Ben Telfer: 

Hello everyone. Hope you’re well, and welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar: “On-demand digital solutions to address unmet insurance needs”. Today we will hear the journey of Duuo, the digital insurance brand of The Co–operators. Duuo was the first in a range of on–demand insurance brands for the Canadian market, and today we’re pleased to be joined by representatives of Duuo, The Co–operators, and their insurtech partner, Slice Labs. 

I’m very pleased to introduce today’s speakers. Firstly we have Robin Shufelt, she’s the managing director of Duuo. Then from The Co-operators, Peter Primdahl, he’s VP of emerging business models. Then from Slice Labs, their chief growth officer, Philippe Lafreniere. Peter, I think I’m handing over to you first. Thank you for joining us today, and over to you. 

Peter Primdahl: 

Thank you Ben. It’s a pleasure to be here today. Maybe just a little more about myself. I joined The Co-operators Group about 10 years ago. I’ve been in the business about, something up on 30 years. I started with a subsidiary, Sovereign General Insurance Company, which is focused on the upper mid-market and specialty space in the Canadian industry and transacting business through independent brokers. In the last two or three years I’ve been exclusively focused on innovation and emerging business model area. I also co-manage our corporate venture capital fund. 

I wonder just before I move on maybe if I could ask Robin and Philippe to just quickly introduce themselves. Robin? 

Robin Shufelt: 

Hi, I’m Robin Shufelt. I’m the manager director of Duuo currently. I’ve been with the group of companies, The Co-operators, for about nine years. Was on the Sovereign side, and my main areas of expertise there were overseeing their technology underwriting areas, as well as their cyber areas. I’ve been managing director of Duuo for about a year and a half now. Before that, participated in a number of innovation projects for the group of companies as well. 

Philippe Lafreniere: 

Thanks Robin. I’m Philippe Lafreniere, Chief Growth Officer at Slice Labs. I’ve been at Slice for about two years. I’ve spent my entire career in the insurance industry, about 27 years now, dealing with sales, underwriting, IT, but I’ve been on the technology side, and the technology innovation, technology implementation side for most of my career. I’m looking forward to share the Slice story and vision with you all today. 

Peter Primdahl: 

Thank you. Maybe where I’ll start is to provide a high level overview of just who The Co-operators is. We’re a multi-line insurance and financial cooperative, focus exclusively in Canada. We have about $41 billion of assets under management. We’re fifth largest P&C insurer in Canada. I think we’re 10th in the life space, which is a space dominated by three very large carriers, Sun Life, Manulife and Canada Life, and then there’s everybody else. We’re in that pool. We have an institutional investment or wealth management arm, Addenda Capital, and a number of other smaller plays, including brokerage operations. We’re about 6000 employees located across Canada. Then we have another roughly 2500 folks in captive agent or advisor offices spread across about 500 communities in Canada. 

Maybe flip the slide here. When I think about the journey of innovation at The Co-operators, I have to go back about 10 or 12 years ago where we realized that in order to optimize and modernize our core operations, we needed to do some things a little bit differently. We did various different things, but one of the key things we focused on was analytics. Since that time, we’ve built out tremendous analytics capabilities in our organization. We’re well north of 100 people in the business intelligence areas, and I like to think that they are, if not the best, one of the best units in the Canadian insurance industry. 

More recently we moved into adjacent areas, in particular in the current strategy we’re focused on personal wealth and really leveraging the footprint and capabilities we have across Canada to push into that space. Also, digital transformation is on the tip of many people’s tongues that are listening in here today I’m sure, but it certainly is for us as well. Our goal here really is to better serve our existing customer, earn that right to increase share of wallet. Maybe also find customers that are just beyond our reach with our existing capabilities today, so to sort of reconfigure our existing products, services and go to market strategies to capture those. Like any digital transformation project, there’s always a focus on doing things more effectively and efficiently to improve your margins. 

Then lastly, we certainly got a lot more intentional about our innovation that’s focused on the more transformational spaces, which is the focus of today’s discussion. When I think about that transformational space, it’s really rooted in our cooperative identity of addressing unmet needs or underserved needs of Canadians. There’s many of those, given the massive changes that we’re undergoing as a society and an economy. We aspire to open up these new markets and find these new clients that we’re not talking to today. As we aspire to do so, we realized that we needed to develop a new client value proposition, so new products, and services, and client experiences by way we capture the hearts and minds of the people we’re targeting, of this market set we’re targeting. In order to build those, we realized that we needed different capabilities and different competencies by which we do that, and really reorganize the processes by which we actually create these points of values and transfer them onto the consumer. 

That’s really the start of our journey, our interaction with Slice. It was somewhat fortuitous because we were working on another project, I think it was early in 2018, and we came upon Slice and got really excited about what they call the insurance cloud services platform, which is a technology and analytics platform that I’m sure Philippe will explain a little further later on. As we saw what it was capable of doing, it really fostered or fuelled the imagination we had around what could we build in terms of insurance solutions or protection solutions on this platform. What immediately grabs you is episodic and on demand insurance products, but I would suggest that it’s expanded beyond that. 

If we move ahead a few months and we’re into July, we actually signed the platform business agreement with Slice, which really cemented the relationship. We actually got so excited about their capabilities that we made an investment into Slice. We were the lead investor in their series A round at that time. In full disclosure, I sit on the board of Slice as well as my role here at The Co-operators. 

Internally, we also realized that if we were going to make maximum utility of these new tools and build these new things, we would need to structure ourselves differently internally. That really was the precursor to launching Duuo, and Duuo is an incorporated entity within the group of companies. We think of it as a greenfield. Sort of the reasoning behind that was innovation in our industry is inherently a high risk, high reward, or we hope a high reward journey, and those risks manifest themselves in many different ways. We felt the best that we could sort of find this place, this home for this innovation and ring fence it, if you will. 

An example of that is, for example, the brand. We’ve been around for 75 years as The Co-operators, building our brand iteratively to have one of the best, if not the best insurance brand in Canada. We would hate for sort of an MVP or an experimental product to impair what we’ve built over the past 75 years. Hence, everything we produce comes out under the Duuo brand with a subtle link back to The Co-operators. That’s just an example of some of the risks that we were trying address by establishing a separate unit. 

The other part of it is you needed this unit to really encourage the exploration that’s necessary in innovation. I like to think of that as you can’t just extrapolate the best practices that have been built for the past 75 years, you really need to create emergent practices both in terms of how you create the value, but also re-imagining how you transfer that value onto the consumer end. With the launch came accountabilities and decision rights around a lot of different domains, including some domains at that time I really didn’t have a lot of experience with. I’ll pull on the marketing thread again. In terms of allowing ourselves to tell our branding story to these market spaces we were trying to explore in a different way, and that really require us to leverage emergent practices in terms of the way we think about it, instead of just extrapolating what we have already. 

Yet I think the real advantage that we have is we’re this start-up that has access to the massive scale, and scope, and capabilities of this large organization. It’s important to stay connected in some way, but really sort of redefine those interactions. As I said, we have these best practices, and we have people accountable for executing those best practices, and that makes total sense when you’re trying to protect the steady stream of profitability that’s emanating out of your core, but it can be less beneficial or even detrimental to when you’re trying to innovate. We try to sort of issue a note directly from the C suite that sort of directly tried to define this idea of, when this new unit asks for help, please help them, however, as you’re helping them, try not to impose or interfere by doubling down on, you need to do this in accordance with best practices, sort of thing. Allow for that exploration to take place. 

The final point, which I think, based on some observations I have, I think a lot of incumbents incorrect, is this adherence to traditional financial KPIs in terms of measuring the progress. We’ll talk more about how we develop product market fit and less about what is the cost benefit analysis. I think we all understand that we need to make money at the end of the day as we’re innovating, but I think having an extreme focus on that while you’re doing your exploratory work can be quite counterproductive, if you will. Perhaps I will stop there. I know Robin and Philippe are going to share a little more context in behind this story, so I’ll turn it over to you, Philippe, to start. 

Philippe Lafreniere: 

Perfect. Thank you. Thanks Peter. I’m just going to share a few numbers about Slice. Every time I get the opportunity to share the stage or the screen with Peter and Robin, I get quite excited because the things that Peter was just sharing around the vision, and meeting new needs, and unmet needs, and really how to engage, how to have a start-up operate within an incumbent. I get very excited because it is pure alignment to what we envisioned when Slice started. 

Going back, just a couple of numbers for those of you on the webinar. Slice is about four and a half years old now. We’ve got about 45 employees, or between 45 and 50 employees. As you can see by the smile there, they’re all generally happy. We’ve raised $36 million to date. We’ve won several industry awards around the globe, awards around innovation, around new product and business models. Awards that wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for partners like The Cooperators and Duuo. We have product in operations live in the US, in Canada, in the UK and Thailand. We like to refer to ourselves really as a global enabler. It’s great and quite happy to be on the call here with ICMIF, which is a global organization. 

We have offices, our headquarters are in New York City. We’ve got people in London. Our center of excellence for product and R&D is in Ottawa. Some of us are based in Toronto. Then we have US center of operations, our insurance operations based in Cleveland, and a few other people scattered around the globe. That’s essentially Slice by the numbers. 

When I look at our strategy, and the things that Peter outlined are right on to what our strategy was. When Slice started, and it started by a bunch of veterans of the insurance industry, and a team that had been trailblazing on the technology side, trailblazing on new business models, but we saw macro trends emerging. It was really about how do we address these macro trends, behavioural shifts, and how do we have the right approach from both a solution and an insurance product perspective to align to those? 

It was really our focus was if we looked at we have the new economy versus the old economy, and the new economy can be split in a number of ways, and one of them could be the gig economy, the sharing economy. We have people now that are doing a lot of part time work, which has insurance exposures. We have people that are sharing things like never before, so we share cars, we share our homes. If we look at some of the products, and some of the products that Duuo has done, we share our tools, we share some of the things that are precious to us. Insurance at its foundation wasn’t really meant, or didn’t understand, or wasn’t priced to account for these things. 

Then there’s a lot of things, and Peter talked about episodic or on demand, there’s a lot of things that we now do part time, we do these things digitally. When you live in the digital world to the extent that we do today, what’s very important to us is to ensure that the insurance transaction just follows along. You don’t want to be in a digital world, in a digital journey, and then have to step out of that and be very analogue to procure insurance for those things that you might be doing. Whether it’s you’re a contractor and you’re signing up for a job on a platform, or you’re sharing your house on Airbnb, or you’re hosting an event. Our vision was that these people that participate in the economy, that deal with new needs, these needs are largely met by digital platforms, and we wanted the insurance operation and the full insurance experience to be up to date and to be digital. 

There’s an interesting trend that has emerged also coming out of this, is a prediction by Mackenzie that about 30% of transactions are going to take place through ecosystems globally. Well, if you extrapolate 30% of global insurance premiums, that is a massive opportunity. They identified several ecosystems, about 17 of them, in their report. When we look at the various ecosystems that affect insurance and the markets that we participate in, those are basically a mobility ecosystem, so everything around auto, and car sharing, and so forth, housing, travel, hospitality and small business, as well as cyber. A lot of the things that we do today fall into these five major categories. That’s essentially driving the strategy for Slice. 

We enable, and we’re going to get into, Robin’s going to share with us how Duuo was started, and you know how Duuo operates today. Peter mentioned insurance cloud services. How do we go to market, or how did we go to market, or how do we help our partner, like The Co-operators and Duuo, basically meet those needs today and have these nimble operations? It’s through our platform, which we call Insurance Cloud Services. With Insurance Cloud Services, we wanted to make sure that we could handle insurance in this new and exciting way. 

What’s important for the platform, and as Peter said, they’ve got a start-up within an incumbent insurer, is to make sure that you can run those new products and services really end to end. The platform is all cloud based, and it is end to end, from handling product, to claims, underwriting and pricing, distribution. If you look at the core of it, the core is really focused on customer engagement. That’s really the component that’s going to deliver an award winning customer journey, an award winning interface and value proposition for the customer. We’re very, everything that we do, and everything that we do with Duuo, and we’ll talk about how we build products together, is focused on customer engagement, and it’s focused on ensuring that we deliver something unique and something that aligns with how the customer is expecting to engage with their insurer. 

Second, it’s all about being data-driven. Signals and events is a very big component of the platform. If we’re going to do things digitally, we need to always be listening for signals, signals that come from various data sources, signals that come from other platforms. Then events, then it’s about capitalizing on these events and empowering AI, data and algorithms to really take as much as possible manual intervention out of the process and really make everything straight through in digital. Again, all with the focus on driving a superior and better customer experience. The platform has all of the components that are required to pilot and run these new innovative products all in the cloud. 

Lastly, when we look at these products, what was important to us, and I think where we have great alignment with Duuo and our partners globally, is really how we think about digital products, and how we think about digital insurance. There’s basically five pillars that we anchor ourselves on as we work with partners to think of, develop and launch new products. 

The first one is this whole concept of on demand. On-demand has evolved since day one at Slice, where we use the analogy of the light switch. Insurance, you should be able to turn insurance on and off like a light switch. That was, let’s say the initial V1 of on demand. Some of our products, like short term rentals, or home share, item sharing, et cetera, they work that way where, as soon as you have a need for insurance, you can just essentially flip a switch and it’s on. We’ve updated that really today with some products that are on a monthly subscription, as an example. It’s really about in the moment to make sure that you can procure insurance right now. 

The next piece is what’s important for us about digital products is to make sure that they are data driven. We try to take friction out of the process as much as possible. Why ask questions that may or may not be relevant to new products, when we can source data and we can use data to essentially price and underwrite risk? Wherever possible, we want to make sure that our products are data driven. 

Then we want to make sure that we set up policies that are dynamic in nature, and that varies, and that’s possible depending on some products more than others. In the mobility space, as an example, if your vehicle is constantly moving and you have basically live data that’s giving you risk details on a point to point basis, then the policy should be dynamic as well. Again, that goes back to being able to respond to signals and events, and make sure that you always have the right level of coverage for the exposure at hand. 

The next one is the flexibility. As we look at new products that we launch, we try to remove all of the preconceived notions of, let’s say the legacy world, in looking at products that are flexible in nature. In some cases we have merged personal lines of business with commercial lines of business to really define the right level of coverage for how that person is engaging, or that small business is engaging. Even stripping products down to really have the core coverages and benefits that are required, not overburdening them with things that will just add to friction in price, and they might be relevant, again, to that new economy. 

Then lastly, and Robin’s going to get into this, speed. The idea is, because we’re dealing with new trends, new risks, we’re always dealing with a hypothesis, speed is important more than ever. Because we have a hypothesis today, we want to be able to take it to market, we want to be able to test the hypothesis quickly, and even adjust quickly. We’ll talk later a little bit about MVP and so forth. 

Speed is important more than ever in this world, so not only did we want to make sure that we had the platform to enable these things, but also the approach. I think the approach is equally as important as just the pure technical platform, because it is an innovative approach, it’s based on design thinking and so forth, and it allows to really to get to market quickly and do things quickly. Again, working with Duuo, and being aligned and joined at the hip on all of these things, on the vision of what these products need to look like, what needs to anchor these products has been a great experience. On that note, I’m going to turn it over now to Robin, who will walk us through essentially Duuo specifically. The vision around Duuo and some of the things that they’ve done to date. Robin, over to you. 

Robin Shufelt: 

Thank you. As both Philippe and Peter have mentioned, Duuo came into effect at the end of year 2018. It was really to leverage this opportunity and partnership between The Co-operators and Slice Technologies. We are The Co-operators’ digital brand. We’re direct to consumer, and we provide on-demand, episodic insurance. Since that time, we have now grown into a 10 member team. We have six products out in market across Canada, which means that we’re in two languages, English and French. 

As Philippe has mentioned as well, we do work very much in partnership with Slice on everything that we do. Slice provides those cloud services that Philippe had showed in his slide there, which really from our perspective is the technology, the build around the product development, the UI, the UX design, and they work with us to support us on product strategy and how to get products to market through an innovative framework. 

On the Duuo side of things, we are providing the strategy, the insurance expertise, including everything with the policy, rating, claims handling, as well as the marketing, and sales, and customer support. 

Go to the next slide there. Our strategy and vision you’ll see aligns quite well with what both Peter and Philippe were speaking to. When Duuo was formed, it was really about continuing to address those unmet needs of Canadians, and really these unmet needs that were emerging from the advent of new technologies and different ways of participating in these different economies. We focus around key three areas right now. The ways in which Canadians are changing the way they live, the way they work, and the way that they consume. 

For example, one of our products was used to address the needs of gig workers. We just launched this product in May, and we were seeing many more people participating in the gig economy, but they didn’t have coverage that necessarily met their needs, and so we created an on demand gig liability policy in able to support this. Our products are all either on demand so they can be purchased for a few hours, and we also provide subscription based policies as well. 

In everything that we do, it’s really important to us that the ease of use and understanding for our customers is at the forefront of our brand and how we operate. This transcends into everything from the language that we use on our website, in our policy wordings, how our customer support, which is online chat feature, responds to our customer needs, as well as the convenience and ease in which they can get a policy. If they registered with Duuo, for example, they can get a quote and [unbind 00:27:28] a policy within 20 seconds, which is the right size fit if you’re purchasing an insurance policy for a few hours. 

Some of the key differentiators that we’re using in order to support this journey for us, and we work very much collaboratively with Slice with these, is to experiment with dynamic underwriting so we’re able to ingest real time data in order to affect policy or rating. This data can either come from outside sources or outside signals, which we’re learning to ingest as well. These outside signals could also trigger an insurance policy, for example. To continue to create that seamless experience and ease of use for our customers, we’re working with Slice to evolve our API integration technology as well. 

On a personal note, when I joined Duuo one of the things that was so exciting for me joining was the response that we got from both our customers and our partnerships. Duuo has a B2C distribution, but we also are more focused on our B2B2C partnership strategy. What the theme has come through from our customers is really this theme of enablement, both from our customers’ perspective and from our partnership perspective as well. 

We partner with platforms that participate in these new areas, such as P2P platforms, or amalgamators of these, or home sharing platforms. What we’re finding is that our customers were nervous to engage in these activities, given that they’re new, or they’re often lending out some of their own assets, or their house, for example. Insurance really gave them that extra boost of confidence in order to participate in these. Our partners realized this as well, and so they’re seeking out opportunities to work with Duuo in order to provide this insurance for their end user. Then also a lot of these partners are newer to the industry, they’re P2P platforms or InsurTechs, and so working with a brand like The Co–operators really helps to help their credibility, which builds confidence in this space as well. 

If I can use an example, one of our products is called Rent My Stuff, and it’s a property based policy that’s to support people that are participating in peer to peer lending economy. For example, say I own a nice camera, I can put it on this peer to peer site and allow other people in my community to rent it from me and use that camera, and it can be for a few days. I would feel more confident as a customer in listing my camera on that site knowing that I had some coverage if anything happened to it. Again, because our products are on-demand, it’s a right size fit policy that they can purchase to just the time that that camera is being rented out. 

The next slide is what I’d like to play is a video, and why I wanted to play this video is it really speaks to the enablement that I’m speaking about, both from our customers’ perspective and from our partners’ perspective. This video will speak to our home share product, which is people that are renting out their homes on things like Airbnb. The product allows them to purchase insurance just for the night that guests are staying. What was really fun about this video is these are actual Duuo clients, and they reached out to Duuo and asked if they could provide a testimonial video. 

VIDEO

Hi, my name is Matt. 

I’m Gwen. 

This is Nikko, and welcome to our pet friendly Airbnb. It’s fantastic being able to share our home with so many people from all around the world. The area in Toronto that we live in is bordering on Moss Park and the distillery district. 

There’s actually a lot of fun in having so many people come over. You name it, these spaces have seen it. When we began, we actually had no idea that we needed additional insurance to cover home sharing. 

When you go onto a lot of these home share platforms, they give all sorts of great numbers about millions of dollars in liability insurance, but they don’t really explain what that means. 

There’s going to be a lot of people in your space, and you can’t keep an eye on things all the time. 

That on demand aspect I think was a really big thing that we were looking for. It’s really simple to log in, so easy to pick the nights that we want covered. 

Duuo is actually a very affordable system because it’s pay as you go. Not only are you protected, but if accidents happen within your space, you’re actually covered. 

One thing that I love is that because we have instant bookings on, we can also have instant coverage on. 

I happen to surprise Matt with tickets all the time. We can just go and travel. We actually have peace of mind whether we’re here or if we’re away. 

Our favorite part of hosting is having people enjoy our home, and now we can also enjoy the experience sharing our home, and because of Duuo we feel protected. 

Robin Shufelt: 

I thought what might be interesting, and Philippe spoke about it earlier on too, is this idea around speed to market, and how we get products to market, and really paint a little bit more of a picture of how Slice and Duuo work on a day to day basis in order to achieve this. 

This slide here really points out the process that we use in terms of product development. With six products in the market now in just over a year and a half, we’ve employed this framework quite a few times to get where we’re at. In deciding to launch a product, we consider a few key points from Duuo’s perspective. We’re looking to see if it’s going to match with Duuo’s value proposition in terms of addressing these emerging unmet needs, as well as is it episodic in nature? What’s the potential market for this product? What’s the TAM? Then dealing with a lot of newer areas, what’s the potential expandable TAM? 

Can we take some learnings from this product? We’re always looking to get as much learnings as possible from our customers. That could be a new key feature, or a new technology that we want to test and engage with our customers with, for example. What’s our potential avenues for distribution for this product? Which goes hand in hand with the market. 

Once we’ve decided on which product we want to launch, before we move into the hackathon process that’s there, we try to de-risk the process. Within Duuo, that’s really about understanding the market potential, and if there’s a need for this. Getting some feedback from potential customers or partners to really further understand what that need is and the opportunity. Then we would do a joint session with Slice, which we call a straw man, and this is really about de-risking the process of getting at the end to where we want to go into a minimal viable product, but making sure that there’s nothing that might potentially derail us. We do some feasibility mapping. 

For example, we’re making sure, if we’re coming out with a product, a potential derailment could be that Duuo doesn’t have the license to sell that product today, or potentially there’s a key piece of technology that Slice hasn’t developed yet. Once we have validated those assumptions, we then move into what we call our hackathon process. We generally have about two to three hackathons, or more than that now that we’re doing it virtually, and they’re separate by a few weeks in between where we’re going back and validating assumptions, and doing more additional work. Then all coming together again in a hackathon format. All of these hackathons have a hypothesis in mind that we’re trying to test, and this is really what’s going to help us define what our minimal viable product is. 

In these hackathons, it’s a series of design thinking and jobs to be done principles that take us into looking at big ideas and bringing them back to empathy mapping, customer journey considerations. Also, much more tactical items too, as well as looking at policy wordings, and rating implications, and compliance, claims, they’re all part of the hackathon process. 

Once the MVP is defined, then we move into the development stage, and we continue to work with Slice on an ongoing basis day to day in that as well. That’s really moving into getting this product to market as quickly as possible, includes writing the wordings and implementing the rating, to a lot of work on Slice’s end in terms of building the product and getting it ready to go live. 

Once the product is out, the focus is really on starting to capture that customer feedback as quickly as possible and that partner feedback as well. There’s also many key features that we’ve maybe considered as part of our big ideas, do we want to implement those post MVP? Continue to get those learnings. This loop here that we’re showing, it really keeps going back into MVP, back to product market fit, and working through that on experimenting basis. Using that customer feedback in our key learnings to continue to iterate on that product. Once we have that product market fit, that’s when we would start to go into more scaling strategies. 

Well I just wanted to share a few of the key learnings coming from more of a traditional set of why I think this type of framework has really helped us be able to achieve what we’re able to. One is when we get into these hackathons, and even the strategy sessions, we have everyone represented from both Duuo and Slice at the table. When we’re doing this ideation or moving through the hackathon process, we have everyone from claims, to underwriting, to sales, customer support, back end and front end development, UI, UX design, strategy. Everyone’s sitting at that table together and working through it. It really aligns everyone on what we’re trying to achieve, and it allows us to move very quickly in terms of considering all aspects of the product before we get it out to market. 

Another opportunity is really in creating the minimal viable product. Getting better at determining what we need to get out there from an MVP standpoint to test our hypothesis, and then how we can quickly get that to market, and gain that customer feedback, and continue to build on the MVP is really important. 

Then lastly, from a personal perspective, innovation doesn’t always go hand in hand with risk, but I think from my own perspective, by making more of those decisions around risk on a day to day basis than ever before, and what really helps in terms of the speed to market and mitigating that risk is really strong project management methodology. In order to be successful from getting things to market, we need to be following this framework to identify tasks, make sure that everybody is getting them and able to deliver them on time, but also making sure that nothing is missed. That really helps to minimize the risk before we get it to market. This is in direct correlation with working with Slice on a day to day basis through these principles as well. They’re involved and helping us be flexible and adjust as we need to. 

Then lastly, before I pass it back to you Philippe, I would just say that we always say that we’re trying to put the client at the front and center of everything that we’re doing. We’re continually trying to get better at this, and Slice certainly helps us in learning more about our clients through usability testing, and bringing that empathy mapping and their experience to the table. It’s really important to consider them in all parts of this framework as well, listening to them, and hearing them, and readjusting towards that product market fit. 

Philippe Lafreniere: 

Yeah, that’s Robin. Thanks for sharing the Duuo path through these stages. As I mentioned earlier, when we looked at the strategy from the beginning, and we looked at insurance new needs, and insurance needing to be handled in a new way based on these emerging needs, and really putting away all of the, let’s say the known conventions that we can, just so that we wouldn’t have blinders on. 

It was equally as important to us that we revised the approach. Several of us have spent our careers implementing products, implementing technology solutions globally in the insurance industry, and we know that that is a long process, it’s a very detailed process, and it’s a process that can be painful in some cases. When we were looking at the fact that we needed to test a hypothesis because we were talking about emerging needs or new needs, it was important to be able to go through quickly. 

As a result, not only did we want to revamp the platform, or what should be in a platform to support these types of products, but also the approach. As insurers, we’re used to launching perfect products. In here we came to the realization that the product might not be perfect. We always have to balance risk, so whether that be policy risk, operational risk, all aspects of risk, and really innovation. We think that the approach here has really found the right balance between managing risk and being able to quickly innovate. 

This whole approach, and as Robin said, we bring the right people into the room, and having the design thinking and jobs to be done approach at the center of it really has enabled us to partner with people and get to this point. What’s important here was the hackathon is very different, and also the whole notion of constantly learning and experimenting. 

At the very beginning, just as an example, when we launched our very first product, which was a home sharing product, some of our people actually were there with iPads, staying with guests and really getting their feedback and learning. Now that’s not something that you can always do, but it really was the foundation of how we wanted to make sure that we understood what the customer cared about, what the customer wanted. Then as a result, the very first policy that we sold is different quite a bit from the policy that we have today. That process has proven to be successful, and I think it’s a key element. Peter mentioned it even at the very beginning, it’s a key element of embarking on this journey is really aligning that way. 

Now we have an interesting situation where globally, as a result of the pandemic, we have people that cannot travel, or be face to face, or be in these design workshops like we used to be. One of the things that I’m quite excited about is what Slice has done, and Duuo’s gone on this journey already, and a few of our other partners, is really we’ve moved our approach to remotely and virtual. 

We have, in the past and when we launched the first several products with Duuo, we would all meet in our innovation center, or our launch studio, or in other places. We had a nice workspace, and white boards, and sticky notes, and so forth that allowed us to go through this process. We’ve now made the jump to being able to do these sessions virtually. That means we’ve adapted the process, we’ve adapted, it’s not feasible when you’re virtual to be in a virtual sessions like this, let’s say, for an entire day, so we’ve broken down our hackathon into a number of smaller virtual sessions. 

We’ve updated the tools. We have a whole new set of cool virtual tools that we use to go through the exercises, to go through the design thinking process, to go through the voting and the sharing of ideas. All of that’s been tailored to the environment that we’re in today. As much as we look forward to being face to face with our partners again, we haven’t slowed down or stopped the way that we can innovate with partners. 

That approach I think is a key part, and for us it was really about balancing what the technology needs to bring, but making sure that with innovative technology and an innovative platform, we also had an innovative way to take these good ideas to market quickly on ICS. 

This last point is really about, just to wrap it up and then we’re going to open it up for questions for Peter, Robin, or myself, is really how do we take you on and take people on this digital journey? As a result, how do we make this happen? At Slice, when we look at digital insurance, we look at these new needs, and as I mentioned at the beginning, we look at ecosystems, there’s a number of people in the value chain, and some of the players are different players, but some of the people that we bring together, and our strategy is to bring insurers. We work with global insurers that want to enter new markets, and The Cooperators was a great example of that. Peter laid that out at the beginning of the session. What they realized was happening, and then the opportunity that they wanted to seize. Then we have several partners that we work with that have a similar vision globally. 

Then part of our mandate is also to look at where is the rest of this ecosystem? Who are the ecosystem orchestrators? Who are the platforms that can participate or that can help bring these new business models forward? There’s really two categories that we are seeing. Our job is really to enable our insurer partners to be able to capitalize on these models. 

The first one is the large platform providers, global platform providers whose core business is not insurance, but what they do has a very strong connection to insurance. If we took, and loved the video that Robin shared with Airbnb as an example as a big platform where people are sharing their homes. That has and had an impact on your home insurance, it has an impact to your commercial liability, et cetera. We look at these platforms that are large global platforms, that are there around the world, and what they do on a day to day basis has an impact on insurance. How do we enable insurers to be able to participate in that ecosystem in that model? Whether it be businesses selling products on Amazon, or people driving for Uber and Lyft, those core businesses have an insurance component, and we’re here to essentially enable our insurer partners to participate in this. 

Then the next one that we’re seeing is really these non-traditional distribution channels. Largely technology companies, or companies that operate in an adjacent world, but are really seeing an opportunity to be part of the insurance value chain. Again, we’re here to enable our insurer partners to participate in these ecosystems. 

Today as an example we distribute a cyber product through Microsoft. Basically in leveraging, when it comes to these platforms, it goes back to what’s important is leveraging their data. With Microsoft as an example on a cyber product, we can leverage Secure Score and help small business owners around the globe, and this is a product that’s in the US today, help small business owners basically be protected with cyber insurance. Slice has a relationship with Lenovo, where we can again bring small business people that are part of the Lenovo ecosystem, bring insurance to those people. 

We distribute a product in Asia through LINE. Again, LINE is like WhatsApp, it’s a texting app, and seeing tremendous results in terms of conversion rates and so forth. As we work with our insurer partners globally, we also bring the ecosystem partners to the table and really help you, insurers, participate in this whole ecosystem driven digital world. What’s important about these platforms is how you interact with those. Where we want to help you is essentially as you bring your products and make products available on various platforms, to test out again these hypotheses, we want to make sure that that is as frictionless and digital as possible. Leveraging, again, some of the great work that Duuo has done as an example. 

That was my closing remark in terms of tying it back to the beginning what the opportunity looks like, some of the things that we look to enable. Then I guess now we’ll open the floor to questions, if we can go to the next slide. We’ve got a bit of a prompt for some questions. I suspect that either Peter, Robin or I are open to questions in whatever format. I’ll turn it back over to Ben, that I think is going to moderate this. 

Ben Telfer: 

Yes, thank you very much Philippe. Thank you Robin and Peter also. It was great to hear the three perspectives on this sort of journey from the cooperative insurance company, the start-up, and new brand, and also the InsurTech partner. We do have a number of questions in, so hopefully we can get through as many as possible within the next five minutes or so. 

This first question is probably for Peter. I’m going to go to Peter first for this, and then to Robin. Peter, have The Co-operators from this whole process taken any learnings in terms of innovation, cultures, processes, team working, back into the main Co-operators company? How far has this infiltrated within the company? Then the second question I’ll wait for Robin. 

Peter Primdahl: 

I would say yes. Within my area, I also head up an area called enterprise innovation, where we’re using the same techniques around design thinking and so forth. We’re really applying it to problem or opportunity statements that are derived from either the core or the adjacency area. We help teams run through the same or a similar cycle, really putting customers at the center of the conversation. Starting with empathy mapping, understanding what are the pain points of those customers. Then start to kind of walk them through a very methodical process by which we can arrive at some novel solutions. 

That having operated in a, I think of it as business as usual world where oftentimes you don’t have time to do that, you’re very tactical, very action focused. Really facilitating that process to allow the teams to examine the problems and potential solutions a little bit differently, we’re starting to see the value of that within the organization as well. It’s really sort of almost I think project by project we’re starting to bring those learnings back into the organization. Our belief is that it’s very important to allow people to have an immersive experience with innovation to see the benefits of it, rather than standing in front of a room full of people and almost having an academic discussion about innovation. You need to get your hands dirty with this to fully appreciate the value of it. 

Ben Telfer: 

Robin, the second part of that question is sort of directed at you. How has the culture of The Co-operators as a cooperative company been infiltrated within Duuo as just a small start-up company? 

Robin Shufelt: 

I think the culture from what The Co-operators provides is really the foundation of where the culture at Duuo was formed. I would say that we have different cultures, but in tying it back to The Cooperators it’s this idea of they were innovators 75 years ago when they were looking solutions for farmers when they got their start in addressing the unmet needs of Canadians. We’re continuing that story from a culture standpoint from The Co-operators and enhancing that within the Duuo culture. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you Robin. Philippe, this is probably one for you. What trends are you seeing in on demand insurance around the world? Is it in a particular product or is it a particular market that seem to be having more of an uptake at the moment? 

Philippe Lafreniere: 

We’re seeing an uptake in small commercial, so in small business, really as people are spending more time both in the sharing and the gig economy. It’s really the intersection of two things. It’s being able to buy a policy by the day, by the hour, and also the second point is really looking for the right products. 

Another space, which I’ll say in the last couple of months has really increased, or there’s an uptick in renewed interest, is in the mobility space as well. As we know, globally there’s been a lot written since the pandemic about how much people are driving, and how are they driving, and the fact that a lot of us are now working from home and not using our vehicles. I think there’s a renewed interest in really understanding better how auto insurance, motor insurance can perhaps be more dynamic and really respond to how I’m using my vehicle, how I’m not using my vehicle. Going back to what I mentioned earlier about the pillars of a digital product and the whole dynamic and flexible has also seen an uptick in the last several months. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you Philippe. You can almost read my questions I think, because the next question is related very heavily to that. It’s talking about, as many countries are in lockdown and there is this reduced driving, there has been a lot of focus on pay-per-drive products from the few carriers that do offer that. Is this going to be an area of interest to Duuo? Are you going to move into this or other parts of that mobility ecosystem? Robin, perhaps I’ll come to you first for that. 

Robin Shufelt: 

Mobility is definitely something that we’re open to as we look forward. That would be in conjunction with more The Co-operators, who has a lot of experience right now participating in the Canadian automobile space. It’s not something we’ve tackled today, largely just to do with the different regulations and things that exist, but it would be on our potential future roadmap. 

Peter Primdahl: 

Maybe I can add from a Co-operators perspective. We’ve certainly conducted a fair bit of R&D over the past five or six years around telematics, so we have a lot of experience in the area. I think it’s trying to figure out where is that market shifting to? We’re not in a position right now on the cusp of executing anything. I think we’re largely in the R&D space trying to figure out what are the vectors of the future in this space? Will we be moving to some sort of commercial mobility as a service platform in place of sort of traditional ownership? Which really allows people to access the ride, as opposed to buying it, so to speak. Channelling philosophies from the sharing economy. 

In our search, whether we’re speaking with data aggregators or OEMs and whatnot, we’re starting to see on the horizon ecosystems forming, to pull on what Philippe said earlier, but we don’t have absolute clarity about what that looks like. Our goal right now is to ensure that we’re positioned to take advantage of how this will unfold over time, all the while trying to read what may be desirable on the part of Canadians as they think about moving either passengers or goods from one place to the other. Long story short, I think we’re sort of in a discovery phase right now as opposed to an action and execution phase. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you Peter. This next question again is probably for you first. You mentioned about meeting the unmet insurance needs, but how else does The Co-operators approach innovation as a cooperative business? 

Peter Primdahl: 

That’s an interesting question. I go to the core of what I believe innovation to be, and it’s a process. It’s a process by which you peel the onions of a problem or an opportunity, and then you try to develop novel solutions around that. Whether that opportunity resides in the area of sustainability, or we have some work ongoing around financial inclusion, or whatnot, it’s about applying that process to the team or person who is trying to solve, or who has been assigned to that problem or opportunity that we’ve identified strategically. Then helping that person through solving those problems to hopefully arrive at some perhaps novel ideas that we wouldn’t arrive at in the course of sort of our traditional thinking or operating a traditional business unit. I would probably sort of push on the idea that it’s a process to accomplish something as opposed to it’s sort of a big bang moment where we’re going to create innovative things, if that makes sense and addresses the question. 

Ben Telfer: 

Yes. I think we’ve got time for just a couple more very quick questions. Robin, this one’s for you. You mentioned that Duuo have an online chat function, do you use Chatbox or for this, or is it human? If it is human, are you thinking about moving to some of these new technologies? 

Robin Shufelt: 

Yeah, right now we have humans behind the scenes answering the chatbot functions. We do have a few that are automated responses. It’s another area that we’re testing and exploring with, but for primarily right now it’s mostly humans, and we are continuing to learn about the different ways in which we could do some of those automated messages. 

Ben Telfer: 

Just finally, Philippe I’ll probably come to you first for this question, but Peter and Robin you may have some comment. It seems like this product is, or Duuo in fact, is in a similar sphere to Lemonade, and Lemonade obviously have just announced an IPO. Do you have any comments on that, and how do you think this will influence the insurance industry and the InsurTech sphere in general? Because there’s been a lot written about the impact of COVID-19. Philippe, I’ll come to you first, and I would just like to ensure you that this webinar is private, so whatever you say will not be publicly available, so please take that to note!

Philippe Lafreniere: 

No problem. Any time insurance, been my entire career in insurance, it’s never been the very exciting or top of mind industry. Any time there is some good news, positive news from a technology perspective, etc, I think it’s welcome. The great thing has been that several companies, and they’re definitely an example where we’ve kind of challenged ourselves, we’ve challenged the industry, we’ve raised the bar for the industry collectively. I like to think the InsurTech space helped everybody raise the bar in terms of customer experience, etc. 

I think right now we’re in unprecedented times in terms of, as you said, COVID, a global pandemic affecting all aspects of our industry. I think it’s great that there’s is growth and there’s a renewed focus. We’ve said, it’s been shared that this has probably accelerated digital roadmaps by about five years in three months. I welcome that, I think that’s great news. We were forced to jump all at once in the middle of March, and I think all of that is pushing us forward. Who wins at the end, the customer wins at the end because the customer is going to have a better experience, and the customer’s going to have better products come out of this. I think all of this is good news across the industry. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you Philippe. I’m afraid I’m going to have to end that there. We’ve had some great discussions. Thank you once again Robin, Peter and Philippe, for joining today and for your excellent presentation. Sorry we couldn’t get through all the questions. If anybody else has any follow up questions, people who are watching the recording, please do get in touch and I’m sure I’d be happy to connect you with today’s presenters. 

A final thank you to today’s speakers, Robin, Peter and Philippe. Thank you everybody for joining us.

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