October 10, 2025 | 13:17
Dani: Welcome to Trust Talks, an Insurtech Insights podcast, hosted by Clearspeed. I'm your host, Dani Ng-See Quan. With these conversations, we're exploring the notion of trust as a competitive advantage. What are the barriers to greater efficiency, profitability and consumer loyalty. And how does all of that ladder back to building trust? We have Richard Wolff, managing director of casualty claims at Markel with us today. He's also a recovering lawyer. Richard, thanks for joining us.
Richard: Thanks for having me.
Really looking forward to our conversation today.
Richard: As am I.
Dani: So I'm gonna get into it. Insurance for profit industry. You know, where do you see money being left on the table from your perspective?
Richard: So I think as an industry we've not necessarily been cooperative enough competitive but not cooperatives so when we're talking about what we can do to improve business what we could improve improved consumer satisfaction I think we need to be cooperatively competitive in a way that yes we're competing for business on the front end but on the back end in claims we're all kind of in the same boat we need to do a better job of growing in the same direction sp I think that prevents us as an industry from combating the fraud piece. I think it prevents us from effectively tackling and combating social inflation and nuclear verdicts, so I think that competitive cooperation is something I think as an industry we can do better.
Dani: What does that look like, competitive cooperation?
Richard: So for me, in my role at Markel, it's the lawyers who represent our insurance working together. The plaintiff's bar is very organized, very cooperative, they share information, and historically, the defense side of that has not done it. If you know a person who maybe examined a witness, you can get a transcript, but there isn't a central repository by both the plaintiff's share. And so there is an ongoing effort in New York and kind of came out of, if you've seen the New York RICO, on that tradesman kind of kicked off, there has been cooperative effort by a great number of the lawyers to work together to identify red flags and things that can be used effectively to combat fraud. And you know, that group of lawyers, They're looking at Standing up a group in Florida and in Texas and in California. So the goal is that we work on the defense side on the insurance side to please combat fraud through Cooperation.
Dani: Yes. I want to dig into the fraud piece a little bit. There's an impact of course on the insurer, but also on the consumer. Can you dig into that a little bit for us and what you've seen?
Richard: Yeah, so my recovering lawyer for 15 years, I defended insurance for insurers in New York. In the five boroughs, a lot of construction is going on. And that New York Civil Rico is surrounding the construction. And because of the nuclear verdicts that came out of that for 20 years and I wouldn't bore this audience with New York labor law. It's probably a topic for this conversation. But the settlements in the verdict became astronomical. What we're seeing now is almost like organized crime. There's All of the claimants are living in the same apartment building in the bronx So the carriers and we're we're We're encouraging our lawyers to play nice in the sandbox with the other lawyers, whether it's Markel lawyers or any other carriers lawyers, if you have something that can help the defense of one of these claims, we should be sharing it as an ink. We started to see, and I think the lawyers that are engaged in this have started to see the numbers come down effectively.
Dan: And so I guess if we think about, you know, there is a, especially if there's an organized aspect to it that the fraud piece ultimately for genuine consumers, you know, they get impacted by that is rates have to go up to kind of make up the difference there. So, you know, what does that do to our system?
Richard: Well, I think there's a cost to doing business. Right, insurance is a big part of that insurance. Insurance protects the public. In every context, right? In the property context, in the casualty context, it's designed to protect the consumer. And I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't be fair and reasonable compensation for injured people. Right? The system is designed for that. and I fully supported and encouraged it. It's where we've seemed to have gone off the rails is where a certain population has started to take significant advantage of that. And now, so now the cost to a car, to a construction company to get insurance has risen. Which means the cost for them to quote the business bill a property owner or her owner has to increase exponentially. Because let's face it. Insurance is a business and I think you know, I think I think everybody understands that right? So I and I think the common consumer on You know for the people in New York all over all over YouTube and TV About maybe six or eight weeks ago. There was a video of a fraudulent car accident that hit all over. It was, I think it made the New York Post. It was a group of people who just stopped their car, got out, and said, "I'm perfect." And the car that they claimed hit them had a dash cam that captured the whole thing. And it never happened. Right? I would hope that the responsible person in, in our community says, thats wrong right
Dani: you would hope you would hope that and also you know that the majority of the genuine consumers then have to kind of deal with the implications from the bad acting few in that case and you would hope but you know we do see social inflation hardening economy all that stuff there's more opportunistic fraud because people maybe who wouldn't typically make that decision. Now they're in hard times. "Oh, can I just exaggerate this a little bit because I need a little bit more?" So again, you find folks in that gray area maybe more than we would have or would want to. And then from your perspective and thinking about claims, you want to build the trust with the consumer, but then you've got to also trust that consumer and what is submitting to you to your point like that's exactly what we're talking about. And if there was a way to trust that information more or more quickly like what would the impact be then on business, on processes, on costs?
Richard: I think that's a very pertinent question for where we're sitting today Dani. In this technology I just walk around a little bit and the AI capability that I've seen just in a little bit of time is fascinating to me. I am not a technology person, but if one of the folks I spoke to was, you know, their AI has a fraud detection aspect to it. It can differentiate between, you know, acute damage in a property and old wear and tear. You know, so, you know, well, I'm making a property claim. I'm gonna get my whole house repaired, not just the part that broke, right? And so I think when we're in this technology environment, all of that brings efficiency to the claim process, right? You know, as much as I don't like to admit that computers are faster than humans, we all know they are.And so if we can streamline and expedite the processed piece of it. It speeds up the client, doesn't take, doesn't take and I don't believe it should take the human element out of it. But I think AI and technology can do the things that slow down humans. That can be, you know, adequately replaced. It gives the human aspect more time to do the customer experience piece and to do the analytical piece and the human piece that sometimes the AI can't touch.
Dani: Absolutely, and I think that's likely a question many folks are grappling with, like what is the right blend of tech and human? And you know, there's that underlying, well, is tech or AI gonna replace my job? Absolutely not, like working together, if anything to more empower the person. And you and I were talking just before this that there is something about speaking to a human and the empathy that's required in a very vulnerable situation that can't be replicated by tech.
Richard: 100%, I think that as an industry, and I think most industries are much challenged by this. There has to be a proper balance between the technology and the AI and the human connection? Right? Because when it gets hard, well, when you don't understand the decision that's being presented to you by whatever business you're dealing with, you want to talk to someone. You don't want the bot telling you yet. So you don't want to sit in the queue for hours. You don't want to pay, leave your number and we'll call you back. You don't want that because You're exposed if it's if it's a you know, it's your home that or your car that can damage you need that to live, so I think that that What I hope is damaged continues to think about the role the significant role that people playing right and you know I say to my team all the time Right is much easier to to explain your position if you actually talk to somebody Then if you just keep emailing me and you know my kids laugh if they listen to this you know they would say to me I spoke to someone so and I'd say well I'm sitting on the couch with you I haven't heard any sound well and they do the thumbs and I say that's not speaking to somebody. You get so much out of actually talking to someone and I think when we're talking about the customer experience, we always have to be aware that the people that need that, that people that are in the insurance claims process, are damaged somehow. And they want to be talked to and they want to be treated like a human being.
Dani: Absolutely. There's nothing really that replaces that connection and also thinking about different types of customers today it's about meeting them where they are, you know and and in the way that they need so I'm with you there. so to with considering everything we've talked about to to wrap us up Rich if there's something you would say to leaders listening either that they should be doing now some kind of takeaway something you want to core to other industry leaders, what might that be?
Richard: I think Dani, it goes back to my last point. I think as my workforce on my team gets younger, obviously, right? And they're so technology-based and they're so used to communicating through an email. I think keeping a focus on people, old -fashioned traditional minus communication and impressing on folks that drives a successful customer experience. It's the people -to -people piece that Someone will walk away from and in some crazy survey will say I had a great experience Because Dani picked up the phone and talked to me.
Dani: Right. Yeah. I love that. And in this vein, having this conversation with you directly, like, there's nothing like it. I really appreciate it.
Richard: No, thank you. I enjoyed it very much.
Dani: Thank you so much for being here, Rich.