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The IT Matters Podcast is about IT matters and matters pertaining to IT.In this episode of IT Matters, host Aaron Bock interviews Jeremy Campbell, VP of Technology at Velogica US, a SCOR Global Life Americas company.Conversation Highlights: The challenges of working in IT at a local county government (4:57)How Jeremy went from programming as a young boy to a VP of Technology (9:16)Jeremy’s advice for young people who want to pursue a career in IT (14:35)What SCOR Global Life Americas doe...
The IT Matters Podcast is about IT matters and matters pertaining to IT.
In this episode of IT Matters, host Aaron Bock interviews Jeremy Campbell, VP of Technology at Velogica US, a SCOR Global Life Americas company.
Conversation Highlights:
Welcome to the Opkalla IT Matters Podcast, where we discuss the important matters within IT as well as the importance of IT across different industries and responsibilities.
About Opkalla:
Opkalla helps their clients navigate the confusion in the technology marketplace and choose the technology solutions that are right for their business. They work alongside IT teams to design, procure, implement and support the most complex IT solutions without an agenda or technology bias. Opkalla was founded around the belief that IT professionals deserve better, and is guided by their core values: trust, transparency and speed. For more information, visit https://opkalla.com/ or follow them on LinkedIn.
Narrator: Welcome to the IT
Matters podcast, where we
explore why it matters and
matters pertaining to it. Here's
your host, Aaron Bach.
Aaron Bock: Welcome to the show.
Again. Thank you for listening.
I'm not sure which episode this
is, but we've got a great one.
Today we've got a new co host,
Keith Hockey, who we will jump
to here in just a second. And
we've got Jeremy Campbell from
SCOR Global Life America or
Velogica. We'll get into that in
a little bit. So before we get
started today, I hope everyone
is having a good fall. We're
recording this post Hurricane
Ian, for those in Florida. Our
hearts and prayers are out to
you. I hope that for a speedy
recovery, and I hope that
everything gets back to normal
quickly. For those of you who
were not affected by it, I hope
you're enjoying this lovely fall
weather we're having Keith
Hockey from Opkalla, welcome to
the show. Happy to have you as a
co host. Why don't you share?
You know, 30 seconds to a minute
tell the listeners about you.
Kieth Hockey: Sure. Well, thanks
for having me, Aaron. I am a
technology advisor on the
Opkalla team. And really what I
do is I work with IT teams that
have had their personnel halved
or fourthed in the last five
years and help them find what
really matters in their
environment and leverage their
existing investments and helping
the time consuming task of
evaluating emerging technologies
that they're not as familiar
with. So I stay within that
realm. And I've been helping
leaders for the past five or six
years in the industry, and happy
to be on the IT matters podcast
for the first time.
Aaron Bock: We're happy to have
you. Keith's also an avid Wall
Street Journal reader. So if he
drops financial knowledge mixed
in there, I think it's because
he's an avid Wall Street Journal
reader. So welcome. Happy to
have you cohosting here, Keith.
And then Jeremy, let's jump to
you. We're really excited to
have you today. Jeremy Campbell
is the VP of technology of
Velogica USA, which is a SCOR
Global Life Americas company.
Jeremy, welcome to the show.
Jeremy Campbell: Thanks. It's
great to be here. Aaron. Good to
see you, Keith as well.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, we're happy to
have you we got a good one for
you guys today. Jeremy has been
in all facets of IT across many
industries, Jeremy, but before
we get into it, why don't you
tell the listeners a little bit
more about yourself personal how
you got to where you're at today
share anything that you'd like
to share with the listeners?
Jeremy Campbell: Oh, gosh, I've
had a fairly long lifelong
career. And it just about I
started, you know, my parents
gave me my first computer back
in the early 80s. Right. So I
was one of these people who
watched the movie Whiz Kids, and
wished I was one of them. I had
a modem, I tried to make it do
more dialing and all that cool
stuff. And I had a little bit of
success finding things here and
there. But you know, so I was
writing code as a kid. And just
kept doing nerdy stuff for just,
you know, forever. I still do
nerdy stuff today. So I ended up
going to Clemson University
ended up working at the Division
of Computing and Information
Technology at Clemson, which I
really enjoyed working there,
they got to get to touch a lot
of really cool stuff and see a
lot of a real, a lot of
technology advanced because that
was in the mid 90s. Right. And
so you've got things like
internet starting to take off.
And you've got protocols that we
use today are starting to really
just come into maturity and be
available. So getting an
opportunity to see a lot of
really cool stuff there. And
while I was there, I started
dating this girl who worked at a
college near Clemson called
Davidson College, or not fairly
near Clemson. And we continued
to see each other and so I ended
up moving to Charlotte and we
got together and have been
together for a long time now I
guess about 20, 23 years and you
know, still get into Charlotte,
the entire area have had a
number of different roles in the
Charlotte area since in that
time. I've been an IT leader at
a number of different places.
I've worked in the local
government space and in
Mecklenburg County and
specifically for Davidson. I've
done work in community colleges.
Also, I worked for Cabarrus
community college for a while as
the chief information officer
there. So a lot of great change
happened there. And in my
current role, you know, with
SCOR, I'm getting to see a lot
of really, really neat stuff,
kind of as the other neat thing
is sort of at the top end of my
career, I'm really finally
getting to see all the coolest
bells and whistles, I guess. But
we're getting to really do a lot
of cool stuff there. So, but
that's, you know, that's kind of
how I got here, I guess.
Aaron Bock: Well, it's exciting.
And I think a lot of the
listeners are going to find your
story very interesting. So for
those out there, Keith and I we
had coffee with Jeremy a few
weeks ago and when we were kind
of talking through, you know how
he got to where he's at today.
You know, you mentioned
Davidson, right so you're
working at a local county
government, when we think of it
from an IT perspective, and
then, you've held a lot of roles
when we think about county
governments, community colleges,
education, I think a lot of
people in this space know,
they're typically not well
funded. They struggle with
hiring, because they can't pay
the same salaries that, you
know, banks and tech companies
can pay. If you look at a bell
curve, they're probably, you
know, playing in the end of the
bell curve in a lot of places.
So how difficult is it for, you
know, a local county to run IT?
What are the risks that they
deal with on a day to day basis?
What are the challenges that
they deal with that you dealt
with? And how did you kind of
accomplish some of those?
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, so I
mean, so I worked for the city
of Davidson, the town of
Davidson, so it was a broad
range of challenges that we had
to deal with there, because
you've got a small police force,
right. And they have very unique
needs, very specific needs very
stringently dictated
requirements in terms of you
know, for a lot of things around
how they do their job, for
example, the evidence room, if
you just leave it at that. Think
about the technology that goes
involved, and tracking and
auditing, they have access to
the evidence room, but even a
small community has those needs,
if they've got those types of
services available to them. So
it's a real challenge, it is a
real challenge and it takes a
lot of forward looking and a lot
of trying to figure out how you
can, you know, make the most out
of what you've got, in some
cases. You know, for example,
when I when I worked for the
town of Davidson, we ended up
partnering with Charlotte
Mecklenburg Police Department,
and you know, you find these
places where you can achieve
these efficiencies, right, a win
win situation that maybe
alleviate something for us. So
in our case, with the example of
the police department stuff we
were able to trade are
patrolling certain areas that
were difficult for Mecklenburg
for CMPD, to reach in exchange
for dispatch services and other
technology support. So that's
one of the ways you can do it.
Right, you can do some sort sort
of horse trading at the
community college level as well,
you know, you can offer to DR
Facility provide DR Facilities
for other community colleges, we
don't have a lot, but some cases
we have buildings and we have
fiber, you know, and if you can
get just a bunch of disks
stacked up somewhere, you can
really start to do some things
that are meaningful, they're
important and those situations
and they're expensive to do
otherwise, when you don't have
those types of resources.
Aaron Bock: Do you think that
those industries are going to
continue to struggle? Over the
next five to 10 years with how
much reliance is placed on
technology in IT? Or do you
think it'll get easier? Because
people are understanding? Oh,
wait, everything we're doing is
around technology. So budgets
might be shifted?
Jeremy Campbell: Gosh, that's a
tough one to say, because
politics are involved a lot of
it. But you know, I think it's
always going to be a little bit
lagging. I think that's just
kind of the nature of it, I
think. I mean, they see that
I've seen that in a lot of
spaces with with technology,
also, not just that the upkeep
and the watering and feeding of
stuff that has to happen is, you
know, becomes especially bad
sometimes in local government
stuff. So I mean, I can see it
continue to lag. But that
doesn't mean people aren't out
there trying to do a good job
and trying to do their best and
make the most of what they can
with what they've got. There's
some places obviously what we
know, better funded than others,
you know, our taxes are not the
highest in the nation. So we
don't have the most to spend out
of all the municipalities.
Aaron Bock: Yeah. Do you? Where
do you see the biggest risk
today? Is it security, like
everyone else is just
understanding the threats and
staying up with what's going on?
Or do you think it's the, you
know, something in the
infrastructure like, where do
you see risks in those two, you
know, towns?
Jeremy Campbell: So, you know,
it was interesting about, I
guess, about three or four years
ago, it seemed like there was a
spate of municipalities having
cybersecurity issues, right. And
I think that there had long been
a history, or at least, people
thought, you know, our thought
process that all of the
information we handle was public
information, except for certain
information, everything is
public information. So in some
cases, I think some of the
security was a little bit lax
because of that. And so, you
know, we saw a lot of things
that happen in that space, and
that's gotten better. But I
think security is still going to
continue to be an important one.
But you know, I guess, and the,
you know, the municipal
governments are important, but
the federal government is an
even bigger target for a lot of
stuff. So I mean, the
cybersecurity is even more
important with them.
Aaron Bock: Yeah. So go back a
little bit. You talked about how
you were working at Clemson and
then you worked for the town of
Davidson. Now you're this chief
information officer, you are
pretty high up in IT, you just
kind of I think you've skipped
your career and how you got
there. So, personally, Jeremy,
Did you always know you wanted
to be an IT management? Or did
you come up from, you know, the
dev side, did you come up from
the infrastructure side, like
tell tell our listeners a little
bit about how you got there?
Because we have a lot of
listeners who are, you know,
always looking at enhancing
their career. They're kind of
I'm just trying to understand,
well, how did you know Jeremy
get to where he's at today?
Which you have a VP title of
technology. I think it's it's
Interesting in IT, it's one of
the few industries where you've
got people coming in from all
different types of backgrounds,
all different experience levels,
all different initial kind of
career paths, and then they end
up in IT, for one reason or
another. And so I'm curious, and
I know our listeners are always
curious how our folks end up
there.
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, so it's
kind of funny, I mentioned that
I got a computer when I was a
kid, right? When I started
programming, my first computer
was a TI 994a and then I had a
Commodore 64. But so I guess,
what I would say is, my degrees
in psychology. You know, when I
went to college, and 1989, a
degree in computer science
looked a lot different than a
great degree in computer science
does today, a lot of the
opportunities just didn't exist,
you know, ecommerce wasn't
really a thing. I mean, you
know, there wasn't, there was a
lot of stuff that just, that
didn't mean, it didn't happen.
So had an opportunity to grow
and evolve with the field. But
I've always been interested in
it right? When I was sitting in
my room in the summertime
writing programs on my own. I
mean, I was, you know, was a
kid, that was something I was
just interested in. And so, you
asked me, how did I get here to
where the job I have today. And,
you know, I'm still trying to
figure out what I want to do in
some regards, you know, because
the world, the landscape keeps
changing so much. And that's,
that's been so exciting for me
with technology. You know, when
I was when I was working at
Clemson, you know, we were
working on, I remember, the
first big thing we worked on,
there was a Windows 95 labs, we
did this really cool stuff. We
had this cool setup with the
labs where the rope you know,
your profiles would follow you
and all this other stuff. And
this and that what happened and
it was, it was really, you know,
it got us a lot of attention, we
got invited to speak at brain
share Neville's brain share and
that sort of stuff. And it was
really cool. Like a lot of the
group policy type stuff that you
see today actually came out of
the stuff that we were working
on, initially with Novell and
NDS. And then you know, when
Microsoft started picking up
those ideas, so like, when the
computer object was introduced
in MDS that was working with us,
which was really, really cool
stuff. So you know, I got to
work on a lot of that, and
continue to grow and evolve. And
then I started getting into
started developing some internal
applications for our folks to
use, right, and this is back.
This is probably like 1997. So
I'm writing some Perl, CGI to
expose functionality for our
help desk and other folks to do
things. In Perl, see Perl, CGI,
Common Gateway Interface that
said, a really, really old
school way of doing dynamic web
stuff. And so I was well suited
in coming out of, you know, when
I left, Clemson, and my wife and
I married in 99, and I moved to
the Charlotte area as well
suited to start working in the
web industry. Because I already
knew how to do a lot of stuff.
Because I've been working on it
and sort of, you know, I guess,
putting in the grunt work prior
to that, but it was just
something I was intrinsically
interested in learning. And
then, you know, beyond that, I
started and then, you know, as
I've moved up the stack, I've
really enjoyed being able to
take a broader view of a vision
and make things happen. A good
example is at Rowan Cabarrus
Community College. So I had, you
know, had a real passion for
education since I started
working in division of computing
Information Technology at
Clemson. And I had a really
great opportunity at Rowan
Cabarrus, they had been
neglected for some years prior
prior to, and they had a new
president, who was really
looking to transform the college
really quickly. And so that was
a lot of fun, you know, because
at that point, I really got to
see, to form and articulate a
vision that needed other people
to enact that vision, and really
start to see things go out and
happen, and you know, not have
to be, you don't have to be
directly involved in all of it,
right. So you can see, you know,
I could go see a whole campus. A
campus would get wired, without
me having to be on site, even,
you know, that sort of stuff.
So, but that was really, you
know, just kind of starting to
move up that way. And, but even
now, you know, I still get my
hands dirty periodically,
because I'm just interested in
stuff. You know, yesterday, I
was writing some PowerShell code
to do some stuff in Azure,
related to access reviews for
our organization, because I had
a 30 minutes and I wanted to,
you know, I'm a nerd. Right,
what else was I going to do? But
so yeah, I mean, it's I guess,
you keep learning. And that's
been a constant, like change is
a constant, and I'm okay with
that. But I also enjoy the
constant learning. And I enjoy
the constant finding, it's like
a puzzle box, right, and trying
to solve that puzzle box. And
then you solve that one and you
go find another puzzle box to
solve, but you've got to have
some intrinsic interest in it.
Aaron Bock: Yeah. What would you
say to the person that is either
in high school who thinks
they're interested in IT, or
they're going to college and
they're trying to pick a major
or they have no no desire to go
down the college route? How
would you? What advice would you
give them to if they want to get
in IT? Like, where would you
guide them? What would you tell
them? I'm just curious. Yeah,
that's held a very wide range of
positions compared to a lot of
people, which is very
interesting.
Jeremy Campbell: It's yeah, I've
actually got a senior in college
who is a computer science minor
and a junior in college is a
computer science major. So yet,
it's something I've given some
thought to because their path
into it is very different than
mine, you know, mine involved
very little video game playing.
Aaron Bock: That's studies these
days.
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, I guess
it's a major. But so yeah, I
guess the advice I would give to
people is roll up your sleeves
and figure out the hard stuff up
front. Because it makes all the
other stuff come so much easier.
And what I mean by that is, go
ahead and learn to do some
programming. Go ahead and learn
to you know, go ahead and learn
to do some of these things. So
that when you when was later on
down the road, when these
concepts are important, you're
not being introduced to him for
the first time. And also it
offers you, you know, put you in
a position when there's a chance
for a creative solution to be
put forth, you might have that
right, you might you might have
the tools to do that. So you
have an opportunity to
distinguish yourself as well.
Aaron Bock: that's interesting
advice. Because like, you know,
when when we meet a lot of
people, a lot of different
companies hear about Opkalla, we
come across many different types
of people. And there's a lot of
people that do go to college and
major minor in something related
to computer technology. Right
here in Charlotte, we've got one
of the best computer science
programs over at UNCC. And UNC
is not, you know, not too shabby
themselves. And there's many
others around us. But we have a
lot of military backgrounds,
coming from comsand things like
that. There's some financial
backgrounds there are
engineering background. So I
think with the importance of IT,
I was listening to a podcast
yesterday with a few of the guys
that are out of Silicon Valley.
And they said, I still think
it's ridiculous that there's an
industry like for ITor tech,
because it's like we are the
industry like we are driving the
companies. So we should just be
part of all these companies.
It's crazy to separate us. But
it's just fascinating to hear
how how you got to where you're
at, I guess making kind of a
shift. So people, some of our
listeners may not understand
what SCOR does where you're at
today. So SCOR is a global
reinsurance company, help
everyone understand what does
that mean? What do you actually
do? I think people might be
guessing, but let's define it so
that people understand it.
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, I get to
explain what reinsurance is
fairly often. And in fact, it
was first explained to me in my
job interview at SCOR, so it is
commonly misunderstood or not
known and not understood. So, a
good a good example of how
reinsurance works, let's say,
Aaron Bock's insurance company,
is in Charlotte, you guys sell
property insurance, and you're
really, really, really good at
it. Right? You guys sell. You
guys get to sell property
insurance for almost all the
homes in Charlotte. And then we
have an incident like Mrs.
O'Leary's cow, kicking over the
lantern in the barn, setting
everything on fire, and all of a
sudden, all these homes in
Charlotte burned down. Right.
And so now Aaron Bock's
insurance company is going to
have to make out pay out a lot
of claims. Problem is is their
inbox insurance company may not
have the liquidity to pay out
all those claims, right. And
that's where reinsurance comes
in. And so regulators exist to
really make sure that people
aren't getting snookered by
insurers, and to make sure that
they have the capital to pay out
those claims. And so as part of
that process, they divest some
of that risk to reinsurers and
we carry that risk on their
behalf. But then, so I'm in the
life reinsurance bet space. And
what's neat about it from the
reinsurance space is you start
to see a broader like, you know,
if you're Aaron Bock's insurance
company, you only see Aaron Bock
claims, you only see Aaron Bock
applicants, you only see your
inbox data, for a reinsurance
company, we get company X's all
their data, they get company
wise all their data related to
the corporate area to the
policies that we hold. So we
started to see things that are
much larger level. And from a
data science perspective, we're
able to start putting together
things, and seeing relationships
that are much more difficult to
figure out from an individual
perspective. But that's what we
do is the reinsurance piece. And
so what Velogica specifically
does, and that's the business
unit that I work with, in
essence, it's kind of a
different animal from the
reinsurance world as we
integrate directly with direct
life insurance. And so we're a
business to business system,
there's my dog, we're a business
to business system. And you
know, the way it works is you
sit down with a representative
from company Y maybe it's your
kitchen table, maybe in an
office, at his office, and
they're going to collect a lot
of information from you, right?
And if you bought life
insurance, you've been through
this, it's gonna be do you
smoke, how have, you know,
what's your weight bla bla bla,
what's your cholesterol level,
and they may want to send
somebody out to take blood, and
they may want to send somebody
out to do some other stuff and
have you go to a doctor. Well
then that process can be a long
drawn out process and the in the
traditional way, and I think the
last time I bought life
insurance, it probably took
about four weeks. I mean,
included somebody coming to the
house to draw blood. So what are
what our system does, it's a b2b
system. So they're collecting
all this information. You're
sitting across the table across
the desk from the agent, they
put it into their Isn't that
their side of the system, they
hit submit or whatever their
button is, it sends the
information over to us. And then
we're able to process that
questionnaire information plus
pool a whole bunch of other data
sources that are commercially
available to us like we request
diagnostic data, lab datas lots
of different types of
information that we're able to
get. And we're able to use that
and algorithmically analyze that
information and provide back to
the insurance agent or the
insurance provider, a
recommendation on whether to
take that under to take accept
that risk or not accept that
risk, and do it in a way in
about a minute, as compared to
making it a three week process,
right. And so, you know,
leveraging our technology,
someone's able to potentially
sit there and close a deal the
first time they meet with a
customer, rather than, you know,
the customers really hot and
heavy, something they just
almost had a near miss of
traffic, they want to buy life
insurance today. And four weeks
from now, they realize they
don't you know, they're not that
hot to spend $120 A month or
whatever it costs for their
policy, right? So it's really,
it changes the ability to close,
but it also it also decreases
the cost of underwriting. And
eventually we want to be able to
get to where we can do human
underwriting accuracy. With just
the data alone.
Aaron Bock: I hate when they
come to my house, and they asked
me about how healthy are you
are? You know, do you? Do you
consider yourself healthy? Well,
I mean, is it? Is it Saturday
while I'm watching football? Or
is it Tuesday while I'm eating
my healthy lunch, you know, it's
just all relative, but so de
risking the insurance industry
and understanding the ultimate
like risk of an insurance
industry is really your, you
know, the reinsurance business
job, you have to understand what
risk is out there are claims,
or, you know, are companies
writing too many policies and
not able to back them up, are
they able to understand their
risks? And you guys would step
in, if there's a, like you said,
a major disaster or something
that's trending outside the
normal afford insurance company.
That's great, Keith, let's turn
it over to you. And you guys,
you can go from here and ask a
few questions.
Kieth Hockey: Yeah, sure, so you
have always had a knack for
getting your hands on the latest
technology, Jeremy and you said
that toward the ends, or later
in your career, where you are
now you've had the experience of
leading the digital
transformation process of a
multi National Underwriter, I
guess he talks to some of that
process of finding out what
parts of your IT environment
needed the digital
transformation before other
parts and how you go about
thinking of, you know,
prioritizing the process of
accomplishing this goal?
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, no. And
that's a really good question.
And it's something that SCOR,
you know, globally is still
struggling to solve how do we do
the entire thing. And I think
part of the problem for a lot of
organizations is they start
looking at it, as you start
looking at the forest, rather
than looking at the individual
clusters of trees. And when
you're looking at the forest,
it's very difficult and very,
very, it's almost seems
insurmountable. So at SCOR, what
we've been doing is carving off
pieces, right, and moving those
types of initiatives to the
cloud for Velogicca,
specifically, so we were driven
to make our transformation and
move to the cloud, back in 2014,
when one of our largest
customers said, Hey, you guys
have to get a sock two. And we
said, Okay, we'll do that,
because we make, you know, your,
a profitable relationship with
for us. And so we went and
talked to our internal folks,
because we, you know, we're a
business unit, we're not the
actual corporate IT group
necessarily, and spoke to them.
And they were telling us what it
would take to get the sock two.
And it seemed like the choice at
that point was for us to go do
something different because we
need to, you have to have
controllable boundaries, the
audible boundaries for any
audit, that's one of the key
counts concepts of it. And so
the best way, the most easy way
we could establish that was to
sort of create a standalone
ecosystem starting for the
applications that we provide.
And so that's what we did for
the Velogica business unit. As
we started off, we just moved
everything into the AWS
environment created sort of a
standalone ecosystem for the
specific application. And this
application has contractual
requirements and stuff. They're
different from some of the other
applications that a company has.
But it's because of the volume
and type of information that is
processed. But it's you know, we
made that initial transformation
and moved into, moved into AWS
back in 2014. And it was funny,
I mean, so much has changed in
the cloud world since we
migrated. I remember when we
were there for the migration
originally was all into one AWS
account, which is like ooh, I
can't believe we did that. You
know. We were had to write a
bunch of helper scripts and
stuff like that. That
functionality just didn't exist
at the time. And it's like now
all that stuff is there. Which
makes it sort of, were having
throw away some of our old badly
written stuff. But that, you
know, you start by looking at
where's the value in it? What's
driving the need to do it? It's
fun to have everything moved to
the cloud, but there's no, you
know, you gotta have some way to
prioritize it. And there's also
so I'm trying to figure out how
to describe is there's a complex
regulatory environment also at
play for us, right? So anything,
anything done at the global
level related to cloud stuff, it
can be very, very, very, very
tricky. Because we have
information from so many
different nations. And there's
so much regulation around things
get handled. So it's very, very
difficult for score to do a lot
of stuff. It's not impossible,
it's just difficult and requires
a lot of thought, but you can,
at the national corporation
level start to do a lot more a
lot, particularly advantage of a
lot more efficiencies,
Kieth Hockey: Does that mean
that it's actually maybe instead
of changing the infrastructure
globally, to start smaller, and
to start more regionally? Since
you do have so many regulatory
compliance, different compliance
issues? You know, anything
becomes more complicated?
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah. And no,
it does you definitely have to
start more regionally. Right.
Because I mean, like, for
example, Europe has GDPR. The US
we have, and that's nice,
because at least I mean, it's
stringent, but at least that's
one thing. And the US, we have a
patchwork of different
regulations. Right. Colorado has
got something they're talking
about right now, in terms of how
models get used. There's you
know, and it's California has
got a very, very stringent
policy, our privacy protections,
New York, NYDFS, they, you know,
they've got insurance
specifications as well. So and
they all vary a little bit too.
So, yeah, it becomes very
difficult, then it becomes very
difficult. So we are seeing some
stuff to get done at the
national level. So and one of
our partners, they were Velogica
US there is a Velogica worldwide
organization that we're
coalescing right now. So one of
those groups, they've got a
pieces system for processing,
insurance underwriting has to be
deployed into each country,
right, where it's where it's
happening, because in China,
they don't want the citizens
there to delete China. Same
thing in Singapore. So you know,
there are necessarily some
fracturing going on. But then at
the same time, we you know,
we're also we're not losing that
view, that larger viewpoint of
being able to control it and
orchestrate things from a higher
level. But we're recognizing
that we've got some necessary
silos, I guess, that are created
by regulation.
Aaron Bock: Jeremy, you
mentioned, like going to the
cloud in 2014, the digital
transformation. And I think it
SCOR, it's called Quantum Leap,
I think is the program or I've
read some things about there's a
digital transformation called
Quantum Leap going on. But I
guess I'm curious in because I
think this is where in the in
the industry, digital
transformation gets thrown on
every Gartner report, every
Forrester report, I mean, if you
don't have digital
transformation written on your
marketing at this point, like,
are you even in IT, but I think
what gets missed is what you
said, Well, we went to AWS. Why
and like, maybe define digital
transformation, like why is SCOR
going through digital
transformation? And what are
they trying to accomplish? And
then, like, if you want to share
your personal thoughts, you
know, feel free, but where do
you think people miss and
misunderstand digital
transformation? Why did the
SCOR, decide, okay, we need to
go through a digital
transformation go cloud, and
everything else that's
associated with that there has
to be, I think, a business
problem associated with that.
Like, why do you think that in
your opinion that they did it?
And what are the benefits of it
that you guys are saying now?
Jeremy Campbell: So
specifically, like for for
Velogica specifically, right, we
were able to create? In that
specific instance, we were able
to create a closed ecosystem
that for a tightly regulated
application, but more generally,
yeah, we don't have that
necessarily that same need
everywhere, right? So why are we
doing that, and there's a lot of
good reasons to do it. We've
been around for a long time SCOR
has been around for a lot of
years, we handle a lot of data.
Our processes are, you know,
they're not paper pushing, but
they're, you know, there's a lot
of it, that's not much more
advanced, right. And so, there's
a tremendous amount of
opportunity, just in the
automation of ongoing stuff and,
taking old systems and making
them more modern, and giving
them the ability to interact
with other systems. You know,
that's one of the things we're
also doing is we're trying to
put API's on a lot of our
internal systems now, because we
want to be consumers of our own,
you know, we need to be able to
be more readily be consumers of
our own systems, and potentially
some point maybe we become a
data provider to some of our
customers too. But you know,
that's really it's really about
where can we automate things
where Can we take the grunt work
out of stuff? Where can we
alleviate legacy headaches,
SCORS, like, you know, there's
we've got data centers in
Cologne, we've got legacy stuff
that is painful, right, and so
that's really an opportunity for
us to consolidate stuff too, and
have that and start to have
some, you know, you have maybe a
more easily global presence in
some regards for some of your
systems also through by
leveraging the cloud. So if you
can do some stuff distributed,
which we're not doing a lot of
specifically yet, but
eventually, we can do
distributed globally distributed
apps that were more performant,
for all of our locations all
across the globe, and those
sorts of things. But the
important part really is the
observability that we have into
everything that we know so
because we couldn't we wouldn't
be making these moves into the
cloud, whatever, whatever
benefit they were giving to us
if we didn't have the ability to
secure that and look into it and
make sure that everything was
auditable as well.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, I think it's
important for listeners, and
just kind of comparing and
contrasting. But, you know, I
think a lot of times, what we
see is, hey, we're on this
digital transformation journey.
So we're going to the cloud, and
it's like, whoa, wait a second,
that's not the whole story here.
There's, there's gotta be a
reason behind it. And I think
that's what's what's missed. So
it's just interesting.
Jeremy Campbell: So we did
everything, we even went through
and replaced, we don't have
computers, right. I mean, my
teams have computers, but they
just use their computers to
access workspaces in AWS. So we
really gone you know, the full
route there, in terms of putting
everything in there and making,
you know, having it nicely
contained, we are still but you
know, the transformation never
ends, right? It's kind of like
the revolution never ends. The
transformation never really
ends. And so we're, you know, we
made the big migration in 2014,
and you make the big migration,
then you get your business to
where it's working again. And
then you go for a few years, and
now we're gonna start making
another round of
transformations, right. And
that's another a new journey
that we're getting there to
embark on, is going to be a
really a lot of fun, actually,
you know, we did it was it
wasn't a lift and shift entirely
when we made our initial move,
but it was a lot of components
were lifted and shifted. And
this is going to be our next big
opportunity to really break some
of the legacy bottlenecks. And,
you know, do the cool
development stuff that we always
wanted to do.
Aaron Bock: You may have people
reach out to you about the
process, because I think a lot
of companies are, are starting
to say, All right, we're on that
path. And then they sit down
after their first meeting of
saying hoorah we're going
digital transformation they have
to figure out what does that
actually mean? And where are we
going? Kieth, I cut you off
earlier. But did you want to get
a question?
Kieth Hockey: That's okay.
That's just it's amazing to me,
Jeremy, you guys invested
heavily and public cloud in
2014. A lot of organizations
were not and are just now
dipping their toes into the
hyper scalar world. So you've
probably seen the immense amount
of pools and helpful
technologies that help minimize
costs and make that transition
easier has exploded, especially
over the past few years. I guess
you talk a little bit about how
it was 2014 moving to AWS and,
you know, if you're going to do
in 2022, what, what's available
now to help with that process?
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, now,
there's a lot, it's changed a
lot. Gosh, I mean, there's so
many technologies that are
available now, right, that
didn't exist at the time, I'm
just thinking, you know,
something like a AWS control
tower, for example, which is a
really neat way to orchestrate
stuff across multiple accounts.
You know, I remember before we
had AWS control tower, we went
through an iteration where we
had other ports, where we had
manually managed, had to
manually manage all these multi
account environments and those
sorts of things. So there's, you
know, in terms of a specific
tool, I don't really know of one
because we're already there. And
now the development we do is now
in there, and we're not moving
stuff there. But there's, you
know, there's a button if we
were to make that move again, I
mean, there's so much easier,
there's so much different stuff.
So many things that would be
easier. We wrote scripts back in
the day, right? So we could shut
off all of our development
environments at night. Because
nobody's doing development Why
run the run the environment? Why
run the essences, you know, so
we were able to do stuff and
right out of the gate to start
cutting our costs once we start
to get the first couple of bills
and we're paying for servers
when we're not using them. So we
started doing all that sort of
stuff. I think they're, you
know, the now there's tools for
that. But when we were doing all
this there weren't, we were
doing it, you know, writing
scripts there got called by
Jenkins jobs, and they would
just go out and do you know,
seven o'clock or shut everything
down. We're going to downsize
all the databases, you know,
those sorts of things. So, but
the sophistication of what's
available is really changed a
lot. And the manageability of it
all is really, really good. I
mean, the services, there's a
lot of services specifically
around manageability and
security. And that's it those
those work really well, they
would have been nice to have had
those earlier on, we probably
would have baked some stuff a
little bit differently.
Aaron Bock: Yeah. But I think
going back to why you do
transformation. And you
mentioned kind of when you were
explaining the reinsurance
industry and some of the
capabilities that you all have
automation of the underwriting
process automation to do that
process faster. So you've gained
efficiencies, as you've you
know, since 2014, because
tooling has gotten better, and
you all understand your
environment. But I think as a
customer of the logical score,
those customers are seeing, hey,
we can do this in under three
minutes, which is a process that
used to take 48 hours. So I
think that's where if you can
tie this back to like, what's
the business problem behind
there? It's really cool to see,
Jeremy, I guess, as we kind of
close out and get to the end
here. One question before we ask
our final question that we ask
all of our guests, but maybe you
talk to us a little bit about
when we had coffee. You talked
about automating and that
automating that underwriting
process, just continually
getting better taking inputs
from many different data
sources. Maybe on that topic, if
that's the trend or whatever.
What do you what do you think
will be the trend in you in
technology in the reinsurance
space? Or like, what's the
technology trend that you're
most interested in over the next
five to 10 years? That will
change SCOR change the logic of,
change your industry? Even more?
Is it automation? Or is it more
specific than just automation?
Jeremy Campbell: It's not
automation, but there's a big
automation piece of it. It's
automation in support of. And
that's really, I think, in the
predictive analytics space.
There's a lot of information out
there that we're only beginning
to be able to go through and
divine learnings from right. But
I think predictive analytics,
regardless of whether it's life,
or property, or whatever the
cases, I think Predictive
analytics is kind of the big
frontier and a lot of folks are
working on that very hard and
insurance and reinsurance. You
know, and I did mention that we
get, you know, the nice thing
for us as a reinsurer is we see
volume of claims, that is much
larger than any one insurer
does. And so we have the
opportunity from an analytics
perspective to really have
learned a lot of important
stuff, and about risk and about,
you know, different things, and
understanding new risk, right
relationships between risks that
we didn't understand before. But
Predictive Analytics is really
where it's at, right? So the,
for example, there's another
another use case for us, we use
predictive analytics in our
system we were, and our system
mostly uses health data, right?
But you can't use health data in
every country in the world for
making underwriting decisions.
But there is an opportunity for
us to take our exact system and
change it from using health data
to using some other common
sources for predictive
analytics, and then apply it for
use cases in France and other
places. Right. So instead of
asking what's your, like
smoking, you can still ask, but
instead of asking, you know,
have you ever had cancer? What
do you do for a living? Have you
ever been a smoker? And that a
couple of three other questions,
right. And that alone, I'll tell
you, I'll give you a risk
profile that is much more
accurate than the systems that
are being used today. So
Predictive Analytics is really
the big thing. And there's a lot
in there. One of the thorniest
piece around it is the
compliance and regulatory piece.
And you see some action, I
think, out of Colorado, they're
contemplating legislation now
and some other places, but it's
really the frontier.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, it's
fascinating. Predictive
analytics is definitely coming
up in a lot of conversations.
And I think kind of like the
cloud was back in 2014, when you
all were moving to it, it's now
kind of commonplace, you know,
everyone, there's everyone's in
the cloud at some point. What I
think is happening is AI and
predictive analytics, etc. It's
been a buzz for call it three to
four or five years now. But
we're actually seeing, you know,
tooling coming out around it.
Applications of the, you know,
predictive analytics, and hey,
we're going to do this. So I
think it's, it's fascinating.
And I agree, I think there will
be a lot more to come. Keith,
first, thanks for CO hosting
your first IT Matters podcast.
It's been wonderful having you,
Jeremy, we really appreciate
your time, as a final question.
And so this is a broad question
because it could be, it could be
for personal people, it can be
to the person getting into IT.
It could be to the company who's
trying to do IT better. It could
be to the local city. You're in
front of a million people or 10
million people, however many
people, a lot of people, and
you're giving advice on
technology, and you have to give
Jeremy Campbell State of the
Union on technology and the
advice you would give. What
advice would you give to people
about technology?
Jeremy Campbell: Learn it,
understand it. Don't just don't
treat is as something that is
somebody else's job. Because at
the end of the day, we're all
technologists. And if you don't
think you're a technologist,
then you're not probably long
for your position.
Aaron Bock: You I mean, you said
it, your 30 minute breaks,
you're still coding. So you're
still writing scripts. So learn
it. I love the advice. Jeremy,
it was wonderful having you on
the show today. I think a lot of
our listeners will get a lot out
of this and really enjoy this
story. So thank you. I hope you
have a wonderful rest of the
week. Thanks for joining the IT
Matters podcast. It was a
pleasure having you.
Jeremy Campbell: Yeah, thanks,
guys. I really appreciate it. It
was fun to chat.
Aaron Bock: Yep. Thanks, Jeremy.
Thanks, Keith.
Kieth Hockey: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening.
The IT Matters podcast is
produced by a collar and it
advisory firm that helps
businesses navigate the vast and
complex IT marketplace. Learn
more about Opkalla at
opkalla.com