Episode 1: The Future Landscape of Claims LitigationTranscript
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Wesley Todd [00:06]: This is the Litigation Management podcast. And I’m your host, Wesley Todd, the CEO of CaseGlide. And the Litigation Management pod is where we talk to some of the most influential and successful people in and around the industry surrounding insurance. And I’m going for home runs here, not singles. So we’re talking to folks that have influence on the areas that all the Litigation Management professionals touch, such as C level executives at insurance companies, people running huge Litigation data companies, servicing all lawyers and all types of clients. And other people, you know, looking at the next 5 to 10 years in industries where insurance and Litigation is implicated. I have some unbelievable guests lined up. Today on the Litigation Management pod, I have the pod father himself, Nick Lamparelli. And Nick has a very long resume, but I’ll go through just some of the highlights. Nick is the founder and chief underwriting officer at rethought insurance. And rethought is an architect that specializes in commercial flood. Nick is also he said several podcasts past but he’s also his current podcast project is The Yellow Book Road. And The Yellow Book Road focuses on actionable practical, and Tech founded advice for insurance companies. And Nick, last but not least, Nick is also the virtual mentor for the entire insurance industry. Sorry to break it to you, Nick. But, you know, Nick shares his journey along the way he has access and experience that, 1000s of us don’t. And so we get to watch him, whether it be through Twitter, or through LinkedIn, or through the pod and learn what everybody’s thinking about. So with that, I want to welcome Nick. Welcome to the pod, Nick.
Nick Lamparelli [02:03]: Thank you. That was quite an intro, and Twitter and LinkedIn are like my diary. So you get a glimpse of my frustrations on a day to day basis as I log in my journal.
Wesley Todd [02:19]: Yes, they are more than frustrations, they are really kind of you’ve hit like an epiphany, and you have an insight. Is there any other place we can find? Are those pretty good, right?
Nick Lamparelli [02:30]: Those are the two places i i do blog out of review, which is now the blogging platform of Twitter. So those are linked. So yeah, I know, we get to the end, I can give I can share my info, but Twitter and LinkedIn are like the two areas because where else are you going to find Litigation professionals and insurance professionals? It’s just Instagram.
Wesley Todd [02:56]: Yeah, I think we’re holding off on that for now and do some beach pictures, they know that you’re done in Naples. So I brought Nick in, you know, the audience of this podcast is claims Litigation professionals, other Litigation professionals, I brought Nick in. Because for this industry, I am looking to or for Litigation managers, I’m not looking for a player in the game looking for somebody that’s has tactics on the next, you know, legal argument, I’m looking for people that are more like the commissioner of the game, that people that are making the rules, you know, the people that actually know where it’s headed, and different things that are happening. And that’s no slight on our Litigation Management professionals, but I’m trying to provide as much value as possible. And, you know, I leave the legalese to the lawyers. So Nick is really that type of guy. That’s why we pick Nick for the first podcast. So Nick, I want to start off with an easy question. What’s exciting you right now, what are you working on right now that has you very excited?
Nick Lamparelli [04:06]: So there’s a couple things that I think are really exciting. We’ve just in the last few years, there’s just computer and digital technologies have just exploded in what’s available. So, you know, I probably everyone that’s listening to this as hurt as heard of AI machine learning. But even below that at a like base bone base level. There’s so much data available, and I don’t think we have to wait for AI or Machine Learning to actually kind of like get up to speed. There’s a ton that we can do now. And that’s like the big thing that’s exciting me now is just the availability of all sorts of interesting data via social media. And of course, I’m talking as a property professional. So social media, satellites, satellite imagery, digital imagery, just big data that’s available. You know, just this past week, I started working with some river gauge data. And I was like, Oh my God, where have you been all my life? Like I knew it existed before, but the types of things that you can build and the types of predictions that you can make and the type and how those predictions translate to potential products, solutions for society, I think is the big turn. You know, everyone’s always been talking about how insurance is like this, you know, a big data industry. But the industry itself has really struggled with the data, they got a ton of it. But it’s all over the place, and they don’t know what to do with it. I think we’re going to see this pivot point where we start to figure out what to do with it, we start to make sense of it. Even for companies that have a lot of legacy data, we start to piece things together, we can use that data and really make drastic changes to what an insurance product is, and in a kind of metaphysical sense that’s the exciting part. Like insurance is changing and what it will be in the future, I think is going to be very different than what it is now and how we buy and sell it and how we think about it.
Wesley Todd [06:31]: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to unwrap there, you look at just news that comes out on like a weekly basis now. And then if you do your own homework, there’s really not a lot of news about these things that are going on, first of all, but then there’s enough news to tell you things are changing really fast to your point. These are multi-billion dollar problems, these data problems, and they actually are still problems. Because you are on the front lines as I can too. And as so many of us in the industry can, actually see how they can be fixed and it drives you crazy but it’s also exciting, right?
Nick Lamparelli [07:19]: Yeah, completely. Like, you know, I’m working with some companies that are doing things in or advising some companies that are working in the area of like smart devices. And I feel I was working with a publicity professional, where he was asking me just lay person questions about, you know, what does this mean? And at a high level, like we struggle with that, like we as insurance professionals were immediately stuck with, like, you know, what does this mean for loss costs? How to loss cost translate to rates, then what are premiums? How do we package this all up? What’s the judge gonna say? What’s a court gonna say, what’s the regulator going to say? We’re so stuck in the trees, you can get if you can get up to the forest view. It’s bigger, right? Like, we’re, we had discussions about, you know, hey, these devices can prevent, like, the all those claims in Texas, that just happen, these devices can turn off the water. So the pipe breaks, but you don’t have $100,000 claims, you just have to clean up. That’s a big deal for society, like that’s a big transitional shift in risk management. So in the risk management triangle, you’re thinking of loss prevention, prevent the loss from happening. But if the loss does happen, mitigate the effects of that. And if you can’t mitigate, then transfer it. But as a society and culture, we’ve leaned on that third leg, that third side of the triangle, or third leg of the stool. However, whatever analogy you want to use, we’ve leaned on that in and that’s caused all kinds of issues over generations. And we’re at a point now where it’s like, no, that can be changed, we have enough experience, seeing how other industries have taken data, and made data turned it from a commodity into the value, the value proposition. Insurance can do that. So not just take data and like, turn it into a rate, but take data and just and be able to inform the consumer, like this is what this rate means. This is where this rate came from. This is how you affect the rate and how you can change it going forward, like installing a device or you know, something like that. It’s massively exciting in that insurance won’t be insurance. That’ll be you know, you can use whatever analogy you want, will be a data analyst that happens to sell insurance, whatever, something like that. But that’s where it’s turning.
Wesley Todd [10:05]: Yeah, or, you know, a new phrase is embedded insurance, it’s just embedded on to something else. It’s by your house.
Nick Lamparelli [10:15]: Yeah, it should be embedded. You know, Avi and Cheffi from Coverature constantly say insurance has no right, insurance companies have no right to be a consumer facing brand. And they say that with all sincerity, because nobody really wants to buy the product. So you have no right to be a consumer facing brand. It’s that challenging. So it should be embedded. And but that doesn’t mean that, you can’t have consumer facing elements to it. And I interviewed the co CEOs for loop insurance, a new insurance company, Auto Insurance Company in Texas. And man, they blew my mind. So here’s a data professional on one side, you know, carrying the dough, data professional from MIT, here’s John Henry, you know, self-proclaimed guy, you know, son of immigrants guy from the street marketing profession, who turned himself into an entrepreneur and a venture guy. And together, like, what they’re doing how they’re thinking of insurance, it’s like, if I told them that your product is not insurance, not in the traditional way that people think of it. It is something else, because you get like the creativity of a data professional and a marketing professional, and they’re turning it into something else, it just happens to have an insurance element to it. That’s interesting, really interesting. Like to finally have a consumer facing opportunity with insurance is really interesting, you know, something outside of just selling a warranty on Tech product. That’s not exciting. This is exciting. This is potentially changes the way auto insurance, homeowners insurance, and potentially commercial is thought of but sold. But it’s becomes data and marketing that kind of drive the whole narrative.
Wesley Todd [12:17]: Yep, distribution as well. And yeah, definitely, you know, that’s a big idea that really leads into this other question I wanted to ask you, that’s very relevant. So alright, let’s take all that together, that there it’s embedded, it doesn’t make sense to be sold. Like you said, nobody wants to buy it, you don’t get anything, you get it other than peace of mind and your largest expense, you know, is usually just added on to your mortgage or something like that. And your auto you have to have as well by state law. So it just, there’s not really a corollary for it outside of it, other than they have all the rules and the laws stacked in our favor. By the way, very relevant to Litigation Management professionals, because, as you’ve seen, like, basically every quarter for the last year, these things are breaking down really fast. He builds business models, the old guard and the old regulations. Now they’re just gone away. That’s been happening for years, but it’s happening so much faster. Now. What does, you know, you know, we want to talk about technology, of course, I think that’s a separate, I think you almost get it for technology, want to get yourself kind of in the mind of, okay, let’s play in this world that we’re still in. But step out of that, you know, that’s the five years from now, if things stay the same. What if all the things you’re seeing, all the things that are happening, all these common sense questions that people are asking about why insurance is sold the way it’s sold, and why at what it costs? What are the new insurance companies look like, in 5 years, 10 years?
Nick Lamparelli [14:06]: I think they look a lot like loop insurance. I think they’re founded by more data oriented folks, tech oriented folks, marketing oriented folks. You know, loops not the only one, there’s just thought right in Arizona. So the gentleman’s name escapes me and I apologize if he happens to be listening to this, but
Wesley Todd [14:36]: He’s definitely listening by the way.
Nick Lamparelli [14:38]: He came from outside of insurance. I think he was technologists. So he sold, he did Python, anywhere as the product and sold it. And then he was famous or infamous. He’s the guy that developed the algorithms that calculates the odds of a sports team winning during a game. Like, you know, like third quarter.
Wesley Todd [15:05] : I hate that guy.
Nick Lamparelli [15:06]: No, but I love him too. Like it’s like, okay, 75% chance we’re almost there.
Wesley Todd [15:13]: 28 to 3 ringabel?
Nick Lamparelli [15:14]: Very much. Yes 99.6%, and we won. So there’s another one right there. And then, man, you can tell it’s a Friday afternoon. My mind’s escaping me, but there’s a life insurance company also, I think in, and know in New York, day forward, Aaron Shapiro. And I interviewed him on a podcast, and I called it an ad man steps into insurance marketing guy, another marketing guy coming in to the insurance space, and they’re bringing completely different ideas. So yes, they have to work within the constraints of everything that everyone listening here is aware of, Courts, judges, state regulators, other constraints. So they understand that coming. Well, I can’t say they understand that coming in, but they learn a quick, there are these constraints, and then they still build products around that, that’s what you’re going to see is, in five years, you’re going to see like a hell of a lot of companies like that the incumbents are still going to be here. That’s one of the unique things about insurance that technology is not going to change. You’re not going to see that disruption that you saw in other industries, because the products different, the State Farm has $125 billion of assets, no Tech Company coming in, is going to make that $125 billion of liquid assets, just disappear. It stocks and bonds, like that’s gonna, it’s a big giant pile of money. State Farm will be around for a very long time, they will decide when they want to go out of business. But I think what you’re going to see is more, like State Farm is going to, I always make fun of them. Sorry, they’re like the biggest. So no spied on them, but State Farms is going to struggle to get out of their own way. So I think what you’ll see is that these companies will begin to lease their balance sheet, you know, start working with MGA, start developing outside programs, and just basically grant access to their balance sheet, but allow those entities to function in a digital environment that’s outside of theirs, you know, so basically just report to us, the, you know, here your guidelines, just report to us type of thing, and you can get access to our balance sheet. So, I think there’ll be a lot of native companies, but a ton of activity in this MGA space. Because there’s just no way the big legacy companies are going to be able to compete with these digital players, they’re just too fast thing, you know, they can get stuff online, faster digitally. The advantages that these incumbents have are their size, meaning so you know, financial stability, it also means that, they can underwrite worse, because they have their generating that floats. But that’s only going to get them so far, people want to interact digitally. If you can’t evolve this product better than a digital company, that company could steal that business. So I think it behooves them to just partner with them. You know, like, hey, we can’t build it, but we have a balance sheet. We’ll you know, we can still make money off of this, but we’ll just have someone else run it for us. A lot of that, that’s the way I think five years from now, potentially 1000s of MGA style insurance companies.
Wesley Todd [19:05]: Wow, that’s what’s happened here in Florida a little bit. You know, you have a lot of companies where there’s like a shared balance sheet amongst reinsurers, and that entrepreneur is good for everybody, because there’s a lot more competition. Obviously, in Florida, there’s other challenges. But you’ve probably seen similar things going to happen in California on the property side with maybe even Texas now. And, so I think that that’s good news for the industry because there will be more nodes of innovation and more opportunities. So I liked that perspective. I haven’t heard that perspective before, are they’re going, a little bit off the script here. Are there any outside forces like big trends just in our country, or with millennials are even younger than millennials. Now, are there any things they’re, five years ago, I used to attend a webinar every year about self-driving cars, and there goes auto insurance and things like that. And I mean, I think you raised the right point that none of that stuff is transformational. There are a lot of things, but it’s not going to disrupt, it’s not going to disrupt in the sense that would make for a really fun podcast. But is there something else? Is there another big theme maybe to watch out for there that you could think of that that makes you?
Nick Lamparelli [20:45]: Well, I think what partially feeds into my prediction of what will happen 5 or 10 years from now is the big transitional stuff, which is, you know, whether you call Millennials are not young anymore. So the oldest Millennials are right into their, like, 30s now, you know something like that. But delicious call them young consumers. Listen, this is not the same type of the generational trend is so massive. Think about how common it was in the 20th century, like, generation after generation, cycle after cycle. You were born, you grew up, you went to school, you graduated, you got a job, or you went to college, and then got a job. And you bought a house settle down, like that was common cycle, generation after generation, after generation, after generation. Look, what’s happened just in the past couple decades, everything has changed. So we’re talking about, think about it.
Wesley Todd [22:00]: Home ownership way down, home ownership for 35 way down.
Nick Lamparelli [22:05]: Everything you know, schools the same, but that’s got you, we know that’s gonna change. So there’s going to be some, you know, some situation where the entire theme, or the just the buying patterns, risk patterns, it’s all changing dramatically, it’s different. What the exposure is, well, how it’s moving around. So that if you put your insurance cap on insurance has been predominantly for 100 years, an actuarial based process. So loss experience has driven the rating mechanism. Actuarial methods have driven there, how we reserve and stuff like that, throw all that out, everything’s changed.
Wesley Todd [23:01]: Go ahead.
Nick Lamparelli [23:05]: People aren’t buying homes, or it’s changed how they buy homes, or how frequently they’re buying homes, then the stuff that they’re putting in their homes, has changed their complete pattern of activity what they do, how they do it? How they go on vacation? Like, everything’s changed, its flipped upside down and the insurance industry today has not kept up with that. So you still see homeowner’s policies that cover pewter bowls and fur coats. Stock certificates, who gets a stock certificate?
Wesley Todd [23:41]: You’re right, I forgot about that.
Nick Lamparelli [23:43]: They don’t exist anymore. But it’s still on the isoform. Like that stuff has not kept up. But just you know, from a bigger sense, just as you think about like buyer personas, who is my customer that has changed, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, what they’re buying, what they think about what they buy, whether they care about it, and so when I talked about the data element of it, there’s has to be a transition towards the ability to issue an insurance policy when you have no claims experience, how do you do that?
Wesley Todd [24:20]: When you first started talking about this stuff five years ago, four years ago?
Nick Lamparelli [24:28]: You thought it was crazy.
Wesley Todd [24:29]: It sounded crazy. It sounded interesting. It made sense. But guess what, every month, there’s about $100 million going into this exact thing. You know, whether it be through the investments in the insure techs, these is that are doing something that’s maybe not transformational different, but very much aligned with a different view of the homeowner and the rest, the kins, the hippos.
Nick Lamparelli [25:01]: So that’s a good point, right?
Wesley Todd [25:04]: I would say you are right, there’s hundreds of millions of dollars a month pouring into this. The problem will be solved a lot faster than we probably thought.
Nick Lamparelli [25:16]: I think so. Yeah, and so there’s like from when you say the word transformational, I’m thinking, like society has had transformational change. I don’t think the insurance business model needs to change from a transformational standpoint. I think the foundation of the business models perfectly fine. Like, from a risk transfer mechanism and how we think about risk transfer, though, that fundamental stuff still works and will always work. Even in situations where you need to develop a product, but you don’t have any claims data, how do we do that? Still, at the end of the day, it’s going to generate claims, and that claims will feed back in and kind of inform us. And that’s where I think like Litigation can be like, an extremely important element that I think not a lot of folks talk about. It’s because, you know, ultimately, all policy forms are, they may be created by an entrepreneur, or someone at an insurance company, but it evolves based off of the courts. The courts will decide how this is all going to work out. But maybe we think about this in a different way, and we think of ourselves as like, learning organizations, like, why can’t insurance companies learn? And think and place that as the top mantle like, let’s learn first, let’s have all of these different aspects of our business, whether it be litigation actuarial, general claims, underwriting, research, all of this stuff to feed in and just educate us about our business, our industry, our particular company that doesn’t happen. Nobody does that, but maybe that’s what we should have.
Wesley Todd [27:16]: No, they all come in with, or they all have an existing value prop and positioning and it never changes live or die. I 100% agree, that’s how our business work.
Nick Lamparelli [27:28]: Listen, I throw this out to the mutual’s and the Farm Bureau’s all the time. I’ll get into argument, philosophical arguments about this. But name a mutual, whether it’s a regional or a national mutual. If that mutual, for the most part, if that mutual disappeared, would anyone care? No, they would not. It’s plenty of options that they have. No one was shattered here, except for the employees. Like, that’s the reality on the ground.
Wesley Todd [28:02]: And so we got to do better and better, every better and build off of that. Let me build off of that the Litigation and people don’t care. What we see on the Litigation side, talking about Litigation, people don’t care and learning what we see. And I know you’ve seen is these monster verdicts. No, talk about larger trends do. People want to stick it to the man, and there’s a whole new ballgame that we’re playing and the rules have changed. And if a case goes to trial on injury, that people don’t care who’s at fault anymore. They are going to load the planet with cash. And people talk about, there’s conservative areas that won’t do that, there’s liberal areas that will. Guess what, we all live on Zoom now, and I’m closer connected to you and to people in New York. I have more in common with you. And you’re then people that my neighbor, I have more in common with people on Zoom that the 30 people around me on Zoom, who are all over the country, all over the world, then my neighbor. There is no such thing anymore as a conservative area, a more liberal area you know, for purposes of courts. And the problem is, to your point around learning what happens when you get that $5 million verdict or a $10 million verdict? Are you gonna adjust all your reserves or 5 or 10 million and put up to close sign on the front door? I mean, so there definitely is, the learning component here is crucial. And if you don’t do that, these are not that good businesses anymore, anybody insuring bodily injury, and Commercial Auto is the main one, but these are getting out of control, and it’s reflective of how our industry feels. And I think it is one of those types of things that can transform the market. And it just underlies the whole model, and it makes you rethink the entire model. I mean, so you’re kind of just, whatever the same thing that we’re seeing on the front lines.
Nick Lamparelli [30:32]: So, you know, I think I like you’re saying, then we’d like you to put up the close sign, we’re not open. Like, is that what we’re gonna do? Is that how we do things like, Oh, we just got this. I don’t know, to me, just seems like, there’s so much information out there. And you’re going to have bad losses, that’s why we’re in this field. Like, my job is to pay claims. My bigger job is to figure out what the claims are going to be and work backwards to figure out how I’m supposed to get paid for those claims. It’s no different in liability area, no different. You’re gonna have big settlements, your job is to work backwards and kind of figure out how this is all going to work and there’s I think, we have enough tools to be able to execute on that. At the end of the day, there’s like, it comes you know, there’s an alignment of interest for one thing, you know, and then there’s the ability to do proper risk selection, and all of that lot of data there. But even after that, you know, using tools like CaseGlide for instance, like the ability to figure out, like when not to go to court. Like, when do you want not want to go face to face? And using analytics, like at every stage of the business model to really optimize that, that’s what I’m talking about. Like, that’s to me, the ultimate learning company where there’s not, you’re not only making the best decision on the information that’s presented in front of you, but those decisions should feed back into the other elements of your business, whether that be marketing, actuarial underwriting, accounting doesn’t matter. Like, there should be a feedback mechanism on all of those systems. And litigation is just one particular aspect of, it’s a very important one. But it’s you know, I see a lot of hand wringing about the nuclear verdicts and the social inflation, but it’s like, we have tools available to us to keep, you know, try to keep that stuff under control, and that we have mechanisms to kind of deal with the ramifications of that large verdicts. How do we handle business going forward? What do we price for it? And how do we, and I guess more importantly, with more litigated types of businesses, is how do you stay in front of it?
Wesley Todd [33:21]: Yeah.
Nick Lamparelli [33:22]: How can you learn it’s always been a problem with Commercial Auto is that the companies keep raising prices, but they raise prices, like too late, like after the claims come in, it’s like, didn’t have to be that way. There’s plenty of data and information and predictive models that could have helped to forecast what was coming in terms of losses, or what the rates should have been ahead of time. We have all of those tools. We’re not using them, honestly.
Wesley Todd [33:56]: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, this just goes into what unfortunately for the audience is, you know, towards the end of my questions, but you know, you think about what’s the practical advice here? What’s the Monday morning quarterback on these type of things? And I’ll just throw out one and you know, I’d like yours to, you know, the people are, it’s got to be predictive analytics. Because to your point, once the data is in the system, if we do believe that things are moving and changing a little bit too fast, they’re faster than they used to. And we do believe that there might be a larger you know, that severity might be going up. In some of these lines of business, we’re not talking about all of them, but in some of these lines of business, the ones where they go up take a couple years, a lot of times to close and by then you’ve already priced another couple of years or three years of business. So it probably has to be you know, it has to be predictive. What it has to be you know, some of these as you talked about earlier around the individual, or just extra data set, what’s or just you know, this abundant data set. But the problem is, we’re already really behind in, you know, AI sounds good, Machine Learning sounds good. But what does somebody do today, or what are people doing today? What can they do today to make any improvements or even potentially just stop the bleeding?
Nick Lamparelli [35:35]: Yeah, well, I think you kind of hit on one that I probably would have mentioned, if you hadn’t already brought it up.
Wesley Todd [35:42]: So talk to, you know, explain it then.
Nick Lamparelli [35:45]: But it’s, listen, where, who are we? Why are we here? Like the old James Stockdale, vice presidential debate, who am I? Why am I here? Who are we though? Like, what is our purpose?
Wesley Todd [36:02]: We are banks to pay lawyers. We’re banks to pay lawyers. So no. Or were
Nick Lamparelli [36:09]: Or where companies that get people back up on their feet somehow?
Wesley Todd [36:14]: Okay. So maybe that should, maybe paying lawyers shouldn’t be our biggest expense.
Nick Lamparelli [36:21]: You try not to. I interviewed Laura Gregory, who’s a defense lawyer works for the insurance industry, mostly in the New England area. He started off like, I was expecting a full conversation on litigation. She started off hers by saying, you know, her job is to prevent litigation. And I was like, I like that. Like we, you know, how do we do that? And she brought up, you know, things in terms of like arbitration and mediation and things that are coming around there. But it’s like, first figure out what is it that we’re trying to do? And I think, Wes, my biggest beef is, this is not just insurance, this is I think business in general is, we contrary to belief, we are not in business to make money. Like if that’s your primary goal, that’s a really crappy goal. We are in business to solve a major problem. And if we solve it, then we deserve to get paid, that’s how we make money. Like it’s an indirect thing, not a direct thing. Our goal should never be to make money. Our goal should be to solve problems. So decide who are we? And I think we have strayed so far from that. That was one of the arguments I get in when I tell mutual’s like, if you laugh, nobody would shed a tear. They get all upset, like, oh, well, we’re owned by the policyholder, and I’m like, they don’t know that, that’s ridiculous. They don’t know that policyholder has some kind of ownership over the insurance company. They don’t care. And so it’s funny, because that’s the truth. The policy policyholder does own that, but the Insurance Committee doesn’t treat them that way. And they don’t think they have a stake in it. And maybe that’s the bigger problem. Now, of course, I’m coming from a property angle instead of a liability, one. But even in the casualty areas, like who are we? Like, what’s the foundational thing that we’re trying to do here? And then what are all of the tools that are available? And, you know, my interview with Laura, I think you know, she said an apology can go a long ways. Like, there are a lot of ways to mitigate the effects of like nuclear verdicts and stuff like that, there’s a lot of things the insurance company can do to mitigate that, and a lot of times they do the wrong things, because they’re so focused on the bottom line element of it, that they forget that there’s a human being on the other side, and small nuance things can go a long way that’s we haven’t even including technology in that but you know, it does matter. Like who’s the attorney on the other side, what’s their reputation? What’s their record on all of that? Adding that predictive modeling like to make sound decisions with the human piece of it on like, what is it that we’re trying to do and then feeding all of that feedback, positive and negative back into the system so that he it evolves they get smarter and smarter to me, that’s where the general direction we as an industry need to go.
Wesley Todd [39:40]: Okay, well, let’s end it with this. And then I’m going to close Nick, there’s been billions of dollars pumped into this industry in the past year, literally directly into companies that barely have four walls put up but have this well, the I think they want to make a lot of money too, but they want to, but they realize that they’re gonna have to do it completely differently than the incumbents. So will we get there soon?
Nick Lamparelli [40:10]: Get where, get to, to make money?
Wesley Todd [40:13]: Get to this advanced state where the technology is going to drive down costs for the policyholder, drive down litigation and make this, bring this into, bring this industry into the 21st century across the board and every facet. I mean, if $2 billion, or 5 billion, whatever it’s been, if it just got dumped into here, do you think that that’s going to be what it takes to the next stage?
Nick Lamparelli [40:49]: I don’t know. If you put a gun to my head…
Wesley Todd [40:55]: The gun to your head?
Nick Lamparelli [40:57]: Gun to my head, current funding with the current cast of characters, I would say not this cast of characters…
Wesley Todd [41:05]: Fascinated
Nick Lamparelli [41:06]: Probably the next wave, we have to learn from the mistakes this wave makes. But this wave will survive a lot of them well, we’ll survive.
Wesley Todd [41:16]: Yeah, yeah.
Nick Lamparelli [41:18]: You know, but I think it’ll be the next wave that creates that foundation that gets to this utopia of insurance that I’m kind of discussing.
Wesley Todd [41:29]: Well, you were right, five years ago, you’re probably going to be right now.
Nick Lamparelli [41:34]: I am wrong often.
Wesley Todd [41:35]: Yeah. Well, we’ll only talk about when you’re right, so you don’t worry about it, on the Litigation Management podcast.
Nick Lamparelli [41:42]: I wish my wife would follow suit.
Wesley Todd [41:45]: Yeah, right. I will have her on next. Well, I really appreciate the insights. Like I said, these are the types of things you know, we’re not trying to talk to the founding partner of a law firm, that’s five years from retirement or Chief Claims Officer, it’s five years from retirement, they don’t care where it’s headed. But if you are in you know, like this in the insurance nerds types groups, or you’re one of the type of people that are just starting your career on Claims Litigation, or as an attorney, which you can’t get away from insurance, if you are, these are the things you have to know because these things are happening and they will fundamentally change. I mean, there’s you know, there will fundamentally change the demand for a Claims Litigation or Legal Professional. So your perspective on this stuff, super valuable. And hopefully it sends people down a path of going and following you and learning about all these things themselves because they will be completely different. Whether it’s five or 10 years, it will be completely different. We all have plenty of years ahead of us so we better figured out quick. So that in the first I’m going to call that a success, the first Litigation Management podcast I want to thank you Nick for once again, not just sharing your journey but also bringing in all of the outside knowledge from these to all the pieces that surround litigation to this audience, which is gonna be 1000s of claims litigation professionals. So thank you so much for your time today.
Nick Lamparelli [43:23]: You’re welcome and if anyone wants to find me, Twitter and LinkedIn or the best, Nick Lamparelli on LinkedIn it’ll, I think there are a couple of us so I’m the uglier.
Wesley Todd [43:38]: @Nick_Lamparelli right, that Nick Lamparelli at it.
Nick Lamparelli [43:40]: And Twitter it would be as, @Nick_Lamparelli actually have two, I have on there but @Nick_Lamparelli where I’ve, that’s where you’ll get my diatribes.
Wesley Todd [43:55]: And where can we follow your new podcasts?
Nick Lamparelli [43:59]: The podcast is “The Yellow Book Road” podcast, and shame on me for not remembering the name, I’m hosting it on Brian fall trucks site but you can find it. It’s “The Yellow Book Road” podcast. You can find it on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher and YouTube, just type in “The Yellow Book Road” podcast.
Wesley Todd [44:23]: All right, well, there you have it. Nick Lamparelli on the first episode of the Litigation Management podcast. Thanks so much, Nick.
Nick Lamparelli [44:30]: Thanks, Wes.