Navigating Trends in Marine and Energy Insurance (Stuart Pembery)

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Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today we are joined by Stuart Panberry, who's the head of UK business development at Noria. Welcome to the podcast, Stuart. >> Hi, Mickey. It's great to be here. >> Why don't we start by telling us a little bit about yourself and what do you guys do at Noria? >> Okay, great question. So, I've been working in software with the specialty insurance market for about 30 years. I've worn three different hats. I've represented suppliers. I've represented insurers and brokers and I've also represented consulting firms. So I've worn a number of hats all within the specialty market all over the world and I've spent quite a lot of time in the states working with clients there. So that's me. Noria are the Nordic's leading supplier of marine and energy policy admin systems. Very very successful in that particular sector. Our largest client is guard. They are a what's called a PNI club and Noria is growing very rapidly in what is a niche within a niche and the most important and most valuable thing that we offer is we offer a SAS platform that is foundational and as this conversation goes on I'll explain what that means >> in marine and energy insurance specifically what are the biggest trends that you are seeing right now if there are any trends. >> Yeah.

Oh there there definitely are trends. So the insurance market is typically cyclical and what that means is that the rate at which risk is priced tends to go up and down at a market level rather than an individual carrier level. At the moment the market's been fairly static and so that means that we call it a soft market. Rates are low and when we're in this soft market then it means hard choices need to be made by the carriers to maintain their profitability. And one of the hard choices that we're seeing at the moment is what the carriers do in the soft market when it comes to having a strong foundation on which to build AI agents for instance or to implement niche products using no code platforms. And that driver really sits well with what we have to offer. >> And where specifically does AI actually help in the work that you do today? >> AI is struggling at the moment in the work that we do today. And the reason for this is that in our market data quality is low.

We often have multiple variants of the same data and it's very hard to get really robust results out of AI. We can get indicative results but to get really what I would call industrial strength results that could inform complex workflows is really difficult. So the way the market's going is over the next two years what needs to happen is that data quality needs to be improved. Um the old adage of garbage in garbage out is still a thing. It's been a thing for 30 years and it's still a thing. And what we need to do is to make sure that that data quality is improved. That's where we come in. And then once the data quality is improved, then our platform empowers our clients to do whatever they want on top of that. >> Could you briefly explain how you will improve the data quality? >> Well, the data quality improves by having a single source of the truth. So at the moment many brokers, carriers, captives, they have multiple systems. They have data in spreadsheets.

Excel is ubiquitous within our market. And so wherever you have more than one system, then not only can you have incorrect data, but you can have data that's wrong because of latency issues. So it might be that data hasn't updated in one place, but it has in another. And over the years, our clients infrastructures have become really complicated. So this is the another time when having a single source of the truth that you can rely on, it's auditable and it's robust gives you that foundation and gives our clients a foundation that they can build on. >> Is there something that you would do different in today's world when you currently have the hindsight with all of the experience that you've gathered? >> Great question. I think the hindsight from a client perspective, particularly when we're working with startups and smaller companies, is that it's a false economy to implement or work with simple systems with the expectation that you might update them later because updating them later is always much much trickier and much more difficult than starting with a strong system to start with. Partly because of this data quality issue that I was I was just referencing.

Personally, no, there's nothing I'd do differently. I I love working with Noria. They're a great team. I love the market. I've met thousands of wonderful people and yes, I love what I do. >> That's great. When you find something that you love, everything is much easier. At least from my own experience. >> It is. And I found it by accident. So after when I graduated, I applied for lots of jobs. I only got one job offer. This was very common. I think it's still very common, but it was very common when I when I graduated. And the only job offer I got was from a software company that specializes in in insurance software. So I landed in the insurance world completely by accident and now I wouldn't have it any other way. >> Besides from actually improving the lead quality, is there any specific focus for this year? >> Question. So my focus this year is entirely on what's called the London insurance market. We hope to gain three clients this year. That's a realistic objective.

I think we're about to go live with a second PNI club. I mentioned Guard earlier. We're about to go live with a second PNI club in April and that will put us on a very strong footing because there are very few suppliers who have more than one PNI club as a client. We'll have two. It's a very niche market. So, the fact that we we can meet all their requirements puts us in a really strong position. >> Curious, you said that it's very niche market. How would you currently gather new clients? >> Yeah, the PNI market is very niche. There are only about 20 or 30 PNI clubs around the world. It's a very small target market, but at the same time, we think we're uniquely placed to meet meet its needs. >> Do you actually use any automations inside of your business? >> We do. Within our system, we have lots of automations. So whether it's managing authorities for payments or whether it's for managing what we call the quote and bind process then we have lots of automations there and within Noria ourselves our development life cycle our SDLC is highly automated very efficient you know we're very very good at what we do >> is there any big difference between actually selling to carriers versus brokers in this segment >> there's a big difference what they do our single platform form supports both brokers and carriers and as the market evolves so some brokers also act as carriers that and they can have operations that that's called an MGA and so the brokers requirements can bleed into a carriers requirement also if you have organizations called captives which are insurers that are owned by an organization then the captives actually can be seen as acting as both brokers and carriers.

So the fact that we have a single platform, single code stream that supports both sort of sits us really elegantly across the ecosystem. >> What do you see as the biggest implementation risk in the marine and energy industry that you are in? >> Great question. I could talk for hours about implementation risk because I've been a project manager myself and a typical complex implementation can take over a year. As you say, data migration is a risk. It's very hard sometimes to get back to the original source of the truth and we find lots of historical bookings in the ledgers for instance just wrong. That's an organizational risk. The real challenge though I'd say with an implementation is managing the tradeoff between leveraging how a platform is designed to do things and how an organization's processes are today. Getting that balance between do we change our process or do we change the system or neither is the biggest risk right it's not just a governance issue in the project it's a cultural one and I'd say that's the the biggest risk the second one risk I'd say is all about remembering why this project is happening in the first place the whole world talks about scope creep all the time but actually remembering why we're doing this what the benefits look like at the end of it and how we're going to leverage those benefits is something that I think from a project management perspective needs to be reinforced all the time.

Why are we doing this? Because often gets lost especially on a long and lengthy detailed project like the projects we have. Saying that at Noria all our projects have been successful. We haven't had a failed implementation ever which is quite unusual in the market. >> And how many implementations have you done in the past? >> We're above 20. Yeah, these are big projects. we can stand up if you've got a startup or a small business then we can stand up the system very very quickly it's SAS it's there it's very quick to use >> but when you're looking at a in a complex organization with hundreds of employees and 15 different departments all talking to each other sometimes that's a challenge I mean we've been to project meetings where we've introduced colleagues to each other within an organization who haven't met that's the scale of the complexity that we deal with >> and wrapping this up I would like to ask you what would you advice to people that are in the same industry as you to actually make it in this field? I'd say three things. Firstly, I'd say be curious. Ask questions.

There are no stupid questions like most industries is riddled with jargon, but don't be embarrassed. Ask those simple questions. So, that's advice number one. I think advice number two, I'd say be honest. Right? We work in a market where everybody knows everywhere everywhere else. If you're not honest, if you're not open, if you're not collaborative, then you're going to hit a brick wall quite quickly. So, I'd say that's thing number two. And I'll say thing number three is to have fun. Our clients are great. Insurance provides the world with an really important service and be proud, have fun. You're working in the insurance market. I'd say they're the three things. >> Great advice. I think Stuart, thanks for coming on. I will add links in the description so people can check you out. And thanks everyone for watching. We'll see you in the next one. >> You're welcome. Thanks Mickey.