Jason Keck: Hi, and welcome back to the Enlightened Agent, the podcast that brings you conversations with top insurance professionals and industry leaders. My name is Jason Keck and we are on our fourth series of the Enlightened Agent, which is entirely focused on the hottest topic in technology and business right now, artificial intelligence. I'm honored today to be joined by the co-founders of Native, John Reynolds and Bill Devine. Fellas, welcome to the show. Bill Devine is doing a startup. Many of you know Bill from his days at Travelers and his 25 years in the insurance industry. And if you know him, then you know what a fantastic person ⁓ individual and character he is. ⁓ if you've had a chance to work with him, then you yourself lucky. Today's show, joins me along with the CEO and co-founder at Native, John Reynolds, new friend.
Jon Reynolds: Thank very much, James. Thanks for having us.
Bill Devine: Hey, just.
Jason Keck: It was a great conversation talking about Today, the future of AI ⁓ their to bringing AI to the insurance industry on service now, their platform partner. It's a great conversation. I hope enjoy, stick around and listen. Yeah, so Bill and I met, background here with Bill and I, met years ago, John is a new friend, but Bill and I met my early days of BrokerBuda when he was leading transformation at Travelers, is that right? Business transformation, is that okay? There we go. We were part of Plug and Play and part of the phase two, know, in SureTech 2.0, which was your...
Bill Devine: Cool stuff.
Jason Keck: your technology enablers. And we were having a lot of success with brokers. Travelers was exploring how they could take advantage of these new technologies and better serve their agents. And we came together around some exciting ideas. He helped build great relationship between BrokerBuda and Travelers at the time, and one that we continue to enjoy. And we still have a lot of great friends there. So thank you, ⁓ Bill, making that happen. ⁓
Bill Devine: Wow, it was a lot of fun, Jason. We had a number of good dinners over the years trying to make that work out.
Jason Keck: We did, we did, and we should look forward to more of those. But things evolved as they do, right? The world's changed a little bit, and ⁓ quite lot in the last couple years. And so I'm still We're doing some new stuff, but ⁓ Bill's into new, and I wanna give you an opportunity to introduce us to native.
Bill Devine: Absolutely. Thanks. No, I appreciate it. This is week three, I believe, for us. we're working in the background quietly for a while, but we are official and out in public and did the big LinkedIn announcement. I didn't realize how close this was to dating now. You have to be LinkedIn official. So we're LinkedIn official for the last three weeks now.
Jason Keck: Brand new. Yeah.
Jon Reynolds: It is a thing.
Bill Devine: But we're a services company, not a software company, so a little bit different than most of the folks you'll talk to. And our mission statement, our charge is to help agents, brokers, and really everyone accelerate their adoption of AI into the workflows that we've known for so long.
Jason Keck: Yeah, but much in demand, very much kind ⁓ of an market right now, right? Everybody's trying to figure out how to do it. Everybody wants to do it. It was all kind of like, ⁓ could see light, but I'm not quite sure how to get there. And people are, some people are, you know, they're doing it themselves. Some people are looking for help and, you know, there's ⁓ a lot of opportunity now. So. So tell me more about Native. I I'm obviously familiar with AI and workflows, and I gather you guys are, a particular angle that's related to ServiceNow ⁓ you know, ⁓ you first told me about it, I was like, ⁓ ServiceNow, yeah, you know, I've heard the name, but like, but I go do my homework so I don't embarrass myself. And, ⁓ you kind of our audience, right, the ⁓ brokers the broker tech out there, now that I know more about it, I gather isn't... ⁓ terribly familiar with it, so us up if you get it.
Bill Devine: Yeah, totally. Well, I'll get going and then I'm going to cede the floor to my partner and our CEO, John. know, ⁓ the core, Jason, for sitting on the carrier side, you know, being deep in the industry, deep in the ecosystem, getting to spend a lot of time with the folks doing cool things like yourself and many you know, what I really saw was this gap exactly like you articulated, this gap between invention and innovation and production.
Jason Keck: Hmm. Hmm.
Bill Devine: And at the end of the day, you know, I'm a capitalist. I've used that line on you many times. I'm a capitalist. My role has always been to create value, right? To be a creative. Experimentation is cool, but it's not a creative to big picture. So when I took a step back and said like, what's missing, what are the components that are holding up insurance in general, would be agents or brokers, ⁓ whomever, what's holding up the adoption of AI? really... And these are not novel concepts, but there's three core pieces. The first one is antiquated workflows. we, you and I've talked about this, you know, the ⁓ side, the underwriting side ⁓ all, all of it. We were running on a set of workflows that have been around for decades and decades. Insurance industry is not short on data, but ready data ⁓ is a real challenge. So sitting across all these legacy systems. You know, we're better than filing cabinets, but, but just barely in many cases. And then the last one, which is pretty unique for our industry and the problem set that we've got to solve for is we're a highly regulated industry. So governance ⁓ of the engine to go fast, right? If you don't start with that end in mind, you're not going to be able to build something that moves to production. You can build really cool things in a POC governance the ability to operate in a regulated environment is going to ultimately be your downfall.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: So what we decided is we've got to bring those three components together. If you want to, if you want to go fast, you need those three components. And to the extent that you can normalize them, standardize them, make it easy. can unlock the superpowers that AI bring. And so as we looked across, it was like, well, we could go build something. then we, we looked, as we did more of digging and discovery and watching commercials during the Superbowl and World Series, ⁓ you know,
Jason Keck: Cool.
Bill Devine: realize that the ServiceNow platform has purpose-built for solving exactly this problem, right? So whether it's the workflow orchestration, whether it's the data fabric tools or the AI control tower, ⁓ all the raw pieces to do this acceleration existed with ServiceNow. And that's what kind of... Yeah.
Jason Keck: Explain ServiceNow. Just for anybody who doesn't know what it is, could you just do your best elevator pitch for ServiceNow as well? I realize you're not an employee there, but go ahead.
Bill Devine: And what I'll say, Jason, is that lack of understanding and knowledge there is exactly how John and I got connected. let me throw it to John, too, ⁓ John is the ServiceNow expert. I get to be the insurance guy. John, you're the ServiceNow guy. So what's elevator pitch for White Earth Now?
Jason Keck: Okay?
Jon Reynolds: defining enterprise software platform of the 21st century. ⁓ That's ⁓ marketing words. ⁓ what ServiceNow has meant to me. Let me start there. I grew up ⁓ a different side of the house. I've been working with ⁓ bills of the world for the last 20 years. Half of my career
Jason Keck: ⁓ that's all.
Bill Devine: I'm
Jason Keck: Okay.
Jon Reynolds: was spent in SIs, advising and consulting business leaders like Bill on how we modernize business operations. And when stumbled across ServiceNow 15 years ago, ⁓ was I first became a ServiceNow partner, it was predominantly ITSM on cloud. That's where we started. ⁓ And the last 15 years, we've seen ServiceNow really ⁓ become IT service management on cloud is really where ServiceNow started, right?
Jason Keck: Okay. So you said ITSM on cloud? ⁓ yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. I just get in the acronym right, sorry. Yep, no, no, yep, yep, yep, I get it.
Bill Devine: Help desks and tickets is what I learned.
Jon Reynolds: Absolutely. Absolutely that. to this day, 15 years later, in my journey, we still meet customers routinely, that that is what they know ServiceNow to be. That's the IT platform, the IT ticketing tool. ServiceNow has become so much more from that. ⁓ I think that really, as we look back, we're really sitting in ⁓ fourth era of ServiceNow, evolving from IT service management on cloud. multi-product on cloud. We got out of IT. We moved over into employee. Now we're elevating and modernizing the entirety of the employee experience. adopted further data models to Bill's point. How do we more effectively drive and manage governance in the enterprise? Well, we adopted data models and security operations and risk. Now for the first time, one common platform, one common data model. where risk and IT have the same purview of what's going on. I've got real time and I've got monitoring and visibility. I've got assurance, right? And for the last 10 years, now we've begun to see the push into business and business applications. ⁓ At its core, we are absolutely...
Jason Keck: Yeah, it sounds like you're moving up the stack a little bit, right? It's like you started with your like base layer. You got one thing right as good startups do, right? And then you sort of started your climb, which is good. Okay, yeah, yeah, carry on.
Bill Devine: Exactly. back office.
Jon Reynolds: That's right. That's right. So now we're off to modernizing business. And this is where my journey in the SI stalled. think, you know, as I looked around, I was surrounded by some of the best advisory on the planet. I was surrounded by incredible technology partnerships across the whole of the technology ecosystem. had some of the preeminent logos and names, customers that inhabit these verticals. And yet we struggled to bring all that together under one common vision. one common direction to modernize business. And I think it's a lot to do with the politics that sit inside those SIs, those long standing customer relationships, the history of transformation that's been sold into them, the allegiances of those technology relationships. There's a lot that inhibits the and growth of ⁓ those ⁓ out the market. And so for a lot of those reasons, what we wanted to do and achieve here at Native was bring those forces together under one umbrella with that aim and shape in mind.
Jason Keck: Amazing. So you're helping, are you guys a ServiceNow partner? Are you like, are you helping them get to that business applications level? Is that the way to understand it?
Jon Reynolds: That is correct. So we are a partner with ServiceNow on multiple levels. So at its core, we're consulting and implementation partner. So we can help customers adopt, manage, maintain, scale their ServiceNow system across all of those workflows that we discussed. That's a core capability. bring together the longest 10-year team that you're going to find in a ServiceNow partner. ⁓ We call them master architects, technical architects. These are the people that really understand the fundamentals of those data models and how to tune and operate, manage, govern this platform at scale so that we limit those things called tech debt and those things that drive CIOs mad terms of customization and sprawl in those. in those instances, absolutely. And then we brought together deep industry know-how, deep industry expertise, people like Bill that have sat in those chairs, that have performed those roles, have struggled with the adoption of these types of capabilities. And so to be able to unify that into one team, we resemble a collective. also doing in an AI era has been ⁓ profound for us, right? We get to think AI first. with a huge appreciation that's what great humans together with the AI can accomplish together.
Jason Keck: But so I spent my first job out of college, a company called Science, I spent two years a consulting company and then somewhere in the middle there I spent two years with Accenture. So I've spent time in the professional services systems integrator world. everybody to have a little bit of strategy upfront, planning in middle, execution and then operations, right? Those are the sort of four phases. ⁓ Are you in the ⁓ same category? Cause I would imagine somebody, you you guys are gonna meet people and they say, well, I don't know what we got to figure out what to do first. Is that maybe that's where bill comes in on the insurance side. Is that kind of how it all kicks off or what, what does it look like if somebody starts talking to you and wants to work with you?
Bill Devine: I mean, think Jason, key thing is that, you know, ServiceNow is one solution. It's the one we endorse and the one we're working closely with. But the idea is that this idea, this need for orchestration between workflows, data and governance are going to be the common traits. So what we've got is a series of accelerators where we were actually pre-building the transactions into ServiceNow so that they can then be customized to individual carriers, individual brokers, but they're all
Jason Keck: Thank
Bill Devine: AI agnostic. So it's, really bring your own AI. So this idea is like, can partner with you depending on wherever you are in your life cycle, wherever you are in your journey. If you've got a whole bunch of AIs, we can bring, we can bring those AIs to the platform and orchestrate them better and bring all the infrastructure. If you're an AI novice, we can help you navigate that entire new world that you've got to, you've got to understand. And if you've got a pile of AI that you tried to figure out and nothing really went well, we can also help take apart and do.
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yep.
Bill Devine: do post-mortem and ⁓ back and put it all back together for you. ⁓ the idea, we wanted the flexibility to engage with people where they're at because this a weird point in the journey for AI, right? Like so many people have started and no one's come close to finishing. ⁓
Jason Keck: I mean, it's only the beginning, that's for sure. And ⁓ thing that comes to mind, when first introduced Native to me, I think it was like a month ago, you kind of gave me a sneak peek and I've been sort of noodling about what this means. And the first I was like, I don't know what Bill's doing, he's crazy. Like, this ⁓ is idea, Bill thinks he's a startup guy now, welcome to the party, buddy. And then I got thinking about it more, was like, ⁓ they have this platform.
Bill Devine: Ha ha ha.
Jon Reynolds: you
Jason Keck: installed, as you said, it was like 98 % of the carriers in the US. you know, the set, right. And it was like, oh, so and I know how hard it is to get a, you know, a platform contract with one of these companies where you're now like, you're, you're company. Now you have the right to sell into the rest of the business or they have the right to, they, they don't have to go through procurement so that they can use you. Right. So that's a huge
Bill Devine: Most of the large brokers too.
Jason Keck: advantage that I think you guys have for showing up and saying, hey, you already have the platform in-house. We have skills, a range of skills, but in particular, you know, ServiceNow specific skills. And you have knowledge, right, and experience. And so I'm curious about the types of business applications you're coming across, because I think one of the things you said, Bill, was like, We're moving out of this, I guess, back office and middle office and moving into what you were saying, John, just now about the application layer or the operating layer, maybe, if you will. What are the areas where you guys can be helpful that some of the current players maybe aren't stepping up as quickly or some of the existing platforms are where you see opportunity, I guess?
Bill Devine: I would say anywhere where workflow could be aided materially by a agentic AI by any AI, but agentic is really where it starts to get super interesting. Right. So, you know, and, the way I like to think about it is that ⁓ been reinventing workflows to bring technology and different ways of working to it for awhile. This is the next big leap. And, and so it's, it's really the, the, the inflection point of stepping back and saying like, Okay, so if I want to bring something as powerful as AI to a submission on the broker side, to a claim adjustment on the carrier side, I have to go back and rethink from first principles that transaction with the idea of AI in mind. And that's the thing that's really exciting. So what we've done is actually built accelerators into ServiceNow so that you can have those transactions ready to go. You don't have to rethink that as much. We can help you do that. But then it's which AIs and how do you want to engage them that we can then plug into our
Jason Keck: Yeah, I was invited to present to our board on what we've been doing with AI, how we've done what we've done in a very short amount of time, right? They're like, you've done what? I was encouraged, but I had to step back and actually try to encapsulate, you know, what basically what it means to be an entrepreneur, right? Is to just have an idea.
Bill Devine: you
Jason Keck: have the capacity and the skills and the knowledge to go and execute on this idea and to bring it to life. it struck me that of the biggest strengths I have with this ⁓ because done, ⁓ because have a computer science degree and because I've run a business and because I've been in product before, I've been able to do a lot of the work with this product myself ⁓ and the example I was gonna give him is like, look, I can do in four hours what two people could do in a week because the communication gap as you bring more people into the process just creates almost exponential lag. so this is all coming back around to the point you made around rethinking workflows, right? We've historically designed workflows around people in roles doing specific things, but if all of a sudden you can use AI to close the information gap and one person doesn't have to wait on steps two, three and four to make a decision, then all of a sudden, you know, your timelines go from five days to one hour, right? And that's like, whoa.
Bill Devine: And, and honestly, Jason, the mental model that I would, I would love for people to take to this, to bring to this conversation is exactly what you just laid out. But I put it in the terms of, of, of we've gotten the acceleration over the last two decades, which is outsourcing. Right. And so if you think about the outsourcing journey that many companies have been on, I knee deep in it for the last two decades. ⁓ Right. the first wave of outsourcing was we identified jobs and we moved jobs.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: to a lower cost environment, right? Wave two is we looked at the transactions and said, well, what big blocks of tasks inside jobs could be done asynchronous to the overall transaction, to the overall workflow? And then we outsource those. third piece though is where you were hitting with your coding example is to go beyond that, actually added time lag to the overall, because there were handoffs changes, things like that. The thing that's fascinating to me about AI, is exactly the example you were using is by actually using AI as your outsource partner. You will remove those, you remove those time lags, you've removed the communication gap and you created this flywheel where now I can move synchronized tasks off of the desk of a producer, a CSR, ⁓ of an underwriter, of a claim adjuster. I ⁓ actually make these things run in parallel. And if I redesign the workflow,
Jason Keck: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Bill Devine: so that I'm taking those low value tasks away, moving them to AI, that flywheel is all beneficial to the overall transaction.
Jason Keck: ⁓ ⁓ efficiency gains are literally exponential. I did a vibe coding, I wouldn't call it vibe, meeting we a few months ago. literally, live meeting our two CEOs, I ⁓ showed them an example of what I could do. I gave one prompt and I built a feature and the reaction was like, ⁓ wow, that would have taken three developers a month, right? And it was, and they said, what do you think the efficiency gains here? was like, a hundred X. You're like, you kid, I didn't know, 100x, right? But you do have to get, you do have to, you know, people doing software development today, they have a product manager, a designer, and a business owner, and an engineer, right? And that ⁓ the existence of those four people slows everything down. So the more you can leverage AI to condense that and to reduce the communication gap, the faster everything's gonna be able to go, which is, I super powerful.
Jon Reynolds: throw out, know, the other dimension that you're activating there is at the same time, you know, that we're creating this exponential modernization of the back office, we're also exponentially improving the quality of the user experience in parallel. So, you know, it's, you've got games, tremendous games on both sides in terms of just your ability to go delight your customers and bring a much more modern experience there. All the while,
Bill Devine: You just articulated our thesis, man.
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, we, ⁓ mean, unfortunately our designer was one of the first casualties ⁓ had is, so I listened to, you know, like modern, modern UI, web UI is, is not, is not rocket science anymore, right? It's, you know, most, most AI platforms will design great UIs for you and you know, you give it little bit of feedback and before you know it, it's, it's fantastic. And so, ⁓ yeah, the user experiences are great.
Bill Devine: mean, Anthropic dropped Claude Design last week, and other than I burned all my tokens for the week and Friday playing with it, I mean, it's unbelievable what it can do. And I think that's actually part ⁓ the conversation here as well. having solid foundation in place that is AI agnostic is the enabler to go fast. So when Anthropic, when OpenAI, whoever drops their next big thing, when
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Bill Devine: When broker Buddha drops their next big AI module that's doing something amazing, the more you can have a stable foundation to immediately be able to pick that up and plug it in faster, you'll get to value. ⁓ you know, it's, it's interesting. I didn't click cause there was a paywall, but, ⁓ I was looking, there was a industry CIO who had had an article, in a major publication. And what this person was saying was that that carrier is actually going to be making fewer bets on AI, but making them bigger.
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep.
Bill Devine: And again, I could have totally misunderstood the quote, but immediately I was like, that's exactly wrong. idea is if you have the foundation right, ⁓ it really allows you to do is make a lot of ⁓ investments in things that may or may not be valuable. But you can go so fast now if you get the right foundation in place.
Jason Keck: Sure. Yeah. Yep. Well, yeah, and then you pick the ones that are winning and you certainly go big on those, but be afraid of the exploratory work, by any means.
Bill Devine: But even, even go big, like you just talked about, like, so it's going to take a week to develop it. Like, I mean, it's go big is not a thing anymore. John and I were talking the other day, we're moving from a can we governor on things to should we, because now the, the time lag in, in, from ideation to development is so short that before you can even decide, is that something we should have done? Our developers already built it.
Jason Keck: Yeah.
Jon Reynolds: you can barely get Bill versus Bi out of your mouth anymore. ⁓
Jason Keck: Yeah, Bill, yeah. We've seen that for sure. Definitely the larger players in the space, it just makes a ton more sense to build. But in case, having a platform to build on is ideal versus just native. I ⁓ want pivot conversation a little bit and see if we can explore the world where you and I met, Bill, which is ⁓ the broker carrier right? Which is, you know, I'm trying to imagine what You know, we're a platform for brokers to help them actually front office and back office now with a new platform. But one of their main interfaces is obviously insurance carriers. And historically, the delivery vehicle for information between brokers and carriers is email. And we'll imagine it will continue to be email for some time. But there's got to be better ways for the two organizations to interact, right? And I'm familiar with some of them, submissions are the core. ⁓ also things like lost runs and things like endorsements. And there's 50 other ones that I'm not yet familiar with yet, but that you've spent time with. are some things that come to me? What are some opportunities that come to mind that are gonna the broker community? What are some things you guys can do for carriers that will help brokers? Or what are some things that you can do for brokers that will
Bill Devine: Mm-hmm.
Jason Keck: that will help carriers. What are the problem spaces that come to mind for you?
Bill Devine: Yeah, well, let me start with micro and then we'll jump up to macro, right? So one of the first offerings when we sat down and said like, okay, we need to build something to prove that we can do this to show people little things, right? Hey, you called it out. You're right. I'm learning how to be in this entrepreneurial space. that was my first lesson. It's like, you got to go build something actually. So we wouldn't build something, but the bigger thing was we had to zoom out, man. it was like, okay, so where could we build something that we could demo to brokers and carriers of an accretive value?
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep. Yep. Prove it.
Jon Reynolds: Keep it simple, Bill.
Bill Devine: application of what we're talking about. And ironically, the place we started was onboarding was, you know, no, no customer onboarding. So you think about, you know, tons and tons of expenses happened to go from day zero to day one. we decided, well, let's go from day one to day 60. And like, what could we stand up? And you about, and I'll use the personalized example, but commercial lines has just as much, it's just more complex to talk about. But, know, the personal lines example,
Jason Keck: Employee or broker onboarding for what do mean customer onboard?
Bill Devine: You write a new auto policy, you write a new home policy. you get the package done. Fantastic. Everybody's high fiving in the office. know, the commission checks going to come in. carrier's happy with you because you even met the quota for the week. ⁓ so you got from day zero to day one. Cool. And there's lots of tools and lots of things to help you do that. But on day one, all of a sudden, all the asks from the carrier start coming in. All the follow on work starts to come in.
Jason Keck: Okay, yep.
Bill Devine: Right? So you sold that policy and it's got a telematics. It's got telematics on it. So the customer's got to download the app and blah, blah, blah. There's a proof requirements for the discounts that you put on there. So good student discount, low mileage discount, whatever those things are. Maybe there's a vehicle inspection, of that. Then you flip to the home side, right? And then there's all the things on the home side that you have to do. The security, the alarm system certifications, the home inspection process, just getting that scheduled and conducted, all of those things.
Jason Keck: Right?
Bill Devine: And you start to realize that, and this is something from the carrier side that I know, that the attrition rate from day one to day 60 is a lot higher than it needs to be, and primarily because of administrative problems. So what we did is we said like, okay, well, what if we could show as a proof of concept, we're not going to touch any of your legacy systems that you run your business on, and we're not going to touch any of your systems of engagement, which are the critical things that you already rely on, and we can build a mid-layer.
Jason Keck: Sure.
Bill Devine: to actually coordinate, facilitate and orchestrate that first 60 days in a way that the customer, the broker and the carrier all have full transparency into how this is progressing. So as a broker, you can look at it and say, this is getting tight. I better pick up the phone. I better send a text as underwriting manager, as the person who's accountable in the operations for getting this done. You can look at it and say, wow, across the portfolio, we have a real sticking point on inspection, ⁓ remediation whatever those things are. And as the, as the customer, can feed all of that up to you through the app that the agent provided through the app, the carrier provided, or we can provide an app ourselves, whatever, but really bringing all that together. built all of that because we wanted to be able to show those are exactly the types of problems that where we think this new approach really lends itself because we put AI through the whole thing. So you, you, you've got a low mileage discount. You need a, you need an odometer verification. Well, you take your, your.
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yup.
Bill Devine: cell phone, your iPhone, you snap a picture of the odometer and inside that we put an AI tool that matches make model matches the geo tag to make sure that you're actually at the garaging address when you took it. ⁓ things like that, Jason, that like remove friction from the process, make everybody happier. And if we can stop the, ⁓ that attrition from day one to day 60 by even a few points, that's millions of dollars, man. So
Jason Keck: It's your car that you're taking a picture of, Totally.
Jon Reynolds: That's right.
Bill Devine: kinds of things are things that we think, ⁓ you can extrapolate that out on the broker side. There's tons of similar examples that, you know, the broker led that has that friction ⁓ the carrier side, tons. And it doesn't have to be everybody chasing, you know, intake or lost.
Jason Keck: There are, yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I could probably list 10 or 12 workflows. There are probably 100 that I couldn't list. more niche the broker, the more nuanced ⁓ workflow. And so there's a need for services out there. companies you are here, thankfully, to help them. And it's cool space, right? mean, it definitely struck me as we were building our new platform that, man, this is... This is a lot easier than it used to be. And I think there's gonna be more people who are gonna wanna build their own things. Because as much as I think our platform is uniquely suited for the majority of the industry, that not everybody's gonna fit. And so there's gonna be plenty of opportunity to build out those workflows. I'm excited to continue thinking about what we can do with you, what we can do with the different carriers out there. I need to learn more about service now and what it does, but I think you guys have a ton of opportunity that space and I'm excited. So what's next for you guys? What's coming up soon? Anything that ⁓ we be thinking about that you want our audience to be thinking about? What's on the horizon?
Jon Reynolds: Well, it's Jason's time to take the show on the road, I think is absolutely it. So yeah, we've got Insteq New York at the ServiceNow office, Hudson Yards right around the corner. So I think you're very excited to get out, really excited to start getting that customer feedback, start actually doing some show and tell, getting these things in the hands of people, getting that experience later out there. And ⁓ I think there's a lot of informative.
Jason Keck: Okay.
Jon Reynolds: can get back in those customer offices, customer conversations. So really, you know, now through the rest of the summer, it's gonna be a lot of a lot of in city activities, lot of customer facing activities from now through the fall. So know, ⁓ me as a you know, as a as a person whose career has been in service management, working with customers, it is this the most exciting part about the job, love customer offices and getting to see and understand their worlds and and how we can modernize them.
Jason Keck: Love that. Where, I Bill, I know you're here in the Northeast. Where are you based, John? Where's home for you?
Jon Reynolds: I'm out of sunny Denver, Colorado.
Jason Keck: ⁓ very nice, very nice. Very central though. You can get East or can get West or you can get to Bill's friends in Des Moines if you need to. He knows where the insurance people live. ⁓
Jon Reynolds: Hahaha That's it. He does. definitely does. The love-hate relationship we have with our airport here in Denver, but it's become quite popular these days. It does get us to just about anywhere we need to go. put it out in Kansas. ⁓
Jason Keck: Yeah, yep. Yep, I did a little flight through Denver recently. It felt very comfortable and spent some time in the Midwest. And yeah, we definitely post COVID. was a period where nobody was traveling much. And then I think about a year or two after it, it sort of struck me. was like, ⁓ we haven't really seen any of our clients in about three years. And we went on tour and ⁓ it to ⁓ your it feels great to be out in front of people and. having live conversations and building rapport and solving problems. And glad to hear that's part of the plan. ⁓
Jon Reynolds: That's what we were born to do. And I agree with you. I remember those first in-persons coming out of COVID. I think people were just more excited to be around people, regardless of what the conversation was about. ⁓ just say you could see about three inches of air underneath everyone's feet. Everyone was just levitating with excitement. ⁓ yeah.
Jason Keck: Fair enough, fair enough. Somebody besides your family, yeah. Yeah, anybody besides your family and your roommates was a welcome conversation. Well, guys, this has been an enlightening conversation and it always is with you, Bill and John. I'm really glad to meet you and get to know you and looking forward to having more of these conversations and some things we can do together. I'll be ⁓ on what my ServiceNow plugin is going to be and how it works, how agents are going to talk to your agents and so everybody else can just go home and put their feet up and let the agents do all the work, right? Isn't that the goal? ⁓
Bill Devine: Or even better, I'll be making the trip down to take you out to dinner and it's my turn to pick up the check now that I'm on the other side of the table and we'll noodle on how to get you onto the platform and do some fun stuff together.
Jon Reynolds: keep you having APIs for an evening. Yeah. It's a love dinner conversation.
Jason Keck: Come on out, come on out. Yeah.
Bill Devine: You
Jason Keck: That'll be fine. A lot of options in New York. Well, guys, if anybody wants to get in touch, how do they find you? they want to have a conversation, if they want to follow up, what's the best way to get in touch?
Jon Reynolds: Yeah, give us a follow on LinkedIn. You'll find us on Native Partners on LinkedIn, native.com, and aitiv.com is our website. going to get a lot of thought leadership coming ⁓ the market. So excited to share some of our thoughts, ideas, where we see the industry going. ⁓ absolutely, go out there, give us a follow. Join us on a webinar, join us in person. ⁓ Reach get us engaged. We love to have a conversation.
Bill Devine: And if you wouldn't mind, Jason.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: And we'll give you the details on the May 19th event. you wouldn't mind throwing those in the show notes, we'd appreciate it.
Jason Keck: Amazing. Yeah, I will. Send them over to me. I've already got the day blocked and happy to have you guys in New York and looking forward to meeting in person. So thanks for coming on the show and ⁓ we'll you all soon.
Jon Reynolds: Thanks for having us today, Jason.
Jon Reynolds: Thank very much, James. Thanks for having us.
Bill Devine: Hey, just.
Jason Keck: It was a great conversation talking about Today, the future of AI ⁓ their to bringing AI to the insurance industry on service now, their platform partner. It's a great conversation. I hope enjoy, stick around and listen. Yeah, so Bill and I met, background here with Bill and I, met years ago, John is a new friend, but Bill and I met my early days of BrokerBuda when he was leading transformation at Travelers, is that right? Business transformation, is that okay? There we go. We were part of Plug and Play and part of the phase two, know, in SureTech 2.0, which was your...
Bill Devine: Cool stuff.
Jason Keck: your technology enablers. And we were having a lot of success with brokers. Travelers was exploring how they could take advantage of these new technologies and better serve their agents. And we came together around some exciting ideas. He helped build great relationship between BrokerBuda and Travelers at the time, and one that we continue to enjoy. And we still have a lot of great friends there. So thank you, ⁓ Bill, making that happen. ⁓
Bill Devine: Wow, it was a lot of fun, Jason. We had a number of good dinners over the years trying to make that work out.
Jason Keck: We did, we did, and we should look forward to more of those. But things evolved as they do, right? The world's changed a little bit, and ⁓ quite lot in the last couple years. And so I'm still We're doing some new stuff, but ⁓ Bill's into new, and I wanna give you an opportunity to introduce us to native.
Bill Devine: Absolutely. Thanks. No, I appreciate it. This is week three, I believe, for us. we're working in the background quietly for a while, but we are official and out in public and did the big LinkedIn announcement. I didn't realize how close this was to dating now. You have to be LinkedIn official. So we're LinkedIn official for the last three weeks now.
Jason Keck: Brand new. Yeah.
Jon Reynolds: It is a thing.
Bill Devine: But we're a services company, not a software company, so a little bit different than most of the folks you'll talk to. And our mission statement, our charge is to help agents, brokers, and really everyone accelerate their adoption of AI into the workflows that we've known for so long.
Jason Keck: Yeah, but much in demand, very much kind ⁓ of an market right now, right? Everybody's trying to figure out how to do it. Everybody wants to do it. It was all kind of like, ⁓ could see light, but I'm not quite sure how to get there. And people are, some people are, you know, they're doing it themselves. Some people are looking for help and, you know, there's ⁓ a lot of opportunity now. So. So tell me more about Native. I I'm obviously familiar with AI and workflows, and I gather you guys are, a particular angle that's related to ServiceNow ⁓ you know, ⁓ you first told me about it, I was like, ⁓ ServiceNow, yeah, you know, I've heard the name, but like, but I go do my homework so I don't embarrass myself. And, ⁓ you kind of our audience, right, the ⁓ brokers the broker tech out there, now that I know more about it, I gather isn't... ⁓ terribly familiar with it, so us up if you get it.
Bill Devine: Yeah, totally. Well, I'll get going and then I'm going to cede the floor to my partner and our CEO, John. know, ⁓ the core, Jason, for sitting on the carrier side, you know, being deep in the industry, deep in the ecosystem, getting to spend a lot of time with the folks doing cool things like yourself and many you know, what I really saw was this gap exactly like you articulated, this gap between invention and innovation and production.
Jason Keck: Hmm. Hmm.
Bill Devine: And at the end of the day, you know, I'm a capitalist. I've used that line on you many times. I'm a capitalist. My role has always been to create value, right? To be a creative. Experimentation is cool, but it's not a creative to big picture. So when I took a step back and said like, what's missing, what are the components that are holding up insurance in general, would be agents or brokers, ⁓ whomever, what's holding up the adoption of AI? really... And these are not novel concepts, but there's three core pieces. The first one is antiquated workflows. we, you and I've talked about this, you know, the ⁓ side, the underwriting side ⁓ all, all of it. We were running on a set of workflows that have been around for decades and decades. Insurance industry is not short on data, but ready data ⁓ is a real challenge. So sitting across all these legacy systems. You know, we're better than filing cabinets, but, but just barely in many cases. And then the last one, which is pretty unique for our industry and the problem set that we've got to solve for is we're a highly regulated industry. So governance ⁓ of the engine to go fast, right? If you don't start with that end in mind, you're not going to be able to build something that moves to production. You can build really cool things in a POC governance the ability to operate in a regulated environment is going to ultimately be your downfall.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: So what we decided is we've got to bring those three components together. If you want to, if you want to go fast, you need those three components. And to the extent that you can normalize them, standardize them, make it easy. can unlock the superpowers that AI bring. And so as we looked across, it was like, well, we could go build something. then we, we looked, as we did more of digging and discovery and watching commercials during the Superbowl and World Series, ⁓ you know,
Jason Keck: Cool.
Bill Devine: realize that the ServiceNow platform has purpose-built for solving exactly this problem, right? So whether it's the workflow orchestration, whether it's the data fabric tools or the AI control tower, ⁓ all the raw pieces to do this acceleration existed with ServiceNow. And that's what kind of... Yeah.
Jason Keck: Explain ServiceNow. Just for anybody who doesn't know what it is, could you just do your best elevator pitch for ServiceNow as well? I realize you're not an employee there, but go ahead.
Bill Devine: And what I'll say, Jason, is that lack of understanding and knowledge there is exactly how John and I got connected. let me throw it to John, too, ⁓ John is the ServiceNow expert. I get to be the insurance guy. John, you're the ServiceNow guy. So what's elevator pitch for White Earth Now?
Jason Keck: Okay?
Jon Reynolds: defining enterprise software platform of the 21st century. ⁓ That's ⁓ marketing words. ⁓ what ServiceNow has meant to me. Let me start there. I grew up ⁓ a different side of the house. I've been working with ⁓ bills of the world for the last 20 years. Half of my career
Jason Keck: ⁓ that's all.
Bill Devine: I'm
Jason Keck: Okay.
Jon Reynolds: was spent in SIs, advising and consulting business leaders like Bill on how we modernize business operations. And when stumbled across ServiceNow 15 years ago, ⁓ was I first became a ServiceNow partner, it was predominantly ITSM on cloud. That's where we started. ⁓ And the last 15 years, we've seen ServiceNow really ⁓ become IT service management on cloud is really where ServiceNow started, right?
Jason Keck: Okay. So you said ITSM on cloud? ⁓ yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. I just get in the acronym right, sorry. Yep, no, no, yep, yep, yep, I get it.
Bill Devine: Help desks and tickets is what I learned.
Jon Reynolds: Absolutely. Absolutely that. to this day, 15 years later, in my journey, we still meet customers routinely, that that is what they know ServiceNow to be. That's the IT platform, the IT ticketing tool. ServiceNow has become so much more from that. ⁓ I think that really, as we look back, we're really sitting in ⁓ fourth era of ServiceNow, evolving from IT service management on cloud. multi-product on cloud. We got out of IT. We moved over into employee. Now we're elevating and modernizing the entirety of the employee experience. adopted further data models to Bill's point. How do we more effectively drive and manage governance in the enterprise? Well, we adopted data models and security operations and risk. Now for the first time, one common platform, one common data model. where risk and IT have the same purview of what's going on. I've got real time and I've got monitoring and visibility. I've got assurance, right? And for the last 10 years, now we've begun to see the push into business and business applications. ⁓ At its core, we are absolutely...
Jason Keck: Yeah, it sounds like you're moving up the stack a little bit, right? It's like you started with your like base layer. You got one thing right as good startups do, right? And then you sort of started your climb, which is good. Okay, yeah, yeah, carry on.
Bill Devine: Exactly. back office.
Jon Reynolds: That's right. That's right. So now we're off to modernizing business. And this is where my journey in the SI stalled. think, you know, as I looked around, I was surrounded by some of the best advisory on the planet. I was surrounded by incredible technology partnerships across the whole of the technology ecosystem. had some of the preeminent logos and names, customers that inhabit these verticals. And yet we struggled to bring all that together under one common vision. one common direction to modernize business. And I think it's a lot to do with the politics that sit inside those SIs, those long standing customer relationships, the history of transformation that's been sold into them, the allegiances of those technology relationships. There's a lot that inhibits the and growth of ⁓ those ⁓ out the market. And so for a lot of those reasons, what we wanted to do and achieve here at Native was bring those forces together under one umbrella with that aim and shape in mind.
Jason Keck: Amazing. So you're helping, are you guys a ServiceNow partner? Are you like, are you helping them get to that business applications level? Is that the way to understand it?
Jon Reynolds: That is correct. So we are a partner with ServiceNow on multiple levels. So at its core, we're consulting and implementation partner. So we can help customers adopt, manage, maintain, scale their ServiceNow system across all of those workflows that we discussed. That's a core capability. bring together the longest 10-year team that you're going to find in a ServiceNow partner. ⁓ We call them master architects, technical architects. These are the people that really understand the fundamentals of those data models and how to tune and operate, manage, govern this platform at scale so that we limit those things called tech debt and those things that drive CIOs mad terms of customization and sprawl in those. in those instances, absolutely. And then we brought together deep industry know-how, deep industry expertise, people like Bill that have sat in those chairs, that have performed those roles, have struggled with the adoption of these types of capabilities. And so to be able to unify that into one team, we resemble a collective. also doing in an AI era has been ⁓ profound for us, right? We get to think AI first. with a huge appreciation that's what great humans together with the AI can accomplish together.
Jason Keck: But so I spent my first job out of college, a company called Science, I spent two years a consulting company and then somewhere in the middle there I spent two years with Accenture. So I've spent time in the professional services systems integrator world. everybody to have a little bit of strategy upfront, planning in middle, execution and then operations, right? Those are the sort of four phases. ⁓ Are you in the ⁓ same category? Cause I would imagine somebody, you you guys are gonna meet people and they say, well, I don't know what we got to figure out what to do first. Is that maybe that's where bill comes in on the insurance side. Is that kind of how it all kicks off or what, what does it look like if somebody starts talking to you and wants to work with you?
Bill Devine: I mean, think Jason, key thing is that, you know, ServiceNow is one solution. It's the one we endorse and the one we're working closely with. But the idea is that this idea, this need for orchestration between workflows, data and governance are going to be the common traits. So what we've got is a series of accelerators where we were actually pre-building the transactions into ServiceNow so that they can then be customized to individual carriers, individual brokers, but they're all
Jason Keck: Thank
Bill Devine: AI agnostic. So it's, really bring your own AI. So this idea is like, can partner with you depending on wherever you are in your life cycle, wherever you are in your journey. If you've got a whole bunch of AIs, we can bring, we can bring those AIs to the platform and orchestrate them better and bring all the infrastructure. If you're an AI novice, we can help you navigate that entire new world that you've got to, you've got to understand. And if you've got a pile of AI that you tried to figure out and nothing really went well, we can also help take apart and do.
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yep.
Bill Devine: do post-mortem and ⁓ back and put it all back together for you. ⁓ the idea, we wanted the flexibility to engage with people where they're at because this a weird point in the journey for AI, right? Like so many people have started and no one's come close to finishing. ⁓
Jason Keck: I mean, it's only the beginning, that's for sure. And ⁓ thing that comes to mind, when first introduced Native to me, I think it was like a month ago, you kind of gave me a sneak peek and I've been sort of noodling about what this means. And the first I was like, I don't know what Bill's doing, he's crazy. Like, this ⁓ is idea, Bill thinks he's a startup guy now, welcome to the party, buddy. And then I got thinking about it more, was like, ⁓ they have this platform.
Bill Devine: Ha ha ha.
Jon Reynolds: you
Jason Keck: installed, as you said, it was like 98 % of the carriers in the US. you know, the set, right. And it was like, oh, so and I know how hard it is to get a, you know, a platform contract with one of these companies where you're now like, you're, you're company. Now you have the right to sell into the rest of the business or they have the right to, they, they don't have to go through procurement so that they can use you. Right. So that's a huge
Bill Devine: Most of the large brokers too.
Jason Keck: advantage that I think you guys have for showing up and saying, hey, you already have the platform in-house. We have skills, a range of skills, but in particular, you know, ServiceNow specific skills. And you have knowledge, right, and experience. And so I'm curious about the types of business applications you're coming across, because I think one of the things you said, Bill, was like, We're moving out of this, I guess, back office and middle office and moving into what you were saying, John, just now about the application layer or the operating layer, maybe, if you will. What are the areas where you guys can be helpful that some of the current players maybe aren't stepping up as quickly or some of the existing platforms are where you see opportunity, I guess?
Bill Devine: I would say anywhere where workflow could be aided materially by a agentic AI by any AI, but agentic is really where it starts to get super interesting. Right. So, you know, and, the way I like to think about it is that ⁓ been reinventing workflows to bring technology and different ways of working to it for awhile. This is the next big leap. And, and so it's, it's really the, the, the inflection point of stepping back and saying like, Okay, so if I want to bring something as powerful as AI to a submission on the broker side, to a claim adjustment on the carrier side, I have to go back and rethink from first principles that transaction with the idea of AI in mind. And that's the thing that's really exciting. So what we've done is actually built accelerators into ServiceNow so that you can have those transactions ready to go. You don't have to rethink that as much. We can help you do that. But then it's which AIs and how do you want to engage them that we can then plug into our
Jason Keck: Yeah, I was invited to present to our board on what we've been doing with AI, how we've done what we've done in a very short amount of time, right? They're like, you've done what? I was encouraged, but I had to step back and actually try to encapsulate, you know, what basically what it means to be an entrepreneur, right? Is to just have an idea.
Bill Devine: you
Jason Keck: have the capacity and the skills and the knowledge to go and execute on this idea and to bring it to life. it struck me that of the biggest strengths I have with this ⁓ because done, ⁓ because have a computer science degree and because I've run a business and because I've been in product before, I've been able to do a lot of the work with this product myself ⁓ and the example I was gonna give him is like, look, I can do in four hours what two people could do in a week because the communication gap as you bring more people into the process just creates almost exponential lag. so this is all coming back around to the point you made around rethinking workflows, right? We've historically designed workflows around people in roles doing specific things, but if all of a sudden you can use AI to close the information gap and one person doesn't have to wait on steps two, three and four to make a decision, then all of a sudden, you know, your timelines go from five days to one hour, right? And that's like, whoa.
Bill Devine: And, and honestly, Jason, the mental model that I would, I would love for people to take to this, to bring to this conversation is exactly what you just laid out. But I put it in the terms of, of, of we've gotten the acceleration over the last two decades, which is outsourcing. Right. And so if you think about the outsourcing journey that many companies have been on, I knee deep in it for the last two decades. ⁓ Right. the first wave of outsourcing was we identified jobs and we moved jobs.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: to a lower cost environment, right? Wave two is we looked at the transactions and said, well, what big blocks of tasks inside jobs could be done asynchronous to the overall transaction, to the overall workflow? And then we outsource those. third piece though is where you were hitting with your coding example is to go beyond that, actually added time lag to the overall, because there were handoffs changes, things like that. The thing that's fascinating to me about AI, is exactly the example you were using is by actually using AI as your outsource partner. You will remove those, you remove those time lags, you've removed the communication gap and you created this flywheel where now I can move synchronized tasks off of the desk of a producer, a CSR, ⁓ of an underwriter, of a claim adjuster. I ⁓ actually make these things run in parallel. And if I redesign the workflow,
Jason Keck: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Bill Devine: so that I'm taking those low value tasks away, moving them to AI, that flywheel is all beneficial to the overall transaction.
Jason Keck: ⁓ ⁓ efficiency gains are literally exponential. I did a vibe coding, I wouldn't call it vibe, meeting we a few months ago. literally, live meeting our two CEOs, I ⁓ showed them an example of what I could do. I gave one prompt and I built a feature and the reaction was like, ⁓ wow, that would have taken three developers a month, right? And it was, and they said, what do you think the efficiency gains here? was like, a hundred X. You're like, you kid, I didn't know, 100x, right? But you do have to get, you do have to, you know, people doing software development today, they have a product manager, a designer, and a business owner, and an engineer, right? And that ⁓ the existence of those four people slows everything down. So the more you can leverage AI to condense that and to reduce the communication gap, the faster everything's gonna be able to go, which is, I super powerful.
Jon Reynolds: throw out, know, the other dimension that you're activating there is at the same time, you know, that we're creating this exponential modernization of the back office, we're also exponentially improving the quality of the user experience in parallel. So, you know, it's, you've got games, tremendous games on both sides in terms of just your ability to go delight your customers and bring a much more modern experience there. All the while,
Bill Devine: You just articulated our thesis, man.
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, we, ⁓ mean, unfortunately our designer was one of the first casualties ⁓ had is, so I listened to, you know, like modern, modern UI, web UI is, is not, is not rocket science anymore, right? It's, you know, most, most AI platforms will design great UIs for you and you know, you give it little bit of feedback and before you know it, it's, it's fantastic. And so, ⁓ yeah, the user experiences are great.
Bill Devine: mean, Anthropic dropped Claude Design last week, and other than I burned all my tokens for the week and Friday playing with it, I mean, it's unbelievable what it can do. And I think that's actually part ⁓ the conversation here as well. having solid foundation in place that is AI agnostic is the enabler to go fast. So when Anthropic, when OpenAI, whoever drops their next big thing, when
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Bill Devine: When broker Buddha drops their next big AI module that's doing something amazing, the more you can have a stable foundation to immediately be able to pick that up and plug it in faster, you'll get to value. ⁓ you know, it's, it's interesting. I didn't click cause there was a paywall, but, ⁓ I was looking, there was a industry CIO who had had an article, in a major publication. And what this person was saying was that that carrier is actually going to be making fewer bets on AI, but making them bigger.
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep.
Bill Devine: And again, I could have totally misunderstood the quote, but immediately I was like, that's exactly wrong. idea is if you have the foundation right, ⁓ it really allows you to do is make a lot of ⁓ investments in things that may or may not be valuable. But you can go so fast now if you get the right foundation in place.
Jason Keck: Sure. Yeah. Yep. Well, yeah, and then you pick the ones that are winning and you certainly go big on those, but be afraid of the exploratory work, by any means.
Bill Devine: But even, even go big, like you just talked about, like, so it's going to take a week to develop it. Like, I mean, it's go big is not a thing anymore. John and I were talking the other day, we're moving from a can we governor on things to should we, because now the, the time lag in, in, from ideation to development is so short that before you can even decide, is that something we should have done? Our developers already built it.
Jason Keck: Yeah.
Jon Reynolds: you can barely get Bill versus Bi out of your mouth anymore. ⁓
Jason Keck: Yeah, Bill, yeah. We've seen that for sure. Definitely the larger players in the space, it just makes a ton more sense to build. But in case, having a platform to build on is ideal versus just native. I ⁓ want pivot conversation a little bit and see if we can explore the world where you and I met, Bill, which is ⁓ the broker carrier right? Which is, you know, I'm trying to imagine what You know, we're a platform for brokers to help them actually front office and back office now with a new platform. But one of their main interfaces is obviously insurance carriers. And historically, the delivery vehicle for information between brokers and carriers is email. And we'll imagine it will continue to be email for some time. But there's got to be better ways for the two organizations to interact, right? And I'm familiar with some of them, submissions are the core. ⁓ also things like lost runs and things like endorsements. And there's 50 other ones that I'm not yet familiar with yet, but that you've spent time with. are some things that come to me? What are some opportunities that come to mind that are gonna the broker community? What are some things you guys can do for carriers that will help brokers? Or what are some things that you can do for brokers that will
Bill Devine: Mm-hmm.
Jason Keck: that will help carriers. What are the problem spaces that come to mind for you?
Bill Devine: Yeah, well, let me start with micro and then we'll jump up to macro, right? So one of the first offerings when we sat down and said like, okay, we need to build something to prove that we can do this to show people little things, right? Hey, you called it out. You're right. I'm learning how to be in this entrepreneurial space. that was my first lesson. It's like, you got to go build something actually. So we wouldn't build something, but the bigger thing was we had to zoom out, man. it was like, okay, so where could we build something that we could demo to brokers and carriers of an accretive value?
Jason Keck: Yep. Yep. Yep. Prove it.
Jon Reynolds: Keep it simple, Bill.
Bill Devine: application of what we're talking about. And ironically, the place we started was onboarding was, you know, no, no customer onboarding. So you think about, you know, tons and tons of expenses happened to go from day zero to day one. we decided, well, let's go from day one to day 60. And like, what could we stand up? And you about, and I'll use the personalized example, but commercial lines has just as much, it's just more complex to talk about. But, know, the personal lines example,
Jason Keck: Employee or broker onboarding for what do mean customer onboard?
Bill Devine: You write a new auto policy, you write a new home policy. you get the package done. Fantastic. Everybody's high fiving in the office. know, the commission checks going to come in. carrier's happy with you because you even met the quota for the week. ⁓ so you got from day zero to day one. Cool. And there's lots of tools and lots of things to help you do that. But on day one, all of a sudden, all the asks from the carrier start coming in. All the follow on work starts to come in.
Jason Keck: Okay, yep.
Bill Devine: Right? So you sold that policy and it's got a telematics. It's got telematics on it. So the customer's got to download the app and blah, blah, blah. There's a proof requirements for the discounts that you put on there. So good student discount, low mileage discount, whatever those things are. Maybe there's a vehicle inspection, of that. Then you flip to the home side, right? And then there's all the things on the home side that you have to do. The security, the alarm system certifications, the home inspection process, just getting that scheduled and conducted, all of those things.
Jason Keck: Right?
Bill Devine: And you start to realize that, and this is something from the carrier side that I know, that the attrition rate from day one to day 60 is a lot higher than it needs to be, and primarily because of administrative problems. So what we did is we said like, okay, well, what if we could show as a proof of concept, we're not going to touch any of your legacy systems that you run your business on, and we're not going to touch any of your systems of engagement, which are the critical things that you already rely on, and we can build a mid-layer.
Jason Keck: Sure.
Bill Devine: to actually coordinate, facilitate and orchestrate that first 60 days in a way that the customer, the broker and the carrier all have full transparency into how this is progressing. So as a broker, you can look at it and say, this is getting tight. I better pick up the phone. I better send a text as underwriting manager, as the person who's accountable in the operations for getting this done. You can look at it and say, wow, across the portfolio, we have a real sticking point on inspection, ⁓ remediation whatever those things are. And as the, as the customer, can feed all of that up to you through the app that the agent provided through the app, the carrier provided, or we can provide an app ourselves, whatever, but really bringing all that together. built all of that because we wanted to be able to show those are exactly the types of problems that where we think this new approach really lends itself because we put AI through the whole thing. So you, you, you've got a low mileage discount. You need a, you need an odometer verification. Well, you take your, your.
Jason Keck: Yeah. Yup.
Bill Devine: cell phone, your iPhone, you snap a picture of the odometer and inside that we put an AI tool that matches make model matches the geo tag to make sure that you're actually at the garaging address when you took it. ⁓ things like that, Jason, that like remove friction from the process, make everybody happier. And if we can stop the, ⁓ that attrition from day one to day 60 by even a few points, that's millions of dollars, man. So
Jason Keck: It's your car that you're taking a picture of, Totally.
Jon Reynolds: That's right.
Bill Devine: kinds of things are things that we think, ⁓ you can extrapolate that out on the broker side. There's tons of similar examples that, you know, the broker led that has that friction ⁓ the carrier side, tons. And it doesn't have to be everybody chasing, you know, intake or lost.
Jason Keck: There are, yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I could probably list 10 or 12 workflows. There are probably 100 that I couldn't list. more niche the broker, the more nuanced ⁓ workflow. And so there's a need for services out there. companies you are here, thankfully, to help them. And it's cool space, right? mean, it definitely struck me as we were building our new platform that, man, this is... This is a lot easier than it used to be. And I think there's gonna be more people who are gonna wanna build their own things. Because as much as I think our platform is uniquely suited for the majority of the industry, that not everybody's gonna fit. And so there's gonna be plenty of opportunity to build out those workflows. I'm excited to continue thinking about what we can do with you, what we can do with the different carriers out there. I need to learn more about service now and what it does, but I think you guys have a ton of opportunity that space and I'm excited. So what's next for you guys? What's coming up soon? Anything that ⁓ we be thinking about that you want our audience to be thinking about? What's on the horizon?
Jon Reynolds: Well, it's Jason's time to take the show on the road, I think is absolutely it. So yeah, we've got Insteq New York at the ServiceNow office, Hudson Yards right around the corner. So I think you're very excited to get out, really excited to start getting that customer feedback, start actually doing some show and tell, getting these things in the hands of people, getting that experience later out there. And ⁓ I think there's a lot of informative.
Jason Keck: Okay.
Jon Reynolds: can get back in those customer offices, customer conversations. So really, you know, now through the rest of the summer, it's gonna be a lot of a lot of in city activities, lot of customer facing activities from now through the fall. So know, ⁓ me as a you know, as a as a person whose career has been in service management, working with customers, it is this the most exciting part about the job, love customer offices and getting to see and understand their worlds and and how we can modernize them.
Jason Keck: Love that. Where, I Bill, I know you're here in the Northeast. Where are you based, John? Where's home for you?
Jon Reynolds: I'm out of sunny Denver, Colorado.
Jason Keck: ⁓ very nice, very nice. Very central though. You can get East or can get West or you can get to Bill's friends in Des Moines if you need to. He knows where the insurance people live. ⁓
Jon Reynolds: Hahaha That's it. He does. definitely does. The love-hate relationship we have with our airport here in Denver, but it's become quite popular these days. It does get us to just about anywhere we need to go. put it out in Kansas. ⁓
Jason Keck: Yeah, yep. Yep, I did a little flight through Denver recently. It felt very comfortable and spent some time in the Midwest. And yeah, we definitely post COVID. was a period where nobody was traveling much. And then I think about a year or two after it, it sort of struck me. was like, ⁓ we haven't really seen any of our clients in about three years. And we went on tour and ⁓ it to ⁓ your it feels great to be out in front of people and. having live conversations and building rapport and solving problems. And glad to hear that's part of the plan. ⁓
Jon Reynolds: That's what we were born to do. And I agree with you. I remember those first in-persons coming out of COVID. I think people were just more excited to be around people, regardless of what the conversation was about. ⁓ just say you could see about three inches of air underneath everyone's feet. Everyone was just levitating with excitement. ⁓ yeah.
Jason Keck: Fair enough, fair enough. Somebody besides your family, yeah. Yeah, anybody besides your family and your roommates was a welcome conversation. Well, guys, this has been an enlightening conversation and it always is with you, Bill and John. I'm really glad to meet you and get to know you and looking forward to having more of these conversations and some things we can do together. I'll be ⁓ on what my ServiceNow plugin is going to be and how it works, how agents are going to talk to your agents and so everybody else can just go home and put their feet up and let the agents do all the work, right? Isn't that the goal? ⁓
Bill Devine: Or even better, I'll be making the trip down to take you out to dinner and it's my turn to pick up the check now that I'm on the other side of the table and we'll noodle on how to get you onto the platform and do some fun stuff together.
Jon Reynolds: keep you having APIs for an evening. Yeah. It's a love dinner conversation.
Jason Keck: Come on out, come on out. Yeah.
Bill Devine: You
Jason Keck: That'll be fine. A lot of options in New York. Well, guys, if anybody wants to get in touch, how do they find you? they want to have a conversation, if they want to follow up, what's the best way to get in touch?
Jon Reynolds: Yeah, give us a follow on LinkedIn. You'll find us on Native Partners on LinkedIn, native.com, and aitiv.com is our website. going to get a lot of thought leadership coming ⁓ the market. So excited to share some of our thoughts, ideas, where we see the industry going. ⁓ absolutely, go out there, give us a follow. Join us on a webinar, join us in person. ⁓ Reach get us engaged. We love to have a conversation.
Bill Devine: And if you wouldn't mind, Jason.
Jason Keck: Yep.
Bill Devine: And we'll give you the details on the May 19th event. you wouldn't mind throwing those in the show notes, we'd appreciate it.
Jason Keck: Amazing. Yeah, I will. Send them over to me. I've already got the day blocked and happy to have you guys in New York and looking forward to meeting in person. So thanks for coming on the show and ⁓ we'll you all soon.
Jon Reynolds: Thanks for having us today, Jason.
