

Tony chats with Illia Pinchuk, Founder and CEO at DICEUS, they help insurers, MGAs, and Captives providing back-end and front-end solutions including Underwriting Workbench, Policy Administration, General Ledger, and Group Administration Services.Illia Pinchuk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/illiapinchuk/DICEUS: https://diceus.com/insurance/

Tony chats with Jens Nasstrom, Head Founder & Head of Science at Precuro,  they provide Cognitive Risk Intelligence for claims. What exactly does that mean? They provide a new variable in claims. Claims can have the same injury, same diagnosis, and somehow one resolves in three weeks the other one becomes a painful three year long claim. The different isn't the injury, it's the mindset. That's what Precuro is measuring. This is especially important for Disability and Worker's Compensation. A fascinating conversation you should not miss!Jens Nasstrom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensnasstrom/Precuro: http://www.linkedin.com/company/precuro/

I chat with Natalie Arroyave, Host of Adjuster Hour & Director of Corporate Engagement at RISE and we chat about our podcasts, her career, claims, RISE, and much more. Such a fun conversation between two people who are passionate about insurance, from very different backgrounds!Natalie Arroyave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliearroyave/Adjuster Hour: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLavr4C_rE5tsyuWedurJsQ-sDLRVGzg68

Tony has an awesome career chat with Scott Johnson. Scott's dad was a State Farm agent for 37 years. Scott started his career in claims, and then grew into sales and eventually sales management. He's been killing it in Sales Management for decades now! So much to learn on this episode!Scott Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-johnson-6113a850/Video Version: https://youtu.be/_FspFMqskYk

Tony chats with Josh Graham, CEO & Founder at Ehab, they have created a weather modeling tool which helps businesses to tailor forecasts to what they do. A fascinating conversation you should not miss!Josh Graham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshmcgraham/Ehab: https://ehab.co/Video Version: https://youtu.be/OHeSV2-ybBU

I chat with Dan Kies, Client Executive at Camunda, a software company focused on agentic orchestration. They’ve been doing orchestration for a long time and now they have better tools to do it with and are focused on doing it for claims and complex underwriting.Dan Kies: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-kies/Camunda: https://www.Camunda.comVideo Version: https://youtu.be/en5W2IPPcAQ

Tony chats with Douglas Escobar - PIR Ep. 817, a long-time insurance professionals who helps others invest in Real Estate. He makes a great case that Real Estate is a perfect fit for the skillset of insurance pros.

Tony chats with Will Kastroll, Owner at Harbour Insurance and Co-Founder & CEO at OrangeAI. Exclusively on Profiles in Risk, Will announces the creation of an insurtech created by agents, for agents, building the first fully Agentic AME (Agency Management Ecosystem), more than an AMS! An incredible conversation!

Tony chats with Jennifer Doty, Speaker & Author Helping Leaders Get Unstuck about her career, transitions, the people who helped, her books, and so much more.Jennifer Doty: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-sierveld-doty/ and https://jenniferdoty.com/