[00:00:00.20] CASEY KEMPTON: The behavior shift at the desk level cannot be understated. It's change management, right? I've spent a lot of my career in change management. It's one person at a time.
[00:00:12.83] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:00:14.31] SPEAKER 1: This is The Insurance Technology Podcast where we bring interesting people from across the insurance ecosystem to discuss and debate technology's impact on the industry. Join us each episode for insights and best practices from industry stewards and tomorrow's innovators. Now here's your host, Reid Holzworth.
[00:00:36.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Welcome to The Insurance Technology Podcast. I'm your host, Reid Holzworth. In this episode, I'm going to be interviewing Casey Kempton. So Casey is the EVP Digital Business Officer at Chubb Small Business. Whoo! That's a title. Carriers love their titles.
[00:00:52.63] But look, it's a big title. It's an important title because I'll tell you what. Casey is a freaking rock star. So I got to know Casey a little over a year ago, and just getting to know her story and what she does and where she's been is just really, really interesting. You guys are going to enjoy it.
[00:01:09.69] In this episode, we're going to get into Casey's background, where she came from, what she liked to do as a kid, all that great stuff. And we're going to get into cognitive anthropology, which Casey knows a lot about, and how that relates to insurance, and then how she fell into insurance through that. So stay tuned. It's going to be a great episode.
[00:01:31.13] Welcome, Casey.
[00:01:32.33] CASEY KEMPTON: Thanks, Reid. So happy to be here with you.
[00:01:34.91] REID HOLZWORTH: Awesome. So Casey and I, we met each other not that long ago. I'd say maybe a year or two we've known each other. It hasn't been that long. I think the first time I met you in person was at InsureTech Connect. I don't know if that was last year or the year before, but fairly recent.
[00:01:48.92] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah.
[00:01:49.79] REID HOLZWORTH: And so we've gotten to know each other pretty well since then. And so before we get into what you do and what you've done for this industry, if you will, we'd love to get into knowing who Casey is. So tell us a little about yourself, Casey. So where did you grow up? Where are you from?
[00:02:05.93] CASEY KEMPTON: I grew up in Connecticut. I currently live in New Jersey. I had a bit of a nomadic youth. I got to live in a couple of different places growing up. I lived in Florida for middle school and a little bit of high school. I lived in a very small town in Louisiana.
[00:02:23.10] REID HOLZWORTH: What part of Florida?
[00:02:24.17] CASEY KEMPTON: I lived in a town called North Port. It's just south of Venice, Florida.
[00:02:27.77] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, I think you did tell me this.
[00:02:28.91] CASEY KEMPTON: West Coast.
[00:02:29.57] REID HOLZWORTH: OK, yeah.
[00:02:30.22] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah, Gulf Coast.
[00:02:31.70] REID HOLZWORTH: Venice-- I've never been to Venice, actually. It's kind of funny. I mean, I've lived in Florida for a long time. But I hear Venice is actually really cool.
[00:02:36.35] CASEY KEMPTON: It's a cool little town.
[00:02:37.22] REID HOLZWORTH: I've never been for whatever reason.
[00:02:38.78] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah, I've not gone back, so I don't know what it's like now. But it was a nice place to grow up for a bit. When I was younger, we lived in a little town called Maurepas, Louisiana, in Lafayette Parish. I went to this tiny little school. It was kindergarten through 12th grade.
[00:02:56.18] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, wow.
[00:02:56.63] CASEY KEMPTON: I think there were, like, 30 3rd graders and 16 12th graders. Right in the middle-- like, in the heart of the bayou. So that early experience sort of opened my eyes to different people and different things and different ways of living.
[00:03:10.73] REID HOLZWORTH: Do you-- hold on. Do you eat mud bugs? You know what mud bugs are?
[00:03:14.03] CASEY KEMPTON: I don't even know what a mud bug--
[00:03:15.05] REID HOLZWORTH: You don't know what a mud bug is?
[00:03:15.87] CASEY KEMPTON: But I have been to an alligator farm.
[00:03:18.32] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, and so you've eaten alligator?
[00:03:19.82] CASEY KEMPTON: I have.
[00:03:20.36] REID HOLZWORTH: Mud bugs are crawfish.
[00:03:21.77] CASEY KEMPTON: Oh. Well, yeah, tons. And crawfish boils, out of control, to the point that I wouldn't even peel my own after a while. They cut your fingers when you're peeling them as a little kid. But I don't eat them anymore. But I do like catfish.
[00:03:34.01] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah?
[00:03:34.40] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. So it was like a fishing community. There were more canals than there were roads. And my little 3rd and 4th grade friends had their own little speedboats, and they'd ride up to my house. And I'd hop in and go play with them at their house. Totally different from my very sort of New England upbringing. Totally different.
[00:03:52.97] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:03:53.39] CASEY KEMPTON: But I came to recognize what's different and sort of beautiful about different people and different cultures, and sort of opened me up to really fascinating curiosity about how people work.
[00:04:05.49] REID HOLZWORTH: That's awesome.
[00:04:06.29] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. So we moved back to where I originally started in Naugatuck, Connecticut. And I lived a lot with my grandparents, actually, which was great. I loved that multi-generational. They are-- both of them were first generation in the US. Their parents came through Ellis Island. Germany, Sweden, Hungary, and Austria.
[00:04:29.09] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, wow.
[00:04:29.57] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. They were working class. They came over to make a better life. They did factory work. My grandfather worked in a factory and then bought that factory.
[00:04:39.78] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, no kidding.
[00:04:40.47] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. He was a tool and die maker.
[00:04:42.81] REID HOLZWORTH: Wow.
[00:04:43.56] CASEY KEMPTON: So he made the dies for Stanley Tools and industrial-grade scissors and things like that. And my grandmother was an artist, and she made specialized dials for different kinds of gauges and all sorts of airplane equipment and such. And so she did all the handmade dials.
[00:05:01.02] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, really?
[00:05:01.65] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. But they had a good life, that traditional 1950s kind of model family. So they grew up in Naugatuck. Our whole family, they all kind of settled there in this little town. And it was full of working class immigrants. Naugatuck is a river community. It fed-- all these factories would ship their goods down the Naugatuck River to the Connecticut River, and off they would go to sea or wherever else. So it was a very eclectic mix of mostly European immigrants.
[00:05:31.32] REID HOLZWORTH: Are you artistic? Your grandma was an artist. Are you do anything artistic?
[00:05:35.34] CASEY KEMPTON: Like, not one bit.
[00:05:36.93] REID HOLZWORTH: Really?
[00:05:37.38] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah.
[00:05:37.77] REID HOLZWORTH: I could see you being artistic.
[00:05:39.00] CASEY KEMPTON: Well, I like to decorate.
[00:05:40.65] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, OK.
[00:05:41.61] CASEY KEMPTON: I'm told I have a decorative flair, which I probably got from my grandmother.
[00:05:45.72] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, right. Totally.
[00:05:46.65] CASEY KEMPTON: Things like that were very important to her. So my parents got married when they were very young. My sister and I were-- we're only about 18 months apart. And they got divorced shortly after I was born. So my mom [INAUDIBLE] was a single mother and doing her best to make a living for my sister and I.
[00:06:07.02] And we grew up without kind of a ton, right? Don't really have some of that privilege that a lot of people had, and it sort of created in me this drive to find a better way and make a better life. But at the same time, not lose touch with my roots. I still have that kind of working class mentality, trying to find our way through the world, and appreciating everything that we have and not taking it for granted.
[00:06:35.97] But it created a sense of wonder, right? I'll use that word again. So I just-- my world was small when I grew up. So when I went to college, just to be exposed to so many different points of view and interesting subjects, right? So I'm this crazy, nerdy sponge. I just sucked it all in and did the best I could with it to kind of round out my view of the world. But it kind of engendered this real curiosity. I'm curious about a lot of different things.
[00:07:05.37] REID HOLZWORTH: That's awesome. Well, it definitely shows. It's interesting you say that about your background. Where I grew up, I grew up in a very, very-- call it rich community. I grew up in Laguna Beach, California. But we didn't have much. Like, we were poor. And it was weird. I was a latchkey kid. My parents weren't really around.
[00:07:27.93] But that kind of stuff really pushed me to be successful in life. Just a lot of ambition, entrepreneurial, a lot of drive, right? And I mean, you obviously have a lot of drive.
[00:07:40.21] And so it's funny. When I meet people like yourself that are just very high functioning, you've accomplished a lot in your life, and when you kind of dig into their background, typically you'll see that. And it's what's made us who we are.
[00:07:56.12] CASEY KEMPTON: It has. So you can see it as struggle and overcoming adversity. I just see it as it just was.
[00:08:03.91] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:08:04.36] CASEY KEMPTON: And I'm here now, and I am all in. And I'm going to keep going and going until you get to wherever it is.
[00:08:12.56] REID HOLZWORTH: So as a kid, what were you into? Sports, hobbies? Like, what kind of things did you love to do as a child?
[00:08:20.15] CASEY KEMPTON: Well, I'm that age that got a Nintendo when I was in middle school. I was a big fan of the Duck Hunt and mastering every Mario Brothers. I did not really play sports until high school. I was a setter on the volleyball team. We made it to the state championship my senior year. First time in 13 years, so that was exciting. But I had a lot of passion for volleyball. That was about it.
[00:08:49.09] REID HOLZWORTH: So you said you went to school. What did you go to school for?
[00:08:52.89] CASEY KEMPTON: Well, I started as a pre-med major, and I ended up studying anthropology, specifically cognitive anthropology, and a double major in English, and almost a triple major in Spanish. I did study abroad and had a real passion for being fluent in that language.
[00:09:12.09] REID HOLZWORTH: What is cognitive anthropology?
[00:09:15.81] CASEY KEMPTON: Cognitive--
[00:09:16.50] REID HOLZWORTH: I don't know what that is. Maybe I should know what that is. Explain that. [LAUGHS]
[00:09:20.04] CASEY KEMPTON: It's very close to my heart. Any cognitive science gets into the brain science, the psychology, the biological science. Its application in anthropology, if you think culture is in the mind instead of culture is the behaviors and actions and all of the cultural artifacts, it really tries to study how culture exists, is passed down, and evolves generation after generation through our minds.
[00:09:52.38] REID HOLZWORTH: That's amazing.
[00:09:53.49] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah.
[00:09:54.06] REID HOLZWORTH: That's so cool. I assume you use some of that today in what you do today.
[00:09:59.49] CASEY KEMPTON: I do. It turns out it's effective for change management, marketing, understanding other, if you will, whether that's someone you're trying to influence or a customer you're trying to reach. Just go into where they are. Meet them there. Be them, and come back out and figure out how to work together.
[00:10:19.02] REID HOLZWORTH: That's so awesome. So tell us, after school, what did you do? So tell us your path. How did you get into insurance? But before we get into the insurance part, what was your first real job out of school? What did you get after?
[00:10:31.51] CASEY KEMPTON: OK, Yes. My first job-- so I graduated from college, and I did a year in graduate school to study cognitive anthropology. And thought I would go down that path of being an academic, perhaps a researcher. And that summer after my freshman year, I was actually working at Foxwoods Casino as a hostess in one of their restaurants.
[00:10:53.74] And a friend of mine was a computer programmer-- this is 2000-- and at a startup company in Middletown, Connecticut. Little company called Axiom Eight that only existed for about two and a half years. They were venture-backed. And they asked me, since I had these research skills, if I could do sort of a trial job interview and study the dynamic collaborative communication market, which was what we tried to coin it at the time.
[00:11:18.89] And so I went off about studying solutions like NetMeeting. You remember the old NetMeeting solution? And Lotus Sametime, Webly. And got the job and ended up becoming our marketing PR, market research, product research. It's where I got into technology, I guess. So I took those research skills and was reading technical white papers and studying the evolution of the internet, business communication, how knowledge workers would work in the future.
[00:11:48.76] We basically built a tool that is Zoom today for distributed companies so knowledge workers could stay connected. So we had some proprietary technology back then, some really cool codecs around how video would reassemble itself. A bunch of PC gamers who had started a company on audio communication came over and built this enterprise software tool.
[00:12:11.92] Of course, being VC-funded, we couldn't get anyone to buy the solution, but it leads to insurance. One of our beta clients was The Hartford. And we worked with them in kind of an incubator-type venture area that they had.
[00:12:26.13] For about five months, every Friday the CEO of the startup would get a phone call from the venture company and tell us if we were still in business for the next month. That went on for about five months. And then one day the phone call came, and it was, that's it. It's done. Good luck.
[00:12:40.78] So I asked him-- he was well connected in the insurance market, having been a former insurance executive, if he would help me find a job somewhere. And he and I went around to all kinds of firms, trying to offload the IP on behalf of the venture company.
[00:12:55.24] And in the end, I had a job at The Hartford in about-- probably about less than six weeks' time. I joined this unit. We called it eBusiness Ventures. And Hartford had a little-- I guess a war chest out of their technology department where they were picking up a lot of distressed properties, particularly after 9/11 when all the capital was going to Bermuda.
[00:13:16.51] So that very first kind of internet boom that hit insurance. And the solutions that they invested in covered the entire insurance value chain, whether it was continuing education or agency management platforms, work comp claims, coding platforms to improve the process.
[00:13:31.90] My official title was-- it was Product Development For Non-Indemnity Products. So I worked in a lot of services that we could attach to our products for policyholders for both homeowners and small business. I found myself at a national security convention meeting with folks like ADT and some of the other giants. First time I ever went to a convention in Vegas, and looking to see how we could kind of round out that offer.
[00:13:57.62] It was a great time. It was really exciting because I got to learn the whole insurance proposition for customers, because that was really my focus is, how do we improve customers? But also really focused on distribution and the tools and technology that you could offer distribution right at that time when we'd flipped from green screens to websites, but we're still screen scraping the backend platforms in a lot of different ways.
[00:14:23.61] So I've got actually three patents in my name. We invented some stuff, which still hasn't come to market. It will, I have no doubt. But it required network bandwidth connectivity that hasn't even come to fruition in the way that this type of invention could make possible for real-time underwriting.
[00:14:44.51] REID HOLZWORTH: No kidding. Really? So you think it's still going to happen?
[00:14:47.85] CASEY KEMPTON: Oh, 100%.
[00:14:50.16] REID HOLZWORTH: That's so awesome. That's awesome. So keep going. So how long were you at Hartford? Keep going.
[00:14:57.73] CASEY KEMPTON: Of course. So I worked with that unit for-- oh, probably two years, I guess. And then we had been taken over by a new leader. And the president of the company at that time had a big vision for how we could double the book value of the company in five years.
[00:15:13.59] And I was brought out of that role and into a strategy role. And in this strategy role, I had the opportunity to work with many of the senior executives who were driving our businesses or driving functional areas and help them evaluate the current state of how we operate, what our plans are, our growth efficiency plans for the future, and what we needed to change. So a bit of like target operating model work and how we evolve, how technology plays into that.
[00:15:40.50] And I was fortunate to get involved with a distribution strategy where I really got to dive deep into who independent agents are. What comprises them? What's important to them? How do they think about carrier relationships? And how do carriers enable them to be successful in their partnerships?
[00:15:59.47] So like most things, you know, I'm a student of the areas that I get connected with. And I just went all in building strategy for The Hartford at the time on how we could expand our distribution plan.
[00:16:14.72] REID HOLZWORTH: That's so awesome.
[00:16:15.82] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. I did that for a bunch of years and then moved on to a technology-- a business technology role. So it was the first time that the company wanted to evolve how project execution occurred from a carrier standpoint and do a better job at estimating upfront, finalizing requirements.
[00:16:35.36] I was put on a project that we called New Business Vision, and it was to revamp the entire carrier platform, agent platform that they delivered for small business. And that was an intense study of what matters most to agents with regard to how they place new business with carriers. And how do you deliver a platform and system that is future-proof?
[00:17:01.41] So I did that for about three years and went on to run an agency that The Hartford owned, the Nutmeg Insurance Agency. And it was a great run. I loved working there. Had a great time, and was offered an opportunity to work internationally. So with that, I joined--
[00:17:22.29] REID HOLZWORTH: What was the name of the agency? What did you do at the agency? Back up a little bit.
[00:17:25.64] CASEY KEMPTON: The Nutmeg Insurance Agency. It was an agency that the carrier owned. And we would place risks that were lines that we didn't write that would normally go [INAUDIBLE] so an agent wouldn't have to work with another entity. Things like vacant buildings. And so we had agency staff who would quote direct with other markets at the time. And then they were able to bring that all together in a very cohesive way for their policyholders.
[00:17:54.41] REID HOLZWORTH: That's awesome. All right. Sorry. Keep going. Keep going. This is great.
[00:17:57.59] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. So I loved that. It was a phenomenal opportunity. But I was asked to consider a role at a different company, and that was ACE. And the role that I was presented was international. And being the anthropologist, it was very appealing to me to have the opportunity to take everything I knew about insurance after 10 years at that time and experience how that plays out in international markets. Just the comparison and the contrast.
[00:18:24.44] So I joined-- I worked for the division president for two domestic lines for wholesale commercial risk services. And at the time, ACE's private risk services or high-net-worth business, as well as our international, personal, and small commercial business.
[00:18:41.72] So I worked with his division presidents for each of those areas and was responsible for technology operations, strategy, and our global e-business, which is back then ace.com. And had not a big team, but lots of huge initiatives that we were running with each of those divisions, mostly around how we bring technology into our value proposition and most effectively compete and deliver the service and value that ACE wanted to to our customers.
[00:19:15.29] The international side of that was really great for me. I did a lot of work in Japan. I was able to do some product development work with Lloyd's of London, looking at, again, new products that we could launch internationally. And tons of work across a lot of products that I hadn't been exposed to, so that got me more into the specialty side-- the financial lines, the management liability-- that I didn't do as much in the prior role at The Hartford.
[00:19:41.92] So I did that for two years. And the company was making a lot of strategic investments in other markets, and I was presented an opportunity to run operations in IT for the Latin America region, which at the time for ACE was about a $2 billion region. I would come in as the Regional Senior Vice President for all of Ops and IT. And most of my focus there was on acquisition integration work. So a lot of due diligence and really thinking through, how can we take critical assets and expand them within the region and outside?
[00:20:17.52] But that experience of watching that insurance transaction, whether it was personal lines, high net worth, commercial, large commercial, small business in Asia, in all of the countries of Latin America just filled me up. In some ways, it was a bit of a time warp, right? Because not all of the advancements around data and the reporting information that we have in the US and some of our more mature markets.
[00:20:42.70] But the way that business gets done and how technology enables business was really quite similar. And in some areas, even more advanced in terms of what agents could get done with the carriers.
[00:20:54.19] REID HOLZWORTH: I will add that I was actually literally on a call yesterday with a big agency. They're doing a big roll-up in Colombia right now, private equity-backed and whatnot. And they were talking about the technology that they're using, the carriers use today. But even the agencies and how they're connected and whatnot, it is still, just to be fair, a bit archaic, even today, and it's wild.
[00:21:16.42] And there's actually-- on the agency management system side, there's actually not a core management system overall within that country that really dominates. It's really interesting. So still a lot-- ways to go there.
[00:21:28.66] CASEY KEMPTON: Oh, definitely. From a feature perspective, I think what struck me is how specifics to a market. So how agents and carriers interact that we may not have in the US, the technology leans into all of that to facilitate. So you might have requests for specific commissions in certain markets, or you may be selling insurance policies through different types of intermediaries. And they're more group policies, and you're issuing certificates.
[00:21:55.99] And all the technology and process that facilitates that, it was very eye-opening. It was an incredible study. I loved living in Santiago, Chile. I had the opportunity to travel all over the region. So I spent a lot of my time in Monterrey, Mexico, in Colombia, a little bit in Ecuador. And most of my technology team was either in Colombia or Miami. So lots of travel during that time, but time very well spent.
[00:22:24.10] And I'm fluent in Spanish, and I had a great time learning how to speak insurance in Spanish. And I think I was going to Sao Paulo, Brazil, 23 times in 24 months. So I actually speak Brazilian Portuguese insurance. I know all the insurance words and can get by speaking Spanish in Brazil.
[00:22:46.27] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS] That's amazing. I feel like you may know other languages as well, Casey. I mean, come on. [LAUGHS]
[00:22:55.12] CASEY KEMPTON: It was a fun time.
[00:22:57.49] REID HOLZWORTH: That is wild. So then what? So then what happened?
[00:23:01.65] CASEY KEMPTON: I was at a point in my career and in my personal life that sort of collided in a way that I took a different position at another company. I went back to The Hartford. And the role that I assumed was now more on the P&L side of the equation, out of operations, out of technology, out of project work.
[00:23:23.83] And I took on-- for their mass market personal lines offering, Hartford distributes its product through affinity partnership, a very large affinity partnership, as well as through independent agents. So I took on the independent agency business, as it were, kind of end to end, and how we improve value proposition, lean into agency partnerships, and bring the best products that we offer to market.
[00:23:47.67] Worked out great for me family-wise. I had just had my third child, and the travel was getting to be a lot. I have two older children and the little one, and so it was great to go back home to Connecticut and have that time and take on this pretty meaningful opportunity for me at that time in my career. I was very happy to do that.
[00:24:09.91] I stayed there for two years. I loved it. It was great work. It was all working with agents, all trying to solve problems. And was asked to come back to Chubb about two years later. And it just was the right opportunity. It's the job that I have been in for the last seven years until very recently, and it just was an opportunity that I couldn't resist. So I call myself a double boomerang.
[00:24:37.03] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:24:38.89] CASEY KEMPTON: Record to ACE to Hartford to Chubb, so that's where I find myself now.
[00:24:46.57] REID HOLZWORTH: So tell us about your position now-- or the position for the past seven years, and then the now.
[00:24:52.44] CASEY KEMPTON: I think actually, I might be extending that. It's probably over six, not quite seven. So I won't push the envelope on that. I joined at a time when Chubb was post-acquisition about two years out and looking to make a material investment in small business. So ACE had a very solid wholesale business and Chubb had a very solid retail business. Both of those served small businesses, but we did not have a small business-focused division.
[00:25:22.17] And so we built that up for retail agents. I came in to take a role that we called small business digital at the time to build solutions that would really bring us into new distribution channels-- still agent distribution-- where technology, the original boom around InsureTech was coming into the space. There was a tremendous amount of interest in reaching small business owners through technology, through social media, other media, all the online ad buys for insurance terms at those times.
[00:25:55.48] And we built APIs for a product that was tuned exactly for this kind of down market, low end, small buyer in the sense that they don't have a lot of risk complexity. They may just be starting. So the transaction is very simple, and it's very amenable to a do-it-yourself-type tech-enabled platform.
[00:26:15.92] So I came in to build that business from scratch. The product was just about done when I got in, but we built the technology from the ground up and have been expanding on that technology, taking that core that we built, and applying it to many, many different use cases across a wide expanse of products. So that's what I've been up to for the last six years.
[00:26:41.59] REID HOLZWORTH: That is so cool. Wow. What a ride. So yeah, that's insane. And even six years ago, that was fairly early. A lot of carriers were not doing that back then, so that was early on.
[00:26:53.74] CASEY KEMPTON: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, we got that feedback quite a bit. It has been such a learning journey for everybody. I have the opportunity to look at the trends across all the stakeholders and see that rate of adoption, rate of interest, where it actually comes to play, and how we get work done between the carriers and distributors. And that's the part I think we could really dig into. It's been really very fascinating.
[00:27:25.87] Considering that, one of the first comparative raters that I can remember all the way back to 2007, 2008 when I was working with The Hartford and building out their new business strategy, their new coding platform for agents, how we think about APIs and agent carrier integration was a big discussion topic, right? At that time, it was anticipated that this will come, and it will come probably sooner than we all want. And how do we engage in that?
[00:27:56.02] And we wrestled with, how do we build technology in 2008 that doesn't cut off any opportunities, whether we want to pursue them now or not, right? And I don't think that's unique to that company at all. I think all carriers have had to wrestle with the trade-offs in investments around where the future is going versus that core, proprietary, come into our platform. This is the basis of competitive advantage in small commercial, and just getting that investment right.
[00:28:27.19] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. That's very, very well said. What really excites you about all of this? What's exciting to you today? Like, what's going on? There's a lot going on. I mean, the market, the industry has come so far since then. You've built a ton of stuff. You guys are doing a lot. What's exciting?
[00:28:47.15] CASEY KEMPTON: There's a lot to be excited about. First of all, almost all brokers, larger agents to small agents, are realizing how they do their work, the pace with which they could do their work and deliver the customer service that they're interested in, go hand in hand, right? Technology can enable how they deliver service, whether it's speed on their side in terms of responsiveness or whether technology enables them to go to market, get more carrier quotes to come back, see who's really interested in the business so they can bring the best solution forward to their customers.
[00:29:24.71] I think agents would feel more empowered, enabled by this kind of technology, than having to key it all in, right? One over one, one over one in the crux of it.
[00:29:35.88] I think the most exciting part, though, is data, right? So working efficiently, working fast, delivering services. That's awesome, right? In our industry, someday that'll be table stakes, right? That's where we're going to.
[00:29:47.93] When you look at what data is bringing to the equation across the board, not just how it empowers decision making, how it enables ease of use for a lot of our partners internally and externally at a carrier, but how does data help us get to know risk better, help us get to know small businesses better? I have a passion for small business. For many, many years, it's been a focus of mine.
[00:30:16.17] And when I think about a customer's engagement with actual insurance products and what they experience, sharing what is my business about, what do I do-- I think the worst thing that can happen is the person they're engaging with tries to put them in a box in insurance terms. But I got exactly that 10-word description for a class code. I'm actually something else, right? There's a [INAUDIBLE] on that.
[00:30:46.46] So when the data and the technology all coalesces, and the small business owner who starts the transaction, who needs the insurance has a really fulfilling experience when the technology can start to anticipate and understand who they are, what they're interested in, what kinds of coverage they can need, then I think end to end, everybody benefits.
[00:31:09.75] REID HOLZWORTH: So I could totally see it. That's pretty awesome. How far are we away from something like that? I mean, you mentioned a bit ago about the first comparative rater you're working with eight or so years ago and how far we've come, but where do you see that? And what are some of the challenges that you're facing in order for the industry to start to be able to leverage something like that?
[00:31:31.76] CASEY KEMPTON: Yeah. 15 years ago, which is crazy.
[00:31:34.35] REID HOLZWORTH: I'm sorry. 15. I'm sorry.
[00:31:35.69] CASEY KEMPTON: The first one came on the scene--
[00:31:36.95] REID HOLZWORTH: Who was that, by the way? Do you mind saying who it was? Was it CPASS or--
[00:31:40.31] CASEY KEMPTON: Yep. One of them was CPASS, right? Here's a throwback, the old Jakata screen scraping that would push its way through.
[00:31:49.82] And some of the challenges faced, there was no way to put a Back button into the platform. But that's how silly some of the technology was, right? When you're sitting on top of a mainframe creating a web-- and agent wants to go backwards and forwards, and you're like, no, if you hit that button, the whole thing will break, that's where we've come from at that time frame. Everything is fully web-enabled.
[00:32:17.30] Do the experiences feel like I'm shopping on a large retailer website? Does it feel like I'm inside an app and it's so easy? I think that's something we all wrestle with. It's a insurance transaction. It is technical. You've got to have expertise. You've got to interpret the questions, give the good, solid answers around those.
[00:32:43.08] So how can you make that as easy as buying paper towels on the internet so they show up to your house the next day? I think we all struggle with that to some degree. From then till now, carriers have repositioned their own views on being on the platforms.
[00:33:05.66] REID HOLZWORTH: Not all of them. Not all of them.
[00:33:07.73] CASEY KEMPTON: I know. Which is fascinating to me. When you understand what business is flowing through the platforms today and where that's evolving, the behavior shift at the desk level cannot be understated. It's change management, right? I've spent a lot out of my career in change management. It's one person at a time. You don't always see a seismic shift. This thing is so amazing, I'm going to forget everything I ever did in how I did my job and just go do it different tomorrow because that technology exists.
[00:33:44.33] But it can be accelerated, absolutely. Right tool, right place, right time, right leadership, right push forward, right incentive. And things that are super intuitive and easy to use, absolutely. You can start to get that mass adoption.
[00:33:59.49] So I don't think we've seen that. I think the leadership, those driving the businesses, agents and carriers maybe have reached a point that says, we can't ignore this anymore. It's important that we start to lean in and engage. I know some are very selective about how they engage. Others are much more open to it. For Chubb, we're a little entrepreneurial in--
[00:34:26.12] REID HOLZWORTH: You are, very much so.
[00:34:28.19] CASEY KEMPTON: --in this little digital world. We will try a lot. It's OK if it doesn't work out. We will learn. We will evolve. We will try to be with the market. Maybe one step ahead if we could pull that off, but that doesn't always work out either because it's hard to predict.
[00:34:43.22] The pacing is what I've often wondered a lot about. Why does it take so long? And so many conversations-- I'm sure you experienced this too-- when you think, OK. Here we are. We're in another place, another time, another set of people. They're about three years behind. And so who's the next one to catch up, right? And those who have led the way in terms of adoption, defining real workflow, moving forward with markets who are ready to go and get right in there with them, where is the next frontier for them, right?
[00:35:18.71] Where does it go from here? Is it everybody's got to adopt exactly what we offer today, or do we get partial adoption and the next best thing comes? And that's where, I think, the power of the data becomes really, really interesting, that maybe we can't see today exactly what that transaction will look like in five years.
[00:35:37.29] I hope we're not still waiting for everyone to adopt exactly what we have today. Not that there's anything needed, but imagine if the rate of development and the adoption could catch up to wherever that future is.
[00:35:51.73] REID HOLZWORTH: Well, that was great. Isn't Casey a rock star? Just like I said. Well, I really enjoyed meeting with her in person at Applied Net. We had a really great time.
[00:36:00.43] In this next episode, we're going to be getting into InsureTech, our thoughts around that, agency adoption, and what that looks like. She sits in a very strategic chair at Chubb, and so she has a very clear lens on what works and what doesn't. So stay tuned. It's going to be great.