--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. The string of dynamic guests continues as we bring you today the CEO of Zywave, Jason Liu. This came out of a conversation I was having with my account rep at Zywave. We were talking about some different features and tools, and I've really become an enormous fan of Zywave. We talk a little bit about that during the episode.
--:-- In particular, I love how the tool has become very accessible to small agencies like Rogue Risk. I can now provide similar, if not better, services to my commercial clients than many of the brokerages that are 10 times the size of Rogue. I mean, just about every brokerage is 10 times the size of Rogue right now. But you know what I'm saying? It really is a competitive advantage. I've been wholly impressed.
--:-- I was speaking to her and I said, "Man, I'd love to have your CEO on just to talk about what you guys are doing and where you're going." I think a lot of agents circle around the ecosystem of Zywave but feel like it might be out of their reach. I just wanted to expose you guys to what it is, what it does, how I'm using it, and why I think they're a key part of commercial producing agencies' future technology portfolio.
--:-- It's a great episode. Jason is a good guy. He's very dynamic. You can tell he's enthusiastic about the business and about what we're talking about. He also has a great new book out. If you go to ryanhanley.com forward slash Jason Liu, and he spells his name L-I-U, so Jason-Liu, or just go to ryanhanley.com and you'll find the episode. He's written a dynamic book. I really, really like the e-book. I've actually printed it out and taken some notes on it. It's really good. A lot of times when you get stuff from CEOs of companies, it's kind of just blah. This is not that at all. It's really well written and there's a lot of meaty stuff in it, a lot of good stats. I actually really enjoyed it. You can get that too. He seems like a pretty open dude. He even gives out his email at the end if you want to contact him.
--:-- I've been using Zywave so much, I felt it was important to share that with you guys. I hope you enjoy this episode.
--:-- Another tool that I enjoy and a sponsor of this show is Better Agency. Guys, I was skeptical of Better Agency at first, not because I didn't believe in the founders, but they had very big goals, big aspirations. There are so many CRMs in our system and I know how hard it is to build one of these tools. I tried other things and finally I did a demo about a month ago. I talked to Nick a lot about the tool, what I was trying to do, where I'm trying to take Rogue, and where I thought I was being held back with other tools as I flailed a little bit with technology.
--:-- I am wholly impressed with Better Agency. William Shaw and the entire team there, you can just tell this tool was built by agency owners. They're constantly pushing forward, constantly pushing out new updates. Their new integration with Lightspeed Voice is the balls. I mean it really is. When someone calls the agency, I'm now getting call pops right on my screen. I can make calls through the computer, through my phone. It's tracking everything right inside Better Agency.
--:-- Guys, there's a good chance that the agencies that are started today may not need agency management systems. Better Agency is a big part of that. I've loved using the tool. I've loved every second of it. I like that the Facebook group is active and helping each other. I like that when you put feature requests in, you're seeing those feature requests come out. I've only been on Better Agency for three weeks now. I don't plan on changing. I plan on building my agency around this tool. I'm really excited about it.
--:-- If you're checking out Better Agency, if you're thinking about it, go get a demo. I'm going to say the same thing about Better Agency that I said about Tarmica. Get the demo. Know what the tool does. You don't have to purchase the tool now. It may not be the right time for you, and it may just not be a great fit, but know what it does. So go get the demo.
--:-- Alright guys, with that, let's get on to Jason Liu and this tremendous episode talking about him, his beliefs, what he's seeing in the industry, and how Zywave can help your agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm good. Thanks for coming on the show, man.
--:-- Jason Liu: Hey, you bet. No, I appreciate the invite. Cool stuff. I actually listened to a couple of your podcasts.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, boy. Those are... I guess my style is much less interview and more conversation.
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah, I love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's like Joe Rogan. I love the stuff. I have a hard time taking that. I'm such a big Joe Rogan fan. I do just like talking though. I feel like there are plenty of shows that have set questions that are just going to hammer you. I'm so much more interested in talking to people. I've been saying for years, this is free consulting for me. This is a really backdoor way of getting free consulting. That's what I use the show for.
--:-- So no, man, it's great. I read through the book that you wrote, the Sales Revolution book.
--:-- Jason Liu: Oh, yeah, with Don.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Tons of questions about that. I really want to take it wherever you want to go. I've said some topics that I'm interested in, but yeah, man, we can just jump in and roll.
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah, Ryan. As I said, I think my personality is very similar to yours. I just enjoy having passion for this type of stuff. Hey, let's make it conversational and see where it goes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Cool. So I guess where I want to start is maybe not at the beginning. I feel like Zywave in the last few years has taken a huge step forward. From being, and I mean this with all due respect, it very much was seen by the industry at large as a big broker kind of resource, but not something very accessible by anyone outside of the mega brokers and the super regional brokers.
--:-- As a single agency, I'm a startup agency as of March 9th, which I don't recommend starting an agency at the beginning of a pandemic. That's just the FYI. But as a single person agency, I'm a subscriber of Zywave. Everyone who's listening knows I subscribe to Zywave, Broker Briefcase, Modmaster, and MyWave Connect. It's incredibly accessible. I use it almost every day. It's the second thing I log into after my CRM, Better Agency.
--:-- That to me has unlocked the resources that I feel like for a long time have been only accessible to big brokers. I'm excited for that. I'm interested in the thought process behind it and I'm super interested in if you see that being more of the path of where Zywave is going.
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah, Ryan. You obviously cover a lot, so I can unpack several aspects of it. One aspect was what we've done the last couple years. There's a second aspect of bringing a lot of the tools that big brokers have and bringing them to smaller brokers, allowing them to leverage leading edge technology. Maybe I can start with the first one and then we talk about the second one.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Go wherever you want to go. That's how I do this. You make my job easy.
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah. Ryan, I'm going to quickly give you a little bit of my history. I've been running software companies now for 25 years. 10 years running venture-backed companies. Very fortunate. Took a company public, sold a couple companies. The last 15 years I've been doing larger businesses, software businesses, helping them grow. Coming into businesses that were kind of slowing down and trying to figure out how to unlock their growth potential and grow.
--:-- I took over Zywave about two years ago. There have been so many things that we've done to drive the growth element of Zywave. One of which is just being a better partner. Trying to be accessible to customers. I constantly am on the road meeting with customers, learning and listening. To me, that's such a fun part of the job. The other part was the innovation around the product and the technology and all the acquisitions that we've made.
--:-- What we've been able to do at Zywave is help drive much more innovation around leveraging smart automation. What I mean by that is a lot of things that were being done manually or with disparate systems, we've now pulled together into an integrated system and added a layer of intelligence and automation on top of it. To me, it's an exciting time to be part of this and to have a chance to talk to you guys. A lot of the ideas and visions have come from the product folks that we have, but also some of my own background.
--:-- I came out of a previous company that was one of the leaders in sales tech. We worked with some of the largest companies in the world, but thousands of companies in advanced sales technologies, whether it be CRM or marketing automation. We're applying them to the insurance vertical, which has historically been a little bit behind other verticals. A lot of the ideas that we have are simply repurposing things that have already worked in other industries and applying them to insurance agents.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That basically described my entire career for the last 10 years in the insurance industry. Taking cool stuff from other spaces and bringing it into this space. People are like, "Oh my god, you're in Star Wars." And I'm like, "No, I just stole that idea from someplace else."
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah, no, I think you're right. Zywave is one of the three large platform players in this space, but I think we're the one that's much more focused on the front office. Vertafore and Applied are primarily AMS, back office. Zywave has an AMS on the benefits side, but doesn't have an AMS on the P&C side. 90% of our revenue is front office.
--:-- Think about the core things that producers and brokers need to generate revenue. It's all around helping make brokers and producers more effective and more efficient, and then helping them support their clients more efficiently. That's what we do. The core systems are the CRM, marketing automation, content management, and what we call quoting. That's not just a comparative rater, but also how you do benchmarking and plan analysis coupled with the quoting. Then how do you support your clients and automate the process digitally of supporting your clients? Zywave has been investing a ton of resources in all of those areas.
--:-- The last thing I'll mention to you, Ryan, about the small broker is we've really adopted two specific things. One is the whole concept of consumerization of IT. People now want their business applications to run like their consumer apps. You see growth in things like Lemonade. People have a disconnect when they're used to using Google or Amazon, and then they get on their business app and it looks like something from the 18th century. They really expect their business apps to be consumer apps. We invested a lot of time trying to make our business apps more consumer-like.
--:-- The other thing is integrations. When we came to this world two years ago, it was a very siloed world where systems didn't talk to each other. Brokers had to re-key everything into different applications. At Zywave, we've opened up our platform, put in open APIs. Now a broker can use Zywave for marketing automation, but if they want to use Vertafore for an AMS or Applied for an AMS, we will integrate with those solutions and allow a seamless integration. I think all that has helped.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know how much you know about what I'm trying to build with Rogue Risk. When I put my plan together to launch this agency, the whole idea behind it was this idea of a human optimized agency. The core thought behind that is I still believe to this day that the independent agency model is the best model for both sales and retention and everything in between. The problem is for too long, we were leveraging humans in transaction points where humans added zero value. How do we take the humans out of the points that don't add value so they can spend their time in the moments where they're maximizing their value?
--:-- That's really what I'm trying to build. How do you set up the systems and levers so I can duplicate myself and that person comes in and can spend time where they're maximizing their value? In surveying the scene of technology that's out there, it is obvious to me today that organizations are thinking about this. They may not be using the same words I just used, but they're thinking the same way. The organizations that are not thinking this way are going to struggle. This is today's problem. We're not automating away the broker, but we are automating the things where the broker adds no value. That's really the game that we're playing.
--:-- One of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised by, I just never was a client and only knew you from the outside until about March, is that this is completely obvious in the tools that I use with Zywave. Everything from the content and the content management systems and being able to deliver real-time value with in-depth articles that might take me three days to write. I can go in, find something, craft it to the way that I speak, and deliver tremendous value in that moment. Modmaster allows me to be a much deeper value provider to my customers. On the back end, I'm onboarding every one of my commercial clients into MyWave Connect. The feedback I'm getting is, "I didn't even know that tools like this were available. I can't believe I'm getting this from my insurance agent."
--:-- Those are the kinds of things that this next generation of broker is going to have to adopt. I like that at least one of the big three is pushing forward into this space. I think Vertafore and Applied are trying, but they're still a little too siloed for my liking. You guys seem to be out in front.
--:-- Jason Liu: No, I appreciate it, Ryan. I think it's in our DNA to be as innovative as possible. To your point about the nature and the role of the broker, I 100% agree. I actually spent some time on your website. I totally agree with where you're heading with this. You need to be a consultative manager. A lot of the really transactional stuff allows systems like Zywave to do that, to free you up to be a consultative advisor.
--:-- I can give you a personal story. At Zywave, we're a software company. Five, 10 years ago as a CEO, I really didn't pay attention to my insurance policies. I let our CFO do that. Given the complexity now, I now have regular conversations at the board level about cyber risk, about other types of risk. One of our board members had another company he works with that actually had ransomware where their company was being held. We now are having significant board level discussions about our exposure around cybersecurity and what our policies are around cyber risk.
--:-- This is where I need our broker to provide that value-added expertise rather than some of the transactional stuff. I think the world is going in that direction. The need for a broker is only going to grow exponentially because of the complexity. Now you're talking about telemetrics. I was on a conference with the CEO of Nationwide, and they're talking about moving to usage-based pricing and micro-segmentation of customers. That's complexity that wasn't there previously. It's perfect for a broker to figure out ways that we can leverage telemetrics and usage-based pricing to be better for us. To your point, that's where the world of a broker is going to go. Just let the systems do the transactional stuff.
--:-- The other point about content, you'll see Zywave has done a couple things. One is we continue to have this incredibly robust content, both for servicing your clients and for prospecting. Snackable content is something we're building a lot of. Little three-minute videos, newsletters, things that can get someone engaged. Then you can offer them more robust content. We'll be releasing this month the ability for our customers to actually customize the content, change the layout, change the logo, so it doesn't have to look like the next guy's. You can even edit some of the wording. We're trying to do all we can to further the importance of content.
--:-- The other part is once you have the content, making it easier to deliver that content. We've been investing heavily in content management. You don't have to go to one system to get Zywave content, another system to get carrier content, and another system to get your sales and market content. You can put them all into our Broker Briefcase product and very easily send out email campaigns and download the content rather than having to go to all these different repositories.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: These are the things that agents are starting to wake up to. My market, our audience for the most part, is the middle sized agency down to the smaller size agencies. I know we have some bigger guys that listen, but for the most part, it's the carriers that serve the middle market agency and below, and the agents themselves. I've been speaking on insurance stages for over a decade now, not right this moment, hopefully again someday. It still feels like they're just starting to wake up to these things.
--:-- A big part of that for a long time was the lack. Insurance agents tend to buck anything that isn't an insurance specific system. Those systems for so long were so far behind the times in terms of their ability to deliver content to clients. That is starting to rapidly change. What's been nice is that the agents are starting to adopt this as well.
--:-- From a competitive landscape standpoint, people would initially think, "Well, if I have more agents who are sharing content and sharing ideas, that makes it harder for me to stand out." I actually think it's the opposite. All that does is elevate people's disposition towards independent agents. People think of us so often as the lowest common denominator version of just hawking prices. As we start to push into the market with more content and more expertise, it'll only elevate the industry and its place as a true professional alongside legal and accounting. Taking a more consultative approach is incredible.
--:-- Jason Liu: I think you nailed it on the head. I spent some time on your website and I love where you're going and the way you view things around mitigating risk. You could get an accountant just to do your books. You could get a broker just to write you a risk policy. But the best accountants give you advice on your business, how to save money or do things differently. I see the same thing with risk.
--:-- A lot of the content that Zywave creates allows brokers to more easily give that advice. You've seen some of our content. If you go to a restaurant owner, or in your case you had a bar example, you can give them very specific advice on how to mitigate risk as a restaurant owner or a bar. You can give them videos using Zywave content on tips and tricks on how to reduce risk and employee safety around restaurants. That is all value add. If I'm an employer looking between one agent and another agent, and one agent is just writing policies versus another one giving me this rich, consultative analysis and information and advice, it becomes a no-brainer.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For my agent friends that are listening, the pushback on that idea is often, "All the customers care about is price." My pushback is always that we have trained them to think that way. Maybe that first year when you present them with a more consultative approach, they're still in the mentality of price. But that next year, when you come back again and you hit them with that same consultative approach, they're going to start to see things a little differently. Maybe it takes two or three years, but eventually this is what people actually want.
--:-- No one wants to see themselves as just a price shopper. No one wakes up in the morning and goes, "You know what? I just buy crappy cheap stuff." That's not the way anyone thinks. They wake up and go, "I'm so savvy. I get that this is just a game and it's all the same stuff." They think they're really smart for making these decisions. We have to retrain them. Our desperation to sell in the moment creates this situation where price is all that we sell on. If we can think a little further out, two, three, 10 years down the road, that account is eventually going to swing to your consultative approach. They'll stay with you if you can stick with them and hold to your guns of being a true consultant.
--:-- I do think that tools like Zywave help us do that. They're certainly helping me so far in my young agency. I want to stop the sales pitch for Zywave. That's not what this is meant to be. But I believe in products and I like talking about products that I believe in. It has helped me get further along than I would be if I hadn't made the investment. For a small agency, it's not inexpensive, but that's okay. You get such tremendous value back. I've enjoyed it and considered it a good decision to have purchased the product.
--:-- Jason Liu: I appreciate you saying that, Ryan. I appreciate your support of Zywave. I love it. Maybe I can add another way to think about it. There's what I always talk about: efficiency and effectiveness. When I talk about efficiency, it's just automating your tasks. Zywave is spending a lot of time automating things that you're doing manually. Marketing automation, instead of you having to send out individual emails, now you can do dynamic lists and very easily set up significant marketing campaigns. With mod analysis, we can do it in a very automated way.
--:-- We're also increasingly trying to add this element of effectiveness. Effectiveness is how do we actually help you close more business, close bigger deals, and win more customers. A lot of what you were talking about with the content is such a critical component. It actually makes you more value add to your customers, which will help you generate more business.
--:-- Even some things like, I do want to plug another acquisition we made, which was called My Edge.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I was going to ask you about My Edge. Please do. I think a lot of people are wondering. They saw it. I don't know if they knew of the tool beforehand. Now it's kind of on people's tongues.
--:-- Jason Liu: My Edge. I think the analogy I would give is when Microsoft bought LinkedIn. People were like, "Why did Microsoft buy it?" One reason was people were using it as a primary contact manager and recruiting tool. But it was the rich data within LinkedIn that ultimately was going to make all of Microsoft's products smarter and better.
--:-- If you look at My Edge, it is an incredible prospecting tool. It is the best data source for plan data that is out there. You might go to ZoomInfo and get contact information of Zywave, here's Jason Liu's phone number and email address. But it doesn't give you what plan I'm using for my commercial business or what broker I'm using for my benefits business, what my renewal dates are, how much am I paying, the number of feet away from a fire hydrant, or the size of my facility. All that information sits within My Edge.
--:-- From a prospecting standpoint, you can start doing prospecting of all the renewals that are coming up in a zip code in Utah and do targeted campaigns for those employers that are coming up for renewal. Or you can look and see how many DOT violations have happened in a certain zip code in Florida and do a specific campaign around that. This type of rich plan information allows you to do such incredible micro prospecting. Instead of it being like a shotgun or you just happen to bump into someone at a luncheon, you can actually have all that information to prospect.
--:-- Ultimately, what that allows you to do over time is have a lot more rich intelligence. Before you go into an account, you already know all of their DNA of their plan. You can spin up quotes or send them content because you already know they got into a safety violation or they had this type of facility.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is one of the things that I've learned about what's coming down the pipe. You're looking at a company like Lemonade. I have my own feelings, which I've shared multiple times on Lemonade. I think the idea here is simple products like renter's insurance can be automated. They can. But the more sophisticated products, high value homes, businesses, when you're having to figure out a risk every time, capture what seems... When I'm asking someone what year their building was built, when I'm talking to a business owner, I'm like, "Hey, what year was your building built?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That is a stupid question to have to ask a business owner because it is not helping with the risk management discussion in any way. They're like, "Oh, I think like 1979." It doesn't matter to them. They don't care when their building was built. And then the next question is, "What year was your electrical updated?" And they're going, "What is this guy talking about? Why am I even here? Who is this Yahoo?"
--:-- These are questions that I think brokers should not be asking. Not because they're not important, although I would argue they are not to underwriting, but because they waste time in points of conversation that don't allow you to actually do your job, which is find out where the real risk is. We need to find out where are these people exposed. Is it a cyber risk? Is it EPLI? Is it that something's going on with their commercial auto program? We realized they're not requiring personal liability limits above a hundred thousand on their own drivers, or they're allowing inexperienced drivers to be part of their commercial auto.
--:-- This is where we need to dig in and spend that limited time we have with someone. We're only going to get 20 to 45 minutes with somebody. No business owner is going to give us four hours of their time. If we can get rid of all these silly questions, the questions that are really just transactional underwriting stuff, and get to the meat and potatoes quicker, this is an enormous win for a broker.
--:-- I see tools like MyEdge, which I've used. I've used Insurance X Dates since the beginning as my source for this information. I actually just did a demo of MyEdge last Friday, and I have a feeling I'm going to be making the move over since the price is basically the same. That to me is dispensing with transactional data accumulation that almost weakens the relationship, so you can spend more time on the points that strengthen it.
--:-- Jason Liu: Yeah, no, I think you just unpacked a couple of things. One is, as you said, all of that forensic data about the accounts is definitely the vision of where MyEdge is and continues to go. We have a team of folks collecting all of this data. Some of it is public, some of it is private. With workers' comp, we're now petitioning each individual state to get all of the granular workers' comp information around plan data.
--:-- To your point, we don't want you to have to spend time asking those questions. Ideally, you can use MyEdge and have access to that. But I'd argue we're trying to think one step better: to actually start giving you recommendations. To your point about a facility, we can actually say, "There's some potential flood risk with this facility. Maybe you should pitch them on flood insurance." We're going to increasingly try to be more intelligent, not just giving you the data, but the real intelligence behind it so you can leverage that. Stay tuned on that. I know it seems like Star Wars stuff, but we've been spending a lot of time with AI and different ways to parse this data to start providing smart recommendations.
--:-- The other thing, just to your point about the quoting process, it'll be interesting. There's been a lot of attention spent with Lemonade on the consumer side, and you're seeing companies like us, Vertafore, and Applied particularly start looking at this on the commercial side. On the personal lines side, there have been commercial raters out there for a while. On the benefits side, Zywave made two acquisitions to build by far the leading comparative rater quoting system. There's a lot of attention being focused here because I think that's the next frontier. Applied made a big acquisition of Indio, Vertafore is looking at the space, and there are players like SEMCI, Tarmika, and Bold Penguin.
--:-- It's an interesting area. I think people are trying to figure out how you digitize more of the experience and make it more of a push-button experience for quoting, which frees up the time of the broker to do the consultative selling.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think slowly but surely, the forward-leaning agents and some of the insurtechs are pushing legacy players into the idea that control is less important than being part of the process. That to me is exciting. I know you guys have partnered with SEMCI. I'm obviously a Tarmika user. I'm looking forward to the day that you integrate with them as well. I can push data from MyEdge into Tarmika, which spits out my quotes, which I can then push through my Better Agency CRM, which is quasi-replacing my AMS at this point. Now I'm having what is almost a seamless push. I'm seeing a prospect's data in MyEdge, pushing it through my rater, getting at least a pretty decent indication of what that rate is, and now I'm prospecting on real rates to customers.
--:-- That is the holy grail opportunity that I think we're super close on. We're not far from that being a reality for agents. When you can couple that with expertise, insight, and a true consultative approach to selling, you've now digitized the stuff that wastes time. That's a five-hour process today in standard form, and you could do that in minutes. Now all that time is redirected into being a consultative advisor. That's the game changer right there. That's how you scale the human experience in property casualty insurance. I don't do a ton on the benefits side, but I'm assuming it's the same.
--:-- Jason Liu: Absolutely, Ryan. I think your vision is exactly where everyone is heading. We think that MyEdge is the key, and we will work with other comparative raters as well. Providing that information in an automated fashion not only condenses the time it takes to collect that information, it also removes steps. For something like a BOP policy, it takes about 15 minutes to get all that information inputted. A lot of times, the person you're interviewing, the business owner, doesn't even know the answer. They have to go get it. Now you've created an extra step in the process, adding another week or day. You ask them, "What's the facility size?" They may not know. "How far are you from a fire hydrant?" All these extra steps. It's not just about saving time, it's also removing steps so you can automate the quoting process and focus on the selling, the closing, and the servicing.
--:-- On the benefits side, we've already done this with small group quoting and level-funded plans. The thing I wanted to share is that it's not just the actual quoting. When you do this type of quoting, you have to do some type of claims analysis or plan analysis. We're also trying to automate that process as well, which we have on the benefits side and are looking to bring to the P&C side. It's not just showing them a quote. You've got to show them a lot of information and detail in your presentation as you consult. It gives you the tools as an independent agent to not have to build out spreadsheets. You can put all that together in a much more professional and consumable way and show it in real time.
--:-- On the benefits side, we can now adjust the premiums or the contribution level in real time and show the impact on the policy while you're meeting with a client. That's the type of tooling we want to give you, so you don't have to go back and rerun analyses if they want to change. You can do it all in real time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's nothing worse than saying, "Okay, I'll make that change and I'll get back to you tomorrow with your updated quotes." Every minute between that moment you have their attention and when you have to resend them stuff is a minute that someone else could get in. Something else gets in their head. A new expense comes up. They just get frustrated and step away. Now you've done a tremendous amount of work that doesn't come to fruition.
--:-- The other thing I would say is I have had more and more smaller accounts expecting to see multiple quotes from different companies in a comparison on the property casualty side. This happened to me two days ago. It was a $1,200 BOP range, companies coming in around $1,200 to $1,500. A relatively small account. The expectation from the business owner was, "Well, what else was in the market?" I didn't come prepared because I hadn't expected it. I just presented them with whatever was best, but in her mind, she was thinking, "How do I know that's the best? What were some other companies?" I said, "Travelers came in a little higher, The Hartford was close," and I ultimately put them with Chubb. But that expectation is only going to become more a part of the culture of business owners and commercial buyers. They want to see multiple quotes from different carriers in your proposal, like you might see traditionally in a benefits proposal.
--:-- Jason Liu: I think you're spot on, Ryan. We mentioned earlier about the consumerization of it. In the insurance world, with consumer solutions like Policy Genius or Lemonade, you can look at your auto or home insurance and get five quotes. People are going to increasingly expect that in the commercial and business world. I think your point is extremely well-founded, and over time, that's going to be more and more of the expectation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, I want to be respectful of your time and energy. I do want to ask you a couple of questions from your seat. I took these out of the book, and I'll have it linked up in the show notes. Obviously, you can get this at Zywave as well: "The Sales Revolution: Digital Disruption Demystified: The Ultimate Guide to Driving Agency Growth." That is a heck of a name. I like it.
--:-- From your seat and the conversations you've had, you were recently in a conversation with Nationwide CEOs. You're sitting in rooms with people who are thinking big about the industry and deep into the future. I'm super interested in what are some of the bigger ideas, bigger concepts that you see? We talked about consumerization of technology and some of the tools. What are some of the major ideas around different types of competition, different types of change in how we differentiate ourselves? What are some of the big concepts you see or hear other leaders in our industry talking about when you're sitting in these rooms?
--:-- Jason Liu: First of all, I would encourage you to get Don Bailey on the show. He was my co-author on the book. Don is a fantastic guy. He's the former CEO of Marsh, Willis North America, and the president of Marsh, and before that an executive of Allstate. He's phenomenal. These types of questions are probably much better directed to him because he's a big thinker and has a lot more wisdom about it than I do.
--:-- But to your point, some of the big things Don talked about, which I feel are the right ones, he's been in insurance for 30 years and nothing really changed. All of a sudden, he believes the world is changing now. The obvious question is why now? Some of it is things like COVID that have really accelerated the dynamics. But I think what he would tell you is that digital disruption is the biggest denominator changing what's going on. It seems like a fancy term, but it is the advent of all these technologies flooding the markets—telematics, big data, wearable devices. All of these things are bringing enormous change to the equation that is disrupting the industry.
--:-- On my board, I have the CEO of Mitchell. Are you familiar with Mitchell, Ryan? Alex from Mitchell. They are one of the largest providers to the big carriers around a bunch of areas, including claims tools. They've gotten to a point now where in the past you'd have claims adjusters. Now you can digitize it. Take a picture of the dent in your truck, send it to them, and they'll automatically, without humans even being involved, estimate the damage and immediately give you a quote and suggest where you can get it fixed. The ability to use digital photography and AI to analyze that, which no longer requires a claims adjuster who took a week to process a claim, that's where the world is going.
--:-- We talk about telematics. That disruption is real, and it's allowing carriers to start thinking about usage-based pricing, which is going to start coming more and more. Usage-based pricing is the ability to micro-target your customer segment. If you have trucks that drive a lot and get into a lot of accidents, or drivers who drive really fast, they can start charging different rates. With the technologies, they'll be able to monitor these vehicles. Telematics will be sent back to the carrier knowing that this employer's drivers constantly speed versus these other ones don't, and they'll charge you more. You'll be paying by the drink. The further you drive, the more you drive, you'll start getting different pricing. I think that's the next wave. I don't think we're 20 years off. Maybe two to five years off where you're really going to start seeing this stuff change more meaningfully.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Wearables from a workers' comp perspective—healthy employees keep comp premiums down. That's a point of fact. Wearables in comp, if companies have employees with wearables and you can track steps and health, you can ultimately rate comp. I know they're doing that already in health. I think that could come over to the P&C side a lot.
--:-- I made the offhanded comment about telematics. I struggle with telematics because I feel like in personal auto, the standard telematics rating has yet to produce more profit or more consistent profit than the standard rating process where we're just looking at, "Hey, if you're under 25, you probably drive like a jerk." I think in the commercial side, it's a completely different story because of the more structured nature in which people drive and the routing.
--:-- I also see companies coming in and using a lot of this AI to help businesses from a consultative approach around things like routing. Can you come in as a commercial auto carrier to a business with a fleet of 50 vehicles and help them safely route their trucks, better position them, better fuel them, help keep their drivers from driving for an extended period of time where they start to fall asleep, which is a major issue with commercial auto? I think all these things are tremendous.
--:-- Man, I could keep talking about this stuff all day. I'm glad you were willing to come in, spend some time, and talk about Zywave. Since I announced a few months ago that I'm using your tool, I've gotten a tremendous number of questions about it. I think a lot of people see you guys as a leading technology and watch from the outside. I'm hoping that more agents and brokers who want to take a consultative approach to their business will start to consider Zywave as a tool. As you know, I can tell everyone firsthand, it is much more accessible today than it was five or ten years ago. I'm a single person. It's the second tool I open up. I open up Better Agency and then I open up Zywave. Those are my first two apps, after probably Facebook and Instagram and all that crap. I appreciate your time. I hope you keep pushing because I'm rooting for you guys. I've seen it as a serious tool in my business, and I'll most likely be a MyEdge customer as well.
--:-- Jason Liu: Ryan, it's been a pleasure being on your show. To your point, we feel like we're giving you guys as a smaller broker the same tools and advantages of a large broker. That's a lot of our mission right now. I do want to mention this from an accessibility standpoint. My email is
[email protected]. If anyone has any questions or ideas on how we can do things better, as many of you are our customers, I really appreciate that. If there are things you've seen that Zywave needs to improve on, or even the way we handle it from a customer standpoint, please feel free to email me. It's been exciting. I look forward to continuing to get to know you better. I really enjoy your show. It's been fantastic, and I look forward to hearing more. Thanks so much.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, take care. Thank you.
--:-- [End of interview. Podcast outro begins.]
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