VF Spotlight: Mallory Bell and Bryan Seiter

For our inaugural issue of Venture Fellows Quarterly, we spent some (socially distanced) time chatting with Mallory Bell of American Family Insurance and Bryan Seiter of Main Street America.

Mallory is a Senior Analyst in the Investments division, focusing on commercial real estate, and attended Venture Fellows in 2020. Bryan, a member of the 2018 VF program, is Director of Innovation and Strategic Capabilities, joining MSA after eight-plus years at American Family Insurance. Each of them took time to share their thoughts on InsurTech, startups, and their Venture Fellows takeaways.

What was your biggest “Aha!” from your Venture Fellows experience?

Mallory: There were so many! After the opportunity to speak to founders like Ilya Bodner at Bold Penguin and Kyle Nakatsuji at Clearcover, what became clear is that founders align themselves with investors that will join them in their vision, rather than try to control it. They may call upon you for access to networks or help in certain areas of expertise, but what’s most important is giving them the runway they need, and then mostly staying out of the way.

Bryan: The biggest “Aha!” for me was how I can support the efforts of the American Family Ventures team. The thought that I could help them from my little corner of the world was something I hadn’t thought of before. It’s something I’ve baked into my thinking. My customers’ problems are probably not that unique, and through the partnership I have with the Ventures team, I can surface potential solutions or provide new problems to collaborate on in service of current and potential enterprise customers.

Mallory: Another realization was that AFV is looking holistically at opportunities to disrupt. Learning about the strike zones in “adjacent” and “enabling” tech, less obvious segments, was interesting because these are areas where the value-add to everyday people is clearer.

What innovation topic has your attention at the moment?

Bryan: Aggregation. Bringing everything together in a way that makes it easy for consumers to work with an agent to manage their risk in a portfolio approach, just as they would with finances or estate planning. As every last dime gets squeezed out of price, and as it gets easier to move a policy at any time with no penalties and little friction, how can we bring coverages together to form a consolidated intentional approach to risk mitigation, instead of a potpourri of the cheapest policies?

Mallory: Since I work in real estate and am passionate about solving the climate crisis, all these tools using IoT sensors and virtual clones of buildings to monitor energy use and make buildings more efficient are really fascinating to me! I’m also interested in circularity in areas like fashion or food and agriculture. Humans create a lot of waste, and smart people are figuring out ways to make waste valuable.

Do startups have a role in your day-to-day work?

Bryan: Considering the work my team does at MSA to support the independent agent channel, we are regularly in contact with startups. Those relationships provide three types of value for us. The first is possible partnerships to solution problems for our customers through digital products. The second is problem validation with AFV. Is the hypothesis of the startup sound, based on what we know from being close to the customer? Third would be market awareness. We stay connected to developments in the industry that help us be mindful of trends and innovations we need to be considering.

Mallory: I can see them becoming a bigger part of our enterprise software toolkit. Within the Investments division, we’re looking at ways to be more efficient, and there are tons of automation/productivity startups that seemed to have gained a lot of traction since we’ve all started working from home.

Is there an element of startup life and culture that intrigues you?

Mallory: I am drawn to the fact that there are people out there dedicating their lives to making things better, or more efficient, or easier. People who look at the status quo and are like, “Nope.”

Bryan: Another thing is the resource constraint. When you can only do the one most important thing, the discipline to find and focus on that is heightened, and I like that. It’s a risk for sure if you pick the wrong thing.

How do you think InsurTech is making its mark on our industry?

Mallory: I think InsurTech is moving the industry forward the same way FinTech did for banking. I probably know the least about insurance of anyone at AmFam, but I do think about emerging, not-fully-understood risks and how technology can help. Extreme weather events, pandemics, and data breaches are all likely increasing. That gives insurers an opportunity to solve new challenges by leveraging technology. Also, like FinTech, I think there’s also an opportunity to use InsurTech to serve customers who have typically been left out, because with digitization, there are fewer costs to spread. That’s how you end up with usage-based or digital insurance growing like they have.

Bryan: It’s opening a world of possibilities in service of the customer. It’s changing the conversation from “I’ll take what I can get from the provider and hope it works out” to “I have expectations around price, service, options, and customization, and if you can’t meet them, someone will.” If you take that seriously and act on it, you stand to benefit greatly.

Also from American Family Ventures:
Dec. 2020: Looking Back/Looking Forward: Three Questions
Sep. 2020: An Ecosystem of Value at AFV
Aug. 2020: AFV’s Investment Focus: Three Classes of Startups