- Welcome to the top floor podcast where we explore the leadership journeys of some of the most inspiring CEOs and business leaders in the region. I'm your host Simon Lewis, a VISTAs chair. And today we have a very special guest with us. Here's the founder and CEO of B4 Insure Attack, an innovative company that provides insurance infrastructure as a service. With over a year at the helm of the company, here's been instrumental in developing and implementing the company's strategic vision, guiding the sector team and overseeing all aspects of operation, including sales, marketing, finance and technology. Before B4 Insure Attack, he held numerous leadership roles across the insurance industry. He has served as a founder and CEO of the Benefits for Expats Incorporated, where he led strategic initiatives, cultivated client relationships and expanded the company's presence in the insurance consulting and digital marketing landscape. As vice president at style union, Dai Chiichi, a life insurance company limited, he drove growth and managed the bank assurance channel across North and East India. He also held pivotal roles at MetLife Golf, Zurich Insurance, RSA and North Taco Bell, showcasing his extensive expertise in insurance operations, business strategy and sales management. His professional journey is marked by his commitment to innovation, strategic leadership and creating a positive work culture. His accolades include being recognized among the top five insurance startups in Canada and receiving the Excellence in Finance Insurance Attack Award at the Finance Conference in 2024. Join us today as we delve into the mind of this visionary leader exploring his leadership journey, values and the strategies that drive his success. Welcome, I'm answering to the top floor. - Thank you, Simon. Thank you for having me over. It's a pleasure to be here. And then thank you for that beautiful introduction. I couldn't say that better than that, myself. - Well, it's my job, so I love it. It's cool. Let's get into it now and let's talk about your leadership journey. What were some of the pivotal moments or key experiences in your career that have shaped your leadership start today? - Well, that's a pretty interesting question, Simon. So, I started my career way back in '97 in India and then gradually moved out of the country to the Middle East, when you must get first in 2004. And this was a very interesting experience where I was supposed to set up a bank assurance vertical for a bank called Bank Muscat in Oman, one of the largest banks in Oman at the point in time. The interesting challenge that they gave me was that they only wanted Omani nationals to be hired to be the entire, to build the entire team for the business. So, which was very unique for me. Insurance was unique for Oman. So, that ended up being a pretty interesting experience. But as I went along and stayed in the Middle East in the last good 20, 25, 20 years, one of the things that stuck out with me as you keep growing up the ladder in the corporate world, you kind of hit the glass feeling pretty often. And one more thing that happens more often than one would like is job redundancy is something which is very common and phenomenal in the corporate world in the Middle East. And I've seen my share of those happening across different organizations. And I think one of the most important thing that I've learned by working in the corporate sector in the Middle East is that one does need to be very strong emotionally, mentally in order to move forward. So, for me, I think resilience is a key takeaway which has helped me go through all the obstacles and be the person that I am today. It's a key trait factor for any successful leaders' resilience. It's how you pick yourself up when you have setbacks. Who've been your mentors or role models and what lessons have you loved from them in this journey? - Oh, wow. So, I've been blessed in that sphere. I've had a few mentors who've guided me along the journey and they've kind of helped me get up every time I've fallen down or they've been challenges, tougher ones. So, these have been people from across different industries, different markets. And I think if I was to name a few of those, Mr. Saramisha, who is a senior partner with Kurnia, which is a consulting firm in India, he's been part of my corporate journey, personally, professionally for a very long time. Then Mr. Gautam Manish, who's again a CEO of another company, Financial Services company, in Mumbai nowadays. Then there's a gentleman called Marvan Mathar, who was my line manager at MetLife. And now he's the general manager for an insurance company in Egypt. I think I've been blessed. I've truly been blessed. I've got friends who've mentored me. I've worked under them and they've given me the opportunity to do the business the way I felt best, right? So they've given me the empowerment, guided me when I needed the guidance. So yeah, so, I've been blessed. I'm sure there are other names that I would not like to mention who are the opposite of that. But I think it all comes out. I mean, you have to have a balance between people who mentor you and people who pull you back. Otherwise it becomes very boring. Well, and look, we all learn from people that perhaps, we would not like to emulate. And you take the learning that, wow, I hope I'm never going to be like that. But at the other end of the scale, having a series, a group of mentors that you can draw upon for different reasons is absolutely vital. You know, and it's something envisaged that we focus on very much is the mentoring aspect to help CEOs really focus on where they want to be successful and how they want to be successful. And it's all about bringing people along with you. And to that point, I just want to delve into your values and leadership philosophy then. Yeah, what core values drive you as a leader? And how do they influence your decision-making process? So for me, I think the most important value is to be human first. Every business is driven and designed to be a profit center. Inherently, that's the main underlying purpose of anyone getting into business. But I think what's very important for me is where you draw the line between where you stop being, considerate or empathetic for your audience or your client or your target audience and just start focusing on profits. There are businesses out there who are purely driven by profit. Somewhere after working in the corporate industry for such a long time, that sort of did not resonate very well with me. And I kind of realized that when you have a unique focus on the profit and then just driving value for the shareholder, somewhere the purpose of buying you when did the business can get lost. So insurance being insurance and it's supposed to provide financial security to people. But if you're just providing financial security to people who make a million dollar or above, I'm not sure that you've done the right job there. There's a larger audience who doesn't earn a million dollar probably doesn't even earn a $100,000 or less. But businesses would not end up serving those people. So for me, I think being human is a very important value and that's how I'm building my business up. And yeah. - It also sounds like you're focusing very much around the value of customer centricity, am I right? - So yeah, I mean, being human would eventually translate into being customer centric. For example, I mean, we are, so we've done this build up the software which we just focus on catering to the development of propositions, which would then cater to the underserved and the uninsured populations of segments across the globe. So pretty much designing an entire value proposition, a digital platform which ensures good use, which then allow the insurers to develop products which are simple to understand. So take the jargon out. Clients should be able to read what they're seeing on the screen and bases that either take a decision to go ahead or not to go ahead. - So yeah. - Right. - So does your system then sort of compare policies and how that decision making process? - Absolutely not. So when people do, so what you just mentioned is called aggregator platforms. So these aggregate platforms would then work with different insurance companies and extract information or different quotations for similar products and then present to the client. Problem with that approach is one that you're distributing and not really representing the client's needs. You're just pushing information in front of the client. So it's a product push. Second, the biggest challenge a grant goes by traditionally insurance products are not really designed for someone who can afford a $5 a month or a $10 a month. So you basically end up excluding that audience altogether. - Right, okay, interesting. So what do you ensure then that your team, which as we're discussing prior to the interview, it's spread globally. So how do you ensure that your team and organization align with your values and cascade them into the delivery of your products and servers? - So what we've done is we've tried to take on people. So our team is relatively young people. When we started off, we tried to look at people from within the industry, but we could not find the skill set, the attitude or people who had the values, what we were looking for. So we had to change gears very quickly and look at people, fresh graduates, people who did not come with the baggage, people who did not come with the mindset that business is only done in a certain way. And we found that was a much better approach for us to groom them, ask for our business values and our business vision. And that seemingly is working well for us. - That's interesting. - I mean, just for an example of it. So we've got some interns who've just come on board a month ago. And the entire training that we've done or the onboarding that we've done for these guys is around why we are doing what we are doing. So understand that they don't appreciate the purpose of what we are doing. It's going to be impossible for them to go out and present us in front of a prospective client in the right way or the right sense as we would want it to be done. - Right. - So we've taken a slide there for divergence there. People would normally go for experienced people, but yes, that would suit the traditional business models because we've done something very unique in the sense of the software that we've designed and the purpose that we are trying to meet. We need skill sets, which is absolutely different. So yeah, so that's also another that is the way we are trying to do business. - It's quite interesting because a lot of people, I mean, you're obviously employing Gen Z employees. A real challenge for a lot of industries at the moment is something that regularly comes up in our VISTAs meetings is how do we retain that Gen Z employee so that they get value from us and we get value from them and their expertise and their productivity. I mean, how are you doing that? Because there is a pattern with Gen Z that they'll sort of go to the next best opportunity and often don't hold down a job for a good period of time. - So I think what we've done is a slightly different. So like I said, in my mind, getting the Gen Z employees, I wouldn't call them employees. I mean, we don't really call them employees any more. And that sounds a little dated nowadays. And Gen Z students or interns or fresh graduates don't really relate to work the way you and I would have related to work, you know, when we started off our professional careers. So I think for us, what's more important is to make it fun for them. - So when we on board interns, we start by saying that you are an entrepreneur and you would do your job as an entrepreneur would do. But if you're looking for a nine to five, then maybe this might not be the best role for you. So that is how we build it up even from the initial discussions that we have, you know, with the candidates. We try and extract that sentiment out of them. Do you want to really work as an employee who likes a nine to five? Or do you like to be an entrepreneur, get the hands-on experience, control the entire environment, where you're operating, what you're doing? And so I think that helps us a lot because there's a lot of ownership that comes out by that mindset of just being an entrepreneur. And that's how we are, we think people stay back for longer than the traditional approach that's been used by other organizations or fresh talent. - No, I mean, that's a really interesting approach. And, you know, not actually calling the employees, but in entrepreneurs, I think that's wonderful. And obviously it's having, you know, the desired effect. And I mean, therefore they're recruitment and against your values is absolutely critical because obviously if it goes wrong, then you're going to have to replace somebody else. So can you share an example of a time when your values were tested? And how do you, how did you respond? - So our digital platform is designed to help insurers innovate and develop more affordable products. Now, traditionally, any deck vendor who designs a platform like this would charge anything upwards of anything between 250,000 US to half a million US dollars to deploy the product, to deploy the application. And then again, every time you make a change or add a new product, you get billed. Now, because what we are trying to do is we're trying to know the cost of those products and propositions make them more affordable. We've taken a very divergent view on our commercial model looks. We don't charge anything upfront. So it's a zero cost application to our clients. Now, when we did that, we had a lot of pushback from competitors in the industry. Even though they don't compete directly with us, there was a lot of pushback that, you know, you might end up coming in market and disrupting how we run our commercial models versus, you know, what you're trying to push. So I think it is very important that we communicated loudly enough to the industry about what we were trying to do. There was good reason of why we were having a commercial model which had a zero cost upfront. And explained to these traditional companies which are giants, you know, when you compare a startup like us with, you know, the likes of Wabun name names because then there'll be a problem there. But the larger tech vendors who are global players, they don't like startups like us coming in saying that, you know, we will not charge anything upfront. Our commercial model is purely success driven. So if a client, an insurance company chooses to use our platform, they would have to deploy products and they would have to sell products. And when they sell products, we would get paid. So until that time, we don't get paid anything. - Right, oh wow. So it's a real flip of the traditional business model. - Absolutely, absolutely. And to be honest, I mean, we're in this for the long haul. We're not in this for, you know, for a year or a few. The statistics show that 90 plus percent of the global population doesn't get access to affordable, simple and affordable insurance products. So there is no financial question for them. Right. - So with that kind of an opportunity size, you have to be patient. You have to pay. - Yeah, I don't know. (laughing) And just so our listeners are clear, what are the insurance products that you're focusing on? - Okay, so we could really simplify these down. And these could be anything which is simple to understand. It could be as something as simple as a life insurance or income protection or income replacement. It could be something as simple as a drone insurance, or it could be as simple as your tech insurance. So the whole premise is that not everyone has the affordability to pay $200, $500 a month. There is a large audience of people out there who can only afford to pay $5 or $10 a month, which in terms means that they might just need a financial cushion of let's say $100,000. They don't need that. But it's unfair that you cannot, but you do not want to make that product because your intermediaries, your financial advisor or your bank relationship manager or your insurance agent is going not going to sell those because if you're just going to collect a $5 or $10 premium, there's nothing in it for them. So the only way to do that is have a digital journey, which is 100% directly accessible by a client. The products are simple to understand. They can just go online. They can have a look at the product, do the transaction of their own and then get that financial security when they need it. So that's the whole premise of what we are trying to do. - So I mean, you almost answered my next question, which was how do you balance innovation with the traditional aspects of the insurance industry? How do you balance that then? If the insurance industry is sort of saying, now we've got to follow this and you'll come out with this innovative solution. Where's the balance? - So again, it goes back to the values, right? So within the insurance industry, you've got the supply chain where you've got reinshores at the top, insurers in the middle, intermediaries, NGOs somewhere down the road, distribution of them in consumer. So another thing that we've done is we've digitized the entire supply chain. - Right. - And the next thing that we do is we look for reinsurance partners or insurance companies who have an inherent intention to venture into the space. But because of the higher cost of building the infrastructure, they shy the way from it. So we look at specifically those insurers, so we have a chat, we try and understand, do they have the appetite? Do they have an inclination to get into this space? It's a no-cost challenge for them. We give them the infrastructure. All they need to do is deploy the products on the system and then take it a market. Now, what we've also done, unique about our system is that we've made the entire front end to be a no-code platform. So the interface for our insurance company partners is a no-code, which means that whenever they need to deploy a new product, they don't need to come back to us as tech vendors. They can do it on their own. They don't need to be coders or IT technicians or engineers. They can do it on their own as a simple form. You can just, as long as you have the product specs, you can deploy it. And under 30 minutes, you can launch it digitally across all your digital channels. So we've kind of taken a lot of different approaches on how we want the digital to serve the business, the technology to serve the business, versus trying to do a business case around a half a million dollar, trying to go through gate one, gate two, gate three, trying to get management approval, budgets, and they never see in the light of day. - So what strategies do you employ to stay ahead of the industry trends? And obviously technology environments, what do you do? - So we aren't constantly doing a lot of development work. So research and development work. And any existing plan that we have, we give them all the updates or the upgrades that we build at the back end, at a free of cost, you know, additional features that they can then use within their businesses. So what that does for us is one of two things. Then, you know, one, we are not again charging for our gradation of the system. Two, at times our clients themselves don't know that there's a certain functionality that they could use and then use that to untap more segments or more business revenue streams that the other ways could not have. So it creates a lot of stickiness for us, a lot of loyalty for us. Yes, we do take the gamble that, you know, we've not charged anything. The client could at the end of the day replicate and then try to move the other way. But then that's a gamble of it. If they want to do that in the first place, they would have anyways done it. Right, right. That's because they don't want to invest in building the digital infrastructure themselves and therefore someone like us would come, you know, fit the build pretty nicely. Yeah, I mean, there is always in industry. There are those that just follow the market leaders and learn from their mistakes and then go off and do it. And then there's those innovative companies like yours that go out and change the landscape. So how do you see the insure tech industry evolving in the next five to 10 years and what role will B4E insure tech play as part of that transformation? So the insurance industry or the insurance industry per se is poised to go to 130, 160 billion US dollars by 2030. That's one of the numbers and that's one of the reports published by the one of the big fours. And so that clearly shows that there is a massive opportunity in the space that we are now getting into. With AI, LLM's, generative AI evolving at the pace of that, it is evolving now. We and I'm sure other in short X in the market would also adapt and utilize those technologies to further drive efficiencies, optimize costs, optimize more personalized products, better claims experience, more better customer service. So I think it's a given that from here on over the next five to 10 years, there's going to be a massive growth in how technology is being used to service the industry and transform the industry into more modern data time. Insurance first thing has been a very risk-to-verse in industry and because of being a risk-to-verse industry has been very, very slow at innovation or accepting technology. I mean, even in current dating time, if you speak to insurers, you would end up realizing that they consider translating a paper document workflow into a digital document workflow as digital transformation, which unfortunately it isn't called digital transformation, that's just a change of paper into a digital journey, that's it. So yes, insurance industry is bound to be transformed over the next five to 10 years dramatically. I was attending a conference in Hong Kong, additional insurance conference in Hong Kong last week. And I think there's only one common theme that echoed across the entire industry. And this was how technology would transform the industry, how in short it collapsed. So yeah, I don't have any doubts that this is going to be, you know, a major transformative area for the industry going forward. - And look, in my previous career in aviation, I mean, in the space of, you know, 10 years, seeing that transform into, you know, from paper, paper tickets and all the rest of it, to, you know, digital tickets and the customer's journey, just being so much easier. And, you know, where it slows up is obviously and rightly so at the security and the border. But that whole system there is I think is a benchmark for a lot of industries to look at and actually say, how can we make it easier for the customer to do business with us? So what are the some of the key goals and milestones you aim to achieve with B4E insurance taking the next sort of few years? - Okay, so I think our vision on both the technology development side, as well as the reach is pretty clear and pretty well set up for us. We are looking at some very critical markets. So Middle East, of course, is a large focus for us. We have a very strong re-insurance relationship within the IFC in Dubai. And through that relationship, we are able to get access to multiple insurers in the meaner markets. India has obviously now come off to be a very important market for us. And this is at the back of the fact that we regulate and India has taken on a task that they want 100% insurance penetration by 2047 in the country. - Oh, wow. - So they currently sitting at about 4.2% and they want to go to 100%. So as difficult as that might be, for us, it becomes a very interesting opportunity because we are the only ones who have a digital platform which is a plug and play. I mean, literally can go live tomorrow morning if we have partners to do that. So we were actually called in by the regulator, by the chairman of the regulator in India to present on how we propose to help them. And so that's one part of it. We're looking at, of course, the North American markets very closely because North America, again, sadly enough while being a developed country, American, North America, and Canada, still hovers around 8% in insurance penetration. - So. - So globally, it's 7%. So that's the average that we're talking about. - Right. - So for us, it's very important that we are able to find Vinsurers and insurers who want to commit to this opportunity. Let me say that because everyone thinks business first. And then see the potential that comes to their business when they start leveraging like an economical scale. So for us, that's very important. And we've been trying to reach out to similar like-minded businesses. Our intent are, so, well, of course, we've got the dollar value targets for us to grow our business and then to be in different markets globally, the focus is more about building those relationships, having a foundation. And preferably, if not being pushed to a product, not raised capital. - Right. - Because our experience, and when we looked around the market with other in short X is that when they raised capital, the essence of what they started the business with, it just went away, it got diluted. Shareholders, investors, won their returns, they won their dividends. And that necessarily might not align with the vision that you set up your business with. So we've tried to stir clear of that unless, until we have investors who are, who understand what we are trying to do and are willing to partner with that vision and align with those values. We are better off being on our own. We might grow a little slow, but we are better off this way. - So how do you stay motivated and continue to grow as a leader in that particular scenario? - With some of the funny thing is that, the joy of trying, seeing things happen the way you would envision them to happen is big enough. I mean, I stepped out of the corporate world in 2020, August, I went solo and I started building my own business up. And 2024, I am in the same conferences where all these global multinationals, their CEOs are sitting on the same panel as I am. They're presenting their thoughts they've used on the same table as I am. So for me, I think this is a big enough motivation to actually come out and do something that's so meaningful that that's more tangible. And then be sitting across peers who are representing the largest brands on the planet in the industry. So I think that that's good enough. - So what advice would you give to aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs in the insurance tech space then going forward? - Okay, so that's a tough one. For me personally, I think what was more important was perseverance, you just have to persevere. There are things that you cannot control. Whenever you're trying something new, you would have pushbacks or you would have reactions which are delayed where people might be very excited today about joining hands and starting working with you. But then maybe it's three months, six months before they even come back and see your face again. So you have to be patient, you have to persevere, you have to be very focused on what you're trying to achieve. The bigger the risk at the end of the day is the same, the bigger the risk, the better the reward. So just keep going at it. And from my perspective, never look back. Everything that I've done till today has been learning, even though it's been a failure, it's been learning and it's just helped me move forward. So for me, that's the best advice that I can give and that's exactly what we do when we hire interns. Be in it for an hour. Don't worry about it if you make a mistake. Don't worry about it if you lose a client. Learn from it, improve upon it, move forward. And that seems to work for us, so. - Yeah, well, I mean, you've talked about resilience, talked about perseverance. You've talked about engaging your employees or entrepreneurs, shall I say, sorry, in a way that allows them to be empowered and learn on the job as well as, you know, perfecting their skills in the insurance tech business. So what's next for you and be for the insurer tech? - So what next is slightly a couple of years away, a few years away, the intention is to be able to become an insurer on our own, some transition from a tech company to an insurer. And then I'm hoping by within the next five to 10 years, there would be regulations where you could have digital companies which can operate globally. So I'm not in the favor of brick and mortar because brick and mortar will not really make sense for the business that we are trying to get into. So the long term view is to become an insurer, have access to products or be in a position to develop value propositions which meet the needs of the general market segments and be global. So we'll have to figure out which is your jurisdiction works best for us, it could be the IFC, it could be, you know, in Canada or elsewhere or give city in India or Hong Kong or Bermuda. So then there are various options, but the regulation has to, you know, be enabled to support us to do that. And once we do that, then since it's more of a playoff, developing value proposition which I've had for purpose, creating awareness, creating presence and visibility within the segments that we want to cater to. So that's a lot of vision. - Well, I mean, without that, you won't be going anywhere. So that's wonderful to hear about. You know, a lot of the businesses I work with, they often have a plan that is unrelated to a strategy. It looks like you've got a very clear strategy, you've got a very clear vision and you're actually getting the right people around you to ensure that that is well executed and is successful and I congratulate you on that. How can to close that? How can our listeners connect with you and follow your journey? - Okay, I'm a pretty easy guy to get in touch with. I'm very easily accessible on LinkedIn, which is the platform that we're using nowadays. It's about my email IDs, my contact details are on LinkedIn. I mean, that being an entrepreneur, I need to be able to be reached and be accessible by everyone in a very simple way. So all my contact details are there. And if someone just connects with me and drops the message, we make sure that we get back within the same day. We are able to get into a discussion and dive on. And you know, even if we don't work together, I personally leave relationships matter the most. It may work in this, may not work in this environment, but may work in a different environment. So we value relationships at the best. So businesses is later on. So yeah, anyone wants to get in touch with me more than happy to be connected and more than happy to work with people. - Thank you so much, Aman, for sharing your insights and experiences with us today. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. And we look forward to seeing the exciting future. You have installed for B4E Insure Attack. To our listeners, click the subscribe button and thank you for tuning in to the top floor. So stay tuned for more inspiring conversations with leaders such as Aman from around the region. Aman, best of luck for the future. And we really look forward to seeing the insurance industry market be influenced by B4E Insure Attack. Thank you. - Thank you, Simon. Thank you for having me.
