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Hello, and welcome to beyond the Desk, the podcast where I take a deep dive into the careers of some of the most influential and inspiring leaders in the technology transformation and operations space within Global Insurance and InsurTech.

I'm your host, Mark Thomas, and every week I'll be sitting down with industry trailblazers who are driving innovation and modernization within the insurance sector.

We'll explore their personal journeys, from their early backgrounds and the pivotal moments that shape their careers to the challenges they've had to overcome, the lessons they've learned along the way, and of course, the big wins that have defined their professional journey so far.

But it's not just about their successes.

It's about what you and I can take away from their experiences and the advice they have.

For anyone wanting to follow in similar footsteps.

Whether you're just starting out or looking.

To level up your career in the insurance or insuretech world, this podcast is packed with valuable insights and inspiration.

So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and let's jump into beyond the Desk.

Al, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing?

I'm very good, thanks, Mark.

How are you?

Yeah, I'm really good, thanks.

Looking forward to this.

So I don't know how long we've been talking about doing this, but it's been a while.

So great to have you on starting wise.

Always good to get a bit of an intro.

So, yeah, do you want to introduce yourself?

Company role.

And then we'll go right back to the start of your career and work through that.

Yeah, sure.

Hi.

Al Robertson, CTO at ICE InsureTech.

Been with the business now for about 20 years.

So was the founding architect way, way back in a previous company called IT Freedom, and then it's gone through a number of different mergers and acquisitions.

And we'll talk about probably later on in this, but yeah, that's me in a nutshell.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I like to go right back to the start.

So talk to me about how you first got into technology.

Was it something like when you were.

When you were a kid, were you, like, into it right from the off?

Like, how did it.

Kind of, yeah.

You know, I really wasn't into technology, I guess.

I guess when I was growing up in the 80s, technology wasn't such a big thing as later years.

But I always loved trying to figure out how things worked, and that was, I think that was a key thing for me.

And then I went on to.

To read computer science at university, and that's the thing that, you know, I had to make a decision.

Did I go down like a, let's say a pure maths route or an engineering route?

And I had an interest in computing but I wasn't like someone who tinkered with computers in their spare time or anything like that, or I wasn't a coder beforehand, but I knew that I love building stuff and you know, the Lego thing was, was a big thing for me.

Just building something and creating something and using that sort of the creative nature, I think that was, that was just really important part of my personality.

So going on to computing is you are, you're using your creative tool set to build something and I loved that.

Yeah, so you went.

So you did, so you did computer science at university.

What did, what did post uni look like?

Did you go straight into kind of software development, programming?

Yeah, I went straight into a graduate job, programmer job with John Lewis Partnership in London, which was great.

Interestingly enough, on that program of 23 or 24 people, there was only three people who'd read computer science.

So they had a real mixture of people, which was interesting.

I think it's a good indication of diversity being a good thing.

We don't want to hire 20 necessarily computer science graduates that all just do exactly the same thing in the clones of each other across the whole business.

That is as well because not everyone will turn out to be a programmer.

People will go into analysis and, and project management, other things, etc.

So, so I started there, did that for three years and then I went to Royal and Sun alliance as it was rsa and that was my first move into insurance and have now done 27 years of insurance.

Sort of found, found an area that I really liked and, and that was great.

So I was there for four years, worked on a household white label policy admin platform.

It was mainframe, it was the, it was niche skills that I had then.

Yeah, as a developer and I, I learned a lot there.

I had some great insurance business mentors there and I was, I was probably fair to say I was fast tracked a bit.

I was a, I was a contractor at the time, so I was still young but, but I worked hard, wanted to do well and end up writing their quotations system part of their platform and it's still in use.

I can talk about that later on because we've actually had some migrations off of that platform onto ours, which is like for me, full circle.

So it was a fun moment when we won that.

So did you say you were a contractor then?

So you were contracting?

Quite.

I went to contracting Early.

Yeah.

I, one of my other colleagues from John Lewis went there and they ended up taking six of us because.

Because it was a niche skill, technical skill.

They took six of us and.

And I, I think I was one of the ones who stayed there the longest.

So did you transition to perm in the end or were you always.

No, I was always contractor.

I was always contractor.

Was that down in Horsham?

It was, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And good times and I learned a lot and the insurance part of the business was great.

When you're dealing with mainframe programming, the business is really important because there's not much you can do technically.

You don't have to worry about technical stacks in the same way.

So it was a lot about good model design, understanding insurance, life cycles and how it's going to work as a white label platform because you're putting a lot of different brands out there and it needs to work for all of them.

So it was a really good starting point.

And then after that I went to company called the Innovation Group which.

Which is where I met Andrew.

Yeah.

And that was a, A really interesting time of a company which was really part of the dot com sort of boom and buster, it was fair to say.

And I was like late 90s, early 2000s there and that was great.

I was working in basically insurance mi, which again was something different from policy admin.

And then after that I got asked by our current CEO Andrew Parsfield to come and join his company that he'd set up to work on to be the main architect on a new claims platform.

Okay.

So again it's nice to have seen all the different aspects of insurance and what's important because from a design perspective, from an architect perspective, you've got in your mind all of the different aspects that you need to satisfy which, which was good.

So.

So I did that for.

So that was.

That was company called IT Freedom.

What was that?

Like that.

Because that obviously.

So I'm assuming when he asked you to come be the kind of the IT architect on a brand new platform, it was probably, probably him and I don't know was he on his own or is wasn't.

They had basically they had a lot of consultants there that were paying for the product.

Okay.

Is the way I would describe it a very high level.

So there were other aspects.

They had an MI product that they'd already started and this was the first time that they were asked to build a claims admin platform and it was a real startup mentality.

So there were three of us on the development front that delivered version one in nine months.

It was a classic three or four nights a week till midnight.

No laptops then.

So it was working in the office, other people building the PC for you, that sort of a real startup mentality and good fun.

And I, I loved was, you know, you.

Like I said, I love building things and it was an interesting time in, in the space that we're in as well because this was core language was Java.

It was quite new.

I'd moved away from the mainframe world.

Yeah.

When I, when I went to Innovation Group and there were some new libraries coming out that are now pretty much de facto standard like Spring Framework and Hibernate and stuff that allowed us to build this claims platform version one.

So it was a lot about job management for accident repair and stuff like that so that we could build that with just three of us.

And if I hadn't had some of these frameworks just at the right time 2004 I would have probably picked a different route and.

And could easily have failed.

Could easily have failed.

So.

So timing was.

Was critical and I got lucky.

I picked.

I picked some of the right architectural components to.

To be able to deliver this.

Yeah.

So.

So that was, that was good times.

And we got more and more clients reasonably slowly as a startup as you would expect.

And then we went through an acquisition to a company called Quindell which was interesting times.

We became part of an insurance product subsidiary of the group called Hubio and I continued on the same route.

But I think the key thing was is we got asked by one of our claims customers to build a policy platform as well.

So around 2012 I completely changed tack and focused on policy admin and using a lot of all of the knowledge that I'd gained doing claims.

I actually, it was.

It was pretty waterfall.

I actually had the first nine months of me basically locked away creating five or six massive documents on the specifications of what this platform was going to do and then.

And then we went in into into build and we delivered it for our first client and that.

That went well.

But the Quindell Group was toxic.

Probably won't go into a lot of the details now but it.

That didn't end up well.

So Andrew engineered us out of that group and got a lovely new parent, the actress group in 2017.

And from then on we.

It was quite good in some ways because we were allowed to focus on product build rather than just delivering client client requirements.

Client requirements.

So allowed us to mature the product and then then it's been sort of flying basically allowing us to sell and get lots and lots of new clients every year onwards and upwards.

And every year we seem to have a going up through the insurance tiers of size of clients and that's been excellent.

Certainly at the moment there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on.

It seems to me that there was quite a pivotal one there in the sense that you kind of took the leap of faith.

And I've had Andrew on the podcast before, so.

Did you work with him at Innovation Group?

Is that how you knew each other?

So we knew each other.

I didn't work directly for him.

Yeah, but we knew each other and I think he knew my skill set.

Yeah.

And so yes, it was a real leap of faith on both sides.

Yeah, you mean, I guess he obviously put his faith in you and his kind of main guides coming in to get this right, but I guess he had some prior knowledge that you could kind of do that and some, some, maybe, maybe, maybe some friends or something that had said or colleagues that said you could do it.

But for, for you, I mean what kind of what I mean you were, you were kind of what, six, seven years in, eight years into your career at that point going to a startup then like in a kind of.

From, from what was ultimately three kind of fairly sizable stable ish companies I guess.

Yes, certainly John Lewis and.

Yeah, so, so did, yeah.

What was talk to me about that decision?

Like can you remember, can you remember like what the, what that.

Was it an easy decision or like what to kind of.

What did that look like when you went through it?

I don't think it was easy and I don't think I really knew what I was getting in for is the reality.

Probably the best thing.

Yeah, probably the best thing.

I think you always think things are going to move quicker than they, than they do in reality and it's.

We're building insurance platforms here so you can't.

It's hard to build a small insurance platform and we didn't have a lot of funding so it's not like we, we had, you know, I don't know who would build an insurance platform these days without significant funding.

We didn't have so, so we were, we were quite hand to mouth at the beginning so trying to do everything on, on zero budget and relied a lot on the people to, to, to work extremely hard without additional pay and stuff like that because, because of the type of people that they were I guess.

So we got, we got lucky that we had some great people and a lot of Those people, a lot of the, the 20 years are still in the, in the company and a lot of, a lot of my senior team.

Well, all of my senior team have been with us for at least 10 years.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, so we've definitely been extremely lucky to have a fantastic set of capable, engaged individuals who want to do really well and, and, and manage to do so on, on a, on a regular basis for, for our clients.

What, what was the, what was the kind of deciding factor then for you making that move?

Is it.

I, I think the challenge of doing it.

Yeah.

It's really not fair to say that Andrew made a massively informed decision because.

Because whereas I was a senior, senior developer stroke architect, I'd never been the person to go and start from scratch and lead it.

And so.

So yes.

Amazing opportunity though.

Amazing opportunity.

Yeah.

I got very right place, right time.

Yeah.

And, and, but it was years and years and years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears.

Yeah.

To get to it.

And 20 years on.

Okay.

It's worked out.

Yeah.

Things, things are really rosy, but it wasn't guaranteed.

Yeah.

And there were the first 10 years, especially with the financial crisis of 2008.

2009 was really tough for the company.

Yeah, yeah.

It sounded, I mean from when I spoke to Andrew, it sounded like the kind of Quindell thing was a bit of a challenge as well.

And there were like certainly kind of issues with kind of winning new business and stuff like that.

So there must have been some kind of bumps in the road at that point.

But so your role when you went into it, freedom, what became ice, that was.

So your role in that was to ultimately design from scratch what this claims platform was going to look like.

Correct.

And I guess you kind of built out a bit of a team to help do so were you doing design hands on, write the code, doing the kind of full nine yards at that point?

Well, yeah, with.

When there was three of us.

Yeah, I was, you know, I think at one point we had some metrics that I'd done 60% of the source code.

Yeah.

But that was really early days.

It won't be anything like that now obviously, but there's me telling people you.

Can'T find developers, architects, project managers and bas all rolled into one.

But then you're probably doing that and more.

Yeah, not so much as pm, but yeah, everything else definitely.

It's interesting you say that because the roles that I'd had previously was described as analyst, programmer, which isn't really a thing these days.

No, no, no.

It used to be what all developers.

Were kind of called but we were and we were doing the analysis and then, and then designing on the back of that.

Whereas you know, not everyone does that these days.

A lot of people want a specification let's say pre thought out to some way how the design is going to work.

And yeah, so I was used to, used to doing that and designing and I think that's the thing that I love the most and using technology and using a lot of open source libraries which again was these were in their infancy.

Luckily it was a small organization.

The red tape wasn't there so we would use a lot of these libraries that were very early in their, in their sea that then became sort of sort of standards within the Java community.

So so we.

There's no way I could have delivered this without them.

Not a chance.

And it sounds like you, you kind of took the, the challenge on and then kind of.

Although there's been some kind of bumps in the road, it's, it's obviously worked out quite well now.

So how, how did your, how did your, how was your role evolved from the kind of days that you started to now and, and how.

I guess how quickly did that happen?

Good question.

Is it, is it that much different now to what it started?

Yes, because now I'm not a developer much to my, my pain.

It's the thing that I love actually I was just saying this week I'm part of a London network of about 30 CTOs in, in financial services and insurance and we were having a meal and the conversation came out is do you still code or not?

And most of us don't.

There are some startups where one of the guys did a day a week sort of thing and I say my answer was I try and give myself a Christmas present of, of doing a week's worth of development when things just slow down of something to keep my, keep my hand in.

I'm sure my team wouldn't trust me to be a full time developer these days but I love it and I would do it for nothing because for me creating something and using all of the tools that you have and is like doing a sudoku puzzle or something like that.

So you know, I love it sadly enough I spent many holidays and downtime and weekends reading and, and learning because I would enjoy that just as much as doing other stuff.

Yeah.

So yeah, that thirst for knowledge is, is important I think.

Do you still do any kind of like, I mean whether you have time or not.

So I guess definitely.

But you still do kind of Code in like and stuff like that at home and just because, and, and I guess the set following question.

Do you think that's important as well?

Because I always met.

You mean when I first started my career, I started off as an architecture recruiter.

That was kind of like.

I kind of went into, I kind of missed out stuff straight into architecture.

And there was, there was a, there was a real kind of drive.

They were talking kind of six, 15 years ago now, but those kind of technical architects that could do architecture but were still hands on, they were the ones everyone wanted because, and, and, and I, I always assumed that was because it meant that they could still get into the detail if they needed.

There was a problem or something.

But do you think that's important or like.

You mean.

So, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna be careful how else this.

Because there'll be so many people who, who don't.

Yeah yeah.

But I guess it's time a lot.

And so I think it depends is, is the reality.

It's not the most important thing, that's for sure.

For me it's a luxury that I enjoy and I want to be able to understand the change that's going through the platform and certainly have an input into things because the reality is doing this for 20 years, you're going to know stuff and see stuff differently to someone who's been doing it three or four years.

And so we're all trying to come up with the best design and the best solution for doing things.

So there's value that I can add there.

For a lot of CTOs, they won't even look at the code.

It will be far more of a managerial role.

And you asked the original question is how have I transitioned.

My main thing is you've, you transition from being an executor of, of delivery to being a manager.

And so I'm, I'm management first and, and overall responsibility for, for, for a number of different areas but for, for basically the product, the product involvement, the technology stack, the team, the hr, the, you know, my team and my team's teams.

So that's, that's far more my role now.

So being able to still get my hand into the, to the code and understand it.

I'm involved in sales so I, I need to be able to understand what our products do in detail and I need to be able to work in, in architect sessions as well and work with clients to, to suggest solutions for, for problems that they might have.

And I love doing, doing that aspect but, but I don't write the code these days.

Really?

Yeah.

And I miss it.

I, some, some part of me would desperately love to go back to being a full time programmer.

Yeah.

So what does, what does a kind of day, week, month in the, in the life of kind of, of you as a CTO now, what does that look like?

Well, it probably, probably covers those things that I was saying.

So it's, it's oversight, it's unblocking other people's problems.

Right.

It's looking at future strategies, new technology.

I'm still trying to read a lot.

We all know that the technology roadmap is changing in some ways over the last year.

Changing more in new ways than ever before.

And the more these technologies are applicable for our industry.

And so yeah, I do a lot of reading and suggesting improvements.

Some are purely business, some are technology based.

But how we can evolve our product.

Trying to make sure that my team are happy.

And I've only lost one of my senior teams and he went on to be a CTO somewhere else.

I'm still really great friends with him.

So, so that's, that's a really positive thing for me because there is probably nothing more important that to our company than our employees because yes, we're a product, but the people are so important so we've got to keep them happy and engaged and I guess that's, that's a big part of the, the job as well.

Yeah, I mean, you have to take that as a positive as well.

People going on to be a cto.

Right.

So there can't be anything but a good thing really.

And people moving up the ladder.

Absolutely.

It was positive.

I mean, I miss him in the, in the company, but it went with my full blessing because it was bit of dead man's shoes because I wasn't going anywhere.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I, I guess we, so we spoke a bit, you, you spoke a bit there about kind of reading and stuff.

So when, when I think that's quite interesting.

So you, you still see a big part of your job being kind of research, understanding what's going on in the market.

Is it that kind of stuff that you're reading or is it something else?

Yes, so it's a mixture.

You know, as a, as a CTO of a product company in insurance, my two major skills are technology and insurance.

And 30, I've got 30 years in IT, systems development, technology and 27 years in insurance.

Yeah.

So I need to keep up with both sides, need to understand what's going on.

So yes, I, I read about insurance, less so.

Most of my insurance comes from clients and communication, networking, etc.

Sales opportunities and the technology side.

Things are, things are changing so quickly and we're wanting to ensure that our product is as good as it can be for our clients.

Whether that's performance, scalability, new technology that will allow us to do something easier.

Obviously everyone's talking about all the different aspects of AI at the moment.

There are so many branches of AI that can solve different problems.

So yeah, we need to understand these to try and make sure that we, you know, if a problem comes up from a client, oh, do you know what?

I know a solution for that.

Yeah, it's almost like having a, you know, be a carpenter and having as many tools as you possibly can.

So when someone comes up with a specific thing, you say, do you know what?

I know how to do that.

Yeah.

So.

So I think that's a really important part of it.

How do you.

Interesting.

Because I mean obviously I speak to lots of CIOs, CTOs, et cetera.

The overall overriding majority of those people are working for insurers, brokers.

They're not in product based businesses predominantly.

I'd say 75, 80%, I would say.

How would, that's an interesting kind of dynamic because how do you balance that research element of IT and kind of all the pace of change, the evolution of stuff in insurance, etc.

And I mean I think I'm quite into technology and wanting to try new things, but I'm always forever kind of trying to check myself a little bit in the fact that like you don't want to just kind of chase this new shiny new thing and when you, when you're in a product based business and you have got something that's so fundamental to what your business actually is, fiddling with it and changing it too much and kind of maybe trying to push it.

I mean, how do you, how do you get that balance?

Right?

Because if you're into.

Especially because I get the impression you get a, you get a kind of kick out of new technology and stuff like that.

And I'm not a techie, but I, I think I'm kind of the same.

Yeah.

I'm always want to try the, I always want to be an early adopter to stuff.

Yeah.

Well, you had a great expression.

You check yourself.

Yeah.

So there's a level of responsibility that you know that the bus stops at you and you're the person who's going to make the decision on whether this is appropriate or not.

So again, going Back to my senior team, I have a, a great variety of personalities in that where I have your early adopters, people who are loving playing with new technology and I have other people who are determined to keep things as stable as possible and not change anything.

And it's trying to find that balance between the two because we've got to evolve our platform and add new capability and take advantage of the changes that are happening in the IT industry.

And we've done a lot of that over the last 10 years.

Things have accelerated huge amounts in terms of operational platform capability, visibility, telemetry of how the system is operating.

There's a ton of stuff being able to scale aspects.

We're having customers that are pushing just short of 2 million quotes a day through the platform and from our original build that we did back in 2015, that never would have been capable at all.

So, so we, you have to evolve the platform given the demands and the, the, the requirements that, that, that come to you to, to try and solve these, these problems.

So, you know, we are not into doing something for the sake of it.

Yeah.

But there will involvements where we go.

Do you know what?

This solves a real problem for us.

So, so let's use it.

And, and there has been some bumps in the road.

You know, technically who, who can say that everything's been 100 smooth, but you know, we've always been successful.

We've never had any real failures.

You know, everything hasn't been 100 perfect.

That would be, that would be incorrect to say, but we've got a pretty good track record of delivering and making sure every one of our customers can upgrade and take advantage of the new features.

Is that getting more difficult as the pace of technology kind of evolution and enhancement of technology kind of gathers pace?

Because I was out of the market for four months on garden leave and I was obviously start the year if we think of where we're at now.

And even the fourth four months or so I was out and I tried to take as much of a break from insurance stuff as possible.

I mean the pace of change just even in that period, I even noticed not kind of being in it all day every day was quite crazy compared to the previous years that I've had.

So that pace is just only getting quicker.

It is.

And so you've kind of, I imagine in your role you've kind of got to keep up, but then also try and adopt the things that kind of really going to make a difference and not, not jump around too much like.

And I guess in your role, you've got to kind of really be the kind of balance of the people.

I guess we've got various different voices saying they want to do different things.

Correct.

Correct.

It must be quite, I can imagine that being quite a challenge.

It is picking which ones from internally and externally.

So we have a lot of stakeholders, even from a sales perspective where someone says we could really do with your system being able to do this.

Okay, light bulb goes off.

You know, do we invest in that from, from an internal product perspective in terms, in terms of, you know, being able to, to help future sales or, or do we wait for, for a client to come on who really wants it and, and then build it?

It is a, it's a balancing act and yeah, I think we do a reasonable job.

And yeah, I don't know, you just have to, this is, this is why you're, you're taking the role is to make those decisions, isn't it really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Now let's get back to today's episode.

So I, I guess we can evolve that onto a little bit more.

Now let's talk a little bit about kind of the insurance space where it's at the moment and what you kind of see is the, is the kind of big.

We touched a bit on AI.

I think most people are obviously thinking that's if they're not, then I guess they've been under a rock for the last 12, 18 months.

But where do you see the kind of insurance sector.

Now, from a kind of CTO and in a product business kind of point of view, what do you think is going to be the next kind of the big ticket thing over the next few years?

How is it going to evolve like etc.

Big question.

Sorry.

Yeah, big question.

We still see a real spectrum of sort of new prospects coming from legacy green screen systems that, that need to I guess join the mid-2020s in terms of wanting a cloud native platform, a business configurable platform.

People if you want to keep your expenses down, you really need digital in the personal line space and that has to, that has to be full cycle.

So I would say, I would say we have over the last few years we've seen a lot of what I would describe as tech enabled MGA's.

So.

So people who've done.

Done insurance well before and proven their capability and, and want to do a tech led sort of enterprise looking at maybe certain niches of the, of the insurance space and we work with them and that works quite well with our platform because we've architected our platforms to try and be.

I guess I would describe it as the core transacting capability in an ecosystem so able to integrate with a lot of clients technology that they want to add to it to give them a whole platform.

So we've seen a lot of that but I think we can see capacity is harder to come by these days.

So yeah, what else can I see from a.

In terms of every.

Everyone wants the business to be in control of their own destiny, if that makes sense.

So they want everything to be as configurable as possible.

If they want to make tweaks, observe performance of products, fail fast on a new product, none of this is particularly new, but having the IT capability to do it, there are so many insurers that don't.

So I don't know where those insurers will be in five years if they don't change because the evolution of having a sort of cloud native core platform and then I'm sure we'll talk about AI.

But you need the fundamentals right before you start going down any serious AI route.

Because if your data is not decent, you don't have a good data strategy, good data products, then you're obviously not going to get good quality out of any of your services that you build on top of it.

Yeah, that data strategy thing, I mean I interviewed, I've interviewed a couple of cd, I'm doing a kind of bit of a miniseries on chief data officers around kind of AI and stuff like that and the kind of strategic bit and the overarching common theme from that is that actually the insurance sector on the whole need to get their data sorted and sort out that strategy and how they look after that and stuff like that before they really start going too heavy into AI.

Because actually I mean if you haven't got that sort out it's kind of, it's only as good as what you said it on was.

This is, I mean me taking it in a complex thing into very layman's terms but that, that's kind of the theory I seem to get from it.

Are you seeing any, I mean from a, an AI perspective are you seeing many insurers at the moment?

Because, because I think certainly six months ago when, when I was talking to people before I had a break it certainly seemed lots of people were playing around with it a bit but it much kind of corner of the desk type thing and just little proof of concepts, not, not really putting anything into kind of actual production.

What, what are you seeing?

Anybody really doing anything kind of particularly interesting.

You have to mention any names but like anything that you think's really kind of taking it to the next level where we're actually seeing some, some quite interesting stuff being done.

So I think everyone's talking about Gen AI but obviously there's, there's loads of different strands and in insurance and financial services quite a few of them have been in play for quite some time.

Again most of them are based on the data that you're dealing with.

We understand that AI, you're either dealing with structured or unstructured data but there are aspects we know about Gen AI we understand machine learning quite well now but then there's a lot of different aspects in terms of NLP and some, some other sort of data processing aspects that are really part of the whole AI space.

So some of, some of the areas are more suitable for different aspects of the platform.

In the Gen AI space we're certainly not considering putting anything out to an end consumer yet until it's more proven but as a, as a co pilot tool for knowledgeable professionals, either brokers or, or handlers then you know we can deliver sort of first iterations and then see how things perform and, and you know it's been said many times, you know, right now this is the worst AI is ever going to be again.

Yeah so.

So in three months time is going to be significantly better, etc.

Etc.

So things are moving so quickly if there's never been anything like it in, in, in our lifetimes.

I don't know if there ever will again but it's moving phenomenally quickly.

So, so I don't think any of us can really predict yeah how, how it's going to be used but in a regulated industry we need to have a level of caution and ensure that we've got good guardrails in place to make sure that we don't do an Apple BBC scenario.

None of us want that.

And so I'm sure there will be a reasonable level of caution in the Gen AI space.

That to me seems the real thing with that is that there's loads of cool stuff you can do.

You mean I use it every day.

I think most people in business now are kind of using Gen AI to.

Even if it's just basic stuff.

I mean I was telling someone the other day how I've got a kind of ongoing story in chat GPT I tell my daughter every day and it's kind of.

I feel like I should, I feel like I should turn it into a book to be honest.

It's, it's been, it's grown so many arms and legs but for that it's fine but in, in the, in the insurance space where it's naturally risk averse there's a lot, lot riding on it.

That's the bit that I can't really see how like I mean it will, I'm sure it will happen but there has to be a kind of a.

It, it go flips over to the other side where it's kind of that trusted at the moment.

Like you can't, you surely still need to have a human check in most of the stuff when it comes to legal documents and all this kind of stuff which can probably do a pretty good job.

Yeah.

Like how would you, how do you, how would you kind of underpin that with, with some level of governance that is Agreed, agreed.

It needs to be, it needs to be proven and there's a lot about explainability and sort of accountability of, of, of what these generative systems will, will actually do and by the fact of its very nature and the fact that you can control how free you want it to be with the level of generation that it's doing.

It needs, it needs good guardrails right now and it's, and it's too early probably to be released on, on to the, to the public in, in many aspects but there are so many other aspects of AI in terms of your like predictive analytics, you working on claims cost prediction and these are more machine learning aspects but, but delivering that with a sort of a co pilot to, to be able to have more of a conversational aid to the handlers.

Absolutely.

They, they understand the business well enough.

They'll understand that this is, this is you know, a prediction based on data that it's seen.

Yeah.

And it can, they can make overriding decisions if it comes up with something that we think is.

Is biased or, or not appropriate.

So, so that's the sort of thing that I think would be really good rather than just some, some basic static configuration that's been in the platform for many years.

Yeah.

Like enhancing kind of people doing their act, still doing the job but enhancing how they do it to give them some kind of protection and make things more.

More, more speedy etc.

Etc.

Rather than actually let's just trust that completely and like just do everything for that.

You mean it's not there.

Yeah.

Correct.

And we're seeing a lot of that sort of thing in our operation.

Like I'm sure everyone else is being able to summarize meetings is, is.

Is working at a really good level now.

Yeah.

And you know, why wouldn't you take advantage of these.

These aspects are.

As a group we're going through developer copilot evaluations to tell.

You know, a lot of us have been doing it for some time but.

But using a GPT engine of some sort.

There's one of the problems is there's so many now.

Yeah.

Which, which, which horsed you back.

But using that in, in the development life cycle to, to solve problems that just might take you a lot longer.

Yeah.

To do it otherwise.

But at the end of the day it's the developer and the, and the senior team evaluating the change that need to say I don't care who this was written by.

Yeah.

I don't care if you did 40% of it, 80% of it or whatever.

It still needs to be the right change.

Yeah.

And that's key.

Yeah.

I mean I totally agree.

I mean I was writing a kind of a proposal kind of pitched brochure type thing over the weekend and we needed to kind of get a load of information from a website.

I just typed in the website.

So can you summarize what this kind of assessment product does?

Because I mean it's all there.

I'm only going to regurgitate and it's going to take me probably two hours to do and you mean I'm still reading it?

I'm still reading it and checking that it works out and I still edit it and make it sure it works for us, but it, it takes me 15 minutes, 20 minutes rather than 2 hours and, and that.

So I, I'm then suddenly able to whack a, a brochure up together like that in, in probably two hours in my weekend, which would, in other times would have probably been a whole day.

Agreed.

And so it is working differently and I think we're all still in the massively early stages and, and it's quite an enjoyable process because a lot of us are massively, positively impressed with, with what these LLMs and other aspects can do.

So you know, think what it's going to be like in, in another six months, in another year.

The changes just over the last year are huge in terms of the perceived intelligence of these engines.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing.

Yeah yeah.

I think you've got to lean into it as well, haven't you?

Like, otherwise you just going to get kind of left behind.

But it's just, I think it's fascinating to see how it's going to, I mean the, the crystal ball of like where Insurance is in 12 months, 24 months and how they start to use it.

Because I think that that balance around the kind of regulated environment and the trust of it is that, that's like the kind of, for me that seems to be like the absolute pivotal point once it gets to the point where, where kind of regulators say you can trust it completely and actually we're not going to hold, not going to hold you account anymore.

I don't know when that comes, but that's a game changer moment surely when that happens.

And I think it's trusted for what.

So, so I think the key thing for us is that there are lots of different aspects of insurance and operational and algorithmic and, and there will be a level of trust for, for some of it and there will be a dial on, on where you use it for let's say for a personalized experience that, that isn't necessarily so affected by regulatory aspects then then that might be a great way to, to do it.

We've talked about some of those copilot things.

You know, that's a, that's a good thing for, for potentially making underwriting decisions, underwriting predictions.

It's interesting, but it has to be really explainable.

Yeah.

And, and therefore can be using different aspects of AI, not necessarily generative AI.

Yeah, yeah yeah, interesting.

So I wanted to kind of move it onto a little bit about your, we spoke a little bit about kind of the transition into Kind of a more managerial role from kind of architecture is, is that, did you have a, did you, did you always want to be, go into management?

Like, I mean, because you've, you focused a little bit about.

And if I had a pound for every time there was someone said they wanted to be a cto and then when they get there because they've been a techie, they don't necessarily enjoy it.

Which I'm not saying you don't enjoy it, but you certainly obviously enjoyed being a developer.

So did that kind of organically happen?

Did you always have ambitions to want to do that?

Like what did that, what was that like for you?

So I think it organically happened.

Did I have ambitions?

No, no, no, I don't think I did.

I think it was a matter of the natural thing to evolve in because of the, the role that I had was I guess overseeing the product and the technology and therefore it is naturally, naturally, you know, I moved into that role.

So it's very different from other CTOs.

Maybe you've had a, had a completely different route.

As I said, I don't find the management as sort of interesting and doesn't come as naturally to me as, as the architect aspect of it and I think I have to work on that.

And I, I read on that as well.

But some people will find it a lot easier than, than me.

Yeah.

And I have a lot of diverse people to work with that have different aspects of what makes them tick.

And, and that for me is, is an interesting part of it to try and make sure everyone is performing as well as they can and happy in their role and staying with the company and, and delivering.

So, and they all work differently which, and I think that's a, that is a key thing that I would say that's important is that you do have this diversity because you cannot have a clone of, of low level techies delivering this because you need people who, who are interested in technology, who want stability, who, who will love working on a proof of concept, who love making sure everything is documented well and going through all of the, the crossing the T's and dotting the I's aspect.

So, so these are all different personality traits and you want a team full of all of them, not just one aspect to, to deliver an overall thing.

So I think, I think that's a, that's a complex part of the job for me and one that I don't think I find massively easy.

But, but it's, it's, it's certainly a necessity.

What was it So I guess if we kind of turn that into kind of advice that you would give then like.

So if in what, what?

Yeah, what?

I mean, well, what, what advice would you give?

Like some people, because there'll be people listening that are kind of techies who not sure whether they want to move into a CTO role or whether they, they want to stayed being a techie.

I think nowadays there probably is more of a career route to stay a techie and get paid well and move really up and stay very much in that lane.

Whereas maybe 15, 20 years ago it was probably more difficult, it was more hierarchical, I think.

But yeah, any kind of particular bits of advice you would give for anyone who's kind of on that route.

So I would say if you want to rise to the top and this, this won't be for everyone, but, but in my experience, I would say to try and focus as, as much as possible on, on a number of sort of key verticals that you think I want to become an expert in.

I mean, insurance is a wide enough subject.

It is.

So there is no one on the planet that knows all about insurance.

We all know it's far too complicated to know everything.

Everything.

So just, just in that.

But my focus has always been on, on insurance and on aspects of insurance and on technology and, and having that combination as allowed me to, to become an expert in, in these areas and, and therefore I think rise to the, to the top.

So I think that's, that's key.

If, if I, you know, I've listened to your, all of your other podcasts.

I know some, some really interesting people have, have been so valuable because they've jumped around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's, so that's not the same.

You know, it's not, it's not one, one size fits all here.

But for me, I don't think I would have become a CTO if I hadn't have got so much experience in a, in a.

And become an expert in a field.

Yeah.

So.

So I would say, you know, if you're happy in the field that you're in, just try and really understand as much as you can about it.

And, and you know, I would always give the, the advice is it's not just if you really want to progress and you want to make it to the top, you're going to have to put the hard yards in.

Yeah, so I used to put in a lot of hours, less so these days.

Yeah.

In terms of the job is, is different levels of stress and stuff like that.

But, but I was reading, reading and consuming as much as possible to try and make sure that our product was, was going in the direction that I wanted it to go in.

And I think that was, that was key.

So you need to, if you want to become cto.

Yeah.

You got, yeah.

You can't.

There's no like fast track, I don't think into doing it.

You've got to put the hard yards in and I would really say as well, you know, talk to, talk to people in these roles and ask them about, about their role and is this really the role that you want?

Yeah.

And I think we've discussed my journey and I don't think it was something that I planned for.

I probably find it quite difficult to give it up now.

Yeah.

Because of the nature of, of the role.

But, but without a doubt I much preferred the being an architect in terms of the joy I got from the job.

Yeah, yeah.

And the creative side of it.

Yeah, yeah.

That's interesting.

An example of that is that I would happily still give up evenings and weekends doing a small proof of concept or exploring and reading something.

Yeah.

You're not going to catch me doing emails.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's, that's my day job.

Yeah.

We're doing a one to one at seven o'clock at night or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, I'm fine because that's investing in people and I'm all right with that.

That.

Yeah.

But, but yeah, you get what I mean.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And that's, yeah.

And I think it's interesting that's, it's definitely a realization that some people don't necessarily always have.

And, and so I guess we're coming slightly kind of closer to the end, but I wanted to talk a little bit.

I always like to talk about the kind of, the big wins people have had and, and, and equally as important, the kind of things that didn't go so quite, quite so well.

The kind of, the failures not to focus on them too much.

But there's normally some quite good learnings that come out of them.

So would you say there's been kind of one or two kind of big, big wins in your career or pivotal moments that you would say are kind of the, the things that you would, if you were kind of back reflecting, you'd kind of bookmark them as the kind of the, the things that really went well or were pivotal in your career.

So I think we've been quite lucky.

Is it as a company that we've had quite a Few big wins.

The obvious things are winning new business and getting some great clients to work with.

You know getting our first tier one.

Yeah.

Insurer I think was, was massive for us because that's, that means someone's, you know, at that level is saying, you know what, we've evaluated you and, and we believe that you're, you're the right fit for us.

So I think that was, that was huge for me personally.

I think transitioning to Java was, was a, was a key.

Was that kind of RSA to the.

End of, end of RSA actually weirdly enough.

And we're in different times these days.

But I was contracting as, as I said at RSA and my agent who I'd won a lot of business for in getting a lot of people to come to come into, into RSA actually paid for me to have four weeks training in Java.

So I don't think that would happen these days.

So four weeks on site, on site training which, which I absolutely loved and then made sure that I moved out into another insurance but Java related role.

Yeah.

And then, and then that was kind.

Of strategic move then that it was modernizing your, your kind of tech.

Tech.

Correct.

And stuff like that because you've got, you know the, the mainframe world would have been a reasonable cash cow I guess once you, once you knew it the demand is still there.

But it's niche, not as exciting and as interesting as cloud.

Native platforms with microservice architecture, distributed computing and all of the things that we do.

SQL and NoSQL databases, excellent analytics.

That sort of thing is the technologist in me is like, oh, it wasn't like that back in the year 2000 but I wouldn't swap that for, for anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any, any kind of things that went wrong that you learned from or anything like that.

So biggest learnings.

Learnings.

It's, it's interesting.

I would always say look, look out for yourself.

Yeah.

Because you're the one person that has the most interest in your career.

Yeah, of course.

And that was probably from learnings rather than someone telling me that thinking that necessarily someone's always going to look after you and maybe they don't.

So don't be scared of having a conversation with managers and senior people because we're all just people too.

And that's one of my key learnings is don't speak to the, to the title.

We're all people.

And I try and try and with my team try and make sure that I'm as accessible as possible.

And I remember what it was like when I was 21 and I would be terrified of speaking to like the, the head of department or anything like that.

Whereas I try and make sure that I am accessible and I'm here to support them and help them on their career and hopefully they'll, they all know that.

So, you know, have a conversation if, if you ever want to.

Because we're here to support them.

That's, that's a big part of our job, is to make sure that they're, they're, they're happy.

And, and the Quindell experience, which was nothing to do with me and nothing to do with ICE at all, but that was a really interesting learning curve and I didn't realize how, how sort of how strong we were by not being able to sell anything until that barrier was removed and the floodgates opened.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So imagine that was a bit.

Yeah, yeah, we'd like, like having sold one policy admin platform in three years and then three in three months, sort of.

Yeah, it was just, it was just a flood after that.

So that was, that was interesting.

So, you know, that's a, that's a learning.

I don't think it's a major learning for many people out there, but try and reflect on the current position and say, you know, is there something that we can do about this?

And, and to be fair, Andrew, our CEO takes the major credit for that in recognizing that we were in a toxic position and we could be doing a lot better with a different parent.

Yeah, well, look, we're coming towards the end now, so I always do a few quick fire questions at the end, so I'm gonna fire a few at you.

Which brand or company do you most admire and why?

So anyone that knows me will probably immediately jump and say, I would say Apple.

That's what Andrew said from memory.

So I, I have a, A lot of respect from what they've done, especially in the connected device sort of thing.

I was a late convert into, into iPhones.

Really.

Not, not too far, probably about two, two or three models away.

But, but having used a MacBook Pro for a long time and then the connected, the connected world of watch AirPods.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, iPads, you know, all this stuff.

So happy with that.

And I also probably, if you'd have asked me three or four years ago, I probably would have said Tesla, yeah, big fan of, of what they've done in the move to sustainable energy.

But I think the tarnishes with what's going on with Elon has certainly changed a Little bit.

So, so if I was to pick one, I would say Google.

Yeah, yeah.

So Google for me personally was a massive assistance in terms of what they did for the developer community in the open source world.

Apple never donated anything to the open source world, whereas we built a whole huge amount of our platform and our operational platform is based on Kubernetes which Google were a key, key contributor to these platforms, these capabilities and these engines.

So we use a lot of Google technology within our platform.

So I just have an admiration of what they've done.

All of the apps that we take for granted and use that are usually free, obviously we understand more about, it's paid for via advertising and stuff.

But over the last 25 years I would say Google.

Yeah.

Okay.

Number two is what's the one piece of advice you'd wish you'd been given when you were first starting out?

I've probably actually spoiled that one because I think I've said it is like speak to the, speak to the individual, not to the role.

Yeah.

So I think that that's, that's key for me.

If you've got a manager who's worth anything, they'll look after you and they'll, if, if you want to, if you're not happy with something or you want to change something, if they don't look after you then maybe, then maybe you should move elsewhere but they should be looking after you.

So don't be scared about speaking to senior people and trying to make them, make them earn their money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

The next one is if you could swap jobs or roles with someone for the, for, for a day, who would it be and, and why obviously so.

I would love to be of being a fighter pilot.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

I flew when I was younger, don't at all now but always wanted to be in the RAF when I was younger and love, love flying so yeah, I would love that.

Yeah, that would be a cool job.

That would be a cool job.

I mean I'm not saying I'd like to go to war.

No, no, no, no.

But just thriller.

Yeah.

Probably missing the whole point of being a fighter pilot but yeah, that would be amazing.

Yeah.

I'm interested in this one because you said you're a big reader but so best kind of business related was kind of non fiction, self self help kind of type book.

Yeah.

You read a lot of books actually or is it more just a kind of industry press?

So I, I think a lot of my reading is actually technology based so not really what you're asking.

So I'm kind of saying I'm, I'm looking at products that are out there that I can use and how they work and how we can incorporate them.

So, so when I thought about this, there's one book that I've actually read twice which is a business book.

It's called How Google Works.

And it was by Eric Schmidt, who was a sort of senior guy in Google.

And it was just really interesting at some insight into the priorities for them, how they dealt with quite flat hierarchies and how they justified decisions or made decisions based on who had the best decision, not who was the most senior.

That sort of thing was really resonated with me and it would be how I would want to run, run a business.

And there was obviously a load of different nuggets of, of how to treat or how to recognize your key individuals and the different, the different personalities that you can get and, and you can't like say, you know, treat them all the same because they're gonna, their different personalities will, will mean that their, their, their value will manifest itself in different ways.

But that doesn't mean that just because maybe you've got a difficult person, you can't get the best out of them by understanding that and working with that rather than saying that you're difficult.

Yeah.

We don't want you here.

Yeah.

So.

So some really interesting stuff in there.

Yeah, sounds it.

The next one is the best career decision you've ever made.

Probably, probably going to rsa.

Yeah.

Okay.

In terms of, in terms of nothing else happens.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If I hadn't have done that so I could, I could go through and say each one of them was, was, was good.

Yeah.

Learning Java.

Yeah, yeah.

Be up there.

Yeah, be up there.

It seems like you had quite a lot.

You mean.

Because obviously when you.

Before I asked that.

You mean going to rsa, first job and insurance gets you into the market.

Yeah.

Learning Java kind of modernize you, makes you more relevant and then obviously taking the plunge.

There's kind of two or three fairly.

Yeah.

Big moves.

Taking the plunge to it.

Freedom.

I mean.

Yeah.

Abs, absolutely.

I doubt that would have another opportunity like that would have come up.

So it probably is that one.

Yeah, it probably is.

It's just that all of them.

You know, I wouldn't have met Andrew if I hadn't have gone to rsa and I wouldn't have learned insurance if I hadn't have gone to rsa.

Yeah.

And it was good to see big corporate versus startup.

Yeah.

With.

With John Lewis as well.

So I think there's a message in there in the sense of kind of taking a risk as well.

Right.

I mean, it sounds like there was kind of two or three occasions where you took a bit of a risk and, and maybe kind of pushed yourself.

And so there's, there's, there's a, there's definitely a bit of a hidden lesson in there, I think, somewhere.

Yeah.

I'd say it's not for everyone.

You can, you can easily hide more in a, in a, in a big corporate.

There's nowhere to hide in a.

When there's two or three of you starting up a company and doing the work, you have to, you have to be jack of all trades.

Yeah.

And, and yeah, it's a, it's a complex technological stack, so you need to, you know, in, in the early days we were doing real low level stuff and real high level stuff and, and trying to, trying to mix it all up and trying to know everything.

Yeah.

So it was, it was challenging.

These days, I guess we're in a.

Different world, but I know what you mean.

I'm experiencing that first hand right now.

Yeah.

The penultimate one.

Who is the, the one famous person you, you admire and why?

So I thought about this.

I'm going for Thierry Henry.

Big Arsenal, big Arsenal fan.

Okay.

And, and I used to love watching, watching him play.

It was, it was, it was just a level above and just different.

And if I could sort of meet.

I haven't met him and I've met quite a few of the Arsenal team, but I, I love the way he talks.

I love his insight that he gives now and, you know, widely respected as one of the best players to ever, ever play and I was lucky to see him many, many times.

So.

Yeah, I'm going with that.

Yeah.

I'm a big United fan, so he was a big thorn in, in our side for ages.

That, that.

I still think that, that when I think someone asked me about that the other day, that, that kind of rivalry between United and Arsenal back then.

Yes.

I don't know, it was like mid 2000s.

But yeah, it was, it was epic repeated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if it were.

You mean.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

It's just, it's not.

We don't get two horse races these days.

Yeah.

And just like the players as well, there were so many personalities in there, like.

Yeah.

Good times, good times.

And then final question.

What's the, the one thing you love most about being in insurance?

So I think the complexity really, if I'll say because it's a challenge.

You there's never, there's never an easy day.

You know, I started these, these platforms 20 years ago and we are still massively developing.

You know, our, the number of people that we have in the company is growing and growing and growing.

We're just adding and adding.

There's just more and more and more to add dealing with all of the permutations of a business configured platform with huge different capabilities.

It's not a one size fits all.

It's not just go and do this.

So they are difficult problems to solve and it's a combination of really understanding the business and the different business contexts and then trying to provide a business configurable platform to do that with the technology that we've got available to us, which is, as I've said, is forever growing.

So you know, that's a really good problem to have if you're someone in my space.

Amazing.

Well, look, thanks so much for making some time to have a chat to us.

I know you guys are really busy on some big stuff at the moment, so really appreciate your time.

I'm sure there'll be people that want to get in touch off the the back of it.

So if they, if they do, what's the, what's the best way to get hold of you?

LinkedIn.

Best for me, please.

LinkedIn.

Absolutely fine.

Happy for anyone to contact if they want some advice or just to just to see what, what's going on at ice.

Not a problem at all.

Yeah, well look, thanks again.

It's been really great to have you loads more episodes coming like subscribe etc and we'll catch you again next time.

Cheers.

And that's it for today's episode of beyond the Desk.

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