Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode of Insurance Technology: Fact or Fiction?, Georgie is joined by Nico Berry, corporate partner at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, to examine whether regulation is truly an obstacle to innovation in insurance.
Creators and Guests
What is Insurance Technology: Fact or Fiction??
Host Georgie Simister speaks with key insurance industry figures to separate fact from fiction in a world of insurance, debunk industry myths and explore the game-changing innovations shaping its future.
Get in touch to suggest our next guest: https://artificial.io/contact/
Legal and regulatory burdens are often blamed for holding back insurance innovation. But are they really blocking growth? Or could they be the very catalyst for change? Welcome to Fact or Fiction with Artificial hosted by me, Georgie Simister. This is the podcast that separates fact from fiction in a world of insurance, debunks industry myths and explores game changing innovation shaping its future.
Georgie:Who better to discuss today's topic than Nico Berry? Nico is a corporate partner from Norton Rose Fulbright's corporate practice and a leader of the firm's corporate and regulatory insurance practice in London. He has been recognized by Legal five hundred as a leading individual for both corporate and regulatory insurance and FinTech. Nico brings extensive expertise at the intersection of law, finance and innovation. Nico is the founder and the host of the firm's Insurathon, an annual innovation event supporting UK insurtech startups, which has provided over £250,000 in legal and investment support since 2017.
Georgie:With almost twenty years at Norton Rose Fulbright and a long standing commitment to helping early stage Insurtech thrive, Nico is perfectly positioned today to guide our discussion and debunk today's myth that legal and regulatory burdens impede innovation and growth in the insurance sector. In today's episode, we will focus on expansion and how companies can navigate complex international regulations while still pushing forward innovation, how the insurance sector can use regulation as a strategic opportunity, and what the regulatory stability looks like with new emerging technologies. Welcome.
Nico:Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
Georgie:I'm very glad to have you here. I think you are a perfect guest to discuss today's myth.
Nico:Well we'll we'll see about that.
Georgie:We're gonna we're gonna kick off focusing on, like, the challenge and the deep dive into expansion. So if we're looking at companies and how how can companies navigate the complex regulations while still trying to push forward with innovation?
Nico:Yeah. I think it's always there's always an inherent tension between innovation and regulation. And the insurance face is obviously one that is subject to heavy regulation for obvious reasons, protection of consumers, sort of because of its importance to the wider financial sort of structure. I think, you know, when I look back at Insurtech and, you know, back back in the days, back in 2016, 2017, we were even working out whether it was InsureCheck with an e, InsureCheck without an e, you know, what it actually was and what it actually meant. But I think at that time, you know, you had the emergence of, should we say, disruptive startups who had with a premise that they were gonna somehow reimagine the insurance value chain.
Nico:And we also had emerging technologies like distributed ledger technology. We had cryptocurrencies. And I think if I look at sort of an example of, you know, how regulation and innovation combined very early on, if I look at, for example, Lloyd's of London, in some ways, the epicenter of the insurance market in London, obviously. And, at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty within the London market as to the extent that digital assets could be insured. And there were concerns there were regulatory concerns.
Nico:There were AML concerns. It was a technology that the insurance market wasn't familiar with. And I think what Lloyd's of London did is they took guidance from the market, including us. We participated in that sort of process. And they issued back in this was 2017 where this was going on.
Nico:And then in 2018, they issued Lloyd's market bulletin putting out guidance as to Lloyd's best practice in relation to ensuring digital assets. And, you know, I remember talking at Lloyd's of London to quite a few underwriters at the time because they arranged for us to do a talk explaining the guidance. And a certain underwriter and I'm not gonna mention names in here because I don't know don't have consent to, but a certain underwriter afterwards came up to me and said, you know, Nico, we're launching this cold storage insurance product. You know? Can we get your views on it?
Nico:And that sort of guidance and and meeting and almost coincidence translated into a first of a kind digital cold asset storage product that was underwritten by Lloyds of London. And I think that's a great example of regulators providing clarity in relation to technological change and therefore enabling products that, you know, people were comfortable underwriting. And, you know, there have been numerous other examples, and there will continue to be other examples. But I think in The UK, we're lucky that we have a regulatory framework where the regulators generally embrace innovation provided it's got the necessary protections and give, you know, the necessary guidance to enable established regulated businesses to write the business and sell it to consumers and businesses.
Georgie:So that's a great example of where, yeah, the regulators and insurers have worked together. So to summarize kind of, I guess, what did work well and and potentially what didn't?
Nico:I don't wanna say everything went, you know, swimmingly because there there was a lot of uncertainty. I think what doesn't go well in these contexts is there tends to be a mismatch in expectations, I think sometimes between startups and those looking to launch new products. And what's actually possible, particularly from a timing perspective in terms of new product launch within new technologies. And I think what startups get frustrated by is the time lag, particularly if they're partnering with incumbent insurers because those insurers have much larger frameworks, regulatory governance processes, and systems and controls. And, you know, generally and I know we'll come on to talk about AI later.
Nico:But generally, the FCA and the PRA and indeed Lloyd's, they have been quite, should we say, they have taken part in consultations and provided guidance, but they haven't sought to change existing regulatory frameworks. They've generally said there are the systems controls, there are the governance structures, there's the customer duty protections that exist in existing regulation. We're not gonna change them for specific technologies, and firms need to get themselves comfortable that what they're doing in relation to new technologies, new products sits within those frameworks and duties because broadly speaking, they're almost principles based. I mean, obviously, are specific regulations, but there are principles underpinning them. And I think what doesn't work well at times is the clash between the need for speed and the need for regulatory certainty of com and comfort.
Nico:And, you know, that is something that I think it's interesting because, again, when I look back at that time, we had these startup incumbents who were gonna revolutionize the insurance value chain. Now the reality is the insurance capital supporting the insurance market globally. You know, there have been changes to that. We've had incoming ILS alternative capital coming in, but that sits at the back end, the top end of the the value chain, the reinsurance end. And so ultimately, those underwriting the risks, those reinsuring the risks, those who retain the risk in the insurance market through all the innovation, I don't think they fundamentally change.
Nico:What's changed is the front end distribution and product suite. And forever, there's gonna be a mismatch, but not a mismatch maybe isn't the right word, but there's gonna be tension between those looking to distribute and those looking to underwrite. And I think insurances will always be fundamentally about underwriting, claims management, and loss ratios and writing good business. And I think you can have great products, but if no one wants to underwrite them, you have a fundamental issue.
Georgie:That resonates with me. So my background has always been working at startups. So I get the need of wanting to develop something quickly. You've gotta be scrappy with what you've got because you're small amount of people, so you can move more quickly. But it shouldn't come at the cost of building a great partnership with your underwriting capital behind you.
Nico:Yeah. And I think what we've seen actually is we've gone from startups launching as, if you like, new product almost mini insurers.
Georgie:Mhmm.
Nico:What I've seen is in the early stages, there was a a rush to develop new products, develop new intermediary brokers that were direct to consumer facing. I think there's been much more of an evolution in the insurtech space. There's been a recognition that actually customer acquisition is hard. Customer acquisition is expensive. There are established players in that market.
Nico:Obviously, in the consumer area, the biggest change, if you like, was actually the introduction of price comparison websites and the the changes that brought to kind of the direct to consumer model. But that almost predated in short x, so to speak. That was something that was already going on in the market. And I think the biggest change has almost been startups have realized that insurers are good at underwriting business, and it's best to leave them to do that almost. And where they can really provide and add value is in assisting insurers underwrite business better and manage claims better and deal with customers better.
Nico:And so we've seen much more of a progression to insurance partnerships Yeah. If you like, with startups, which are service driven and there's a much more of an investment in a longer term collaborative relationship, which I think is really good for the market, you know, and it's been a good trend in terms of evolution.
Georgie:I completely agree. Yeah. It's all about the the longevity. Expanding into new markets brings complexities. Yeah.
Georgie:What do businesses need to understand from the legal and regulatory standpoint when entering new territories?
Nico:I think in terms of expansion to new territories, kind of the the biggest issue, if you like, that we deal with, we're an international law firm, so we do work in both The EU, UK, and The US and other jurisdictions, including Asia Pac. And I think one of the biggest issues we have, if you like, is although insurance law globally is and regulation is broadly consistent, there are subtle but material differences as to outcome in different jurisdictions. And there are also different areas of regulatory focus from regulators globally as you would expect. And some of that is for historic reasons where you get sort of quite nuances that people don't really understand and don't necessarily appear to have a rationale, but relate to particular local and historic circumstances. I mean, to give an example of that, there's a a rule called the Appleton rule Mhmm.
Nico:In New York, which relates to financial guarantee insurance and effectively is almost extraterritorial in scope in terms of its application across US states. And, I mean, again, we'll come on to talk about parametric insurance later, I think. But when we're dealing with products like that, that are innovative, there are always rules or particular per jurisdiction aspects that you need to consider. So a one size fits all approach isn't always possible, and people need to be flexible as to structuring products to achieve similar economic and customer outcomes, but albeit with a different structuring approach. I think the other thing is just the expectation sometimes that because something works somewhere, and this follows on from the point I was just making, it will work everywhere.
Nico:And we particularly get that from US insurtechs looking to expand into The UK. There's generally an assumption that because something works in The US, it will work in The UK or EU consumer market. And often that's not the case. And and for those businesses, there's an a sort of education process almost that we need to take businesses through to show them where the differences are and help them achieve the outcomes they want to achieve. So I think it's all it always goes back to the tension between the economic drive to expand and the economic desire to replicate a model that's been very successful in one jurisdiction, but just making sure and sense checking that that's gonna work from a regulatory perspective in another.
Georgie:Mhmm. I think it's a nice segue then to to look at the opportunity rather than the burden. So, like, do they always need to be a burden? And are there any companies, as you said, that are using things like ESG or Climate to create new opportunities?
Nico:Again, if you take Lloyd's of London, for example, there have been a lot of innovative carbon credit and other carbon sort of related insurance products that have come from Lloyd's of London. A huge area at the moment, obviously underpinning climate change policies globally is a move and a shift to green energy and, you know, wind and other other energy sources. And we've recently seen huge proliferation of parametric products designed to effectively give almost balance sheet insurance and hedge risk around weather. And that's something that wouldn't have existed but for, you know, government policy in relation to climate change. And that's an area that candidly is really interesting for a lawyer to work on because we can help navigate the different regimes globally and get to the same economic outcomes that our clients want.
Nico:And I also think it's it's a great product because it's an enabler. It's an example. I said the other day at an event that insurance compared to banking and other financial services, it doesn't get widely reported in the press actually as something that's actually quite a key enabler of the financial services. And I think in some ways, insurance is, should we say underreported as a sector in the financial press. And it's actually a great example of insurance providing, if you like, the hedging and insurance capability to an expanding market to enable government policy to be implemented actually.
Nico:And the insurance market has reacted to an economic need that innovation and government policy is is driving. Mhmm.
Georgie:You've worked with both Insurtechs and the Lloyd's of London, and we have kind of touched on it. But when we're looking at launching new products and looking at maybe an insurtech versus Lloyd's, Who gets there quicker and why?
Nico:Well, that's a complicated question. I think so the honest answer is insurtech there are two types of insurtechs. Right? There are insurtechs who are intermediaries or brokers if they're distributing the products, you know, or intermediaries, brokers, or MGAs, you know, if they if if they're doing product design and and claims handling. And though that category of insurtech can design a product very quickly and sort of they can design the product very quickly and be in a position to launch it to market.
Nico:But as I alluded to earlier, they need capacity. Yeah. And a theme of insurtechs launching products is sort of the tension between speed and getting capacity and getting someone to underwrite it. Now, as a result of that, there have actually and this is another great example of the insurance market innovating. We used to talk about venture capital, and then we started talking about venture capacity and having insurers and balance sheets who would sort of not take speculative underwriting positions, but have a more innovative approach to underwriting new risks and supporting new businesses.
Nico:And there are examples of those in the market now. We also have businesses that are effectively front fronting businesses almost that sort of front the risk out to a more risk, should we say, a more risk dynamic reinsurance market where that reinsurance market takes a wider view and is able to underwrite products that perhaps established insurers wouldn't effectively through reinsurance arrangements that front through to the market. So I think what's interesting is there's resistance to innovation or issues. And actually the insurance market is generally quite adaptive and other means of getting to market do arise. So, you know, that's on the startup side, but fundamentally we talk about insurers.
Nico:If what you're alluding to is our insurers difficult about launching products, I honestly think the answer is no. I think insurers themselves often sit behind some of the most innovative product launches. And also don't forget, they also support quite a lot of the MGAs in the market through underwriting capacity, where they're supporting management teams designing new products and bringing new products to market through the provision of underwriting capacity. So it's not just internal innovation, they can support MGAs as well. And I mean, recently there has been a real proliferation of MGA startups in the market, as you'll know.
Nico:And that again is just another limb of effectively the insurance market's flexibility to expand really.
Georgie:I guess, yeah, it's an easier way to entry and it's safer way to kind of dip your toe in the water. And if you have the distribution as well, then yeah. That's why MGAs have been so successful.
Nico:Yeah. Well, what it is is it's not necessarily safer from an underwriting perspective because they retain the...
Georgie:It's quicker.
Nico:It's quicker. But what they're really doing is they're able to invest in a separate product and more importantly, actually, separate team of underwriters who they feel have the requisite know how to write the business profitably. And that it's not an outsourcing, but, you know, it's a investment almost in separate businesses for particular lines of business. Yeah.
Georgie:You've touched on it, I think, your previous answer, and it sounds like there are so many different ways to actually get underwriting capital, whether we're calling it, you know, whatever we're calling it, really. So is it safe to say that when historically it's been a struggle to get underwriting capacity for data driven kind of innovative products, are you saying that we're kind of we're past that now? This you know, it's no no longer a challenge?
Nico:I don't think it's no longer a challenge because there is still a process you have to go through. Mhmm. But there's no doubt at the moment. I mean, there is a proliferation of capital in the market at the moment. At reinsurance level, there has been, you know, a lot of inbound investment and capital going into Lloyd's
Georgie:Mmm.
Nico:in recent years. So the capital is there for good risks. It's just, you you know, it goes back to the point I was making earlier. When we have startups coming to us saying, you know, Nick, I need legal opinion on this matter, or I need some regulatory advice to get my capacity provider or reinsurer comfortable that this risk is either insurance or is within a certain product class or, you know, has other features and works from a regulatory perspective. I always used to think that if you gave them that opinion and help them with that advice, that it was a pure regulatory issue that needed resolving Mhmm.
Nico:Behind, you know, the the carrier end. I think experience has taught me that sometimes actually it's not a regulatory issue, really. It's there's fundamentally an underwriting or risk appetite issue. And there comes a point where we can give all the advice that we can, but fundamentally someone needs to like the risk and needs to wanna underwrite it.
Georgie:Yeah.
Nico:And that's where innovation and regulation is the constant tension behind, you know, regulation is sometimes used as frankly an excuse because someone doesn't want to write a line of business.
Georgie:But uncovering uncovering the myth here, aren't we? Yeah. That it's not actually a burden. It's the underwriters. No.
Nico:I'm not I'm not blaming the underwriters, to be clear. I'm just saying that, you know, that there are there are there are a number of reasons a risk can be rejected and they're not always, you know, relating to regulation and law.
Georgie:Right. I wouldn't be a true artificial employee if I didn't talk about AI. So we need to touch on the topic of AI. So how quickly is regulation updated to reflect AI? And when are regulators seeing kind of other emerging risks, how do they typically respond?
Nico:In The UK, you know, the it's interesting because the PRA and FCA have been very active in terms of consultations, guidance, sandboxes, you know, in relation to AI use cases and financial services generally, including in insurance. What they haven't done is enact specific regulation to deal with AI or change existing regulation. It goes back to the point I was making earlier around, you know, our UK regulators have taken the view that existing regulations cover the risks and the principles that they want covered. And firms implementing AI use cases need to consider those when they're implementing AI use cases. I think in terms of AI in the insurance value chain, so to speak, again, there has been a huge use case of AI Yeah.
Nico:In back office services, claims management, risk assessment, and underwriting processes. Mhmm. And I I that's clearly going to continue because you know, going back to the underwriting piece, good underwriting requires good data. Mhmm. It requires underwriting expertise, and firms are gonna use any competitive advantage they can get.
Nico:And that's underwriting. And then loss and claims, you know, where do you make your profits in insurance? You make them through loss ratios and keeping loss ratios, you know, in line with expectations. Mhmm. How do you reduce your loss ratios?
Nico:Either you write more profitable business or you reduce claims exposure and expenses.
Nico:What we've seen is, again, there's been a focus on expense reduction through the use of AI. And that's a completely natural progression and, you know, and frankly, a very good use of AI. And what's interesting for me is when I look at the AI use cases in insurance, data scraping, sort of reading unstructured data, reading structured data, feeding it into databases, There are a lot of parallels between the issues we actually have in legal services in terms of unstructured data, not necessarily Obviously when we're on files, we clearly know what are in the documents. But from a look back perspective and historic data, we have a lot of information that isn't structured in a way that is easily navigable. I always think that whoever develops the tool to extract structured, unstructured data in a highly accurate way, I personally think it'll happen in the insurance space first.
Nico:And whichever business develops that or businesses develop it, will have a future in legal tech as well because it's very applicable to legal tech.
Georgie:Yeah. No. Look. It makes sense because
Nico:I look forward to your expansion into legal tech services in due course.
Georgie:Well, most of the points you were making about companies wanting to reduce their expense ratio
Nico:Yeah.
Georgie:Write more profitable business, I was just thinking whoever's listening, reach out to artificial. That's exactly what we're doing!
Nico:I was giving you a subconscious plug. It's no problem.
Georgie:If we're looking at the new buzzword, which is agentic AI, what are the legal considerations around that?
Nico:I think it's interesting. I was in an event the other day where people were talking about agentic AI, and I we've sort of had next gen AI Yeah. And then it's become agentic AI. And there was a discussion in the room along the lines of the AI is responsible for its own acts. And I was sitting there as a lawyer going, hang on a minute.
Nico:And so far as I'm aware, AI hasn't, you know, transformed, you know, the British legal system and and the laws of agency. And, you know, it's quite clear that an agent, including whether it's an artificial agent or a human agent, right, you know, principle is liable for the acts of the agent. And so it comes back to systems and controls and processes for firms and making sure that if they are using AgenTek AI, that they have systems and controls to make sure that they they understand both the outcomes of what's being produced and actually what's being produced itself. And regulators have made it very clear that understanding processes and outcomes and explainability to customers is a very important feature of the use of AI and insurance. And so we've seen to date more of an algorithmic approach to the use of AI.
Nico:Mhmm. So the outcomes are certain and processes can be explainable. What will be interesting will be the next phase, I suppose, of the use of AI where, you know, you have self learning, you know, smart AI and smart algorithms that are sort of self improving.
Georgie:Mhmm.
Nico:And how those square with regulation and in particular explainability and process process explainability will be interesting.
Georgie:There's a lot of people that are wanting to do something. I know most people are using AI. They're probably not even knowing that it is AI that they're using. I think there's still the fear of actually what is what is AI? What does it look like?
Georgie:And we're seeing that, yeah, as I said, people want to do something in AI, but there's a lot of I don't know. It's wanting to know what the the implications are if it goes wrong. So from your perspective, and I might regret actually asking this question, what happens when a breach occur occurs and what are the consequences?
Nico:Well, the the answer is and sorry to be a lawyer about this. It obviously depends on the breach and the context.
Georgie:I know.
Nico:But these regulatory breaches occur. And in the context of evolving technology, there are gonna be incidents where outcomes don't meet plan or expectations. And I think, again, this comes back to systems and controls, explainability. And firms just really need to make sure that before they embark on a project using AI from a systems and controls and governance perspective, they understand the deployment. Mhmm.
Nico:They understand the risks, and they understand the potential outcomes, and they're comfortable that the benefits outweigh, you know, any regulatory risk to the extent there are regulatory risks, which firms need in turn to find a way of mitigating and explaining. So I don't think there's anything for firms taking the adoption of technology seriously as part of their business plans to fear from AI. It's just like any other evolving technology or change to processes that firm just need to have governance and processes around. But that's not to say that, you know, I clearly, you as a startup don't want firms to take years to launch products because of regulation and governance. So there needs to be a proper and thorough approach, but, you know, also one that doesn't disrupt the launch of technology.
Nico:Because actually, a lot of the technology is in the interest of customers. Yeah. Let's be honest. Price comparison websites in the interest of customers have resulted in regulatory changes potentially to pricing and other policies that might not have existed but for those price comparison websites. So technology is is in the interest of consumers, but it just needs to be properly adopted.
Georgie:I think as well, everything in our platform is traceable. So you can it can tell you at every single point why it made that decision
Nico:Yeah.
Georgie:And the context behind it. Could a human do that? No. You You can't trace that back. So there's the fear of it going off and doing its own thing, but you can always you can hold AI accountable, can't you?
Georgie:Yes.
Georgie:Can't really hold someone.
Nico:You can hold humans accountable as well, to be fair. But I take your point about recollections may vary,
Nico:Should we say, in relation to humans. Whereas with AI and technology, as you say, you do have a dataset and you have the data background to explain processes and outcomes. Whereas humans, you know, are unfortunately human.
Georgie:Exactly. So, yeah, you can't blame them. In your impressive intro, you've clearly done a lot and so have Norton Rose Fulbright. Yeah. I'd really like to touch on your contribution to the Insurtech and insurance industry and what are companies similar to yours doing to help drive innovation within Lloyd's and the Insurtech market?
Nico:From a business perspective, you know, clearly, we do like to engage with insurance innovation. There's a saying that no one gets into insurance on purpose. People only do it by accident. And, you know, as a lawyer, possibly when I was young, didn't have a dream that I would become an insurance lawyer, but I find the sector endlessly fascinating. You know, its variety is interesting.
Nico:And so we we actually like supporting as part of our day job businesses, you know, who are launching innovative products, looking to disrupt or enable the insurance market. And we do that for startups. We do that for established insurers. We've been involved in innovative capital products, innovative insurance products. We do a lot of work on the investment side, so venture capital and private equity.
Nico:So we we represent the established insurance market. I think one of the things that became apparent to me some time ago when the insurtechs were coming to the market, you know, back in 2016, 2017 was we actually, as a firm, had an lot of institutional insurance market and also regulatory knowledge. And some of those startups had very complex questions that without the requisite expertise, it would either take them a long time to answer or actually be very expensive for them to get an answer. And I sort of saw that and to try to there were you know, candidly, out of self interest, we launched the Insurathon because we were interested to see what was going on. Because by launching it, we got sort of, you know, decks inbound interest from startups who would never normally approach us.
Nico:So we got we got visibility on what was going on. But in launching, you know, the Insurathon, which is an innovation competition where we give 25,000 of pro bono advice to the winning startups. And we also have the option to make an equity investment as well, which is a cash equity investment, you know, at a a proper valuation. We're not just translating legal advice into equity, so to speak. And in launching that, it's been really interesting.
Nico:You know, it was a very complicated business, which was a crypto sort of crypto denominated mutual. Mhmm. That's quite a high profile one in the market now. And our pro bono advice enabled us to write a memo for them, which they could take to investors to get investors comfortable that the product they were launching was in line with UK insurance regulations as they were understood at the time, obviously. And that enabled that startup to go and get funding and launch the market.
Nico:And I think that's, you know, the free advice we provided. We sort of didn't know the answer, but we knew that we sort of knew the answer and we would get there quite quickly. But for that pro bono advice, that business may have been at least delayed to market if not found it more expensive to get to market. And, you know, that's a great example of where we have actually been able to help with innovation and the development of the insurance market. And, you know, as you said in your intro, we've now given away over a quarter of a million pounds in support.
Nico:And that sort of our interest in the insurance market as well as, you know, cynical business reasons, so to speak.
Georgie:I mean, it's worked wonders, though, hasn't it?
Nico:Yeah. Yeah. No. It has. It has worked wonders, and it's been great.
Nico:And as I said, the interesting thing is every year, you get a slightly different range of pitches and range of focus. Initially, it was all very crypto and product focus, and now it's become much more SaaS services focused. Going back to ESG and climate risk, we've had a proliferation of interest from wildfire and data analytics businesses, which just tallies with the themes going on in the wider P and C market. So the startups reflect or preempt depending on whose position you're in, the insurance market themes and trends certainly. And that's one of the great things about the competition.
Nico:And also with those businesses, we're not necessarily just service providers to them. We're investors as well, and that gives you a different relationship and interest. And you get to know the founders on a slightly different level. So that's been great as well. And it's been great watching some of them go on to, you know, really big things, which
Georgie:Some of them hire really great people Yes. Like myself.
Nico:They do.
Georgie:Yes. Because you funded one of them didn't you . They were your first winner, weren't they? Flock.
Nico:Flock.
Georgie:Yes. Yeah.
Nico:Yes. They were. Yes.
Georgie:Yes. They hire great people.
Nico:No, they do.
Georgie:Yeah. Maybe you're the reason why I got into insurance though.
Nico:I wouldn't take that credit.
Georgie:Right.
Nico:As I said, no one gets into insurance deliberately. It's always an accident in one way or another.
Georgie:Yeah, it was an accident, but I'm loving it now I'm here. Okay. Now onto your artificial insights. So this is your thought provoking outlook. If you had to place a bet as a lawyer on the single biggest regulatory shift that will define the insurance market in the next twenty years, what would it be, and how should insurers prepare?
Nico:I can give you a very simple answer to that, which is in the next twenty years, there will be no fundamental regulatory shift or change in the insurance regime. Mhmm. Insurance is an inherently very stable market. The UK legal and regulatory system relies on stable regulation consistency that encourages investment and a long term approach to investment and product launches in the underwriting investment cycle. So I I don't see anything fundamentally changing the insurance sector.
Nico:I think the insurance sector embraces innovation. Mhmm. Regulators work with the insurance sector to make sure that they're attuned to technologies and innovation, but underpinning that is the requirement for a secure financial and insurance regulatory structure. So I think that's the great thing about the London insurance market is its reliability. And its not resistance to change, but its stability.
Nico:So I I see that continuing for the next twenty years. And frankly, the moment, the London insurance market is incredibly successful. It's actually one of the great success stories of, you know, The UK financial system, and I think that's gonna continue.
Georgie:It may be a simple answer, but it's probably provided a lot of comfort to people that think there's gonna be this huge shift in the next couple of years with, you know, AI and whatever. But it just proves the point that
Nico:Yeah.
Georgie:We are strong and stable.
Nico:Yeah. So I didn't wanna give you a lawyer's answer, but I think that's honestly that's more of a business answer, you know, and it's more, I think, likely to be reflective of the actual position.
Georgie:I'll take it. So I think it's clear from our conversation that legal and regulatory frameworks can be used to grow innovation safely rather than be a burden and can identify strategic opportunities. So thank you so much for joining me today and I would like to thank you on behalf of InsureTech for your contribution with the Insureathon and everything that you do to help InsureTechs thrive.
Nico:Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure being here and very interesting as always to particularly take part in a a vodcast. Yes. That's what believe they're called.
Nico:Yeah. My first. So I look forward to my next one, depending on how this is received.
Georgie:You will be welcomed back. And thank you everybody for listening. Thank you for everybody who's also reached out and suggested guests and topics. Please keep them coming. I wanna make sure that I am talking to people who you want to hear from.
Georgie:So thank you.
Nico:A pleasure. Thank you.