Sep 173 min read

InsurTech Ohio Spotlight with Ludy Underwood

Ludy Underwood is the Enterprise Sales Manager, Growth at Prove, an identity verification and authentication platform. Ludy was interviewed by Andrew Daniels, Co-Founder and President at CrashBay and Founder and Managing Director at InsurTech Ohio.

Ludy, the majority of your career has been spent in healthcare. What ideas have been adopted there that should be in the insurance industry?

“It's a dedicated vision and focus around innovation. I've seen pockets of innovation, but I would say that it’s less in comparison to healthcare, which is immersed in a huge cross-functional initiative throughout their strategic vision and priorities at all levels. That's what jumps out at me the most. Eventually, it becomes driven around the patient experience and can become a profit center. The cross-functional team and stakeholders drive innovation to help with products in the environment. It’s not to say that I’ve not seen promising changes emerging by way of innovation. There are definitely key focus areas predominantly driven by the industry that are requiring speed to impact, cost pressures, competitive threats and aging technology.”

Why has the insurance industry been slow to recognize this need?

“They've recognized the need and are slowly trying to pivot. Healthcare and insurance are very similar; they're laggards because they’re risk averse. It's a slow adoption to pivot and approach the markets. I suspect it’s acquiring the right talent internally. As I mentioned earlier, key shifts in the industry will continue to drive the necessary change. We see executive leadership driving toward key strategic priorities. Ensuring the right talent is in place to drive toward execution and adoption will be the true measure of success.

In healthcare, outcomes and ratings help drive and align the strategic priorities across the organization. Insurance doesn’t have that key factor in place but the continuing pressures I discussed earlier, cost, competitive threats, etc., will help continue to push the industry forward. Those that have been more advanced and lead the way with innovation will be key to driving the digital maturity needed.”

How do you remove the right level of friction in the process to balance revenue versus fraud?

“I’m going to assume we're discussing new account registration or onboarding because that's how you're going to capture additional revenue streams. In this scenario, there's a certain level of friction that needs to be introduced. You wouldn't leave your garage door open and not expect someone to walk in and help themselves to something. A certain level of friction is recommended; it's going to be finding the right level of friction, so you don't sacrifice the consumer experience. Now, it's leveraging a very deterministic approach to identifying someone.

At Prove, we leverage deterministic signals. Once we onboard someone, we're following them through the various life cycle of events that occur through that digital engagement. A delightful consumer experience is what we strive for while at the same time ensuring that there’s trust through the engagement, and we can definitively say that you are who you say you are in the process.”

What else should the insurance industry be on the lookout for?

“The biggest vulnerabilities already exist. We're seeing a higher traffic interaction with account takeovers, particularly within call-center activity. The reason I say that is because I mentioned capturing additional revenue and reducing that, leveraging a frictionless approach to onboarding. There’s a need to verify as you pursue that lifecycle and engagement. Who's going to be accessing that account? Passwordless is a huge adoption. It’s the way of the future. I think about the number of breaches. There’s daily account breaches, so the sensitive data is out there. Couple that with AI and all of the ways you can access accounts, and you can have those accounts compromised through the process.

Another has to do with resources. What's the prioritization for that lift and project? It's not like there's not an awareness, but I would say looking for partners that are going to be low-code environments that take on that risk and have a faster, quicker approach to getting you up and ready should be a key focus.”