Scouting for Growth

Trust Is the Operating System of the Agentic Enterprise   In this episode, Sabine VanderLinden is joined by Franklin Manchester, Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS, and Steven Abel, Global Technology Partner and Deputy Global Head of AI & Transformation at Oliver Wyman. Together, they unpack the concept of "trust by design" in the context of agentic enterprises and AI adoption.    The conversation pivots from traditional risk frameworks and compliance-based approaches to trust, to the urgent need for architectural and cultural transformations in which trust is embedded in every system and decision. They explore why organisations often confuse expanding AI tools with genuine readiness for autonomy, discuss why "human in the loop" is no longer sufficient, and offer perspectives on scaling trust, managing risk, and redefining organisational roles.    The trio debates actionable leadership moves for CEOs and boards, the evolving skills for insurance professionals, and how the frontier firm of the future will distinguish itself through intentional trust-building—not just AI deployment.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   Many organisations treat AI trust as a compliance issue, which hinders safe scaling. The fundamental shift involves deploying autonomous decision-makers, making trust by design an architectural and leadership mandate.   We, as an industry, over-invest in AI models and technology while under-investing in people and trust. Simply using more models or data doesn't guarantee higher trust, especially without architectures built for transparency and governance. Franklin noted a disconnect where insurers use AI but lack trustworthy systems, surprisingly favouring newer generative AI over established machine learning.   I question the efficacy of "human in the loop" controls in high-stakes industries, while Steven advocates embedded, infrastructure-level trust solutions. Franklin identified processes as primary failure points, particularly when tacit knowledge is overlooked (citing Cigna's mass claim denials).   The discussion explores the need for new AI risk and governance roles, akin to past actuarial practices. While human-centricity should drive design, scalability is challenging as organisations move toward agentic systems in which humans supervise, rather than directly control, risking brand integrity if governance fails.   For leaders, I urge you to shift focus from technology hype to foundational trust. Steven prioritises "under the water" capabilities, such as risk and regulatory expertise. Franklin recommends three people-centric actions: embracing new skills, breaking data silos, and protecting the brand.   The truly future-ready firm embeds trust into every decision system—a practice rooted in culture, governance, and leadership, not just technology. Scaling AI without trust is merely scaling risk; organisations must engineer trust as a core operating principle.   BEST MOMENTS   "Trust isn't what you say, it is what your system does." — Sabine VanderLinden   "The architecture of these models themselves don’t lend themselves to a high trust environment." — Steven Abel   "We trust generative AI 200% more than machine learning. Which is bonkers to me because machine learning has been around for like 30 years." — Franklin Manchester   “There’s still no more sophisticated sensor than a human being and a more powerful computer than the human brain.” — Franklin Manchester   “Auditability, transparency, and a connection with the human ecosystem and judgment—these things are non-negotiable.” — Steven Abel   "It is clear that the adoption is moving fast, and we need to make sure within regulated industry that we apply trust in everything we do. Otherwise, we are going to shun both customers." — Sabine VanderLinden   ABOUT THE GUEST   Franklin Manchester Prior to joining SAS, Franklin served as a Global Insurance Strategic Advisor at SAS Institute, bringing over 20 years of experience in insurance underwriting and analytics. Known for his deep industry insight and passionate advocacy for trustworthy AI, Franklin is currently focused on linking insurance expertise with AI-driven transformation, highlighting the importance of governance, ethical frameworks, and human-centricity in future-ready companies.   Steven Abel Global Technology Partner at Oliver Wyman and Deputy Global Head of AI and Transformation, Steven leverages his extensive background in tech innovation and large-scale enterprise change. As a self-proclaimed technology enthusiast, he offers critical perspectives on the infrastructural and professional challenges organisations face in scaling agentic AI responsibly and with embedded trust, urging leaders to rethink assumptions and prioritise under-the-surface architectural investments.   ABOUT THE HOST   Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.   If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.   And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

In this riveting solo episode, Sabine VanderLinden confronts what she calls "the capacity gap"—a silent barrier that undermines organizational success in today's complex business landscape. Rather than blaming common culprits like strategy, leadership, or talent, she reframes the issue as a structural mismatch between ambitious goals and the finite resources available to deliver on them.    Drawing from her extensive experience in the insurance sector and referencing compelling case studies from companies like Ping An and Nestlé, Sabine VanderLinden unpacks the math behind the capacity gap and lays out a practical five-step playbook to help leaders bridge it and thrive in the era of AI-driven transformation.   Key Takeaways Reflecting on the capacity gap, it becomes clear to me that most organizations are not failing due to weak ideas or a lack of vision, but because they are unable to match their strategic ambitions to their actual capacity to implement them. The sheer pace of technological change, combined with heightened expectations around innovation, puts immense pressure on existing operating models, especially in sectors like insurance.    The essential insight I share is that companies will win not by having the grandest vision, but by developing the operational elasticity to close the capacity gap faster than competitors. This requires a rigorous assessment of current delivery abilities, a relentless focus on throughput, leveraging external partners as capacity multipliers, and embedding elasticity into both technology and workforce design.   Most crucially, making capacity a leadership and board-level metric shifts the organization from admiring problems to solving them. As I explore in the episode, frontier firms show us what’s possible when capacity is managed as a dynamic asset rather than a limiting factor. The future belongs to those who can execute, not just strategize.   Best Moments   "What if the single greatest obstacle to your company's future success isn't the competition, a lack of budget, or even the speed of technological change—but a silent thief of momentum that lives in the space between your boardroom's bold vision and your team's daily reality?"   "It is not a people problem. It is a math problem, a fundamental mismatch between the infinite demands of strategic ambition and the finite capacity of your organization to execute."   "The winners will not be the companies with the most visionary strategies. They will be the companies with the smallest capacity gap."   "Frontier firms are not just managing capacity; they are weaponizing it."   "Closing the capacity gap is not about asking your teams to work harder. It is about redesigning the work itself."   ABOUT THE HOST   Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.   If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.   And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures  

In this episode of "Scouting for Growth," Sabine VanderLinden welcomes Florian Graillot, founding partner at Astorya VC, for an in-depth conversation about the evolving landscape of risk management and insurance innovation. The discussion explores how risk management is shifting from static predictions to adaptive strategies designed for tomorrow's uncertainties, emphasizing the rise of the “frontier firm”—organizations that continuously learn, adapt, and act in real time.   Florian Graillot shares insights from his experience investing across insurtech, cyber, climate risk, and financial fraud, highlighting the increasing importance of technology, data, and AI.    Together, Sabine VanderLinden and Florian Graillot discuss the structural advantages Europe may hold in building AI-native, trust-driven business models and the critical role of agent-human collaboration in future risk management. They address the challenges faced by incumbents—including talent acquisition, cost efficiency, and profitable growth—and consider what distinguishes great founders in the frontier firm era.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   This episode underlines that risk management is no longer about controlling yesterday’s uncertainties but engineering resilience for tomorrow. I was struck by Florian Graillot's argument that insurance leaders must rethink the entire risk value chain—not just the insurance segment—but encompassing prevention, risk assessment, capital efficiency, and claims. Simply layering AI onto legacy workflows isn’t enough; true transformation requires intention, an openness to external partnerships, and a clear ROI focus.   It’s clear to me that embracing AI isn’t “optional practice"—it’s existential. Organizations that experiment vigorously and collaborate with tech-first ventures gain a competitive edge, especially as emerging risks outpace traditional data models. Europe’s more measured regulatory approach, sometimes critiqued as cautious, actually presents an opportunity to build trust-by-design, ensuring AI is explainable and aligned with both ethics and end-customer value.   Ultimately, the essence of any successful frontier firm lies in clarity of vision, a readiness for real change, and a focus on trust between leaders, employees, and customers. As the industry shifts, those who can articulate and measure technology’s value, while empowering agent-human teams, will undoubtedly shape the risk landscape of the future.   BEST MOMENTS   "Risk management is no longer about predicting yesterday's risk. It is about designing for tomorrow's uncertainty."    "Either you consider emerging risks as a threat and retreat from the market, or you leverage technology to build resilience. That resilience is the optimistic side of the challenge."    "The perfect founding team is a blend of technology expertise and deep industry knowledge—you need both to create real value in insurance."    "If you expect big figures tomorrow morning, it will not work... But if you are ready to take more time and invest accordingly, innovation can deliver real and very nice results."    "In the end, technology doesn’t remove risk. It actually reveals our choices."    ABOUT THE GUEST   Florian Graillot is the co-founder and founding partner at Astorya VC, one of Europe’s most influential venture capital firms focused on early-stage insurtech, risk, and regulatory technology.    With 15 years of tech investing experience—ten of them specializing in insurtech—Florian Graillot has an unparalleled vantage point on the evolution of the insurance and risk landscape. He is passionate about backing founders who are redefining resilience, tackling climate, cyber, and financial fraud with cutting-edge data and algorithms, and reshaping how risk is owned and governed across enterprises.   ABOUT THE HOST   Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.   If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.   And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes industry veteran Karl Grandl, now of Miss Moneypenny Technologies, for a wide-ranging conversation on the real transformation underway in financial services and insurance.  Sabine VanderLinden sets the stage by emphasizing that digitization is no longer enough—true change means re-architecting operating models for velocity, intelligence, and trust at scale. Together, they explore the pitfalls of strategic complacency, the opportunities provided by European regulation, and the immense potential of intelligence layers and wallet technology to redefine how institutions interact with customers.  The discussion moves from strategic leadership to practical use cases—from frictionless onboarding and claims to agentic customer experiences—offering a roadmap for both incumbents and challenger firms looking to thrive in the era of real-time risk and embedded governance. KEY TAKEAWAYS Reflecting on my conversation with Karl Grandl, what became clear is that transformation in financial services isn’t just about digitizing legacy systems—it’s about fundamentally re-architecting the industry. For decades, institutions like banks and insurers were built for stability, but the pace of change and customer expectation today demands real-time, intelligent, and seamless experiences. Simply layering new digital tools over old processes leads to fragmentation, not progress. We’re stepping into the era of frontier firms: organizations powered by intelligence, human-agent collaboration, and embedded governance. As Karl emphasized, automation by itself doesn’t mean autonomy or intelligence. Instead, success hinges on evolving operating models and creating trust at scale. Regulatory changes, particularly in Europe—such as the EU AI Act and the introduction of digital identity wallets—are not burdens, but strategic advantages. They force discipline, drive infrastructure modernization, and create opportunities to offer frictionless experiences for 450 million citizens. Karl’s insight into customer experience “activation layers” resonated deeply. True transformation is about orchestrating intelligent touchpoints so insurance feels invisible and effortless, yet highly trustworthy, especially at moments of service or claim. This approach preserves the value of brokers and advisors, enhancing their roles as strategic risk partners instead of replacing them. Finally, leadership, not technology, is at the heart of transformation. The ability to articulate a clear vision and quickly demonstrate value is what distinguishes the winners. Real-time governance, compliance by design, and empathetic human engagement are becoming essential to build—and keep—customer trust. The challenge for every executive now is not just to optimize yesterday’s operations but to actively build tomorrow’s intelligence layer. The frontier is being defined now, and it begins with a leadership mindset ready for structural redesign and velocity. BEST MOMENTS "Automation is not autonomy, efficiency is not intelligence, and digital channels without orchestration create digital fragmentation."  "European regulation is our unfair advantage. It’s not just about discipline, it’s about infrastructure."  "You have to evolve—from transaction intermediary into a strategic risk advisor, augmented by intelligence that handles routine so you can focus on relationships, empathy, and judgment."  "Governance is about to become the most strategic capability. When compliance agents and financial AI are embedded in every workflow, governance shifts from retrospective reporting to real-time intervention."  "The frontier firm is not defined by how much AI it deploys; it is defined by how intelligently it integrates risk, compliance, capital, and customer experience." ABOUT THE GUEST Karl Grandl is often dubbed an “insurance dinosaur,” with over 30 years in the industry spanning Swiss Life, GetSafe, WeFox, and now Miss Moneypenny Technologies. His experience spans product development, distribution, and embedded insurance, as well as scaling tech-driven aggregators across markets.  At Miss Moneypenny, Karl is spearheading the integration of wallet technology and intelligence layers, focusing on frictionless customer interaction and embedding trust and compliance by design.  An advocate for regulation as a strategic advantage and transformation as a leadership imperative, Karl is a sought-after voice for both legacy insurers and challenger MGAs looking to build tomorrow’s intelligence-driven operating models.  Connect with him via LinkedIn or at upcoming events such as InsurTech Week and InsurTech Insights in London. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden sits down with Manish Shah, President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, to explore the rapidly changing landscape of insurance core systems.  Together, they examine how AI is shifting the industry from being purely a protector to one that also focuses on prevention and dynamic participation. The conversation covers everything from the persistent protection gap and the urgent need for behavioral—not just technological—transformation in insurance to the practical realities and fears surrounding the implementation of agentic AI systems.  Manish Shah shares actionable insights on overcoming internal resistance, building trust with customers, and the importance of leadership courage. Throughout, listeners will gain an insider’s view on how insurance models are transforming and what sets bold, future-ready leaders apart. KEY TAKEAWAYS I was delighted to welcome Manish Shah to explore how the insurance industry is being transformed at its core. Our discussion began with the fundamental premise that insurance is built on trust and a promise of protection—yet today, both are being challenged by shifting customer expectations, legacy systems, and the rapid evolution of AI technologies.  Manish emphasized that closing the protection gap is not merely an issue of customer education but primarily a challenge of product and experience design. If customers do not understand or value our offerings, it's a failure of design, not comprehension. We agreed that the path to genuine transformation must be grounded in a behavioral shift—beyond technology upgrades or business process reengineering. Transformation executives must start by listening deeply to customers, adapting to their evolving needs, and fostering a culture that is not afraid to take bold risks rather than settle for incremental change. The conversation also delved into how AI, when embedded into the core—not bolted on as an afterthought—can help insurers move from process-led to truly human-centered operations. This enables better capacity, more personalized experiences, and the ability to anticipate rather than react to customers’ needs. Crucially, Manish Shah articulated the importance of trust, transparency, and auditability in the AI era: true trust is built through consistent, clear, empathetic engagement, supported by AI that augments—not replaces—human judgment. The insurers that will thrive in the next 3-5 years are those who are brave enough to rethink their business models, leverage intelligent, agentic cores, and prioritize behavioral change.  The future belongs to those willing to become active partners in their customers' lives, focused on prevention, participation, and peace of mind. BEST MOMENTS “If our customers don’t understand or see the value in the product, then it is a design problem. It’s not really a customer problem or an education problem. “Trust is built in small moments, not in any marketing material or strategic deck.”  “If we can actually execute well as an industry, insurance should feel more like a proactive safety net than a just reactive payment mechanism.”  “The brave ones… are those who are willing to rethink their business model and not just the tech stack.”  ABOUT THE GUEST  Manish Shah is the President and Chief Product Officer at Majesco, a leader at the intersection of technology, product strategy, and insurance industry expertise.  With over 30 years in the insurance sector, Manish Shah has been both a witness and a driver of major transformation, from the analog days of the industry to today’s AI-driven innovation. He is particularly passionate about embedding intelligence into the foundation of insurance operations—not just talking about AI, but delivering it as an engine of change.  At Majesco, Manish Shah oversees strategy for their cloud-native, intelligent core platform, with a special focus on agentic workflows, operational effectiveness, and preparing insurers for future challenges and opportunities in P&C, Life, Health, and Benefits. If you want to connect with Manish Shah, he encourages open dialogue and learning across the industry. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

In this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VanderLinden welcomes Gil Arazi—a serial entrepreneur, executive, and leading insurtech investor—to explore the urgent transformation taking place in insurance. Gil Arazi argues that the industry’s traditional role of simply paying claims post-loss is outdated and that prevention is the new north star for sustainable growth. Their conversation dives into why insurance must shift from risk transfer to risk mitigation, what the future holds as data, AI, and even quantum computing disrupt business models, and how prevention can actually drive profit—not just avoid cost. Gil Arazi introduces The Spark, a not-for-profit initiative designed to help insurers decrease systemic risk and increase societal resilience through practical collaboration, not empty innovation theater. KEY TAKEAWAYS Reflecting on my conversation with Gil Arazi, several themes truly stood out, affirming both the urgency and opportunity for true transformation across insurance.  First, it’s clear that insurance cannot remain content with its legacy of paying claims post-loss. We are entering an era where prevention, not just remediation, is imperative—technological advancements, from AI to quantum computing, now offer insurers the tools to anticipate and prevent systemic risks, fundamentally altering their value to customers and society. The model must evolve from chasing losses to proactively reducing risk, and this shift is not just about cost efficiency, but empowering profitable growth through enhanced customer retention and relevance. In building The Spark as a nonprofit prevention lab, Gil Arazi emphasized a collective responsibility: by leveraging data, domain expertise, and increasingly mature technology, we—insurers, partners, and innovators—can bridge the protection gap and act as genuine “protection architects.” This vision requires us to move beyond innovation theater and toward real operational enablement, where execution trumps experimentation. The challenge, however, is not just technological—it is cultural and emotional. Building trust across competitors demands we fall in love with solving the problem, not just owning the solution. Clear boundaries and shared vulnerabilities create the foundation for meaningful collaboration on the risks no single entity can control alone. BEST MOMENTS “The insurance industry needs to move from reacting to the claim ... to proactive prevention of this damage or systemic risk.”  “The only way insurance can be actually successful and sustainably profitable is by being biased.”  “Technology will predict risk, but humans will decide what to do with it. Algorithms are very good at probability, but they're terrible at responsibility.”  “Do something good for humanity and for yourself. If you can't measure your impact by the loss that never happened, you're just optimizing the decline.”  “The real revolution isn’t technological anymore. It is emotional, it is behavioral, and it is strategic.”  ABOUT THE GUEST Gil Arazi is recognized as an insurance industry disruptor and visionary. He’s the founder and managing partner of Fintlv Venture Capital—a top insurtech VC fund with close to $1 billion invested globally—and the founder of The Spark, a purpose-driven, not-for-profit global prevention lab.  With a career spanning nearly 30 years, including executive leadership, board roles, and serial entrepreneurship in insurance, Gil Arazi has first-hand insight into the industry’s pain points and future opportunities. His work focuses on shifting insurance from loss-payout to loss-prevention, leveraging technology and collaboration to build resilience and drive growth. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

In this forward-thinking episode, Sabine VanderLinden returns to kick off the year with a transformative discussion on “frontier firms” and the rise of agentic enterprises. As digital transformation accelerates, leaders face challenges like increasing climate risks, cyber threats, and widening protection gaps—pushing businesses (especially in regulated industries like insurance) to rethink strategies. Sabine explores how trailblazing organizations are leveraging AI not just as an assistant, but as an autonomous driver of capacity and productivity.  Through practical frameworks and real-world case studies, this episode lays out the playbook for riding the next wave of innovation, resilience, and growth. KEY TAKEAWAYS This year on Scouting for Growth, I wanted to regroup and make sure my podcast continues to deliver what matters most to you in the fast-paced transformation market. After a brief pause and reflection, and evaluating the insights from the World Economic Forum, with a clear sense that the world feels increasingly uninsurable—climate risk, cyber threats, and protection gaps are all expanding. But I believe that this narrative of uninsurability is simply a choice, not a certainty. I see a new class of leaders emerging, those who aren’t just trying to manage risk but who are fundamentally changing how we approach it. Transformation isn’t just happening in isolated labs; it's exploding at the convergence of capital, technology, and strategy—the true frontier of business. This is where agentic enterprises are emerging, blending human leadership with AI agents, forming digital workforces where competitive advantage depends on our agility with data, not just data ownership. Examples abound: Telstra is scaling AI across thousands of employees, UBS has put AI at the heart of its business via a Chief AI Officer, Mercedes-Benz uses digital twins and multiple agent systems to optimize production, and at Nestlé, AI is transforming everything from farm to fork. These companies aren’t dabbling—they’re fundamentally rethinking their models and leadership. My message is simple: the agentic frontier is not some distant theory—it’s here and now. The uninsurable world is a choice, and you can choose to lead in this new paradigm. The tools and models exist, and the only question left is who has the courage to execute. As you listen and engage this year, I’ll keep guiding you through these themes—helping you build, not just watch, the future unfold. BEST MOMENTS "The uninsurable world is a choice, not a certainty. While some twist their hands over these challenges, a new class of leaders is rewriting the rules of the game." "A frontier firm in the simplest terms is an organization that is human led but agent operated. This means your people set the vision and define success, while AI agents handle a significant share of the execution, working autonomously with oversight across processes." "Mastering [these levers] is the difference between watching the future happen and actively building it." "The market is sending an unequivocal message: the future of financial institutions including insurance, all regulated industry belongs to the agentic enterprise. This is not a distant vision; it is happening right now." ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures  

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sangha Penesetti, founder and CEO of goZeal, who didn’t just break the glass ceiling—she installed a flexible skylight. Today we’ll dive into the economics of equity, why flexible work is not a perk but a performance driver, and how insurers can win by rethinking who gets a seat at the table—and how that table is set. KEY TAKEAWAYS In my early career, every client meeting I walked into was a room full of men. I was the only woman of colour. When I became a mother in 2010 I felt first-hang how unforgiving the industry was, there was no real flexibility, no empathy around new mums (though that may have just been the company I worked for then), and certainly no system that was designed for working mums. During Covid I found my own community: Brilliant, highly educated women, especially Indian and Asian mums, step out of the workforce to raise kids and never return. Not because they lacked ambition, but because the system simply wasn’t build for them. That’s the moment I realised it wasn’t an individual struggle but a systemic design flaw, that’s when goZeal was born. We talk about empowerment a lot, but what is empowerment? It‘s the financial empowerment, the capacity for women to have the money to spend on whatever they want be that a Gucci bag or feeding their kids. The data is clear: When women (and especially women of colour) advance, companies become more innovative and perform better financially.  BEST MOMENTS  ‘My experience taught me that being included isn’t the same as being empowered.’  ‘Radical inclusion flips the dynamic. It’s not about representation, it’s about access to meaningful work decision-making authority and economic mobility.’ ‘Remote work is not “flexibility.” Flexibility means flexibility of time. I wanted to hire women directly to give them the autonomy of time. Direct impact comes when you are the employer.’ ‘True flexibility allows for peak productivity not proximity. When people work at their best insurers benefit from higher quality work, lower burnout, less attrition, stronger retention, all of that good stuff.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Sangha Penesetti is the powerhouse founder and CEO of goZeal, a company rewriting the rules of work by directly hiring skilled women, especially women of colour, for high-impact, flexible roles in insurance and tech. With 18 years of experience in finance and insurance, she’s lived the challenges of being the only woman at the table—and decided to build her own. Under her leadership, goZeal is more than a talent platform—it’s a movement. One that’s tackling systemic inequity, modernizing legacy operations, and showing insurers that flexible work is not a perk but a strategic edge. She’s here to talk about the real economics of inclusion, why hybrid isn’t enough, and how insurers can close talent gaps while building a future-ready workforce. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Marinela Profi, Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI and Agentic AI at SAS, about the rise of agentic AI and how we will move from hype to real, reliable AI. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss: Why LLMs alone don’t solve business problems – and what does, how governance is becoming the new frontier of AI trust, and what leaders should expect by 2026, as enterprises shift from experiments to autonomous, explainable intelligence. KEY TAKEAWAYS A generative AI chatbot is really good and answering questions, generating text, or summarising content. But, it typically stops when it comes to conversation. On the other hand, an AI agent goes beyond that, it can take action, it has goals, memory, reasoning capabilities and can orchestrate multi-set workflows using a combination of not just large-language models but also rules, data and analytics. Generative AI talks, and agentic AI does. The 5-step lifecycle of an agent is a framework I put together to help me and my customers understand what an agent actually does step-by-step in practice. 1. Perception 2. Cognition 3. Decisioning 4. Action, and 5. Learning. Governance boards in 2026 will act more like digital oversight committees, they will ensure that agents aren’t just smart, but they are safe, explainable and accountable.  BEST MOMENTS  ‘Post action the agent learns from feedback from a human operative. It’s important to monitor the learning loops, you cannot allow the agent to “self-update” in ways that are uncontrolled.’  ‘How autonomous should an agent be? 90% of the time it depends on the risk and impact of the task.’ ‘Autonomy without accountability is a risk multiplier.’ ‘Governance doesn’t stop at deployment, performance must be continuously monitored.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Marinela Profi helps organizations move from AI hype to trusted impact. As Global Market Strategy Lead for AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI at SAS, she works with enterprises in financial services, healthcare, and government to build AI systems that don’t just act fast—but act responsibly. With an MBA and a Master’s in Statistics and AI, Marinela bridges two worlds: translating complex data science into clear business strategy. Her work focuses on how agentic AI—intelligent systems that perceive, reason, and act autonomously—can deliver governed, explainable decisions instead of black-box predictions. A frequent keynote speaker at international AI and analytics events, she shares insights on the evolution from generative to agentic AI and the new frontier of AI governance, trust, and human-AI collaboration. Marinela is also an Advisory Board Member for Wake Technical Community College’s Data Science Program, helping shape future-ready curricula that connect classroom learning with real-world AI innovation. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Andrei Craciunescu, founder and CEO of RiskCube, about why the next generation of insurance will be built like software: adaptive, transparent, and embedded into every business platform. They also discuss how AI and data are transforming the broker's role from middleman to intelligent orchestrator, and what the insurance experience of 2030 could look like when protection becomes invisible and trust becomes the new currency. KEY TAKEAWAYS What companies want from the insurance market is fast underwriting, not to talk with humans so much anymore, especially startups; they want a quote in minutes, not months. This is how we got into the segment where we offer business insurance for startups – mainly venture-backed startups. Some providers already offer what we are doing, but there is no comparison. Every founder needs to go to each insurance company separately and ask for a quote, which often varies a lot – sometimes by 40%. They spend a lot of time investigating these quotes, which is expensive and hard to understand. RiskCube is an AI insurance agency for startups where founders can buy and manage insurance online. We looked at what an agency traditionally does: it has different processes in place, such as insurance applications, renewals, cancellations, and claims. We tried to map out all these processes to see which can be done by AI agents. AI cannot solve the whole insurance value chain, but we see a huge adoption in the claims and applications processes. Generally, most founders don’t really care which insurance company they’re with; they care that they have somebody who really understands them as a customer. We want startups to come to us because they trust the system, which provides a fast experience that works for them. It’s not very complicated, what we do for them at the beginning, we provide a smooth process where we can say they have high, medium or low risk then evaluate different quotes for them. BEST MOMENTS  ‘Everybody’s pushing on the AI front, but the insurance market is also evaluating if it’s really necessary; it’s not all in, which is impressive.’  ‘We build the firm first and then embed the technology inside the firm. This will make us defensible in the future because we will own the data in our agency and use it to train our own model.’ ‘People are using a lot of AI nowadays, but nobody really understands where the data is going or hosted.’ ‘Insurance companies tend to adapt AI for themselves, not for the whole market. We want to bring them all together in one channel.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Andrei Craciunescu is redefining risk management with RiskCube, an AI-powered platform revolutionising insurance by streamlining risk assessments, accelerating quote processes, and providing real-time insights to help businesses secure coverage faster and smarter. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Rob Schimek, Group CEO at bolttech, about how bolttech’s connector model is redefining global insurance distribution, from telcos to auto makers and beyond. They also talk about why the future of protection will depend on trust, data and design more than policy documents and premiums, and what leadership really looks like when you are building at the intersection of revelation, innovation, and human impact.  KEY TAKEAWAYS If you have an hour to solve a problem you should spend 55 minutes on the problem and then 5 minutes on the solution. I’ve spent my career in the problem, the formation of bolttech is the attempt at the solution – it’s the path that I’ve chosen to bring that solution to the marketplace. Our mission is to work out how to close a multi-billion-dollar protection gap that has existed for years, that’s getting bigger? In order to do that we need to really understand the problem. We think there are 4 basic drivers for this multi-billion-dollar protection gap that and they’re pretty irrefutable. We’re trying to make a seamless connection between the buyers of protection products (insurers) and the distribution partners who have access to the customers so we can put those solutions into the hands of the customers. bolttech’s here to try to provide tailored, affordable, accessible, and convenience insurance in the hands of the customer on a B2B2C basis, connecting big partners who have lots of customers to the insurance providers. Without the data there’s a tendency to paint everything with one brush, like it’s all the same. Data is accessible and available on a real-time basis today and it can be available with no intervention, straight from the vehicle telematics about the unique driver. BEST MOMENTS  ‘We really want to connect people with more ways to protect the things that they value, we want to close the global protection gap.’  ‘The more we make connections frictionless, the more the connection will happen and the more the protection gap will get closed.’‘ If the mission and the vision are super-well-known then nothing can distract you from solving that problem, regardless of what’s going on in the marketplace around you.’‘ If a customer doesn’t trust the use of AI in their interactions with you then AI won’t be successful in that space because it won’t be accepted in that space. Ultimately it comes back to do we do things the right way and give the customers a reason to trust us?’ ABOUT THE GUEST Rob Schimek is Group Chief Executive Office at bolttech where he leads the team across its operations globally, overseeing its growth and partnership opportunities. With more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, Rob previously held senior leadership roles, including Managing Director & Group Chief Operating Officer for FWD Group, President and Chief Executive Officer of AIG’s commercial insurance businesses worldwide, and Chief Executive Officer of the Americas for AIG. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of EMEA for AIG, and was the Chief Financial Officer of AIG’s global property and casualty insurance business. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to us about all she’s learned from the numerous guests on the show recently, from startup founders who build AI to simplify the chaotic insurance back office, to innovation leaders in Fortune 500 firms wrestling with ethics, regulation, and talent shortages. After dozens of conversations here’s what Sabine has learned: AI isn’t just changing our tools. It’s changing our temperament. This episode is her reflection on those lessons; a guide for leaders and builders trying to navigate this new age of intelligence and unpacks five principles that define successful AI adoption. KEY TAKEAWAYS When Branch Insurance introduced AI into its claims process, something unexpected happened. It wasn’t the customers who resisted, it was the adjusters. They were worried, not because AI made mistakes but because it didn’t. When Lisa Bechtold’s (who led AI governance at Zurich Insurance, now at Nestlé) team started implementing AI, they faced the classic dilemma: Move fast or move right. Lisa said: “We don’t see governance as slowing innovation – we see it as enabling trust at speed.” ERGO Group worked with CamCom, a startup from India that uses computer vision to detect car damage from photos or drones. The tech was brilliant. The challenge? Integrating it into a multinational insurer’s process. They didn’t just hand over the product, they sat side by side – engineers, adjusters, compliance officers, even lawyers – to make it work. It took nearly a year to get from pilot to production and the result wasn’t just faster claims; it was a new relationship model. The startup learned how corporates think. The corporate learned how startups move. That’s the real win. After all the talk about data, systems, ethics, and pilots, what really matters is how humans evolve. AI won’t replace people, but people who know how to use AI will replace people who don’t. That’s not a threat, it’s an invitation. AI is already changing what we expect from talent. Claims adjusters now need to interpret AI outputs. Underwriters must question models. Leaders must learn to manage digital teammates. BEST MOMENTS  ‘Intelligent tool don’t remove human judgment; they reveal it in higher resolution.’  ‘In this AI era, trust is the new currency.’‘Every AI dream dies in the shadow of bad data.’‘The irony is that the more intelligent our systems become, the more human our leadership must be. Empathy, creativity, ethics aren’t data points, they’re our differentiators.’ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Stephen Brittain, co-founder of InsurTech Gateway, a pioneering venture builder focused on bringing early-stage startups into the heart of the insurance world – a regulated industry that typically moves at glacial speed. Over the past decade, Stephen has helped launch and scale ventures inside one of the most regulated, risk-averse business sectors on the planet: the insurance space. He has been the spark for innovation inside large insurance corporates and the strategic partner for founders who wanted to navigate the labyrinth of regulation, procurement and distribution at scale. In other words: he has been solving the archetypal “how to innovate inside a large enterprise” question while keeping the spirit of a startup alive. KEY TAKEAWAYS I was a product /service designer, and I found myself – through building bigger and bigger products – coming up against risk, and I saw risk as a constraint. I knew that if I could only understand risk better that I might be able to do bigger and bolder and better projects. That’s how I outgrew product design and moved into insurance. InsurTech Gateway’s original intention was to find amazing founders and fast-track them into market with enough creative energy to survive, adapt and evolve in an environment where your first idea had to be your fixed idea. Today we give founders greater agility to learn and evolve, because no one ever knows what to do when they first start, it’s a learning journey. The upside, the enthusiasm, the opportunity framing of entrepreneurialism and venturing gets everybody started, rallies people together. But, an a bad day, the downside view is actually the long-term sustainability of any new category. VCs and insurers have never sat round the table together. BEST MOMENTS  ‘The opportunity was not to make insurance sexy, it was to look at the secret powers of insurance to create mutual models to work at scale, to unlock lending and put trust into ecosystems that didn’t exist before.’  ‘One of the biggest challenges in InsurTech is; to get a successful outcome from something that looked great on day 1 but didn’t evolve into the opportunity.’ ‘Pattern recognition has never been higher and the cost to entry and experimentation has never been lower. We recognise what works and what doesn’t much better, but can we validate it with an insurer and get them onside? I think we still need to work out the connectivity.’ ‘If you can work with innovators, and you understand risk, and you can help unlock that innovation, you can make it sustainable.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Stephen Brittain is the Co-Founder of InsurTech Gateway, the world’s first authorised venture builder and fund focused on insurtech. A true pioneer at the intersection of innovation, investment, and impact, Stephen has spent the past decade turning bold ideas into scalable ventures that redefine how insurance and technology collide. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Sebastien Denef, CEO and co-founder at AGENTS.inc, a company at the forefront of building intelligent agent platforms for enterprises. On this episode we explore how agentic AI architectures are reshaping industries, what it takes to scale agentic AI solutions across siloes, and why the winners in this space will be those who master both the technology and collaboration. KEY TAKEAWAYS You can give a task to an AI agent – a piece of software – that autonomously handles the task. When compared to previous layers of automation, we can now increase the autonomy level because of the AI models and the increased amounts of data we have.  It’s underhyped. The impact we can have with today’s technology is very, very big and it will impact all sectors, from education to finding a job, buying a house, buying your groceries, deciding where to go on your weekend where right now we’re only seeing the beginnings of what could happen.  Almost the entire industry is trying to improve ChatGPT, to make it a little bit better, we actually see that this chat function isn’t really needed. What is needed is having a tireless workforce that tirelessly works for you as AI agents – you don’t necessarily want to converse with all of them because there would be too many messages to handle. You need a control interface to steer these new employees. RPA allowed us to move a document from A to B. AI agents will allow us to understand what’s inside that document, extract the right stuff, put the right thing into the system, evaluate the information, and so on. All these things were impossible before, that’s the big difference and that is possible today. BEST MOMENTS  ‘Think of AI agents as computers that work while you are asleep.’  ‘We will see shifts in entire industries, especially those with large workforces which will no longer be needed, and we will see new stuff coming up because of that.’ ‘Companies are only just waking up from the dream that if you use ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot you’re “AI-ready”.’ ‘More than 70% of the work people do right now can be automated.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Sebastien Denef is CEO and co-founder at AGENTS.inc who is inventing the future of human-computer interaction. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Ulrich (Uli) Homann, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, and Mark Luquire, EY Global Microsoft Alliance Co-innovation Leader, about how to build an agentic AI enterprise that doesn’t just work faster, but works smarter and, most importantly, works for everyone. KEY TAKEAWAYS In the past automation has been very task driven and specific, things had to go in a certain order and you needed to know that order ahead of time. While you need some of that with generative AI, we now have a system that can help do some of that thinking, so if things change in the process along the way, you can deal with it. Now you can rethink what processes even need to exist and focus on the outcome and how to get to it in a new way.  By giving everyone at EY access to generative AI a couple of years ago we learned that people were able to accomplish more more quickly. They used it as a thought-partner, used it as a way to fine tune the product they were working on. Being able to see the evolution of generative AI to now where it’s coding applications on its own almost, seeing the new agent capabilities and tools, and being able to take action on its own with very little prompting, it opens the doors to possibilities and what you’ll be able to do in the future.  BEST MOMENTS  ‘Focus on where you want to be and then rethink how you’re going to get there, that’s the real key.’ ‘It’s not just an assistant to you, providing you with information, it’s actually taking on work it’s actually thinking through and processing those things as well.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Ulrich (Uli) Homann is a Corporate Vice President & Distinguished Architect in the Cloud + AI business at Microsoft. As part of the senior engineering leadership team, he’s responsible for the customer-led innovation efforts across the cloud and enterprise platform portfolio. Previously Homann was the Chief Architect for Microsoft worldwide enterprise services, having formerly played a key role in the business’ newly formed Platforms, Technology and Strategy Group. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1991, he worked for several small consulting companies, where he designed and developed distributed systems and has spent most of his career using well-defined applications and architectures to simplify and streamline the development of business applications. Mark Luquire leads the EY organization’s global efforts to co-develop innovative solutions with Microsoft and clients, driving growth and accelerating technology strategy. He oversees cross-functional teams spanning sectors and service lines, serving as a key liaison to Microsoft’s product and engineering teams. Previously, Mark headed Platform Adoption for EY Global, leading enterprise-wide AI and cloud enablement, including integrating generative AI tools like EYQ, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot. He also created the first EY Global DevOps Practice and led cloud transformation efforts, making EY a leader in Microsoft Azure usage. Mark’s career includes leadership roles in large healthcare enterprises and technology startups, where he established scalable operations, spearheaded digital transformation, and built high-performing global teams. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Laurna Castillo, Senior Vice President of Product at CSAA Insurance Group, a AAA insurer serving millions of customers across the western United States. Laurna has become a leading voice in reimagining how the insurance industry – and entire communities – can build resilience in the face of escalating wildfire risk. On this episode, Laurna will share her journey, lessons learned from the frontlines of growth, and actionable insights for listeners eager to drive meaningful impact in their own ventures. KEY TAKEAWAYS The AAA was originally an automobile association focused on making cars safer, advocating for seatbelts, for example. Without seatbelts, car insurance would be more expensive, making driving less accessible to the average person. It’s the same with wildfire; there are massive quantities of homes being lost every year, and if we don’t have these solutions for fewer homes being burned down by wildfire, it’s going to be less accessible for the average consumer to live in places like California. Knowing where to start was our biggest challenge, but picking a direction and sticking with it, and recognising all the different facets that need progressing, we leant in when we recognised those. We’ve learned that people are overwhelmed. There’s so much information out there, if you speak to your neighbour, you might get one thing, if you speak to your local fire chief, you might get another. That was reinforced in our community engagements, as was the fact that trusted voices matter; people are most likely to trust the motivations of people they know rather than insurance companies. We’ve been leaning into this problem with this mindset for over a decade, and it’s becoming a strategic focus and imperative for us because of the increase in large-scale fires affecting many properties. One of the most important issues is where to start with mitigation. The 0-5-foot ignition zone is the single most important factor. The next is scalability, we need to rally around and give common standards and similar messages, that will help homeowners receive clear, consistent guidance. BEST MOMENTS  ‘Do the next, best, right thing that’s in front of you. If you keep doing that, eventually it builds up into a system of change and collective progress.’  ‘I cannot emphasise enough how important partnerships are to this problem. They extend reach.’ ‘The easiest way to have a wildfire resilient home is to build one, building one that’s not resilient and trying to retrofit it is less optimal and not as easy.’ ‘The single most important thing is clearing flammable material (fences, overhanging trees and bushes) from a 0-5 foot zone from the house.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Laurna Castillo is a forward-thinking leader and passionate advocate for innovation and sustainable growth. With a dynamic background spanning entrepreneurship, community development, and strategic leadership, Laurna has dedicated her career to empowering organizations and individuals to unlock their full potential. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Yo Kwon, CEO at Voltaire.Claims. Together, we pull back the curtain on how enterprise operations (and in particular finance and insurance operations) are being reinvented – not tomorrow, but right now. KEY TAKEAWAYS           I was working with my co-founder on Ai technology trying to work out what would be applicable for wider businesses. While we were testing ideas someone was using one of our products to write claims letters. Adjustors don’t enjoy writing claims letter, especially denials, they lean heavily on templates and cheat sheets to figure out the clauses to cite, so small mistakes and big ones can slip though. Voltaire generates each letter from scratch, it doesn’t take shortcuts which removes the room for error.  Litigation alone adds an average of $10,718 per claim in loss adjustment expense, we projects Voltaire can reduce litigated claims by 10% or more through more defensible correspondence. Even a conservative 5% improvement in leakage through clearer letters translates to $320,00 in recovered value.  We include critical guardrails. If an adjustor requests a denial letter but there’s no valid policy exclusion that exists to support the denial, the system returns ‘no relevant policy language was found’. This prevents a wrongful denial or compliance violation before it happens. BEST MOMENTS  ‘Before I started this company I did not think this would be a problem in 2025, and this is a problem because of the complexities of claims.’  ‘Whenever productivity is measured, people will choose speed over compliance, I’d go far as to say most adjustors never actually learn the correct way to write a claims letter.’ ‘Claims managers and adjustors have told us the AI is teaching them things about policies that they’ve never known before.’ ‘Our approach treats compliance as a product feature, not an afterthought.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Yo Kwon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Voltaire.Claims, where he leads the development of cutting-edge AI solutions that transform insurance correspondence. With deep expertise in artificial intelligence, decentralized systems, and cybersecurity, Yo brings a rigorous technical perspective to one of the industry’s most overlooked but high-impact challenges: claims letter automation. Under his leadership, Voltaire has built a lightweight, API-driven platform that integrates seamlessly with core systems like Guidewire to deliver accurate, regulator-compliant claim letters in seconds. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Bobbie Shrivastav, co-founder and CEO of Solvrays about building AI-driven workflows that aim to eliminate 70% of manual back office work with governance, auditability, and with human-in-the-loop controls directly built in. They also talk about what makes vertical AI for insurance defensible and measurable, compressing sales and implementation cycles without cutting corners on risk, change management, and how to augment teams as talent retires while new talent ramps up. KEY TAKEAWAYS When the work comes into an organisation, not everything is digital. Things are still mailed, the first help we provide is extracting the information from those manual sources and place it with the right person in their case management system. That alone eliminates 5-7 touch points. When an agent sends an email we’re able to get a new business application, we’re able to extract the information, we understand that this is a new business applications, and we can take that data and integrate it into the new business solution. Before, someone would have checked an email, gone to the new business application and keyed that in so work could move in. We’ve eliminated that complex new business touch point. 74% of our industry is still tackling legacy. Customers don’t care if you’re still using mainframes, they shouldn’t feel a difference. We’re using agentic AI as a connector to legacy systems, we’re also doing database to database connectors, and for newer systems we’re using APIs. We eliminate a dependency factor and empowered IT to work with new technologies, so they’re not dependent on us. But the business and IT partnership with any project, whether it’s our solution or another, is the key to success. BEST MOMENTS ‘We want to be a ray of hope for the operations staff for back office.’ ‘What makes us superior, from an industry point of view, is that we’ve innovated in this space for the last 10 years, we understand operations intimately.’ ‘Once a signature is signed, our goal is to do one workflow in two weeks, not months or years, weeks.’ ‘Where I’ve seen most anxiety in business and IT is in implementation, it can drain your team. Our goal is: If we can build our orchestration layer the right way you don’t have to be so tense.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Bobbie Shrivastav is founder and managing principal of Solvrays. Previously, she was co-founder and CEO of Docsmore, where she introduced an interactive, workflow-driven document management solution to optimize operations. She then co-founded Benekiva, where, as COO, she spearheaded initiatives to improve efficiency and customer engagement in life insurance. She co-hosts the Insurance Sync podcast with Laurel Jordan, where they explore industry trends and innovations. She is a co-author of the book series "Momentum: Makers and Builders" with Renu Ann Joseph. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Amit Santhirasenan, co-founder and CEO of hyperexponential, an actuary and software engineer who has built the AI native pricing and underwriting platform used by leading specialty carriers. In this episode we cover how to turn messy submissions into structured signals your pricing model can trust – without hiring an army, multi agent architectures, the agentic AI mesh, and the human in the loop controls executives need for auditability and speed, and where agentic underwriting is ready today (and where it isn’t), plus the metrics executives should track—cycle time, hit ratio, and loss ratio uplift. KEY TAKEAWAYS Email submissions were a luxury at the start of my career! What’s been so exciting for me, as a self-professed nerd, is the pace at which the capabilities of core models have got so good that even 6 months ago was a whole product’s capability and feature set is now within the gift of Gemini or GPT5. If you’re an underwriter filling out a spreadsheet/renew model, in 2025 you need to be working with hx underwriting , actuary or agent inside a renew model to have your paired partner helping you get to the best result. Why can’t you have deep risk research on every single risk? Why can’t you say: Tell me the most important characteristics in the world that you can tell me about the top 3 exposures? No human can do this work, the cost/benefit trade off there isn’t economic, but you can run an OpenAI deep risk API call to do that on every single risk you underwrite today. We do it for you, it’s what we do. All of a sudden it’s dramatically easier to bring that level of differentiation and specialism in the way that great underwriting has always been done to every single risk you want to touch. BEST MOMENTS ‘You won’t see that many places with a $7 trillion contribution to GDP, with such a small number of companies and people responsible for this.’ ‘We demonstrated the first API machine vision algorithm in the market in 2017, now kids coming out of university are doing that as toy projects before they get to our clients.’ ‘You can have an army of digital agents helping you now, all for $20 per month!’ ‘Generative AI models have unlocked the ability to pull data so quickly out of the information required for underwrite that you can put a very quick red/amber/green status on risks, several orders of magnitude greater than ever before.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Amrit Santhirasenan is the Co-founder and CEO of Hyperexponential (hx), the AI native pricing and underwriting platform for P&C insurers. Under his leadership, Hx Renew has become known for delivering executive-level outcomes: ~50% faster submission-to-bind, 10× faster model build and deployment, and a platform that supports $45bn+ in GWP for 20+ enterprise customers worldwide. A qualified actuary and computer scientist, Amrit previously spent over a decade in the London Market. He served as Head of Pricing & Analytics at Tokio Marine Kiln, building the managing agent’s first technical pricing team to support ~£1.5bn GWP, and earlier held actuarial roles at Catlin (including standing up the Canadian actuarial function). ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Will Ross, Co-Founder & CEO of Federato, and if you’re an underwriting transformation leader—drowning in Excel, stale pilots, and disconnected data sources—this episode is for you. Will Ross isn’t here to sell you hype. He’s here to show what it looks like when AI actually delivers: faster quotes, better decisions, happier underwriters, and measurable results before the next board meeting. KEY TAKEAWAYS Thinking back to when Amazon released the Echo with Alexa and a bunch of us bought them and took them apart to figure out how it worked reminds me of how Wild West the early days of AI was a decade and a half ago. Now any undergraduate student taking computer science will have some exposure to AI. One of the first things they might learn is how to do simple tasks like that on very little computational resource. I love jumping into our products like that to understand how they work. Break down what AI means: There’s an idea of intelligence or grasping a concept or knowledge, then there’s artificial – doing something in place of a human. You can take it a step further and look at ‘generative’ – generating a thing, or predictive – predicting a thing, agentic – giving it agency and allowing it to complete a task.  What is it that humans do today and, theoretically, what could humans do if they had unlimited time to do their jobs? For underwriters, the process is similar across many line of business: you analyse an exposure, loss history and loss control to come up with a rate perspective, etc. Where can AI systems interact with that process? BEST MOMENTS ‘One of the things I think is really scary with AI today is its perpetuation of news cycles and how fast it spreads.’  ‘No matter how sceptical people are, the vast majority of people are already using these technologies to do their jobs. By bringing them into the room, making them aware of what this technology does, and letting the interact with it, that’s a powerful thing.’ ‘There are going to be jobs that change, but we shouldn’t think about it as AI replacing our jobs, we should think about it as someone using AI to do our job who will replace us.’ ‘What we call AI today will change and change again because it always has; Deep Blue used to be called AI and is now called a chess simulator.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS William Ross is a product and operations leader obsessed with solving the toughest problems in insurance with a mix of pragmatism, speed, and machine learning. As a core member of the Federato leadership team, Will focuses on one mission: turning underwriting from a slow, manual grind into a dynamic, data-driven advantage. At Federato, Will is helping specialty and commercial carriers build resilience and growth into their underwriting operations, showing chief underwriting and transformation officers that AI doesn’t need to be another failed pilot—it can be the competitive edge that secures market share today. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at hello@alchemycrew.ventures