Beth Taylor is SVP & Global Head of Marketing at ReSource Pro, a strategic operations partner to insurance organizations seeking growth and optimization. Before joining the insurance industry, she spent 10+ years as a marketing executive supporting large, global technology companies. She was interviewed by Michael Fiedel, Co-Founder at InsurTech Ohio and Co-Founder at PolicyFly, Inc.
Beth, how do big tech companies leverage industry knowledge to scale quickly?
“If we’re being honest…. not very well. Big tech and big consulting might have a few market luminaries in their ranks, but they struggle to leverage industry knowledge at scale. Half of my career was spent working for large technology companies that serve multiple industries, including insurance. There are some tough realities in those organizations that you might not see from the outside in.
First and perhaps most obvious, they're heavily incentivized to sell the technology; that’s their primary goal. It’s not to solve what’s broken in that industry or to understand the use cases and implementation challenges in an industry - that’s a secondary consideration. So, when an industry expert is hired in and connects with the technologists and execution teams (who typically serve more than one industry), a lot gets lost in translation. The industry itself is not their specialty.
Second is that these tech companies often categorize insurance with and sometimes beneath banking or financial services. This indirectly sends a message to internal teams that their industry use cases are synchronous, which of course they aren’t. It's no fault of their own, but it creates a domino effect that gets in the way of the company scaling industry understanding and industry knowledge - especially when it comes to serving insurance.”
How is your team looking to solve the industry knowledge challenge?
“Resource Pro is driven by this belief that you have to lead with insurance knowledge at every level, all the way down to the details. It's understanding the end-to-end workflows, it’s understanding the tech stacks, it’s understanding the ecosystem. With this knowledge in hand, our people can effectively start with business challenges - the use case - and then look at the people, technology and optimized processes needed to deliver the outcome. That's very unique - we’re talking about what’s actually going on in the business, and we’re solving it with people who understand the pain created if we don’t solve it correctly. It's not a transactional relationship, and our annual client-retention rate holds at 96 percent for this reason.
Another specific way we’re leading with knowledge first has been to train a mindset of precision right from the start. We only accept roughly three percent of candidates that apply to our offshore delivery centers. A lower acceptance rate than MIT or Stanford if you want to look at it like that. It’s not a rotating door. Those hires know it’s a long-term career fully focused on insurance - inclusive of how to capitalize on new technologies. They know if they get really good at the basics, they move on to complex tasks. And they know that if they get really good at complex tasks, they can get a seat on more transformational projects. It’s not just the luminary talking a big game at the front of the room with no one else behind them understanding what’s going on.
Lastly, we continue to coach clients that you get a higher ROI on transformation if you have a handle on the basics first - clean data and optimized workflows. There's a lot of pressure right now to leverage automation, AI experimentation. But, you can't start to bring in new technologies at scale and make that level of investment without having a firm foundation across your operations. And you can't build that foundation from the outside in listening to the incentivized AI expert. You've got to build it from the inside out with partners that can communicate the core requirements of the business and translate for the technology that enhances it. That's one of the things we're uniquely focused on. We've got a really strong position to be that broker.”
How does ReSource Pro see interactions between established players and emerging startups in the industry as a vital part of the industry's ecosystem?
“Every company needs a clear mission, domain knowledge, velocity and resources. The velocity edge belongs to the startups. They're able to focus fully on one or two problems and carve a niche into solving for that - then can use that success to establish credibility and grow. The edge on domain knowledge belongs to the established players - they know the industry and how to get things done within it. They know what’s worked, what hasn’t and deeply understand the barriers to adoption. And then usually (not always) the edge on resources goes to big tech or big consulting players who have the advantage of moving in and out of industries when they think there’s a ripe opportunity.
All this is to say that conversations between all three - established players in insurance, tech and emerging startups are critical to progress, and there's a lot that can be done faster working together. I’ve seen this play out in other risk averse markets - namely air travel - but the best effort I've seen is when all three of those players are working together. But to do that effectively, those parts of the ecosystem need to lower the wall, create less friction and have an open dialogue that’s not always about immediate near term revenue. It's why forums like yours should exist and should be invested in, not just by startups, but by everyone. It helps lower the wall and create less friction so that everyone can enjoy that extra bit of velocity we’re all looking for.”
What does Resource Pro hope to accomplish in the second half of 2024 and moving into 2025?
“We're moving into 2025 with focus and purpose, helping insurance organizations grow through both short-term gains and long-term operational strategies. With an inside view of the opportunities and challenges in the insurance market, we’re focused on addressing four key industry challenges— managing the talent gap, preparing for greater adoption of automation/AI, scaling expertise & institutional knowledge and boosting team productivity—at every level of the organization.
In workforce management, we’re expanding our global talent base, giving clients access to diverse talent pools that match or exceed what they could hire in-house. Our clients need access to a global talent base on their terms. Our new service delivery center in Europe and further expansion into the Philippines by the end of 2024 will provide them with workforce options across 12 locations on three continents.
Secondly, we are helping teams prepare for more efficient and optimized deployment of automation and AI-driven tools. Our solution architects and strategic advisory team has been helping clients maximize their use of AI by standardizing workflows and current levels of data hygiene to ensure that workflow transformation and planned automation has a solid, reliable foundation for deployment. With this approach, businesses can trust that new AI-based workflows won’t result in unintended inefficiencies or poor outcomes.
Thirdly, we’re helping our clients come up with immediate strategies to institutionalize their internal knowledge base, a move that’s essential to sustaining growth, competitive advantage and filling talent shortages. By helping teams document this knowledge (with a level of detail that would amaze even the most Type-A person), we are helping companies mitigate knowledge loss, boost operational consistency and prepare for scale in the future.
Lastly, we’re staying close to what teams need now to meet immediate productivity needs. We've expanded our capabilities service portfolio to support carriers, MGAs and retail clients with tailored technology services, strategic advisory and products like Direct Bill Complete, premium audit surveys and AI-driven policy checking.
But at the end of the day - moving into 2025, we intend to stay true to our DNA and continue raising up community dialogue for those who truly represent the insurance industry. We’ve published over 300 research reports providing insights to different parts of the P&C/EB ecosystem - all developed from primary & secondary data sourced from within insurance. We're going to continue to lead that charge and bring acumen to as many clients as possible, so they can get more done faster without worrying that the data came from a ‘one-size fits all’ vendor from outside the industry. It’s core to our DNA to unite our clients with these communities, so you can rest assured we’ll continue to stay involved with InsurTech Ohio.”