The insurance industry is undergoing major digital transformation.
It's not just about cost and premiums and actually tables anymore, but the underlying
data, AI-based transactional agents, consumerization, the market, individual environment,
social economic, convenience, different generational preference, and more and more. How can we
trust the use of big data when personal data is still handled in a non transparent manner?
How can we turn insurance into an engaging product?
Wefox believes that by having the people owning and controlling their data and the
ethical usage of it, consumers will feel safer to embrace technology.
Thanks for joining our session. Insurers aim to reduce risk with big data, but is there risk
for you?
Julian, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you.
Clearly, there are three topics I believe audience may be interested in talking with
you.
One is around entrepreneurship, right?
You and I both are entrepreneurship.
I think sharing a little bit about entrepreneurship and about your company that you viewed, that
wefox that I'm very proud to be associated with.
And then lastly, also talk about the work you're doing to address the public need around
tracking applications that you have worked with the non-profit. I guess it's called
healthy together.
Yes.
And I understand it's "gesund zusammen". [inaudible].
So I would be very interested in understanding more about that.
I think there was a study subject that we can talk.
What would it be in your wefox journey?
What would it be success look like?
Let's say three to five years out.
What are you envisioning?
So what we focused as us digitize insurance. And insurance is today something that most
people don't like it is.
Yeah, it's painful.
Right.
And essentially, what you do is you enter a couple of data points, variables, right?
Your age, your gender and so forth, your address, your address, and yeah, like 15 data points.
You get a price, you start paying for it.
You start forgetting what's actually in the policy, right?
Something bad happens.
You need to take the policy, fine print, you read through the fine print, a paper, paper,
paper.
And then in the best case, they pay the money back.
So terrible customer experience, right?
And we are in front of the third data revolution.
So what changes in the next few years is that everyone
will own 15 devices in his life.
And the amount of real time data that's collected about people is so much more valuable to understand
people's risk.
So this third data revolution, the IOT data revolution will have a big impact on
any industry on every industry, but on insurance, especially big because insurance is based
on data.
And what we believe is that what we can contribute to is turning insurance into a really engaging
product, into a product that people love.
And that provides real safety.
And what we see is that based on contextual data, so knowing much more about customers
in real time, we can understand what is their risk right now.
And we can also help them reduce the risk that they're exposed right now to prevent
something bad from happening.
Right?
So Julian, if I can translate it a bit, the old industry was really based on traditional
demographic-driven, and which is basically your age, your address probably dictate your
risk profile much more than what you really are. Exactly! Where it is today with number
of IOT device, you know, so much more about the way we live, our habits and our behaviors
and what we even consume and how we even drive.
All those informations will give much better insight around personal risk profile.
So demographic to personal and that journey is with digitalization.
Absolutely.
And that is what's going to disrupt this industry.
Absolutely.
And it will become such a beautiful product because it will become a friend in your life
that gives you advice on how to live a longer and happier life without the terrible tragedies.
And because today insurance is only there to pay after something terrible has happened,
but if we can prevent the terrible things from happening, we can make people live longer
and increase the quality of their life.
So basically knowing a lot about us, this information is not only about risk understanding
the risk, but really it's about behavior change.
Absolutely.
It's about the change that's going to make us live better.
And because we all know more about where we are, what our risk is, we can change the risk
by being more proactive, by doing more exercise or by eating the right food or not going to
the bar as much, all that type of stuff.
That what you're saying.
Absolutely.
And of course the freedom of the individual and the ethical usage of data, these two things
are central, but if we nail these two things, then this is the future.
And we're talking about one of the most engaging products of the future of humanity.
So let's talk about this kind of the other side of any data.
Which is about really about two areas.
In my view, one is around security of your data.
And the second aspect is really privacy of your data.
And these two are fundamental to, in a way human rights.
And if you violate that and better become a compromise, there are people doesn't
want to take.
So how do you manage the, your data, your client's data, and also providing the right
advice that are relevant, but not you're violating that principle.
So I think we have to differentiate between a pre-consciousness time and the post-consciousness
time about data, and we still live in the pre-consciousness time about data.
So we live in the, what I call second data revolution, the internet.
And in the last 20 years, what has happened is I told Facebook what I, like I told Google,
what I'm looking for, the data went through my mind and I communicated it actively.
And that has led to a certain consciousness about usage of data.
I give you data, I receive value.
I like it right now with IOT devices, the world changes and we'll create a post on
data consciousness.
And this is really because these devices in my life, they will talk directly to Facebook,
directly to Google, and the data will not go through my own consciousness, so that Facebook
and Google, they know more about me than I know about myself consciously, and that creates
a whole different world, right?
So I think what we have to do is we have to be good citizens in the pre-conscious in this
world, and we need to prepare for the post consciousness world.
So what is our company doing in the pre-conscious world?
It's really acting with the categorical imperative of Kant.
So that's the only thing I tell the data scientists and the developers and the product managers
at wefox is you don't do anything right.
And we're allowed to do everything from a regulatory perspective, by the way, right.
We are allowed to almost do everything and there's no regular regulation yet about data.
If we look at what we can do now, it's really, of course, a tier two regulations.
That's easy because it's very low bar, even with GDPR.
And what we do on top of that is we say we don't do anything with the data that I would
not want to done with my own data.
Yeah.
And that's the guiding principle, but post this consciousness of data that will come
over the next five years is actually accelerated through covert.
We need a new infrastructure, a new global infrastructure that goes into what you said
data privacy and data security.
And the answer can only be that the new paradigm must be the data is owned by the individual.
And data is stored on decentralized storage
Where your device devices, jab, basically data should belong to the owner of the device
rather than data being going up and then owned by someone else.
I think that principle is really critical.
It's something that Samsung believes in.
We always try to say your data belongs to you.
Let's change subjects a little bit to your journey.
So tell me about the journey that you're making a startup to scale up.
What are some of the lessons that you have learned and what you're willing to share with
other CEOs who wants to get scaled up?
So you start on the one in the living room at the table with your co-founder and you build
a friendship and you build trust.
You create an idea.
And then that same person a few years later leads a company was, you know, 600 people
with, you know, C level with, you know, compliance departments, legal, like, I mean, these are
two different human beings, right?
So me like four years ago, and me today, it's like two different Julian's.
Right. and I think this really brings out the point that
The only way that you get two personalities too
Completely different personalities.
Yeah. and I think the only way on how this is possible is by every single day, reflecting
upon your own behavior, your own strengths and weaknesses and developing on a personal
level constantly, changing, changing every day.
Thinking about in the evening, what were the things that I could have?
I realized I certain patterns from the past that might create energy block blockages in
the company and that might have, you know, destroyed value rather than created value
in this new setup that I've experienced today.
And how can I do this tomorrow in a better way?
What of my fundamental beliefs about life?
Should I question based on my experience, again.
It's about constant learning and being able to willing to change in the learning process
is the mindset.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So my advice is to go through this slow and mostly actually always painful process of
challenging your own beliefs.
I want to change the subject
to this project on health sit together, and clearly you're involved with nonprofit
consortium of players bring their best mind together and best engineers to do something
about this pandemic.
Right?
So tell us about the journey and how you're involved and how they seek orange.
We thought about creating an initiative where we would say we built technology for people
that are hit by the crisis because we have this competency of building technology, and
it's now more important than ever to use it.
What we have been doing is two things: on the one side, and we have been building a privacy
first COVID tracing app that makes sure that what I said before what I think is the biggest
paradigm shift of the future of the next 10, 15 years, that the ownership of data goes
back to the individual.
So that's the principle of the COVID tracing of that.
We have built, I'm so different than, you know, in China, for example a covert tracing
app that represents the European freedom and personality and privacy rights.
So that's one thing that we've done because we believe that this is the best tool to help
reduce the spread of the virus with technology.
And then on the other side, we started an accelerator where we called for innovators
to hand in ideas on how to build technology to help people hit by the crisis.
I'm glad you're involved in assembling and being able to call us and being able to also
innovate in a time like this, which is an opportunity as well as the crisis.
Absolutely.
And what we've seen is that there's a new generation of founders who does things for
a purpose and not only for money.
And this was great over the last 10 weeks to see how all of these entrepreneurs came
together and just worked for a common purpose and cut all of the motivation from a purpose,
never asking about a contract, never asking about money, who reimburses my resources,
never asking about these things, but just saying we are in a crisis, we have competencies
that can help let's do it.
It is solving problems together rather than about what's my motivation.
You know, I think that that also up the, a nonprofit that I've been working with extreme
tech challenge which you're part of. The idea behind the extreme tech challenge is
about helping really startups to focus on UN 17 sustainability goals, whether it is
education, whether it's health, whether it's poverty or inclusiveness all those
things need to be looked at by.
And I think technology can help.
And we want to mobilize startup ideas like your accelerator idea to help and solve these
problems.
And one difference also is working with corporations. Corporations that can work with, because if
Microsoft, Samsung or Google, or Intel work together, we can accelerate that ideas to
the market.
And I think that is the idea behind this particular nonprofit that I'm working with.
And I think the two has a really good synergy.
It's a new world, it's a new world.
And it's really people not just asking what's in it for me, but what's in it for us.
Thank you, Julian really appreciate your time.
It was a great conversation.
Thank you so much.
I wish you the best with wefox journey, as well as some of the impact work that you're
doing.
Thank you so much, Young
for the invitation.
I appreciate that.