// . //  Insights //  Episode 4: Reinventing Insurance Podcast
When it comes to customer experience in insurance, the most important thing is transparency. There's no secret sauce... but it can be incredibly difficult to execute
Drew Ostro, CEO and Co-Founder, PolicyMe

In this episode, we connect with Drew Ostro, CEO and co-founder of PolicyMe. PolicyMe is a rising player in the Insurtech space, coming off a record year—with a 700 percent growth rate and introducing a completely digital way for Canadians to purchase life insurance. As an Oliver Wyman alum, Drew shares the full spectrum of his experiences, from advising senior leaders at the world’s largest insurance companies to the challenges of launching a new startup. We draw parallels from both sides of the incumbent and insurtech equation. Join us as we explore partnerships, accelerating industry trends, lessons learned, burnt pizza, and recommendations to help insurers build solid customer-centric experiences in the digital space.

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.

 

Episode guest

Drew Ostro is the CEO and Co-Founder of PolicyMe. Most recently, PolicyMe succesfully partnered with the incumbent, Canadian Premier Life Insurance Company, to deliver a customer-centric and fully digital insurance-buying experience. The result—customers can easily purchase term life insurance policies directly from the PolicyMe platform. The product delivers an optimized customer experience, with the application, approval, and underwriting all performed digitally.

Drew has seen the insurance industry from both the incumbent and insurtech views. He brings over 10 years of experience in the insurance industry working as a licensed actuary and was a management consultant here at Oliver Wyman. He has advised senior executives at the world’s largest insurance companies on strategy, digital transformations, operations, regulatory adherence and finance and risk.

Our podcast host

Paul Ricard is a Partner in Oliver Wyman’s Insurance practice and a member of the CustomerFirst platform, which focuses on designing and building digital solutions, starting with customer needs and challenges. Paul has worked with large financial-services institutions across the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions. He is also actively connected with the Insurtech and Fintech communities, and has facilitated strong ties between Insurtechs and incumbents. His areas of expertise include designing and building greenfield digital solutions and implementing large-scale digital transformations.

Featured in this episode

Podcast Episode 3: Playing to win

Are you ready to spark innovation?! Join us, for our third podcast episode (18 min) where we interview Taddy Hall. Taddy is a Senior Partner in Lippincott's Innovation Practice, a best-selling author, and a founder of the "Jobs to be Done" theory.  

Taddy shares ways insurers can evolve their mindset by shifting away from selling products and moving toward solving problems, and not just any problems—the ones that spark real energy for progress. Taddy invites insurers into a world of new possibilities, and shares first-hand experiences on how insurers can succeed at market-creating innovation, and create breakthrough solutions for their customers.

Podcast Episode 2: The Power of Human Insights

In our second podcast episode, we interviewed Dr. Amy Lasater-Wille. As Oliver Wyman's Director of Human Insights, Amy works closely with financial services and insurance leaders to help them deeply understand the motivations, needs and desires of consumers. She will share how insurers can uncover unmet needs to best inform decision-making and create distinct customer experiences. We go ‘beyond the obvious’ as Amy talks about the power of human insights and offers examples of client experiences to help insurers tap into today’s growth opportunities.

Podcast Episode 1: Launching new digital ventures

Our pilot episode featured Michael Keany, Head of Oliver Wyman's Studio and a partner in our Digital practice. Michael has spent considerable time launching new digital ventures inside large financial services firms. Michael shared four key management traps to avoid, along with learnings on how traditional insurers can set the company up for new venture success.  


Reinventing Insurance series