Ep157 Killian McDermott Executive Partner POP Holdings: The opposite of the Palo Alto approach

Today’s guest is someone you might not know but I think he is
someone you should definitely listen to. That’s because Killian
McDermott, Co-Founder & Executive Partner of POP Holdings is
someone who is quietly innovating and applying technology and the
analysis of data to the business of underwriting. Killian is an
insurance professional with a long pedigree and so doesn’t come
from the school of insurance disruptors. Indeed he believes that
successful insurers have been married to the smart analysis of
data since time immemorial and that the term insurtech will
eventually have to be retired. He is an insurance person whose
career would be typical of many in his peer group and
recognisable to all of us, but who has learned to focus on the
technology side of the business, not the other way around. What
is also fascinating is that, in a world where so much tech
innovation is going on in personal lines where numbers are large
and premiums very low, his focus is on applying data ingestion
and analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning,
digitisation and automation to highly specialist classes of
business such as M&A insurance and financial lines. The
firm’s ambition is also substantial. Fusion Specialty Insurance
and io.insure are the group’s main operating business with
licences in many major insurance jurisdictions globally and
Killian is targeting a billion dollars of Gross written premiums
within five years. So if you want to hear from someone who
instead of talking about innovation and insurtech is quietly
getting on with making it all a reality, I highly recommend you
listen on. LINKS We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com/ And our advertiser Bolton
Associates: https://www.bolton-associates.co.uk/