TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW WITH EUGENE SHAFRONSKY – HEAD OF STRATEGY AT THINKTUM.AI
QuotersCaster Host: Alright, so my guest today is Eugene Shafronsky. You’re located in Toronto, you founded, Thinktum in 2018, you’re the Head of Strategy there, and Thinktum is a no-code platform geared to the insurtech industry. So I’m really interested in this because I think you’re doing something cutting edge. Can you describe to us how and why you formed Thinktum and what it does.
Eugene From Thinktum: Thank you so much for that. So first of all, I’m not a founder, I’m here as the Head of Strategy, but I’m working directly with the founder and the founding group. So, I think Thinktum was created exactly for the reason I mentioned to be able to create a customer experience for applicants, for the insurance agents and advisors from those who offer life insurance as kind of their main job, and then also offering their customer experience. I would say a better journey, user journey for those who create insurance product,s for those working back offices and work within insurance companies within different jobs all responsibilities. To be able to make it better for everyone. You probably know insurance industry as a whole is a little bit outdated or struggling to be modern, so the technological advancement because of the concept of how risk can have on certainty, like trust and your name in, there’s probably a long list of different reasons. We wanna be one of these companies within the industry helping to bring things forward. That’s pretty much the main purpose of our existence.
QC Host: Yeah, you bring up a good point. A lot of the insurance companies have been around for 100 years or more, so how do you see your platform… It’s no code. How do you see the integration? What does that look like? That sounds very challenging.
ET: So first of all, we can look at some of the recent experiences I had with a number of insurance companies. So for me, working with presenting them or consultations of my experience with them. So insurance industry is a like a whale so to speak. They will consider themselves as something very simple and just ask a few questions and then let’s see what happens after… Right, but with a technological evolution and in the last 20 years, perhaps more than ever, and because it’s more kind of exponential today, it’s only more than before you figure out at what has been done is not poetics. To not call no code is really a concept, it’s not a new concept overall, where it’s a newer concept within insurance, the technology allows using, let’s say, assume as a graphic interface in which user who doesn’t have to be a programmer, it doesn’t have to be a technologically advanced person, but they can create any type of flow and rules and outcomes and personalization they want, and because they can do it, now you can… I look at much less stages which most of them are struggling with that. Most insurance companies do not have enough technology resources, enough teams or large enough systems to deal with new ideas. The majority of their teams are really stuck with the legacy and fixing that and adjusting to other new things. It’s typically something we struggle with, and let alone is now that creating something that also they need to maintain it more, it goes against what this company is a majority interest, just trying to create some exceptions, but let’s talk about it.
So no one uses business experts. You think of product people usually, so executives may be underwriters, it allows them to create and work with technology on their own, without involving product managers, project managers, without involving QA, without involving designers, developers. All those people, working with a finite amount of time. To create something, to adjust something, even to fix a spelling error, right. You have a legacy application and have a spelling attack, you’re gonna go on to project management and you’re gonna create a task. Developer is gonna fix it. You’re gonna test it. It may take a long time. What if you’re just gonna get yourself a handout, so you have it in front of you, just fix the error and it’s done. Right, this is kind of the easy way to give an example and I… Some experiments that we are on, we’ve seen that if you do that, that way you save significant amount of money and time and another challenge with the industries, time is critical because you collect data and that gives you some outcomes, you can always take that much faster today. So when you have specific evidence, facts about something not working right, the question is, how long are you willing to live if that’s not working right or not being right. We input your assumption. Which we instruct to color the business, which may impact your mortality, your risk assumptions, your profitability. How long are you willing to be with it knowing it’s there, because nobody can shut it off, because you need to continue generating revenue. So what if you could, as a business person, make those adjustments on the fly based on the evidence, what if you could have gone to your insured and present them those data, facts and evidence, and that again, from my experience, would be more open to discuss it, to negotiate, to make changes versus emotions when you say, Well, I think it’s not good, or I don’t like how they… It’s not good enough, but you want more clear evidence. They’re gonna get so much farther.
QC Host: Yes, so let’s see this, there’s a number of huge old insurance companies that dominate the industry. So what would a meeting with executives and you explaining to them how they take their system, which is kind of all chopped up, there’s some parts that are really secure for the application, the medical information, and then there’s the CRM, which is a little more open, and all of these moving parts for the agents, for the clients, for the underwriters, and admin… what does the meeting with you and the executives of a company like that look like trying to explain how that’s gonna work?
Eugene from Thinktum: I can actually recall having the same meeting and they are differences in the companies but the challenges are not. They are not the same. So most engineers, companies will have a little bit different challenges or the difference is you’re also gonna be having decision makers in those meetings that may come from different disciplines, are coming from product, are coming from distribution of revenue, are you coming from the actuarial side of it? Are you an entrepreneur? Maybe a small organization, we have someone who is more like a fine type of a person, right. So they will have different needs, but we always try to do is to understand what those needs are first, because as much as we want to revolutionize the entire industry and go from zero to 1000, we know it’s impossible. We know this. I posted, one of the things with larger companies, one thing that is common is that neither of them is ready to make that move so fast, it has to be gradual and gradual, it has to be a tempo for the change has to be convenient for them culturally, or whatever are the reasons it may be, so for us it’s not so good to be disruptors we are trying to be collaborative. So those meeting steppes gonna be look like we interview and then to fully understand where they really need help or where they think they need help, if we feel there’s something that you have sprouted as a command it, but that’s pretty much it… Now, if you get more into more specifics, if you like, when it comes to specifics, but we find typically is that all of them would like to improve their moral of the people would like to generate more revenue to expose themselves to improve the customer experience than some of them, understand the impact of the quality of business, not all of them, but depending on side of the company and other things, right. So for us, it is really what we can do to improve as soon as possible, as fast as possible… and for them, what they really need, and it may be maybe different things, some of them more instead into risk assessment, underwriting, some of them are going to be concerned more about what customer journey and advisors joined, right? So how we can make our advisors feel comfortable when they go through this process and return to their clients so they will feel comfortable. Some of them are struggling with legacies, how we can connect into a newer system, how we can retain previously collected data and analyze it better and how we can analyze that, they analyze data as a whole, what the data can do. So it’s gonna be a bit different from one to another, what the concept is really all of it give towards one point is the bottom line.
QCHost: So now what are we looking at in terms of cost? Because that sounds almost overwhelming really to try and integrate it.
Eugene from Thinktum: Depends on the company. Every company will have their own costing for us, but we’re trying to adjust. So I think the cost for different company to company, and obviously the volumes and what they wanted to do also goes into the difference for us. Cost-wise, it’s a modular thing as a whole today. There’s different models and not on about in particular, but we see model to include what the implementation fee and the licensing, and then either revenue sharing or transactional fees and so on. So I know a majority of technology companies trying to structure some type of a winning scenario for the client or the insurance company they’re working with. And so we have the same approach. We have a general idea of implementation of a transactional course, but we typically do a lot of due diligence to understand what is that the best for that specific client, for that specific company, to make sure that it’s… It’s right for them, you hope for someone not to pay on, ability to modernize themselves, will be able to provide a better experience for the advisors and clients just because they could afford something that would be good deal for everyone. So for us, it’s always having this communications, understand how they see, what is it in their mind, and then try to make sure that we can deliver the program to what they were thinking of.
QC Host: Okay, great, excellent. So now the no code, the no-code platform is based on artificial intelligence, and so can you explain more how that works and data collection, and I know there are a lot of fears out there about artificial intelligence taking over and such.Can you speak to that, please?
Eugene of Thinktum: Yeah, so it’s interesting because I think artificial intelligence, the main reason for that publicity was because there are several all sectors and even within insurance industry that we’re a little bit in the right time to launch something. And they did not put in thought and effort to test it on, and it did not check all the other groups, because AI is not an iRobot or terminator, it’s merely a software program that soon gives someone who gives it specific functions rules that it reads, and follows and what it may say I can’t do some rules can become more complex. So that makes it a comfort, it also leaves a room for human being to make a mistake when they create those levers, and sometimes when the mistake is happening you may realize it a little bit later. You think of that being decided for itself, but it seemed with that true perhaps was not ever tested. And now on the first time you see it, you think, Oh, I didn’t anticipate it. Yes, but it’s there. So that’s Thinktum. So I think AI is itself, it’s not a scary thing, it’s just a complex programming environment, which sometimes human tend to make a mistake or don’t test in at before deploy, and it’s easy to blame it, so it doesn’t fully understand what AI…
Eugene at Thinktum: Now, AI also can be divided or separate in two different concepts, so you have a symbolic AI, which is more simplistic or more complex programming, if you like, and then you have a traditionally, which in be more of machine learning and deep learning and natural language processing and computer image recognition, and so all those components create a 3 with no cold calling itself, majority of it is built in more of a symbolic is so it’s more kind of a decision tree, so more simplistic, some more complex… There’s lots of facility in it, we all say The harmonic approach, which we think they’re reflexivity to the next level of making sure that it’s not just a list of questions and then they open or not open depending on what you answer, but the entire flow is integrated into correlated to low posed to be very personalized. So if you answer the questions or if you apply for something or you go to the flow, you would never feel it, it wasn’t for you. Everything is there, areas designed just for you. They are very personalized, and it’s not the new consult, if you go to another place… I hear you’re new to Apple to those places we have here on a con, when you go in, they already know what you want, anything you’re profiled. An HIC profile, they have your previous experiences. They try to make sure if you’re comfortable, it is for you, and that’s the idea behind it, it’s not about business, it’s about how we feel when we go through a process of doing something. So based on that split is building to not cop, there’s some more complex, like a national language processing in some other elements that are building if those are being triggered. And then another part of isometry is machine learning, and so on. That applies to data. So the litany from the process, both disclosed data and data that there’s behavioral data, how user was comparing it, design for us to any health organizations to understand where this quarter is not, is lacking basically, and where a disclosure may be included, some type of behavioral full-behavior may be fraud, maybe miss the things you want to eliminate because that will help you as you option in claims, but it’s also designed to optimize the environment. know how many questions want someone answered on average, how long it takes some plants questions where their staff when they don’t understand, when they stop and don’t continue anymore percentage twice, right? So you can really quickly analyze, this is good, this is bad, I need to make some changes here and to reverse this flow, so the thing is gonna allow you to continuously optimizing that, and machine learning can provide a much faster outcome because it can provide you the supervise announcer provides machine learning, so basically you can go either allow it to look for specific items or change, looking for an outlier, or you can just ask you to look for itself and it. You should be able to tell you, Oh, this is abnormal, or this is normal, or whatever. So you can implement both and you can look for what we want and then we can find something for you to to… Now, you mentioned securities, so one of the things, or the AI reputation, let’s go it this way, insurance in as a whole, and that’s why we do think when it comes to, Hey, it based on traditional components of underwriting manuals or risk manuals, and those risk manuals are pretty much traditionally were the only component or the only Bible that our decisions are made, so AI would not be making decisions based on things that are not elites, it’s not gonna be making its own estates or program or will not be able to make their own decisions. About something, maybe collecting data for general statistics and behaviors and so on, it may be, but you would not find the discrimination as much because it’s really made… And we connect to data and just analyzing it. I think it’s combination comes decisions. I’ve seen some companies have discrepancy in the basis or ran some other components, but in majority of insurance industry is far, far away from it, and again, those risk manuals are typically done or provided by insurers on some larger companies are prostrate and how they design and they’re only looking for risks, not less to discriminate them on the risk, and we consider discrimination too, because we do discriminate based on risk, but it’s really a component that allows you to price properly and be able to see the proper category of a specific insurance solution to a specific applicant that fee down the
QC Host: OK, I wanna address too how technology, where all that data gets stored, because we’ve heard a lot about quantum computing and how pretty much all these big companies collect our data and then it gets funneled into a huge database. It’s all sort of a little bit Big Brother-ish and frankly… And the powers that be do know an awful lot about us. So how does your software fit into that and where does it go? Basically, well.
Eugene of Thinktum: Without getting into too many technical definitions, today, most of the data stored is in different servers and cloud, so the parent company, if any, how they do it, every company today put in a lot of effort into making sure that is secure, so both internally and externally, it only allows proper access, and I can tell you from our perspective, the way we do it is, it’s also start in cloud, but even internally, we have filters, are not anonymize the data. So even our data, intimate look at the data, they don’t see nothing personal to see as a block of how many people from specific carrier is leave what they did, so there’s no really personal data access, all the code really locked in. You have the PCI compliance for credit cards, it’s working from… It’s not just insurers from banking, it’s every retail online retailer in the internet, obviously, we have people that manage to break through and manage to get through and it scares people, or maybe we get access to some data, but I know every single company respects the safe way. Or significant effort and significant financial effort to make sure that all the data storage, it can be done in different clouds, it can be separate different ways from the cloud and some on different servers that are more physical and so on. So it allows you to make sure that they don’t hold all the eggs in one basket and say, something happens, it doesn’t happen to the entire data, but it’s really the big hope of computer companies as a technology provider, and I know not only as most of the companies to make sure that what they provide is a secure, responsible, we have a security department or other companies that do the two, and there’s constant updates, constant studying of the market or the industry or how data is working with credible providers today and you have the Microsoft and the Amazons and so on, and some others don’t advertise them, but we now know who they are, and they used to work to those who beat security and give it a support to make sure that things are done more secure.
QC Host: Okay, so I know from doing the research for this interview, I was wondering what other uses does this have and how, I guess it will fit into our society in the future. How do you see that going?Eugene of Thinktum: We talk a lot about insurance, and as I mentioned before, to me, majority combines on is the customer Gerstner experience, they really look at a customer… I think we should look at it. Is there any kind of person whoever can tactically… So they all have to have the experience. We should never choose just one person or one specific donation, for us, it’s always been to understand how we can help the entire spectrum of those who’s gonna be either directly in direct without… So to me, a technology itself really need to make a step ahead and to be more inclusive to different roles and not just for customers. Because I know many companies, the outside to look very technologically invest, but then if you look behind the scenes, it’s not the other case, it… And so what they can hide, they don’t like hiding, because now what I can see… But then again, you are not optimizing your ability to really perform route, and not everything can really estimate it or budget properly, but you have to understand what’s the longer term in pots, I have to… Short and not just today. And then eventually, I think that people don’t discount advisors and talk a lot about direct to consumer, and I think if you look at the last, I would say only 10 years, they’re at the Consumer existent, but direct-to-consumers are at least an insurance industry is not progressing enough. So if you think the consumer can go and buy insurance along, it’s happening very, very rarely. So what bathing I happen is that advisor, same as other professions within the back off of some choice companies, they’re also gonna get to water some augmentation, so advisors that… And it’s happening at… And today, we’ve seen more and more advisors that they’re in now relying on technology in protecting yourself, change a lot to… So what I believe is gonna happen is the technology and allow advisors to get access to more volumes, the network in terms of things, and that’s to fathers to go of them as leads, if you like, but the swallows will allow… Allow them to spend less time and prospecting and maybe be more effective as prospect, but be able to spend more time on generating business for themselves and really helping a our environment involved in… And I think this is what we’re going to see is gonna be an automation of the whole generation or online presence, because we open online today and we would see not all invoices are gonna be able to go to this transition, but if I can do the profession a generational change. So we will see that it’s a group of advisors and the next generation of advisors, they’re gonna be more open to work with the online presence, and they will be able to connect with their virtual crowd much faster, and then technology not only can connect you… Technology can also refine it for technology, I can speak to that you need to connect or can choose, does have a high probability that they’re more serious about it versus song maybe just shopping around and not to say one is more important than others, but you can prioritize the recording. So basically what you’re gonna see then, in my opinion, shift of the technology, gonna make a shift of advisors becoming almost like a call center advisor, but difference in remote work environment.
QC Host: That’s actually very much what WikiQuoters was created for because I’m a licensed insurance agent and my partner in this is a digital marketer, and we realized that prospects are treated like data receptacles to so many people, it’s crazy, and so with us you get a licensed agent the first time. So for us, your technology sounds phenomenal, so we have a website set up, if we started using your service, how would that look different for us as agents that are looking for leads.
Eugene of Thinktum: We’ve done recently, late last year, we’ve done one of those deployments, actually organization that, that’s where similar stuff that… Same to you. So this organization gonna leave a fine, and so they’ve worked with a public sector health platforms to various hospitals and so on, different there in partaking about many thousands of employees, and those employees have an ability to access that help part of financial health portal and go through a series of questions that will determine their needs and what exactly they’re looking for, and from there, they either can keep them all into direct to consumer channel, but they can attempt a lion their own, they don’t have to. They don’t want to, and it provides a summary of the journey to an advisor and then system, and also what it doesn’t prioritize accordingly, depending on what they need, because keep in mind, in the space that the specific time operates… They have with some of the clients or some of these prospects, they have a limited time to get the specific solution, so systems would recognize limited time because if they were a third day Asian is no longer available, so you have to be very timely with it and there’s some other concept, it does an initial screen for investments, and it does screen for forsake, a disability and lean Benefits and Critical and some other products. So all of this happened. Now, how it’s done typically, so we need to understand the prospecting in… So basically, you have some type of or be able to generate leads from somewhere, and they come in your way, if any social media presence or it can be maybe specific websites, other portals and what the Ignite… Make someone else helping you. Never mind, it’s coming from some of the moment prospects, we call the prospects, but their labs, but the woman prospect police clicks on that specific baton or get into the portal, you Rita begin the interview, if that’s always the process, so you asking the questions in the way you generate leads, you always have to get the point you ask in the questions. Yes, so those questions, you know you really want to because you know, every question you answer, you create a draw, so there’s always a percentage of those proxies gonna drop, they’re not gonna be interested in, they just try the… So that it is for you to make sure the first group of questions gonna collect enough information for you, so our recommendation is environments, all their contact information or the most important…. so as soon as you can gather the better is because that is short and that becomes a lead and lead you can allocate to someone and the completion of the way it can be defender, the garment process and process, again, if process, personalized study show that they don’t stay longer, so if you can make it really personal to them, If system is not gonna be a blank question, I give it to all of your clients, but it’s gonna personalize itself as that specific prospect answering the questions. You’re gonna keep them longer. You’re gonna make it more complete, so give you an example with some of the pilot is-related, you actually end up having… So before that, we’re just gonna say that the conversion ratio was something around 3 to 5% depending on channel, and when you personalize them, you get less leads, but you’re gonna improve your completions, so basically you create more efficient environment. So for example, in the group, when we have five advisors, their revenue or this is was improved significantly because they were wasting less time with a lower quality prospects, so they actually managed to get an environment when more of their calls and one of their contacts first all they did faster because now the priority allows them to connect with someone faster versus you have 50 people and you need to connect to .To have 20 gives you a different time, these spend more time or quality time with those people, which you improve their conversion and they’re built to close, and they were happier, they were in no money and they were not leaving, they were not living after a few months because they feel they’re failing again, as I mentioned to you, to ask, it’s kind of a 360 degrees approach, it’s not just a specific person, it’s on just a prospect, on just a customer, not just a advisor, it’s not just the order of the fear or co… The film, it’s everyone. And when you want to tailor your system to everyone and make everyone happy, that’s the most effective approach.
QC Host: This has been excellent. Thank you so much, I really appreciate this. So if somebody wants to get a hold of you, because you do work with individual agents as well as large companies… Correct. So they just go to your website and inquire and they can start the process and they can
Eugene of Thinktum: They can go to thinktum.ai – We actually just launched a newly branded version of our website just last week or so, so they can go to thinktum.ai and they can ask for someone to connect with them. You also information of the key people who putting myself, they can reach out to us directly we’re gonna be always happy to chat with anyone for us, so obviously business and revenue is one side of it, and we all need it, unite all edit but I think the best way together is to have conversations, we never shy away of talking with anyone about anything, we’ll learn from each other every day, so it’s important for us to keep those conversations together and making sure that we’re helping on each other to understand how we can make the world better.
QCHost: Well, that’s excellent, I think that’s a good note to end on. Thank you, thank you very much, Eugene. And I look forward to following up and learning more about your company and watching it grow.
Eugene of Thinktum.ai: As much for that, we appreciate that and feel free to connect if you need any help, you wanna have anymore outside of the boxes, but just overall, feel free to direct, I will be very happy to do connect and you have more.
QC Host: Oh, absolutely, that’s great. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
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