InsurTech Geek Podcast

David Fernandez, Chief Claims Officer at Kingstone Insurance, joins host James Benham to explore claims transformation, operational excellence, and why the team comes before the technology.David fell into claims almost by accident: a broken-down car and a newspaper ad for a claims rep trainee job at Progressive, one that came with a company car, started an 18-year run there. A decade at Liberty Mutual followed, then stops at Unum and Point32Health, and now three years as Chief Claims Officer at Kingstone Insurance, where he has helped lead the company's turnaround.In this episode:• Claims quality is a grind, not a project. It is won file by file, day after day, until it becomes how the team works, not something you launch and move past.• Why "until you have a team that you believe in, you're swimming up river" is the foundation every other fix in a claims org sits on top of.• How a small, empowered team rebuilt Kingstone's claims platform in four months, with clear ownership and not a single slide deck.• Why making no decision is worse than making a suboptimal one, and how giving people room to admit mistakes keeps a transformation moving.• Inside Kingstone's catastrophe playbook, built for a Northeast climate that delivered 11 declared catastrophes in the first quarter alone.Key Quotes:"We sell a piece of paper and a promise. Sometimes it's a PDF.""Making no decision is worse than making a suboptimal decision.""Until you have a team that you believe in, you are swimming up river.""There was not a single slide for that whole thing."🔗 Connect: David Fernandez, Kingstone Insurance links👤 Host: James Benham🎙️ Terra sponsor block + InsurTech Geek socials + standard sign-off (unchanged, copied from the standing footer)

Dawn Miller, Chief Commercial Officer of Lloyd's and CEO of Lloyd's Americas, joins host James Benham to explore what an insurance ecosystem actually is, why a 338-year-old market still has to fight to be understood, and how Lloyd's Lab turned an accelerator into a pipeline that keeps its alumni in the industry.Dawn grew up in Georgia and went to university in Washington, D.C. planning to run the United Nations. Instead she found risk transfer — first at OPIC, now DFC, then political risk at Willis — and stayed for 25 years, through Chubb, AXA and AIG, with a detour building a company in Prague along the way. She joined Lloyd's for the transformation challenge: an institution with 338 years of legacy, a license network trading in 200 countries, and a purpose statement that needed a reset.Recorded on site at InsurTech Insights New York 2026.In this episode:• What separates an ecosystem from a marketplace or a network — Dawn's answer is the heartbeat at the center, where you can watch value move between stakeholders• Why Lloyd's reset its purpose statement in March, and why "global" appears in it twice when 60% of market premium comes out of North America• The narrative problem: a coffee house origin story and 338 years are not enough to win capital and clients• Inside Lloyd's Lab seven years on — two themed cohorts a year, structured problem statements, government partners, and the 95% of alumni still in insurance• Why insurance should talk about itself as a resilience industry that happens to sell insurance, and what that reframe does for talentKey Quotes:"We bring together the world's leading risk-takers to advance global progress.""Your competitor one day could be your partner the next, your client the following.""We can't just say we started in a coffee house. We've been here 338 years. That's not enough.""Ecosystem is the only word that gives a sense of a bit of a heartbeat to the center of it.""Talk about us as a resilience industry that happens to sell insurance."🔗 Connect:Dawn Miller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-mmiller/Lloyd's: https://www.lloyds.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/lloyd%27s-of-london/👤 Host:James Benham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbenham🎙️ This episode is sponsored by Terra, the next-generation Workers' Comp and Commercial P&C Software.Visit 👉 https://terra.insure / https://www.linkedin.com/company/terrainsure/📌 Find InsurTech Geek:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insuretechgeek/Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/InsurtechGeekInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/insurtechgeek/Subscribe, rate, and comment. As always, Enjoy the Ride & Geek Out! 🤓

Ken Bunn, Vice President of Claims at Builders Mutual Insurance Company, joins hosts James Benham and Rob Galbraith to explore how a construction only Southeast insurer built its claims department from scratch, why the AI tools that stick are the ones adjusters never have to think about, and what it takes to keep training junior adjusters into seniors.Ken's path ran through 18 years at Nationwide, rotating between claims leadership, field training, and IT program management, before Builders Mutual asked him to build a claims department that didn't exist yet. Twelve years later, the company has grown from roughly 200 million to 650 million in revenue, and Ken still leads much of the original team he brought over from an outsourced TPA.In this episode:• Why Builders Mutual pulled its claims department in-house, and how they kept close to 30 of the original 40 people they brought over. • The predictive AI models that worked exactly as designed and still failed to stick. • The unglamorous automation, document routing, indexing, and med record summaries, that actually delivered the ROI. • Ken's leadership philosophy for change management with no formal program at all. • Why work comp rate softening may be hitting a floor as catastrophic claims costs climb. Key Quotes:"You can't work on an assembly line and do brain surgery at the same time.""It's not going to solve all your problems. It's going to help.""There might be something wrong when your claims adjusters are the happiest people in the room.""Be real. Tell people what's going to happen and why you're doing it.""Pick and choose your tools well so they inform the adjuster, not just replace them."🔗 Connect:Ken Bunn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbunn/Builders Mutual Insurance Company: https://www.buildersmutual.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/builders-mutual-insurance-company👤 Hosts:James Benham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbenhamRob Galbraith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-galbraith/🎙️ This episode is sponsored by Terra, the next-generation Workers' Comp and Commercial P&C Software.Visit 👉 https://terra.insure / https://www.linkedin.com/company/terrainsure/📌 Find InsurTech Geek:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insuretechgeek/Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/InsurtechGeekInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/insurtechgeek/Subscribe, rate, and comment. As always, Enjoy the Ride & Geek Out! 🤓

Freddie Scarratt, Global Deputy Head of InsurTech at Gallagher Re, joins James Benham and Rob Galbraith to unpack why 95% of all insurtech funding in Q1 2026 flowed into AI-focused companies, and what that means for the birth of an entirely new risk class: AI liability. From the Air Canada chatbot case that made headlines, to the hard lesson the industry learned when cheap venture capital tried to scale insurtechs like SaaS businesses, Freddie brings a reinsurance broker's view of where AI liability, cyber, and professional indemnity are converging into one digital risk category, and why insurance, unlike every other industry, can never fully cap its downside.

Cyber risk is evolving faster than the policies written to cover it. Rick Wong, Head of Insurance at Parametrix Insurance, sits down with James Benham live at RIMS 2026 to talk about the future of parametric cyber — and why the standard tech E&O form wasn't designed for the exposures that actually matter today. Parametrix is a Lloyd's coverholder writing parametric cyber, SLA, and enterprise risk. Named Cyber Underwriting Team of the Year at the Intelligent Insurer Awards, Q1 2026 already at 60% of full-year 2025 volume. In this episode:→ Why standard cyber policies fail data centers→ How parametric products are being used as financial tools — not just risk transfer→ AI-powered criminal organizations, nation-state actors, and what's coming in cyber threats→ Building a differentiated MGA in a space with growing capacity and real opportunity Guest: Rick Wong - Head of Insurance at Parametrix InsuranceWebsite: https://www.parametrixinsurance.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-b-wong/ Host: James Benham - Founder & CEO at JBKnowledge Sponsor: Terra - Cloud-native Workers' Comp and P&C platform | terra.insure