Meet The Disruptors: Prakash Vasant of NeuralMetrics On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Building a relationship doesn’t mean you have to go to extraordinary lengths. It often means ‘being real.’ In this case, we were just ourselves when we met with the team. We answered their questions truthfully. We let them know what we could do, what things we couldn’t do, and things we were working on.

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Prakash Vasant, Co-Founder and CEO of NeuralMetrics, a data provider that is improving commercial insurance by using artificial intelligence to extract insights from public data making the underwriting process faster, simpler, and transparent.

Prakash is a serial entrepreneur launching and scaling successful ventures in finance and technology and leading global teams. As the leader of NeuralMetrics, he has built and launched a platform leveraging AI and natural language processing to analyze unstructured and public data to automate and improve the commercial insurance underwriting process. Prior to NeuralMetrics, Prakash led a global IT consultancy as well as served in senior positions with an inter-bank currency dealer and a corporate foreign exchange advisory consultancy.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Like many people in insurance, I didn’t start out there. Previously, I owned an IT services company. From that vantage, I was able to see the intense focus on data and harnessing the power of data with predictive analytics. It was really beginning to take off, and I knew I wanted to be involved in it. So I decided to exit my IT business and pursue my data analytics passion.

I didn’t initially set out to create a data company in insurance, but as I researched opportunities, I saw that a well-designed platform could have a real impact in the sector. The underwriting process for small commercial insurance was cumbersome, inefficient, and inaccurate. And it didn’t have to be. There is so much data available publicly to help insurance companies quickly and efficiently sort through this information. I realized that technology can enable insurers to better analyze customers’ risks. And this ultimately enables businesses to get better insurance coverage.

We designed a solution that helps insurance companies and their agents better evaluate a client’s risk. But what’s most important is that we made it completely transparent. In the past, a lot of analytics has been done in a black box — hidden. We’re turning that on its head, providing companies with both the answers and the sources of those answers. And the industry has been receptive. We’re a relatively new startup and we are already working with three of the top 10 property casualty insurance carriers in the U.S.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

We are disrupting the Insurance industry by making the entire ecosystem easier, and in reality, we’re changing things in multiple ways…drawing on more than 5 things to shake up the industry.

With just a name and address, website, or corporate email ID, agents and insurance companies can get all the information they need about a business customer to evaluate the insurance risks and get them coverage. This means consumers no longer have to fill out lengthy forms. Agents can focus on the customer’s unique needs rather than entering data. And insurers are getting far more accurate data.

But one of the most unique things about what we’re doing is how we’re disrupting analytics itself — we’re making predictive analytics transparent. We are the only company right now doing this. Not only are we helping insurers and agents classify and assess a risk, but we show them the data sources we used to come up with the classification and assessment, so they can evaluate it for themselves if they want. We are combining data analytics, AI and machine learning with human decision making.

Let me give you an example of the way this human-machine combination works. Consider an insurance agent working with a restaurant on a new insurance policy. The agent submits the business name and address. Our solution analyzes all public data to answer the key questions that the carrier needs to assess the risk. One of those questions asks about food delivery. Let’s assume our solution says, “no delivery.” But there’s a twist. The agent is familiar with the restaurant and has actually ordered delivery before. On other platforms, that’s where the black box comes in. The agent wouldn’t know why the solution said “No” to this question and that would be that. They could do manual research to figure it out, adding significant time to the sale. Or they might question the accuracy of all the analytics information because of the answer to that one question. With NeuralMetrics, the agent can click the question and see the data sources we used to answer. In this case, assume the agent looks at the source and realizes that the restaurant only offers delivery through a third party provider, like Grubhub, which is why the solution said “No.” Since third party deliverers don’t impact the insurance, the agent can then move forward with the policy, knowing the application is accurate.

This level of transparency helps gives insurers the confidence to replace some manual decision making that doesn’t add value with real time information and data, streamlining the underwriting process.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

If you asked some insurance industry veterans, my funniest mistake would be taking a team of technology people with little to no insurance background or knowledge — beyond what ordinary consumers know about insurance — and building an insurance product that specializes in something as complicated as underwriting.

But here we are. Not only is our product working, but we are performing at a high level, delivering insurance risk classification with high accuracy. Sometimes outsiders can have a huge impact because they bring a new way of thinking to a problem.

The important lesson is that you don’t have to be an expert in everything to have impact. But it is important to know your limitations and find partners who can assist you in the areas that you don’t specialize in. I understand data analytics. I know AI and machine learning. I partnered with people who have deep insurance knowledge. Working together, we are able to change the insurance buying experience for businesses.

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

Some of my biggest mentors have actually been our insurance company partners. They put trust and faith in us as a new insurance technology platform. These are collaborative partners who are actively helping us build and shape the platform. They are letting us know areas where we can improve our solution or what tweaks or adjustments they would like made.

They constantly give us feedback — a great model for the ideal partner/vendor relationship. We want to provide the best solution possible. This requires input from our customers who know their processes and workflows better than any of us do. We value their input so we can make sure we are delivering them real value.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

For me disruption is always positive because it means looking at something and saying, “how can this be improved?” However, in the insurance industry, in particular, I have discovered that the word disruption can have a bad reputation. That is because when people first talked about disruption in insurance, it referred to technologies replacing agents. This didn’t happen and it won’t happen as agents are more important than ever.

Disruption isn’t about replacing people, but rather using technology to improve processes so people can do their jobs better.

Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

I can sum up the best pieces of advice I have gotten in two words: relationships and trust. Building relationships and trust takes time, but if you put in the effort and make these a key part of your business operation, they can take you a long way. Here is an example. I had been pitching NeuralMetrics to a large insurance company. We weren’t the only company in the running for the business, we were pitching against several of our competitors. In fact one of the companies we were competing against had already received investment from the insurance company. So some might say we were the underdogs. But we ended up getting the business. When I asked our contact what factored into the decision to go with us, he said that he has complete trust in his team and his team liked working with us and trusted us.

Building a relationship doesn’t mean you have to go to extraordinary lengths. It often means ‘being real.’ In this case, we were just ourselves when we met with the team. We answered their questions truthfully. We let them know what we could do, what things we couldn’t do, and things we were working on. We also said we would be their partners who valued their feedback and who would continue to make our solution the best product possible to meet their needs. They embraced our message and now they are one of our valued partners.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

Though our platform has made great improvements streamlining the commercial underwriting process, in a way, we have just begun scraping the surface. Insurance has so much farther to go when it comes to automation, data analytics, AI, and machine learning. There are many more things that we can try to improve. Can we further reduce the number of questions people have to answer to make getting coverage easier? Can we enable an agent or insurance company to get all the information they need about a customer with just an email address?

We want to continue to make strides in insurance and elevate its technological capabilities to put it on par with other digitally fueled sectors like financial services or retail.

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

For me, I get more value from my interactions with people. I love talking to clients, team members, insurance industry leaders, or people who lead organizations in other sectors. Conversations allow you to get different viewpoints and look at topics from a variety of angles. A good discussion with a passionate individual gives me more ideas than any book I have ever read.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One of my favorite lessons is that trust has to be earned and to earn trust you need to be an open book. I follow this lesson every day. It is what helps us build successful customer relationships. I never tell a customer that I can solve all of the world’s problems. They know I can’t do that; I know I can’t do that. But if I am transparent, I start building the foundation for trust. If they decide to partner with us, they know we will be upfront with them and always have their best interest in heart.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Insurance is something that everyone should have. It protects them from life’s unexpected events. But people sometimes don’t realize that not everyone can afford insurance. Not everyone can pay the premiums. I want to help bring insurance to people who don’t have access to it. It will require some creative thinking and new approaches to make sure we can provide products that offer protection but are also affordable, but I think it will enable more people to recover and get back on their feet after an incident.

How can our readers follow you online?

They can follow me on LinkedIn.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!