Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!
⁠Join Oliver Lang⁠, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and ⁠Nikolaus Sühr,⁠ Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about the fundamental differences between launching an MGA and founding a full insurance carrier, exploring capital requirements, risk management responsibilities, survivorship rates, and how each model impacts growth, profitability, and long-term strategy for insurance founders.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Carrier vs. MGA are two basic options to found an insurance business
• A carrier requires much more capital and has higher cost but also much higher revenues
• You need broader know-how in a carrier as it covers the entire insurance value chain
• Only a carrier can keep the entire profit of the insurance business
• If you know your insurance business is technically highly profitable, and you have plenty of funding, you might want to think about founding a carrier – in all other scenarios, start with an MGA

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!
#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #insurancedistribution #managinggeneralagent #MGA #insurancelicense #insurancecarrier

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!
⁠Join Oliver Lang⁠, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and ⁠Nikolaus Sühr,⁠ Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

In this episode they talk about how lead generation in insurance is being reshaped by AI-driven search, the coming rise of personal agentic assistants, and the role of speech bots in scaling outreach while reducing costs. This is part 3/3 of their series on Lead Generation.

Here are the key takeaways of the episode:

• More and more people replace Google searches with LLM searches.
• Being found by Large Language Models is very different from being found in manual searches.
• LLMs find you when you’re technically accessible, well-structured, using clear and consistent wording.
• When personal assistant agentic AI will become mainstream, your products and services must not only be machine-accessible but machine-interoperable.

Speechbots can replace human agents in outbound calls (or voice messages). This can lift lead-warming to a new level.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #futureofinsurancesales #leadgeneration #futureofinsurance #sales #growth #ai #bots #automation

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!
⁠Join Oliver Lang⁠, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and ⁠Nikolaus Sühr,⁠ Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is part 2/3 of the discussion around leads.

In this episode they talk about the latest trends in insurance lead generation, the critical role of speed and specialisation in conversion, and why rising lead costs demand smarter optimisation and cross-selling strategies.

Here are the key takeaways:

• More and more insurers and brokers are entering the space of generating their own leads.
• On the other side, some lead providers form their own brokers/agencies to sell insurance, not just leads.
• As a result, lead prices have gone up significantly – you must dramatically increase your conversion in order for your CAC to stay the same.
• We see a lot of investment and upskilling in managing the lead journey. including but not limited to time to react, lead to advisor matching and cross-selling. 

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #insuranceleadconversion #leadgeneration #customeracquisition #salesgrowth #insurance strategy #crossselling

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about why most insurance organisations struggle with lead generation, everything it needs for customer acquisition, from basic contact data to booked appointments, the costs, and challenges of acquiring leads, and how salesforces must adapt their skills and processes to convert leads outside their own networks.

Here are the key takeaways:

• The only way to grow the number of customers for many insurers and brokers is to acquire leads from outside their agents’ networks.
• There are many lead categories ranging from a name with contact details to fixed appointments for an insurance consultation.
• Leads can come from many sources – Google or Facebook are just two of them.
• Leads are valuable. You must treat them with great respect and care.
• It is critical that you optimise the end-to-end journey from lead source to closing the deal and cross-selling additional products – not just parts of that journey.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #insurancesales #leadgeneration #customeracquisition #salesgrowth #CAC

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about AI for decision makers:

• One use case for AI is to make decision makers / knowledge workers more efficient.
• AI can help throughout the decision-making process including communication and implementation.
• It can cut the time for decision making including communication by up to 60%.
• AI takes voice-to-text to a whole new level as you don’t have to speak like you would write.
• Best advice: simply start with what already exists.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!
#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #AI #KI

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about the attack on cross subsidies:

• In many lines, there’s a trend towards more price differentiation using additional data we have on customers. Some business models focus purely on capturing profitable customer segments.
• There are 4 ways for incumbents to react to this trend which can be combined:
1. Ignore and keep the way of cross-subsidy / solidarity that you’re used to.
2. Discredit the loss in solidarity and act by not allowing customers who go for their maximum profit to profit from the community’s solidarity when they are in a weak position.
3. Jump on the bandwagon and generate an additional line of tariffs / brand that captures the possibilities of stronger price differentiation while keeping the solidary part of the business alive.
4. Go all in and change you pricing structure to include the new normal of stronger differentiation.
• Depending on the specific situation, your profitability targets and moral position you must chose between and potentially combine your options.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!
#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #subsidies

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they finalise their discussion about Aggregators (3/3):

• You can (further) increase profitability of the PCW channel by increasing prices (relative to other tariffs) over time and by incentivizing PCW customers to refer you to their friends.
  

• A convincing communication and discount strategy for your agents and brokers is essential as some customers go to PCW and then to agent/broker.
  
• You must generate data from PCWs and use it for product design and dynamic pricing.
  
• Avoid building a separate IT & operating infrastructure just for the PCW channel.
  
• Build a strategy around the (unprofitable) core product including capturing spillover, cross- and upselling and profitability increase over time.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #aggregators #pricecomparison

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about Aggregators:

• When working with PCWs you can (and must) retrieve a unique wealth of data. It’s important that you make the effort of constantly retrieving and interpreting the data and implement real-time actions.
• In rare cases you can hit the jackpot and find profitable niches on PCWs. This is when you can write lots of profitable business.
• It’s important to work on non-price-comparison efforts with PCWs. They have lots of traffic and business opportunities beyond price comparison if you work together constructively.
• Life savings products, small top-up coverages, or switch tariffs are some examples of how you can utilize PCW’s traffic without engaging in a price war.
• As the core business with PCWs won’t be profitable, upselling and cross-selling, spillover effect and renewalmanagement becomes  major factors on the road to profitability.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #aggregators #pricecomparison

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about Aggregators:

• Price Comparison Websites (PCW) are an important distribution channel in many countries and for several lines of business (especially motor).
• Their business model is to connect price sensitive customers with insurers that need to shop topline growth.
• The combination of low premiums, high commissions, and short customer lifetime makes it very difficult for insurers to make a profit with business from PCWs.
• HUK24 is an example of how to successfully position an insurer as price leader without using PCWs – but it’s hard to replicate.
• If PCWs are an important distribution channel for you, you better set-up specific products, processes, and potentially a separate brand for it.
• Your best friend when working with PCWs is the spillover-effect: customers that compare prices on a PCW and then come to your website for free in order to buy directly from you.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #aggregators #pricecomparison

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about Embedded Insurance when it comes to Airlines:

• Travel insurance through airlines is one of the oldest and most successful embedded insurance segments.
• It can raise ticket profitability for the airline by as much as 30%.
• The best airline/insurer partnerships reach up to 15% attachment rates on all airline customers.
• If you can bring your airline partner towards 15% attachment rate through products, touchpoints, delivery, and brand, you can become a trusted partner – not just a commodity.
• It requires a lot of expertise and the ability to quickly test and fail in order to get to that 15% attachment rate.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity #airline #embeddedinsurance

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠⁠KASKO⁠⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode they talk about the Risk Appetite of Insurers:

• Every insurance Board of Directors must issue a Risk Appetite Statement.
• However, there aren’t many proper and specific Risk Appetite Statements for insurers. Yet, defining the Risk Appetite isn’t that hard.
• For a Financial Risk Appetite Statement you must define clear financial dangers and assign maximum acceptable frequencies to them. This is easier than it sounds.
• There are only 3 kinds of financial dangers: regulatory intervention, loss of rating, and drop in profit. 
• Regulatory intervention is a relevant danger for every insurer, loss of rating is only relevant for commercial insurers and reinsurers, drop I profit is only relevant for publicly listed insurers.
• A Board of Directors Risk Appetite Statement must consequently broken down into operable limits, thresholds, guidelines, and controls.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity #risk #riskmanagement

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler ⁠KASKO⁠ as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about what they call "Insurtech Leftovers". These are some of the key insights shared in the episode:

• Insurtech is dead – R.I.P.
• Online direct isn’t an attractive channel in insurance: limited size, no growth, high CAC, low LTV
• Apps and portals have been a mistake – new technology can help repairing it
• Technology can enable insurers to capture more opportunities by trying fast and cheap
• Online leads can be valuable – but only if you use outbound calls to increase conversion
• We’ve developed the technology for the wrong target group – use it for distribution partners, not customers

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about AI Implementation Challenges (2/2) and these are some of the key insights of the episode:

• 70% of a successful AI implementation is change management
• Reasons for resisting AI implementation include cognitive overload, fear of failure, lack of leadership buy-in, change fatigue, or misaligned incentives
• These reasons of resistance must be addressed to ensure success
• AI projects can be started by giving teams small budgets without requiring a specific return
• The smaller the change for employees, the higher the success

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast! Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, supervisory board member and advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about AI Implementation Challenges (1/2):

• The progress in AI is impressive and calls every manager to action
• Given the vast amounts of funding, AI is likely to continue its success story
• As with every tech implementation, change management is the most important component
• Using AI to get data from customers and distribution partners in a digital way without asking them to change their behaviour might be the best use case for AI today as it actually gets rid of required changes
• Rather than focussing on the highest tech potential, go for the ones with the highest likelihood of adoption and that is where users don't have to change 

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about the renewal of insurance contracts 🎙️

• Whether customers must actively renew their insurance contracts (forced renewal) or contracts renew as long as you don’t cancel them (auto-renewal) makes a big difference for insurance markets.
• The difference in Lifetime Customer Value (LTV) between direct customers and broker customers is bigger in forced renewal markets than in auto-renewal markets.
• In forced renewal markets more focus is placed on keeping the customer and the processes to do so are much more complex.
• Any feature to bind customers (like claims, free discounts, or recurring referral benefits) is more important in forced renewal markets.
• There’s generally more change in forced renewal markets: faster growth of new offerings and competitors and less legacy in old tariffs.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #renewal #strategy

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about Strategic Investment in the Insurance Industry 🎙️

• It’s a good idea to buy other insurers if you want to enter new countries or lines of business – because building this organically isn’t what most insurers are good at.
• Buying insurance sales channels can create a lot of value for insurers.
• Claims management is an area of differentiation, so buying claims service providers can make sense for insurers.
• Buying MGAs can make sense to secure existing flow of business or attract underwriting talent
• Buying alternative sales channels, tech companies or startups is typically a bad idea for insurers.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #investment #strategy

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about broker distribution 🎙️

• Brokers are a valuable distribution channel for most insurers/MGAs
• Segmenting brokers makes a lot of sense – but use profitability, not volume as criteria
• The most profitable brokers will be the ones for which you are the preferred insurer/MGA
• The other brokers will typically deliver business at higher CACs, higher loss ratios and higher churn to you
• Develop every broker into a profitable distribution partner – or cut the ties to stop the bleeding.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #broker #distribution

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!

Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about MGA Market Entry in Germany🎙️

• Germany is a big insurance market, so as a non-German MGA you might consider entering the market.
• Regulation for intermediaries is more light touch than in other EU countries.
• To actively source business, you need (senior) local talent and meet f2f.
• Your reputation-building flywheel should centre around having something to say
• Remember: this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #EU #MGA #Germany #UK #strategy

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about Growth Opportunities in the insurance industry (Bonus Episode):

• Hybrid agencies generate leads online but convert them over the phone.
• Hybrid agencies are scalable: for every new telesales agent you typically get about 200 new customers per month.
• You can easily start a hybrid agency by assigning the agency status to a specialised team using very similar conditions to the ones you give to new physical agencies.
• A hybrid agency can work with your existing products and processes. No need to invest there.
• There are many levers you must optimise to maximise a hybrid agency’s success. Complement your know-how with external skills.

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity

Get Your Insurance Fix on “The Insurance Couch” Podcast!Join Oliver Lang, former CEO of InsurTech Unicorn Wefox/One Insurance, Supervisory board member and Advisor and Nikolaus Sühr, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech Enabler KASKO as they bring you unique insights from their experiences in the insurance world.

This episode is all about Growth Opportunities in the insurance industry (4/4):

• Quick growth can be achieved by winning new sales partners with existing customers (brokers, multi-agents, banks, etc.).
• Don’t give the sales partners parts of your margin: solve some of their problems.
• Adjust your products and processes to help sales partners grow their number of products per customer, decrease the time for a sale or reduce back-office costs.
• If you want to win a “whale” (a very large sales partner) send your CEO to their CEO and start solving THEIR problems (not yours)
• Solve the capacity constraint by reprioritising projects and/or using external capacity

Listen to “The Insurance Couch” to stay tuned for the newest chatter about the industry!

#insurance #insuranceindustry #versicherungsbranche #versicherung #versicherer #growth #opportunity