Scouting for Growth

• State of the Nation in Insurance Venturing

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to a panel of global experts to explore the bold new frontiers shaping insurance technology in 2025 and beyond, including microinsurance in Africa, digital disruption in Latin America, the evolving tech scene in the US, Asia, Europe and the UK. KEY TAKEAWAYS AI cannot just be something we add on top of existing infrastructure, there needs to be some re-work to integrate it into existing infrastructure. Foundation for AI scalability and security (not as a bolt-on) will be a big trend. The second thing is generative AI that’s across ecosystem. There is a trend emerging and growing in InsurTech in Europe at least around emerging risks. 20% of all the deals done in 2024 were around that specific topic. Most of the startups in this area are in the pricing/underwriting part of the value chain. There is a need for these with emerging risks that didn’t exist (or weren’t as prevalent) in the past, such as climate change or electric vehicles. In Asia, especially South-East Asia, the markets are way more green field than they are in the US. Here, embedded insurance and ecosystem integration are a really big deal. As people get onto external ecosystems outside of their own they want to embed insurance in them across sectors. We don’t think insurance just in the insurance space is enough. There’s a lot of brain drain in Africa where skilled professionals are leaving the continent. But the paradox of that is that there’s a lot of influx onto the continent. The questions is: Where exactly do the opportunities lie? There’s a lot of grown happening in the emerging communities where companies are developing the mindsets and capacities to transfer risk in all kinds of insurance, not just life. BEST MOMENTS ’95-97% of the economy in Asia is driven by SMEs, and 75% of employment is in the SME sector, and it’s wildly underserved from an insurance perspective. It’s a massive opportunity.’ ‘Accessibility possibilities that the technology and maturity curve provides in emerging markets, especially, is quite exciting because it’s making insurance sustainable, affordable, and reaching more people.’ ‘The population where I live is very young, they were the first penetration for insurance here and, unlike the rest of the world, they’re deeply unconcerned about data privacy, they’re willing to trade their data access for convenience, better products and more personalisation.’ ‘Don’t only stick to the regulations timeframe, keep an eye on what entrepreneurs are building because the market can move faster than the regulations.’ ABOUT THE GUESTS Florian Graillot (covering InsurTech Europe) Hilario Itriago (covering InsurTech LATAM) Lisa Wardlaw (covering InsurTech USA) Michael Waitze (covering InsurTech Asia) Tunde Salako - Africa InsurTech (covering InsurTech Africa) ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  1:04:27
• Carolina Klint: Unveiling Key 2025 WEF Risk Insights

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Carolina Klint, Managing Director and chief commercial officer for Continental Europe at Marsh McLennan, who shares her views on the latest WEF report and its implications for businesses and insurers worldwide. KEY TAKEAWAYS My goal with speaking about and promoting the Report is where the topics of risk and resilience belong, which is on the agenda of world leaders, decision makers, executives, board members. The business world is so complex and difficult to navigate and we have an environment now where risks are not only interconnected but they are also layered. So, the Global Risk Report is a great place to start trying to make sense of this. When a company looks at the risks that have the potential to impact or execute on strategies it’s so difficult to get it right: You’re going to go through your risks and scenario planning to pull together an ambitious risk register. Most companies have good processes for this, but in the current environment it’s very rare to pick and prepare for the risks that are going to be the ones that will hit you. Aby working on a culture of risk awareness and resilience, by working on taking a holistic view, connection the dots between people, risk and strategy, companies that do that have a much better opportunity to deal with whatever ends up hitting them. If you have a culture and awareness, and if you empower your leaders and employees to manage through when something hits, it’s going to become a much better outcome for you regards of the risks. We need to not just look at what’s in front of us, but look at the long term perspective. Human beings are wired to focus on what’s in front of us and it’s easy to forget the long-term horizon. This is where the Global Risk Report is so helpful because it looks at the perception of current risks, the 2-year and 10-year risk horizons. BEST MOMENTS ‘We look at how we can bring more value and become more relevant to our clients by connecting people, risk, and strategy – and the WEF Global Risk Report speaks directly to that.’ ‘The business environment is very difficult to navigate, and it’s only through collaboration and looking at the business holistically that you can achieve a long term sustainable business model.’ ‘For anyone in risk and resilience, when the Global Risk Report comes out it’s like Christmas Day as a 5-year-old!’ ‘Everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face – that’s exactly the way it is in the current environment.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Carolina Klint is a recognized expert in global risk management and a key contributor to thought leadership initiatives, including the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report. As a Managing Director and Risk Management Leader for Continental Europe at Marsh, she works with clients across industries to anticipate, quantify, and navigate emerging threats—ranging from geopolitical and environmental disruptions to the rapid evolution of technology. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  43:25
• Michael Lingelbach: Inside Hedra’s Agentic AI Revolution—Why Long-Form Video Is the Next Big Thing

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Michael Lingelbach, CEO and co-founder of Hedra—a company that specializes in long-form generative video and agentic AI solutions. In just over a year, Michael and his team have seen explosive growth and raised backing from leading tech investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. From marketing and social media campaigns to corporate training videos, Hedra’s technology is revolutionizing how we produce immersive, human-like content at scale. Michael and I discuss the power of agentic AI, the ethical dimensions of automated digital creation, and how he’s charting new paths for startups, enterprises, and content creators alike. KEY TAKEAWAYS We’re still very early in ‘generative media’. Stable Diffusion came out 2 years ago for images, video models have been maturing rapidly, but right now they’re focused on small fragments of content not cohesive brand storytelling. Building models that can not only generate compelling dialogue performances, and incorporate consistent identities and assets is a challenging research problem and something we’re pushing on. When people first think about generative AI they think about increasing the volume of content, but that typically isn’t a problem. The predominant concern of most marketers now is engagement. We live in a limited attention economy, so the focus now – in my opinion – is how to make really good content that’s going to hook people. For short-form content you’re usually trying to hook the viewer’s attention in the first 5-10 seconds as they’re scrolling through Tik Tok style feed. You want bright colours, a crazy character or a hook like “OMG you’re not going to believe what we’re going to talk about today!” With long-form content you’re optimising for retention. You still want the viewer to be engaged, but usually they want information or entertainment. We think the big opportunity is making it accessible for product/social marketing managers to have all this powerful technology to generate video and have a workflow were they’re working together with AI to make compelling content. That doesn’t require them to outsource to an external agency. We then get rapid feedback cycles rather than drawn out ones when you’re working with an external partner. BEST MOMENTS ‘We’re focused on bringing this technology from something that’s fun to play with to something that’s a strong part of an enterprise/brand marketing workflow.’ ‘Are you conveying information that makes the user feel like you’re conveying information that’s also usable for them? That’s the job of a content creator.’ ‘Video is the most natural form of communication; people have been talking to each other face-to-face for a long time!’ ‘Video is a massive market and it’s growing rapidly, it’s where most advertising, marketing information, learning and spending is shifting towards.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Michael Lingelbach is the CEO and co-founder of Hedra. While pursuing his PhD at Stanford, Michael worked closely with world-renowned AI researchers and developed a deep interest in pushing the boundaries of long-form video generation. Seeing an opportunity to combine advanced visual models with natural, human-centered dialogue, he set out to create a platform that produces fully generated video and immersive, conversational virtual avatars. Under Michael’s leadership, Hedra attracted early backing from top-tier investors, including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Since launching publicly in 2023, the company has grown its user base to over one million registered users, earning recognition from both independent creators and major enterprises. Hedra’s generative video technology now powers cutting-edge use cases ranging from marketing and social media content to more complex interactive experiences. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  40:02
• Denise Garth: Key Trends and Strategies for 2025 Shaping The Future of Insurance

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Denise Garth, a globally recognized InsurTech thought leader and Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco. In our talk today, we dive into the top trends shaping insurance and InsurTech as we head toward 2025—from next-gen technology enablers to constantly evolving customer expectations. Denise will share her insights on where the industry is headed, how to stay ahead, and why a collaborative mindset is crucial. KEY TAKEAWAYS What was happening in the resilience market in 2024, from both economic and risk standpoints, has had a huge operational impact on insurance companies. As a result, as we go into 2025, the reaction of loss ratios increasing, unprofitability, high interest rates, all the economic factors are forcing us to step back and see it as a wake-up call. We’re in the midst of business model and technology driven change. We’re finally realising our decades old operational models and technology foundations no longer meet the challenges and opportunities of this fast-changing risk, technology, and customer demographics world. It’s a race to the future because there’s a growing protection gap that we must address in a different way. We’ve been on a technology ride for 10-15 years , especially in InsurTech, but the last few months have been mind blowing with the pace of change and what the technology, like GenAI and IoT can do. They can help us do risk assessments better, give better customer experience and optimise the whole operation. Cloud computing is expanding the capabilities. We’ve got to fundamentally rethink the technology and business architecture of our solutions to optimise and take advantage of not just cloud computing but all the other technologies that are going to leverage cloud. BEST MOMENTS ‘We must think about how to underwrite and assess risks differently, more importantly how do we minimise the risk. We can’t keep growing the risk and the insurance costs, people can’t afford it.’ ‘Data is the lifeblood of this industry, and we’re coming to realise that we’ve got to democratise and demonetise data because everybody needs to have it.’ ‘MGAs and full-stack insurers are trying to think how insurance is going to be done, but also, what constitutes the insurance policy.’ ‘48% of part-time workers don’t have access to life or health insurance, they want a simple way of buying insurance, and they also want the risk about themselves by having Protection as a Service based on usage.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Denise Garth is an internationally recognized InsurTech thought leader and innovator, serving as Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco. With a passion for transforming the insurance industry, Denise leads global strategy, marketing, industry relations, and innovation—helping companies navigate disruption and harness new technologies to capture growth. Her accolades are numerous, including being named among the 30 Most Powerful Women in Business: The Titans of Industry (2024) by International Business Times, an InsurTech Top 50 Influencer, and one of the Top 50 Women in SaaS. Bringing a blend of deep insurance expertise and visionary thinking, Denise’s work focuses on how today’s industry challenges can spark tomorrow’s opportunities. She has served in leadership positions around the world, developing go-to-market strategies, guiding operational transformation, and fostering collaboration across multiple continents—from Europe to Asia-Pacific. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  1:02:49
• Top 2025 Technology Trends That You Need To Know

  On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks about the technology trends shaping the future of insurance and finance in 2025, the big shifts, from AI wizardry to climate tech disruptors, that are revolutionizing how we manage risk, measure reward, and generally conduct business in these fast-changing industries. KEY TAKEAWAYS AI in insurance alone is predicted to jump from just over $8 billion in 2024 to potentially over $140 billion in 2034. With generative AI tools creating on-the-fly risk assessments and personalized product recommendations, the old “one-size-fits-all” insurance model is heading out the door. Soon, underwriting or credit-check processes that once took days could be done in mere minutes. With 5G insurers can collect real-time driving data to offer usage-based policies – like getting rewarded for being a safe driver. Meanwhile, finance companies roll out mobile-first investment platforms that update your portfolio in microseconds. VR is also taking the stage, letting financial advisors or insurance agents hold “virtual meetings” with you inside immersive 3D worlds. This creates deeper engagement and a better understanding of the coverage you’re getting. With hurricanes, floods, and wildfires happening more often, insurance providers are analyzing climate risks like never before. Some are even adjusting policies in real-time based on environmental data, which is crucial for those living in high-risk areas. Meanwhile, finance giants are offering “green bonds” or environmentally friendly investment options. Sustainable practices aren’t just an afterthought; they’re part of corporate strategy, and regulators are stepping in to promote responsible business. “Financial Services 2.0,” covers InsurTech, embedded finance, embedded insurance, blockchain, and more. This signals a future where financial services, insurance, and other industries blend into platform-based experiences. Blockchain is a game-changer here. From frictionless cross-border payments to “smart contracts” that auto-trigger claims payouts, the possibilities are endless. We’re also seeing digital currencies – from stablecoins to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – gain traction. BEST MOMENTS ‘Insurance is flipping from driver-centric to vehicle-centric as self-driving cars become more common. Meanwhile, in big cities, sensors track traffic to reduce congestion, meaning fewer accidents and lower claims.’‘Cybercrime could cost the world up to USD 10 trillion annually by 2025. For insurers, that spells an opportunity to offer robust cyber coverage, but it also means constantly updating your own defences.’‘AI and data-sharing help shape new solutions—but trust erodes quickly if people sense their data is being misused or if algorithms are biased. Transparency and good governance are your best friends.’‘Step outside the old “policy mindset” and start innovating in ways that deeply resonate with how people live, work, and move..’ ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, & commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner. Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook TikTok Email Website

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  18:58

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