{"id":6835,"date":"2024-06-20T08:31:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T07:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=6835"},"modified":"2025-03-26T04:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T04:56:22","slug":"voi-podcast-with-james-slaughter-cuo-of-apollo-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-james-slaughter-cuo-of-apollo-group\/","title":{"rendered":"A culture of innovation \u2013 Apollo\u2019s CUO, James Slaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep214 James Slaughter: Innovation at Scale\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=rvnif-16443b1-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=0&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Chief underwriting officer (CUO) of Apollo Group, James Slaughter, was the latest guest to grace the Voice of Insurance podcast, produced in association with AdvantageGo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Innovation is a term almost synonymous with Apollo Group. Slaughter suggests it isn\u2019t quite right to label Apollo \u201can incubator\u201d, but it can seem that way, linked as it is to so many innovative London market launches. Perhaps enabler is a better word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLloyd\u2019s has never been as open as it is today for credible opportunities,\u201d Slaughter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Lloyd\u2019s business has co-launched a steady stream of new startup partnerships in recent months, from cyber and drones, to parametric products and captive insurance business, as well as welcoming African business to the London market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apollo has increased its focus on its innovation (ICX) category at Lloyd\u2019s, from 2% to 5% of its stamp capacity, something Slaughter said had been \u201cdriven by demand\u201d. The firm has expanded its reach by using its ICX consortia, partnering with other businesses within the Lloyd\u2019s ecosystem, to maximise the effect of joint capacity through a single channel, enabling innovation at scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf you innovate in isolation, putting out a $2m line or a $5m line, it doesn&#8217;t help a client. But if you can put $20-25m out, on a novel product, you can start to solve some real problems. Lots of people are innovating, but if you don&#8217;t come together and innovate at scale, it&#8217;s difficult to get it across,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One recent application of the ICX scheme has been to co-launch a product called \u201cJust Parent\u201d, focused on delivering \u201cequity and paternity and maternity leave\u201d for small businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Product innovation in insurance tends to run up against challenges such as a lack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/products\/underwriting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">historical data for underwriting<\/a> something brand new. This means careful supervision, but shouldn\u2019t be a barrier to new thinking in the market, Slaughter emphasised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf we stick to more traditional methods of evaluating risk, we limit our ability to innovate. The proliferation of data and third party data sources, and our ability to ingest and look at things in different ways, is exploding, and one of the super exciting elements of what&#8217;s going on in our industry today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Constructing \u201csynthetic loss records\u201d by making use of data that are available \u2013 such as the example of paternity and maternity leave \u2013 can help substitute real underwriting and claims histories, he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou&#8217;ve got to use your underwriting experience and merge that with high end computer analytics,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we&#8217;re talking about here is big data analysis that says something along the lines of: \u2018what could it have been; and have we tested the environment in which those conditions are applied?\u2019 And from that, can we create a synthetic environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The podcast explores a number of different product innovation areas, many of which make use of technologies, including artificial intelligence, or parametric triggers that substitute traditional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/products\/policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">claims process<\/a> for an automated data-driven contract and payout mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Energy transition and carbon markets represent a major future aspect for product innovation, Slaughter suggested, with products taking time to come together, some failing and others succeeding in an evolutionary process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Host Mark Geoghegan noted that \u201ccarbon could be the next cyber\u201d as a product opportunity, as the market grapples with risk transfer associated with global efforts towards <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/what-role-can-the-insurance-industry-play-in-the-journey-to-net-zero\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/what-role-can-the-insurance-industry-play-in-the-journey-to-net-zero\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">net zero emissions targets<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s a heck of a lot of stuff going on in carbon, around the asset carbon, thinking about projects that are there to restore forests, and things that may have financing or credit risk related elements,\u201d Slaughter said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;d certainly say it&#8217;s about the most exciting novel area to explore today\u2026Is it bigger than cyber? I think it&#8217;s credible to say it is akin to cyber in terms of the opportunity in front of us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chief underwriting officer (CUO) of Apollo Group, James Slaughter, was the latest guest to grace the Voice of Insurance podcast, produced in association with AdvantageGo. Innovation is a term almost synonymous with Apollo Group. Slaughter suggests it isn\u2019t quite right to label Apollo \u201can incubator\u201d, but it can seem that way, linked as it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[12,14],"line-of-business":[24],"class_list":["post-6835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","tag-policy-admin","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-cyber"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6835"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=6835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}