#186 Transforming Insurance Tech with Caden Braly

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0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Caden, who's the co-founder and CEO of AgentsTech, joining me from the US. Caden, thank you very much for being on the show today. If you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your company, yeah, yeah. So my name is. 

0:00:20 - Caden
Caden, as Mehmet said, I'm the co-founder and CEO of AgentsTech, located in College Station, texas, which is northwest of Houston. We are a technology consulting firm for independent insurance brokers in the United States, so we basically go in and help insurance brokers who are either very far behind in their technology journey within their company or just want a second opinion on things in terms of what they're going to add to their company to help them do business better by either increasing revenue or increasing efficiency and things like that. 

0:00:59 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. So this is the question. Maybe it's a little bit classical, but I'm curious to know from this perspective because, as we were discussing before we start that we didn't focus on insurance tech in the show yet. So what is the moment that you realize that there's a huge gap in technology adoption between small insurance brokers and larger firms? How did you react to this realization? 

0:01:31 - Caden
Yeah so I was actually invited to go to a media conference in the Northeast in the US, and before then our company I worked for, also an insurance brokerage myself. Before then we had onboarded a lot of softwares to help us do business better, because we saw, hey, a lot of stuff is going on in the world right now when it comes to insurance and insurance technology. 

we've got to be a step ahead because we don't have the funding that larger, massive brokerages have. So we had to kind of take that next step, so fast forward. When I went to this conference, the people that we were talking to, they were saying, hey, we always have these problems with this and this and this and this. 

And I was like, okay, but I realized I was like well, we already have a software that does that, like we already solved that problem, and these were the people that we were talking to. The other brokerages that were at that conference. They were three, four, 10 times larger than the brokerage that I worked for was. So I was like man. If these people are struggling with having certain technology that they need, then I guess everyone is at this moment. 

So that's when we kind of set down the path. Me and a couple other people started to realize there's a significant need for people to learn how to use technology, and in the insurance industry it's so archaic it's at least 10 years behind every other industry. We found that agents need help because there's so many different softwares that they could use, but they don't know which one to use. 

0:03:10 - Mehmet
And to be honest, insurance brokers. 

0:03:13 - Caden
They don't have time to comb through all of the softwares available because, one, they're really expensive and two, they just don't have the time because they're trying to focus on selling or managing their business. So that's kind of where we come in and take that off their shoulders, because all the softwares that we recommend or that we consult on we've already vetted ourselves and that just helps the agent have kind of a piece of mind that what they're getting from us is going to be the exact solution that they need. 

0:03:43 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. I like always when I hear these stories of actually you face the problem kind of yourself also first, and then you knew that a lot of people would use it and then you came up with your offering, which is amazing Now, but I'm sure, like even at the beginning, there were some challenges that you faced to bridge this gap. So can you like walk us through, like, what kind of challenges you faced and then how slowly these insurance brokers, they started to accept that yeah, they need the change and you were able to onboard them with your company. 

0:04:25 - Caden
Yeah, it's the first big challenge that we saw and we kind of did a trial run of cold calling people of different marketing avenues to see what's the best way to get in front of people. 

And when we did our first trial cold calling, we got a lot of pushback, because there's a lot of insurance agents and I may ruffle some feathers with what I'm about to say, but there's a lot of insurance agents that are stagnant in how they're doing business, because all they're doing they may be a little bit older, they may be middle-aged, they may even be younger, but they're sitting on a cash cow. They're sitting on two, three, four, five million dollars and all they're doing is waiting for a massive venture capital firm, private equity firm or a massive insurance brokerage to come and buy them so that they can take their one, two, three, four, five million dollars and retire. That's. We realized those are the people that we're looking for, because they're not, they're apprehensive to change, because they don't really want to work at this point. 

And then we realized after a while okay, we have to find the insurance brokerages that are maybe not 100% there when it comes to technology or software within their agency, but they're actively seeking it. They're desiring it, because those people are the ones that are like yeah, let's talk, let's work, let's come up with a plan. We've had really good success with those types of agencies, and it doesn't mean that they're already massive. It could be a really small agency, it could be a one or two man shop, but the people that have shown desire to grow and desire to keep working are the people that have become some of our best customers. 

0:06:09 - Mehmet
Yeah, actually this is not something new. I hear Caden and I think it applies across multiple, I would say line of business. You know, when you bring in new technology, you always find these people who would tell you hey, we've been doing it this way all our lives, no need for change. Now Business is running. But the thing I want to highlight here and it applies for the insurance and might apply to other verticals as well is you might come up with a moment where we have a big disruption in business and then you find out that you are losing customers. It's not that we always get the same examples as the Airbnb's and the Netflix and all this, yeah, and the technology is coming after every single vertical, I would say so there is no way to run away from that. Now, how does your company ensure the seamless implementation of these technologies offered to the insurance companies? Can you discuss a little bit some key steps or strategies here? 

0:07:17 - Caden
Yeah. So we have a very after a long deliberation with a lot of our other employees, we've come up with a very seamless, step-by-step process of what to do. The first step that we do is our recommendation, or connecting. So we ask a lot of really in-depth questions about the actual brokerage, about the company, to see what are their problems, is there a solution that can help solve those problems? So after we ask those really in-depth questions, we then go to the implementation phase, which is more of along the lines of the administrative process getting them in touch with the companies, helping manage those initial meetings, answering any of their questions about the software that they may have any confusions, and then the last two steps kind of go hand in hand, which are the integration and the training. 

So the integration has to do with how do we get all these softwares to talk back and forth with each other when it comes to their CRM or insurance industry, there's another one called an AMS or an agency management system. It's more of the like insurance work that needs to be done with them within a daily basis. And then there's a lot of other peripheral softwares that are integrated into these two main CRM and AMS. So you have to be able to know how does this software talk to this one, how does this software integrate to this one? And we have companies that we work with that are third parties that help with that integration, as well as within our own company. And then the last part is probably the most important, is the training for their employees because, right now there's a company called Next Think. 

They're like a technology research firm and they said that in the United States at the beginning either it's either the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023, 60% of employees do not use the technology that their employer has given them. So we come in and we actually do third party training yes, on how to use the software right, because that's the most important. If you don't know how to use it, you're never going to use it. But also, what part of this software? How do we integrate this into your daily business processes? How do we go? You have a customer come in the door or you have someone call in get it wanting an insurance quote. How do you then use software ABC to make that process easier for the customer? 

and in turn, easier for you as an employee. 

And then, lastly, one of the things we realize is that within current insurance brokerages there's some employees that get it, they understand the software, they have no problems. 

It's literally we have one or two meetings and they are off to the races, right. 

But then we have other employees that maybe they're a little apprehensive, maybe they're on a lot of things, and our COO, he said sometimes he said Kate, and he's older than me, he's been in the insurance industry for a long time he said when software comes in, there's some employees that are scared that their job's going to be taken away because that will solve it. 

So we kind of have to go into some of those employees that either are apprehensive and scared of using it or just are having a tough time doing it, saying, hey, it's not going to take away your job, it's actually going to help you do your job better so that you can have more efficiency and potentially make more money. If you're in a sales environment and a software helps decrease 50% of your day-to-day data entry, automated email follow-up, that's 50% more time in the day that you can try to make more sales and make more money. And so that's our whole process and then that is a four month minimum contract that we have and then after that we can actually stay on as just a monthly retainer consultant for any other trainings, any other software recommendations. That's pretty much the process we use. 

0:11:29 - Mehmet
Yeah, just out of curiosity, I'm a technical guy by nature, so when you say you do these integrations, so you rely on some automations and kind of API integrations between different components that they might have. 

0:11:45 - Caden
Yeah, so a lot of API integrations, sometimes native integrations depending on the software. The only problem that we've seen and saying again that I work for an insurance broker is myself In the softwares that insurance companies are building, sometimes they're not the most integrative into other softwares. That's a big problem in the industry right now is there is no one software that can do it all there, because and I don't know the reason why, but there's a lot of softwares that just don't, either company dynamic or technology availability or the depth of technology. They do not integrate with other software as well, so it's a very big issue. The most useful thing in the insurance industry has been Zapier, if you know what Zapier? 

is is because you don't have to have that native integration with some softwares. You can just bounce it off of Zapier and it bounces back over to the other software you're trying to communicate with. That is something that we talk to and share tech companies. All day long we're trying to say hey, can you please open up your API so that our jobs can be easier, so that you can better serve your employees? Some of them are open to it, some of them are not, but it's just up to that company. 

0:13:20 - Mehmet
Actually, this is very good observation. Caden Mice have been also back in the days, previous lives, as we say sit on the client side and then as a consultant. Now people think that once we have a software that can do it all, it's better, but actually the feedback I receive it becomes more complex to use because people start to lose track. Where I can do this Now, on the other hand, what happens sometimes is you have a lot of tools and people get lost also as well, like which tool is for what? I have a very software first-gen, I have something for marketing, something for I don't know, maybe finance, accounting, all this stuff, and I think tools like Zapier and Make, or Integromat as it used to be known, like. Here we are facilitating this and bringing the pieces together on the whole Because, as you said, the biggest friction for the user is always learning something new, and I'm happy you discussed because I was about to ask you about the training part, but you already answered it. 

Now people always love to hear stories, like I mean, when we say we shifted this organization from this state to this state, so right. So if you can give us you know kind of a success story or case study that you know. It can tell us how your company transformed a traditional insurance brokerage into a short stack. 

0:14:57 - Caden
Yeah. 

So the basic one that I love to use because it is a literal self-case study, is with our current brokerage that I work for. 

We were the obviously the trial right of like okay, let's, we can't mess up, right, because it's our own brokerage, so we might as well just 100% all the way in. So prior to me coming on to the current brokers that I work for, it was, you know, a decent size in revenue and employees and number of customers. But when I came on, you know, coming from a pretty heavy tech background, I was like this is it's not bad, but it could be a lot better. So I talked to our CEO and I was like hey, you know, we're starting this company up on the side, you know, can we use our brokerage as the guinea pig per se? So what we did within our brokerage is we onboarded about eight or nine softwares, all Taylor, taylor picked to some some issues that we were having within the agency, whether it was inbound customers or email automation to current clients or filling out forms for quotes for insurance, commercial insurance quotes, and the list goes on and on. 

So we onboarded all of these softwares in a way that was not overwhelming Because, like, if you onboard nine softwares in one week, your employees are probably going to leave because they can't. They can't handle them. So we onboarded, I think, over about a six month timeframe. We onboarded two softwares a month until until we were finished. 

That way we could slowly say all right. So we did the main two, which was a CRM. We onboarded that one first. That was just the first month, because that in itself is a lot to work with. So we did that first and then from there we started adding things that built upon the CRM. That made it made everything flow really well together. And then, after we got done, we did the training with everyone. I was the one that led majority of the trainings for all of our employees. 

And then we started the actual seeing. Okay, let's see, what have we increased in efficiency? What have we decreased costs? What, how much revenue have we increased? And we monitored that for about a year, for about 12 months. What are our KPIs? Are we actually doing what we said we were going to do? And at the end of 12 months we increased our revenue 25% and it was totally attributed to the technology. 

And you know, some people say, oh, you know, you can't, you can't fully, you know 100%, say that it was the technology that that did the, that made you increase your revenue by 25%, because prior to that we were only doing about 10 to 12% year over year increase in annual revenue. But I and I always say to those people because I get it all the time I say the only thing that we changed was our technology. That year we didn't hire any more employees. We didn't, you know, increase any any lead sources. We didn't purchase any more lead sources. 

It was all just based off of of increasing efficiency, increasing, increasing the amount or decreasing the amount of time it took to onboard a customer to the, to the brokerage, and then also with those automated emails, it helped a lot with our retention because in cross selling different, different lines of business. So that was a lot of what we did, so that was probably the best success story, and then we've definitely had a lot of other agencies have similar success in terms of increasing revenue. We've had a couple agencies that we worked with that have been able to increase their efficiencies and decrease the amount of time it takes to onboard a customer by like 40, 50%. 

So, the customer is almost and it's almost a totally automated process. But also there's little touch points in that onboarding process with customers that are, you know, receiving a phone call from the agent or things like that. So that's probably in all our biggest success stories our own agency and then we have some other agencies in. Florida and on the East Coast that we have done a lot of good work. For that are seen a lot of success. 

0:19:56 - Mehmet
Yeah, probably I can now imagine you know exactly what happened. 

So, probably because you were in engaging the technology in the onboarding of customers, or customers satisfaction increase, and based on that, probably they started to suggest your services to other people also as well their friends, their family, you know, yeah. 

So, yeah, of course, like you know, people think like only it's the you know number game with technology, but they don't put a lot on customer satisfaction because, you know, one of the main thing that technology can help companies is increasing their customer satisfaction, or what sometimes we call it customer experience, and customer experience is a main driver for revenue growth also as well, which is amazing, actually, and the reason I asked you the question in this way because when we talk about, you know, kind of digital transformation or modernizing your tech stack, so it needs to be seen with a number and, of course, like increasing the revenue generated is, I would say, number one for any, any organization. Now, of course, like you have a vision, I would say, for the future, for the industry in general. How are you seeing this and where you do see your company fitting in that picture? 

0:21:24 - Caden
Yeah, I mean to answer the first part of your question about where you see the industry going. There's about to be a large shift and by large I mean like industry changing shift of there's a ton of insurance agents that are about to phase out, about to retire, because insurance is one of the oldest industries in the United States and in the whole world. So, right, you're gonna have a lot of older insurance agents that are gonna either sell or retire, probably both. That's gonna be a very big thing because you're gonna see, in just my opinion, you're gonna see larger insurance brokerages or private equity firm of venture capital. They're gonna start buying these agencies and they're gonna start getting bigger. Now, a lot of these bigger brokerages, they have a whole department that's totally dedicated to mergers and acquisitions. 

So you're gonna have those smaller mom like we like to say mom and pop insurance shops in smaller towns that are gonna get bought up by the larger brokerages. And it's gonna be you're gonna see people kind of scrambling to say, well, where do I go, you know? And it's gonna be the agents that have done the good software, technology and marketing platforms available to get those customers to come to their agency. That's what I'm gonna see that's what I think in the actual industry that we're gonna see in terms of technology. I think the innovation right now in the insurance industry is starting to finally grow. It's they're starting to, it's starting to make a make an appearance as a legitimate industry that you can go work for an insured tech company and you can make a good living. 

0:23:15 - Mehmet
So that's that's encouraging to see. 

0:23:17 - Caden
But in terms of the second part of your question, I think I think really the most important thing that I want our company to fit in as is a trusted source. You know we're not. We're not doing this agents tech company to make a ton of money and then sell to some bigger venture capital firms so I can go retire on an island in Bora Bora. No, I don't. That would be great, but I'm not. I'm not, that's not, that's not my focus. 

I I have a true desire to help smaller, smaller to medium-sized insurance brokerages make a business for themselves, make up, make a good life for themselves. And if they don't, what they're gonna see is oh, they're gonna have, they're gonna be forced to sell. That's the worst case scenario for me is an insurance agent that's worked his whole life to build up a company and then gets to a point where he can't compete with the bigger brokerages when it comes to selling insurance and he's forced to sell. But if he would have had technology in place prior to any different carrier appointments in different software is to help increase business he wouldn't have to do that. So that's my thing is I just I want to be a help, because small business is really important to me it's. I work in a small business pretty much my whole life and I don't want to see small business getting eaten up by big, big business 100%. 

0:24:48 - Mehmet
The small businesses are like I think it's I was doing some research it's not only in the United States, it's also across the world like they. They contribute in the larger portion of of the economy of any country. And, yeah, this is why also, I focus a lot, you know, in in outside the podcast time on trying to help startups and small, medium businesses in in surviving. And then I want to ask a question because we didn't discuss it. So what is your take on on AI and its use in insurance tech? 

0:25:27 - Caden
I think AI and insurance will be the last to really integrate well together. I don't think I think it'll be insurance companies. As you know, the actual carriers, like nationwide progressive travelers, all of them, especially in the US and in Europe and in Asia. They will be very hesitant because the underwriters that one of the biggest issues right now is underwriters who actually, you know, determine, okay, are we going to write this piece of business or not? You know what are all the rating factors in determining the premium and things like that. Well, they're very hesitant because AI is, eventually, is smarter than they are right. 

If you take years and years and years worth of insurance risk data and you plug it into AI, yes, it will spit out a premium that is going to probably be better than what they can determine, or it will, you know, be able to say, yes, this is a good risk or no, this is a really bad risk to do. The only thing I think it's going to be a hesitant of doing that is there is sort of a human factor to underwriting insurance that really you can't put off to a, to an AI. It's just, it's not impossible. I don't think I'm never saying anything is impossible, but it's going to be a pretty tough thing, just depending on the amount of data that you need for to determine that. So I think it'll have definitely its place in insurance technology and softwares. I don't think in the actual insurance world. It will take place for probably about five to eight more years. 

0:27:21 - Mehmet
That's interesting. I was reading an article and exactly you know they raised the same concerns that you mentioned. Now, in addition to this, it's all the talk about how the data is biased like is it a clean data? And you know it's a people that they might not have even history before. They might be, you know, given an unfair policy, for example, or you know like it's a challenge to do. It's challenging but it's coming. 

Yeah, but I agree with you, it's going to take a little bit of time until it reaches the maturity that we can integrate it in insurance tech, and I think this is why you know because insurance tech is more or less also similar to the case of banking also as well, and you know banking or anything financial, you know related vertical we will see like more slower adoption for AI and actually any other technology, because usually these verticals are the slower Because, yeah, they deal with the actual money and no one wants to lose their money. So it's like very spot on. Now, as you know, now you're managing the business Gaten yourself and a lot of things we mentioned. We mentioned a lot of other trends also as well. So how do you keep up with all the news and all the innovations that are coming up out there. 

0:28:46 - Caden
Yeah, we are actually all of our employees and we've given them full reign to constantly be looking for new startups, constantly looking for new companies, new innovations. We're on email, the automated emails from every insurer tech that we recommend to see hey, are they updating a new portion of their software? Or, you know, do they recommend? You know, do they have a partnership with another software that we don't know about? That's how we do that. And even then, within before we got really started with Agents Tech, me and our CEO were in, I'd say, combined, 150 to 175 meetings or demos with software companies and that was kind of our due diligence to see are these, are these software is actually going to be good? 

Software is to recommend, or they just, you know, some of us just has an idea and you know, things weren't really planned well. So that is kind of what we do is we're always researching, we're always looking. If you're not in the insurance industry, because there's tons of companies, if you're not looking and you're a tech consulting firm, you're going to be behind. That is part of our daily routine. Is hey, did you find anything else? Did you find any other marketing, lead generation software, crm, whatever it may be? That's, that's how we always stay kind of ahead of the game for our customers. 

0:30:20 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. As we're approaching Kevin and just I like also to you know you did something really, you know impressive. You know trying to innovate something within right. So what's your advice for anyone who want to take, you know this entrepreneurial and people think sometime that being entrepreneur is only you know leaving and starting something. But in your case it was like a little bit changing from within. So what advice you give? You know, fellow people who might just now at the edge of deciding what should I do next, you know how I move forward, what you can tell them. 

0:31:01 - Caden
Yeah, I would say instead, if you have an idea that you think is going to be the next best thing thing, go for it If you have a lot of confidence. If you don't, I would say, start it on the side. You know, do something here and there to just get the ball rolling. Determine is there going to be any interest? Because what you may find out is that you have a great idea but actually people are interested in buying it or they're not interested in getting those services that you came up with. So that would be my number one thing is like maybe start on the side. You have to dip your toe in the water a little bit and see, does it actually make sense for you to do that? Also, come up with a solution to solve a company's problem and then, if that you know, determines hey, this is actually a really good thing, maybe other companies can benefit from this. That's a fantastic thing, because then you can still maintain your current job and still have income coming in. 

You don't have to take out you know, business loans and then you can slowly progress into something that's going to be big and stable. That's the one thing that we really want to emphasize in the entrepreneurial mindset is there's definitely a place for, you know, venture capital, small business loans, things. You know, going 110% balls to the wall and just absolutely hitting it as hard as you can. That's great. But there's also a place for slow, progressive growth of a company, of an idea. 

I personally like the slow, progressive growth because you can make a good foundation underneath you and you don't have to answer to investors. You don't have to answer to, in the US, the Small Business Association. If you're trying to get a loan, you know they're saying, hey, where's my money? You can't pay on that loan. That's a really good thing because, also, if you start by helping your current company, you're in, you already have an example of how that idea or that product or whatever it is works, so that you can then take that onto whatever other business opportunities you want to pursue and say, hey, it's already worked here, like it has with our agency. I'm just going to go ahead and do it and use that as an example for other people that might be interested. 

So I think, that's probably the best idea. 

0:33:30 - Mehmet
Yeah, so it's basically following the boost-rapping, the business approach, which quite yeah like I'm from that camp, let's say, of course. But there are exceptions, you know, and we discussed it on the show multiple times. It depends on the idea, on, you know, the founders and many other factors. But yeah, I would say your way is a very healthy way of doing it. Also as well. I'll put it on the side, I'm just testing. Now I have kind of a legacy question here. Is there anything you wish? I asked you and I didn't, and how you'd answer that, oh man. 

0:34:13 - Caden
I wish you would have asked me how hot it is in Texas right now, because it will not be more hot than Dubai. 

0:34:20 - Mehmet
I can assure you this. 

0:34:22 - Caden
Yes, yes, it's a little bit of a different hot, I think right now. I'm in Dallas right now and I think it's it's like 102 or 103, but the humidity is about 90% or 85%. So that's about it. But realistically, you had you had some very, very good questions. 

0:34:46 - Mehmet
Okay, thank you. 

0:34:47 - Caden
I think I would just want to tell people that starting a company is not easy, especially in an industry that is so apprehensive to technological change. So I would say, if you have an idea and you're in an industry other than insurance, go for it, because you'll probably be successful. 

0:35:12 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's. That's really informative, just to put context for people. So if you are in the US, you know 102 Fahrenheit how much it is. So for people who are living on the side of the world like it's almost 39 degrees Celsius in Dubai is 45 degrees Celsius, which is like almost 113 or 114 Fahrenheit I would say so, yeah, so, but yeah, it's hot, it's hot. It's also hot, Caden. Thank you very much. Just where they can find a little bit more about your company, like is there any website about yourself also as well? 

0:35:46 - Caden
Yeah, yeah, so you can reach out to wwwagentstechcom. That's our website. If you're an insurance brokerage and you want to reach out to us, you can fill out a consultation there, or you can email me at Caden at agentstechcom, and we can talk that way as well. 

0:36:05 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. I will make sure that I will put the links in the episode description. Thank you very much for the time, Caden, and, as usual, the way I end the show, asking the audience if you like this episode. You have any feedback, any question, don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can find me on all the social media. You can see them now. I changed the banner recently so I don't have to repeat them. Maybe I'll link it in where I'm most active. You can send me also an email If you are interested to be a guest, same how Caden was a guest today. 

Also, reach out. I have open door policy. I would say. Actually, I would love to have you on the show, doesn't matter where you are. If you are in the US, canada, UK, I have guests from all over the world. I can afford all time zones. That's fine with me. Important thing is like I was impressed by Caden's story. It's like a true success story. This is why we decided to do this and if you have something similar, don't hesitate, reach out to me, because the CTO show is not only about tech, it's also about starting up an entrepreneurship. Well, thank you very much and until we meet next time. Thank you, bye-bye. 

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