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What's happening in insurtech?
Karn Saroya knows how to build and raise seed funding for insurtech ventures. In this episode of Reinventing Insurance, Karn joins Paul Ricard and shares his secrets, challenges, and experiences as a serial insurtech entrepreneur. Over the last 10 years, Karn has launched three successful businesses — the latest is Re, a Web3 reinsurance startup valued at $100 million post money.
Tune in as our conversation discusses the latest happenings in the insurtech space, technology breakthroughs— such as AI and Web3 — that are redefining growth opportunities, and Karn's broad spectrum of experiences with launching three successful startups.
Re, a Web3 reinsurance startup
Re aims to become a decentralized Lloyds of London, and as a De-Fi insurance protocol, Re provides transparency and backs insurance programs that cover risks and capital for areas such as workers compensation, agriculture, and aviation.
Stylekick, an e-commerce fashion startup
Karn started his career as an Oliver Wyman consultant, advising leaders in the world's largest companies. In 2013, he co-founded an e-commerce fashion startup called Stylekick, a marketplace for bloggers, designers and fashion influencers to upload their lookbooks to make them shoppable.
Cover, a modern purveyor of insurance
Shopify purchased Stylekick in 2015, and Karn moved into the insurtech space, launching Cover with the goal of making buying insurance coverage an easy, stress-free, less intimidating task. Cover's app quickly became popular, ranking #1, and allowed customers to take photos of items they wanted to insure, such as cars, homes, and even pets.
Spend your time doing things you really like to do as opposed to dreaming about it. Push forward and build solutions that solve problems. Eventually, you got to take the leapKarn Saroya, Co-founder and CEO at Re
Reinventing Insurance Podcast
Our Reinventing Insurance podcast explores best practices for taking a CustomerFirst approach to innovation within Insurance. Throughout this series, host Paul Ricard discusses lessons, challenges, and new ways of working with guests who will share their first-hand experiences.
Our podcast host
Paul Ricard is a partner in Oliver Wyman’s Financial Services, Insurance and Asset Management and Digital practices. Paul works closely with businesses to reinvent their strategies, products, and services — and to fuel top-line growth opportunities. Paul specializes in advising leaders on large-scale digital transformation programs, greenfield business design, and digital operating model development. He is also the CustomerFirst platform lead for Insurance and Asset Management, working collaboratively with clients to develop novel value propositions rooted in customer needs. He is actively connected with the Insurtech and Fintech communities, and has facilitated strong partnerships between incumbents and Fintech/Insurtech players.
Our guest
Karn Saroya is the Co-founder and CEO at Re. Karn is responsible for operations, business development and investor relations at Re, an on-chain reinsurer. Karn’s first company, Stylekick, was acquired by Shopify in 2015, he then left to scale Cover.com into a national insurance platform over the next 7 years. Prior to entrepreneurship, he was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in their financial services practice. Karn holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University with Distinction and a Master of Finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he attended as a Fulbright Scholar. He is also a Y Combinator fellow and alumnus.
More from the Reinventing Insurance podcast collection
Our Reinventing Insurance collection is now available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also tune in on Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Episode 10: Digital revolution(s), will Insurance be the next wave? Oliver Wyman's Paul Ricard connects with Albert Chu, Group Chief Digital Officer, Sompo Holdings. In his 40-year Silicon Valley career, Albert has been at the forefront many technological revolutions — the personal computer, the internet revolution, and today's AI and Web3 opportunities. Albert shares ways Sompo is finding new growth opportunities, building and educating talent, and investing in the future — beyond insurance.
Episode 9: Right side, Left side - What does behavioral science mean for insurers? Paul Ricard sits down with Wei Ke, a partner based in Oliver Wyman’s New York office, affiliated with both our Pricing, Sales, and Marketing Practice and our Retail and Business Banking Practice. Together they discuss how behavioral science can help insurers improve decision making and build stronger customer experiences in the age of acceleration.
Episode 8: Who will win in the age of acceleration? Paul Ricard sits down with Gaurav Garg, Oliver Wyman's Global Head of Property & Casualty insurance and former C-Suite executive. Together they discuss the insurance industry's current and upcoming changes, and the various ways incumbents and challengers are approaching the age of acceleration. Gaurav provides his perspectives on how incumbents and challengers can play to their strengths and maximize their opportunities.
On Episode 7, we talk tech and insurance. Paul Ricard is joined by Alex Lyall and Justin Kahn, leaders of Oliver Wyman's Fulcrum technology. We take a deep dive into industry trends, greenfield considerations, and the key ingredients to a successful legacy transformation. Plus, how incumbents can leverage their strengths and get unstuck when it comes to building a modern tech stack. And we learn how Fulcrum's proprietary tooling and intelligence is helping life insurers solve their most pressing and complex infrastructure challenges.
View more from our Reinventing Insurance Podcast collection.