Theresa Blissing, founder of Accelerating Insurance and the Asia InsurTech Podcast, delves into the transformative potential of emerging technologies in the insurance sector. She offers valuable insights for founders aiming for success in the insurance industry, irrespective of their operational geography. Additionally, she sheds light on noteworthy trends, opportunities, and challenges facing insurtech startups, with a particular focus on the dynamic landscape in Asia.
Theresa Blissing, founder of Accelerating Insurance and the Asia InsurTech Podcast, delves into the transformative potential of emerging technologies in the insurance sector. She offers valuable insights for founders aiming for success in the insurance industry, irrespective of their operational geography. Additionally, she sheds light on noteworthy trends, opportunities, and challenges facing insurtech startups, with a particular focus on the dynamic landscape in Asia.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[1:54] Getting into insurance - Theresa Blissing’s life-changing mission
[5:43] Insurance is everywhere
[8:27] Future of Insurance in Asia: Diversity and Nuances
[21:33] Stay on top of how technology is helping reshape the insurance industry on the Asia InsurTech Podcast.
The non-profit organization that Theresa is passionate about: Girl Gone International
About Theresa Blissing
Theresa Blissing is the founder and director of Accelerating Insurance, an innovation advisory firm in Southeast Asia. With a decade at multinational insurer Generali and a leadership role at German consultancy Detecon, she brings extensive industry experience. Theresa is also a trailblazer in big data and analytics within insurance, contributing to some of the first academic studies on its adoption in Southeast Asia.
As a thought leader, Theresa founded the Asia InsurTech Podcast and InsurTech Mentors, creating unique platforms for industry experts across Asia. Her commitment to knowledge sharing extends to speaking engagements at conferences like Asia Insurance Review, Techsauce, Uniglobal, and InsurTech Insight, as well as lecturing at institutions such as the Singapore College of Insurance and Thammasat University.
About Accelerating Insurance
Accelerating Insurance is an insurance consultancy that navigates the insurance landscape, helping insurers cut through the noise, understand emerging trends, and demystify technology. By closely monitoring InsurTech developments and sharing success stories, Accelerating Insurance contributes to reshaping the future of insurance, advocating for meaningful change in both technology and the people driving innovation.
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The incredible thing that happened was that there were really three fundamental concepts that all of these company were following, regardless of they were working in a very mature market like Japan or are an early stage startup or are more advanced player in China or Hong Kong. So I think that is what is really powerful because they are the different nuances and culture and etc.
Gopi Rangan: You are listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur - a podcast for founders with ambitious ideas. Venture capital investors and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful and authentic stories to help you realize your vision. Welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Gopi Rangan. My guest today is Theresa Blissing. She is also a podcaster. She runs a, a podcast called the Asia InsureTech Podcast. She's written a book. She's in the process of launching the book. It's called Asia Rising. It's co-authored with Bryan Falchuk, who was a guest on our podcast a few weeks ago. We're gonna talk to her about her views on what is in InsureTech, especially Asia.
We'll talk about how entrepreneurs can prepare when they start companies focused on the insurance sector and why it's exciting to start companies in this space. Theresa, welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
Theresa Blissing: Thank you, Gopi. I'm, you know, super excited to be here and have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Gopi Rangan: Let's start with you. Tell us about yourself. You're from Germany, but you've lived all over the world. And now you've recently moved to New York. Tell us about your journey a little bit.
Theresa Blissing: Yes, sure. So, um, yeah, as you mentioned, I'm, I'm originally from Germany, just outside of Frankfurt. I believe many have been to Frankfurt, at least to the airport. Sometimes I feel like it's a bit like Dubai and these like passing through airports. Um, nobody ever steps out. Yeah. So grew up there, started my career in insurance in 2004 when I joined Generali, the Italian. insurer with their corporate life division. I held a range of different positions. Generali also allowed me to do my first international move to Hong Kong where I was working in the Generali Asia regional headquarter. That was back in 2009. And I was really excited by the insurance industry in Asia and how different some of the challenges there are.
Right. So coming from a very mature market like Germany or the U S, and then coming to Asia. During that time in 2009, Generali was in the process of starting some of their local insurers in the Asian markets, like future Generali in India or Generali Indonesia, Generali Thailand, Generali Philippines. I learned that the challenges these markets are facing in terms of insurance are so different. But I found it actually really exciting and fast forward in 2015, I decided to leave Generali. I thought there must be more in life than just working for a carrier. And, I decided to go back to university and do my MBA.
And I did an academic research study on the adoption of big data in the Asian insurance industry or specifically in Southeast Asia. So this was really my start to everything tech and innovation and You know, if you ask me the exciting part about insurance. And the years after I pivoted my career a little bit, started working for management consulting firms. Later I had my own consulting and research practice in Asia, um, was living in Bangkok at the time, but operated across Southeast Asia as well as Hong Kong. And so this is also when I then got introduced and worked with a number of insure tech startups or startups in general. I worked with the university programs that had accelerators, for example, the Mai Science and Technology Park, they had an accelerator for health tech, which is, you know, super close to insurance.
So I really enjoyed that. And after that moved to Sydney and earlier this year, I moved to New York because of my husband, frankly. He's working for the United Nations and he's trying to make the world a better place. And I work in insurance. So I thought, okay, let's join him, go to New York and check out yet another market.
And yes, here we are.
Gopi Rangan: I believe that insurance makes the world a better place as well. It's the backbone of our economy. It touches people's lives on a daily basis at highs and lows. It creates a safety net so people can go out, take risks and build prosperity for themselves and their families and their businesses.
Theresa Blissing: I'm glad that you say that actually. And, and to be honest, I agree. And, um, you mentioned it at the beginning. I'm about to publish my first book, which is part of Bryan Falchuk's Future of Insurance series. And it's focused on Asia and I have some amazing case studies of startups who are looking to help increase insurance penetration exactly for that reason, right?
Because insurance is so important for the overall resilience of an economy. So yeah, I actually agree with you.
Gopi Rangan: I can see that you have a global outlook. You grew up in Europe, spent a lot of time in Asia, more recently in Australia, and now in New York. You also have a very deep understanding of how insurance works.
I'm curious to learn from you, and if you could share with founders, why is the insurance industry so exciting for founders?
Theresa Blissing: That's a really good question. And I think it has only become exciting in the past years, right? So you mentioned that I'm also running the Asia Intro Tech podcast together with Michael Waitze, who's the host. And when we started in 2019, we talked to people in the insurance industry. We always heard the term like, you know, it's not a very exciting industry. It's not sexy, but you know, you have good career opportunities. And we saw this changing over the past years. Now, when we talk to people, a lot of people are actually super excited when working in insurance and especially that wave of insurtechs.
Personally, from the experience I had, and I just mentioned, I was working with also universities in Asia and, and their startups, and I'm still mentoring some of these companies. And the great thing is. Regardless of what type of industry you have, there's always an insurance component to it.
To give you an example, I was working with a drone company in Thailand. So they have a company called Go Rai, which has agricultural drones to spray fields. And immediately I thought there's an insurance component to that because you can use that and it's, it's kind of an Uber for agricultural drones. So farmers they have an app, they can book a drone.
So you can actually combine this with, some time of parametric crop insurance, right? Use this as a distribution channel or you can use the insights you gain and work with reinsurers to help them with the data to understand impacts of climate change, et cetera. So that is what I think is super, super exciting in the insurance industry. Regardless of what industry you are in, there is an insurance component and all these new technologies, like drones, like artificial intelligence, that can all be utilized in the insurance industry to make better products, better services, better ways of distributing insurance.
Gopi Rangan: Insurance is not a new thing. People need to learn and if founders are building products that need to be sold, they don't have to educate the world.
People are already educated and they're already buyers of insurance products. Either it's mandated by the government or sometimes often they're voluntarily buying products. Most of us have multiple insurance products. when a founder looks at building a company, it's a much easier sector because the demand is already clear.
It's very evident that there is an opportunity for people to buy products. I'm very excited about it for many reasons. But let's talk about your book, The Future of Insurance, especially Asia Rising. Can you give us a little bit of context on what's happening in Asia?
Theresa Blissing: Well, I'm glad that you ask and also, to add on what you just said, that insurance has been around for centuries. I work for Generali and the company was founded, I believe in 1860 or something crazy, right?
It has been around for many, many years. But if you look at developing Asia, we still find markets that have very low financial literacy. If you take Indonesia, for example, it is one of the countries in the world with the lowest insurance penetration rate. They only have about 1. 6 percent of GDP allocated to insurance.
The U. S. has. I think 12. 4 or 12. 6%. And one of the reasons that is, is because in Indonesia, motor insurance is not mandatory, right? Like most of us, we get first in touch with insurance when we start buying our first car and need to get insurance for that. If you don't have this component. It's being mandatory, you have a completely different situation.
So with the book, I really wanted to tell the stories of these gross markets, Indonesia is one of the biggest gross markets in the world with 270 million people, but at the same time, very, very low insurance penetration. And many insurers have tried to crack that market, but have failed, right?
The insurance penetration is still very low. And at the same time, you have a large population of very young, tax heavy consumers. 50 percent of the population is under the age of 30, right? These are all digital natives. They have grown up with technology and, you know, insurance is not as, strongly represented in the country as it is in the U. S. as in Germany. So insurers there face very, very different challenges. On the other hand, I also wanted to feature countries that are very, very mature. Hong Kong, Singapore, but also Japan. Japan is one of the most mature and largest insurance market globally.
So my aim for this book was really to give you know a flavor of the different landscapes we find in Asia. From like very developing countries like indonesia. I also have an example from India, Malaysia etc but then also you know tell the stories of the tech hubs globally like Hong Kong and Singapore as well as Japan. And yeah, I've actually interviewed eight different companies from, you know, these different countries. One is from China as well, Ping An, which is one of the largest insurers globally, but then I also have really early stage insurtech startups in the book to really have a good mix of different countries, different challenges, different maturity stages.
Gopi Rangan: Asia is a mix. On one side, like you said, there are very mature markets like Japan, Hong Kong. when I did research and I found that Sumitomo insurance dates back to the 1700s, perhaps even before Lloyd's, which is considered the absolute origin of insurance, it's Probably that market started around the same time when Lloyd's started or perhaps even before.
And we have segments in Asia where the economy is just booming, the opportunity is just evolving. The penetration of insurance is like 2%, 4 percent and it's far below where it could be in the future. India is a good example of that. Countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and many others are also in those categories.
It's fascinating to me that all of this can coexist in the same region. What's your advice to founders? How can they prepare? What are some challenges to anticipate? How can they be better prepared to launch a company and be successful?
Theresa Blissing: Well, that's, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? Well, the insurance industry, and that's regardless if you are in a very mature market or if you are in a evolving market like India, like Indonesia, Malaysia, right, you have heavy regulation.
Insurance is a very complex, in a way, business because of regulation. You need regulatory approvals, depending on what type of country you are building. So in my book, I mainly focus on companies that are either distributors, so intermediaries of insurance or, licensed insurance carriers, right?
So they have direct contact with consumers, so they need regulatory approval. They also need to look at data privacy, et cetera. And just the fact that insurance is nothing that people wake up in the morning and say like, "Hey, today I'm going to buy health insurance or motor insurance." people are not excited about buying insurance mostly.
So this is some of the challenges they are facing. And yeah, I would like to get back to the insurance market in Indonesia. If you just look at the numbers, indonesia has double the GDP per capita of India, but half the insurance penetration.
So if you look at that, you're like that's an easy market go into. It has a growing middle class. Lots of people are coming in the realm of buying insurance for the first time. There's doesn't seem to be that much competition because, you know, it's still very low penetration. But the reality is there are a lot of challenges around selling insurance to people with low financial literacy and thinking about new ways of distributing insurance.
So I think it's really a mix. Coming back to your question, like what is that founders need? So on the one hand, they need to have a good understanding of insurance regulation. And how the industry work and being able to maneuver these laws and regulations. But on the other hand, also have a fresh perspective on rethinking ways that insurance is marketed, that insurance is distributed, that products are designed, right? So you really need both industry insights but also a fresh perspective, in addition to all the skills you need to have as a founder, being able to talk to VCs, pitching your ideas, etc.
Gopi Rangan: For founders, it's important to respect regulations. Regulations define a lot of things on how things work in the industry, understanding the complexity of the regulations, working in compliance with regulations and which might change from region to region, country to country, even within a country. And that is important. But despite having the expertise and the deep knowledge of fresh perspective on what products to build, how to build the product using technology, which markets to serve, those things are important.
I think Asia is also particularly challenging because In a country like Germany or Netherlands, you could build a product that applies to a large part of the country population, but that may not be true in Asia. What works in Hong Kong doesn't work in Indonesia. What works in Indonesia maybe doesn't work in Malaysia, although they're all right next to each other.
It is a challenge and that's also the opportunity for founders. I'm glad that you've highlighted a few things that would be very valuable for founders to consider before they start companies. What is challenging? What is difficult compared to starting companies in other sectors?
Theresa Blissing: Yeah, again, I mean, you, you mentioned how different these countries are, even though they are, they are neighboring, right?
So if you take Malaysia and Thailand who are bordering, right, um, where you think, you know, they, they should be fairly the same, but you know, just in terms of, of culture and religion, Malaysia being predominantly Muslim and Thailand being a Buddhist country, that has an impact on insurance because if you're looking at selling insurance in a Muslim dominated market, you have to comply with Sharia law with Islamic law for some of the insurance products. So there is a insurance concept called Takaful. So that is something you have to consider when operating in Malaysia. Then, you know, in Malaysia, the language barrier compared to Thailand. They have completely different languages, it's not that if you speak Thai, you understand Malay, they are completely different, they have completely different roots, they have completely different alphabet, right, like Thai has its own writing, right, and then you have, you have China, which is Completely different again, and you have India, which might be a bit easier because a lot of it happening in English and a lot of people understand English, but again, also in India, you have these different cultures.
It's a huge country, but you have to take all of these differences into account and also how to sell insurance. I can tell you a funny story. One of the companies I spoke to actually for the Asia InsurTech podcasts, they operate across Southeast Asia and during COVID they in Singapore gave away like free COVID cover, like a small cover.
If you get COVID, you know, et cetera, they tried to do the same thing in Indonesia and nobody would touch it because culturally people believe that if you talk about an unpleasant event you invite tragedy into your home. They didn't even want to have it for free because they thought if I take it for free, then I will get COVID.
So I don't want it. And this has a huge impact when you are trying to scale a business like, you know, Singapore is often the place where a lot of insure tech startups start, but Singapore is tiny I think, around four or four or 5 million people living in Singapore. You can't scale a business in Singapore. The competition is also really high because everybody starts in Singapore if they want to go into Southeast Asia.
But then branching out from Singapore, which is surrounded by Malaysia and also borders Indonesia, it's a completely different market, right? So it's not like in the U. S. where you have also different regulations from state to state, but it's not only different regulations, it's a completely different culture and mindset.
Gopi Rangan: It is. I can see the nuances. When startups focus on a large economy like the U. S. It's a lot easier to scale because unlike Singapore that has 4 million, the U. S. has a few hundred million potential customers. If the product is easily scalable and not selling toothpaste or flowers and like e commerce type of things.
The behavior is fairly similar, whether they're in California or New York or Texas or any other part of the U. S. But insurance ties to risk, which connects with desire, appetite for risk, appetite for liabilities. Dreams that they want for themselves. A lot of those things are different from one person to their neighbor.
And even the same person is different this week compared to next week or the next year or the following year. It becomes very important for any founder focusing on the insurance sector to understand that even in large markets where everything looks homogeneous like, uh, U. S. It is a collection of small fragments.
And understanding the nuances of behaviors of customers is very important. If you can be successful in Asia, you can easily take the lessons and bring it to the U. S. or vice versa. So the insurance industry behaves very differently compared to other industries when founders are looking at targeting that market.
So I'm glad that you describe the challenge, but you also show how that can become a strength for these founders.
Theresa Blissing: Yeah, and, and actually what is fascinating when I wrote the book, right, and I, I followed Bryan's structure he had for the other books of having these different case studies of different companies and then have the lessons learned and I guess maybe I didn't pay attention enough or I was too naive, but you know, I thought, "okay, I've written the eight case studies and now I just pick out some lessons."
And Bryan was like, "No, no. That only works if you find lessons that apply to all eight companies." And, you know, first I was like, Oh dear. I mean, these are different markets, different stages, right? You have a company like Pingan, which is, you know, one of the biggest insurers in the world. And then I have a startup that just entered the market in Japan in June this year, right? It's like brand new. And I was like, that seems impossible. But the incredible thing that happened was that there were really three fundamental concepts that all of these companies we're following. Regardless if they were working in a very mature market like Japan or are an early stage startup or a more advanced player in China or Hong Kong.
So I think that is what is really powerful because they are the different nuances and culture and et cetera and why you have to pay attention to those. There are some overarching principles that apply basically to everyone working in insurance, and I guess not only insurance, but in general.
Gopi Rangan: It's great to see that the lessons are universal across multiple cases that you studied.
Shall we talk about your podcast? What is the podcast about? What topics do you cover? Who is the podcast for? Who's the audience?
Theresa Blissing: Yeah, sure. So the Asia Insure Tech podcast, we started it in May 2019 and the idea was I had started to research insurtech in 2018 on like a global level, being based in Asia. And I found at that time, there was a lot of hype around the bought by many's and lemonade, you know, all the Western insurtechs. But there was very little information available on what was happening in Asia. And for all the reasons I just shared, I thought there should be a platform where these founders can share their ideas and what they are trying to build, but also for insurers to share their struggles and what they are facing. So with the Asia InsurTech podcast, we talk to insurTech founders. We also talk to what we call thought leaders. So it's mainly people working in the insurance industry, C-level executives, or people like Bryan Falchuk, who we had on the show, even if he's not in Asia. And then we also talk to investors. So if you have VC companies on the show who are operating in Asia and beyond. So, yeah, I think we should have you on the show. That would be really interesting. And really try to give a platform to share their stories and how technology is reshaping the insurance industry and how we can bring the industry as a whole forward.
Gopi Rangan: I'd be delighted to be a guest on the podcast. I usually stay on the host side of the table. I very rarely become a guest and speak. I like asking questions and letting the guests share their wisdom, but I'm more than happy to share my perspectives on InsureTech on your podcast.
I see that you've published more than 200 episodes over the past few years. Congratulations. It's great to see consistent, high produced by your podcast. So everybody take a listen. It's the Asia InsurTech Podcast. The website is asiainsurtechpodcast.com.
We're coming towards the end of our conversation. Is there community activity you are involved in which nonprofit organization excites you and why?
Theresa Blissing: Well, that's a good question. Yeah, are a lot of like great local organizations for all different types of charity of, you know, doing good for the world. I have been moving around quite a lot and the first time I moved abroad was 2009 to Hong Kong, later lived in Bangkok, later lived in Jakarta, then in Sydney, now in New York.
You know, it's often difficult to find tribe and to find your people. So I have been involved in creating women expats communities. I created one in Bangkok with at the end over 3, 000 women that were finding a safe space to connect, ask questions, find a safety net for being abroad. And especially, now that I'm married, it might be a different situation. But when I first moved abroad, I was on my own. It can be quite scary. So there's an organization called Girl Gone International, which is volunteer run by women across the globe. And the idea is really to provide a safe community for women living an international life, arriving new in a city to be able to find like minded people and, yeah have a safe space to ask questions and build friendships.
Gopi Rangan: That's fascinating, indeed. Theresa, thank you very much for sharing your experiences, your stories. You've shared some very insightful perspectives on how you view insure tech, how you view Asia and your advice to founders when they consider starting companies. I look forward to sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the world.
Theresa Blissing: Thank you so much, Gopi, for having me on the show.
Gopi Rangan: Thank you for listening to the Sure Shot Entrepreneur. I hope you enjoyed listening to real-life stories about early believers supporting ambitious entrepreneurs. Please subscribe to the podcast and post a review. Your comments will help other entrepreneurs find this podcast.
I look forward to catching you at the next episode.