Episode 80: Full Transcript

[00:00:00.00] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:00:04.67] REID HOLZWORTH: Welcome to The Insurance Technology Podcast. I'm your host, Reid Holdsworth. Joining me today is Adam Denninger. Adam is the Global Insurance Lead-- I'm sorry, let me say that again because I'm terrible at these, these big giant titles or these big giant--
[00:00:21.20] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:00:21.95] ADAM DENNGINGER: It is a horrible title. Want me to say it for you? I can say it for you.
[00:00:24.48] REID HOLZWORTH: No. No, I'm doing this. I'm doing this.
[00:00:26.41] ADAM DENNGINGER: OK, all right. [CHUCKLES]
[00:00:27.93] REID HOLZWORTH: Global Industry Lead for Insurance at Capgemini.
[00:00:33.41] ADAM DENNGINGER: There you go. Keep it up.
[00:00:33.86] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS] Adam, welcome. Welcome. Tell us about the title.
[00:00:35.54] ADAM DENNGINGER: Thank you.
[00:00:36.65] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:00:36.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Thank you. [LAUGHS] Yeah, tell us about the title. They try to make it so long that nobody could say it in a single, coherent sentence. That's basically what the title is designed to do. Now, briefly, Capgemini has a bunch of priority industries, nine of them, to be exact, and insurance happens to be one of them. And so my job is to make sure that I actually keep track of the strategy and the products and the overall performance of Capgemini's business in insurance around the globe. So that's it. That's it.
[00:01:07.02] REID HOLZWORTH: I've heard of this Capgemini company, that they're a decent-sized shop, so we're going to really get into that as we go on.
[00:01:14.70] ADAM DENNGINGER: [LAUGHS]
[00:01:15.78] REID HOLZWORTH: But hey, first, before we get into what you're doing and how you're affecting the global economy of insurance at Capgemini right now-- [LAUGHS] I'm just kidding. We'd love to learn more about you, Adam. Like, tell the listeners-- tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up? What did your parents do? What did you want to be when you grew up? Let's just-- let's get going.
[00:01:38.55] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, the classic "who do you want to be when you grow up?", right? So I actually wanted to be a fighter jet pilot in the US Air Force when I was growing up.
[00:01:47.52] REID HOLZWORTH: That's bad ass.
[00:01:48.83] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, that was my goal. That was my goal. But I was, unfortunately-- let's just say I ran out of inspiration in high school. I think a lot of people run out of inspiration in high school for a period of time. You need to be inspired to make it into the US Air Force as a pilot. So--
[00:02:07.30] REID HOLZWORTH: Ah. Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
[00:02:08.22] ADAM DENNGINGER: -- I ran out of-- maybe "inspiration" isn't the right word. Motivation. I ran out of motivation going through high school. But yeah, I ended up forfeiting that particular dream.
[00:02:19.48] But yeah, no, where did I grow up? I grew up in New England. I've been in New England my entire life. My family is a lot like Modern Family, the TV show. So you could watch that, and you can think of me, or not, whatever you want to do. So yeah, Modern Family would definitely be my upbringing-- very unusual but actually now normal, I think, for most people.
[00:02:49.35] If I think about who I was and what I was focused on as a kid growing up, I mean, I was all about sports, I was all about reading history, World War II. I admit it. My favorite author in high school was Jane Austen.
[00:03:03.86] REID HOLZWORTH: Wow.
[00:03:04.11] ADAM DENNGINGER: Probably not something that most people say to you, but it's completely true for me. Yeah, if-- trying to picture who your favorite band would have been, for example, in high school. Just looking at the beard--
[00:03:16.45] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHING]
[00:03:17.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: --I'm going with ZZ Top or--
[00:03:20.55] REID HOLZWORTH: ZZ Top? Come On, man, I don't have that kind of beard.
[00:03:22.99] [LAUGHTER]
[00:03:27.57] ADAM DENNGINGER: For me, it was-- again, I can't believe I'm going to admit this in public, but it was Def Leppard. So there you go.
[00:03:32.82] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, Def Lepp-- all right, yeah, totally.
[00:03:36.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: And also, that also sort of puts an age on me, I suppose. Let me see. Yeah, that's a little bit about me.
[00:03:44.35] REID HOLZWORTH: Your first car. What was your first car? What's your-- well, actually, a better question, what was your car in high school?
[00:03:49.98] ADAM DENNGINGER: Car in high school. I had a Ford Escort. And I thought it was awesome. And being a teenage boy, like most teenage boys, I think I tested every road near my house to see the maximum speed you could take every corner without sliding off the road.
[00:04:06.61] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:04:07.53] ADAM DENNGINGER: And I thought that was cool at the time, and now all it does is it convinced me that my own son is not getting a car until he's at least 25.
[00:04:14.98] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:04:15.92] ADAM DENNGINGER: Maybe 30. [LAUGHS] I don't know because teenage boys in cars, not a good mix, not a good mix. All right, you didn't tell me, though. Come on, favorite band. You didn't give it to me.
[00:04:28.05] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, man, my favorite band? I don't even know. I listened to so much different stuff in high school. I went-- through most of my life, I listened to a lot of hip-hop. That's what I grew up really listening to,
[00:04:38.64] ADAM DENNGINGER: Ah, OK.
[00:04:39.46] REID HOLZWORTH: --like East Coast, West Coast. But I don't know, some of my favorite people would be Nas and people like that--
[00:04:46.95] ADAM DENNGINGER: All right. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:47.82] REID HOLZWORTH: --Wu-Tang and stuff like that. But I love all the Tupac and all that stuff. I loved all that. But then I went through a phase where I really got into Metallica and Pink Floyd and The Doors and just all of that whole scene, and yeah. And so now I listen to-- I mean, a lot of people say they listen to everything. I really do listen to everything. I think the genre that I listen to the least, I think, would be country music. Not that I dislike it, but it's just-- it's never really been part of my life in that way. But most, most of the time, now I listen to what people call boat music but--
[00:05:32.56] ADAM DENNGINGER: Nice.
[00:05:33.78] REID HOLZWORTH: --dub reggae kind of stuff, just chill island vibe music.
[00:05:39.18] ADAM DENNGINGER: So boat music has distinct from yacht music.
[00:05:43.08] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, I mean, well, there's yacht rock, right?
[00:05:45.91] ADAM DENNGINGER: Definitely, yeah.
[00:05:46.11] REID HOLZWORTH: And so I don't-- it's not like yacht rock is starting to-- it died off a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. I call it more boat music. At least, that's what we call it down here in Keys. [LAUGHS]
[00:05:58.56] ADAM DENNGINGER: Got it. Got it. Got it. [LAUGHS] OK. That works. And it works. It works. So yeah, I don't know that. I don't have nearly as interesting musical palate as you do, so that's all I'm going to say to that. [LAUGHS]
[00:06:13.58] REID HOLZWORTH: And I will say some people that listen to this have probably heard me mention this. But the big thing that I'm actually really getting into is I've been getting into classical music in a major way.
[00:06:24.37] ADAM DENNGINGER: Really?
[00:06:25.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:25.60] ADAM DENNGINGER: Which composer?
[00:06:26.82] REID HOLZWORTH: Well, I like really all of it. But to give you a hint, I've been practicing and learning to play the violin, so--
[00:06:35.84] ADAM DENNGINGER: Wow.
[00:06:36.78] REID HOLZWORTH: --I love really, really amazing violin, specifically classical. So anyways, all of it, man. It's just-- it's so fascinating, and what's cool is I've never learned an instrument in my life. I never learned to read music. I'm learning to read music as well as play the instrument.
[00:06:54.93] By the way, I'm fricking terrible, and I'm already almost a year into this. But I feel that it's connected me differently to music, and to listen to these artists and what they do, I think we take it for granted. I mean, I go-- I'm down here in my house in Key West. Every other bar has live music here. And to be able to do that for someone that hasn't played an instrument, I always kind of took it for granted. I was like, oh, yeah, that sounds kind of good, like, oh, they're all right. You know what I mean? This kind of thing. And I just have such a different appreciation for it now.
[00:07:30.35] ADAM DENNGINGER: I totally agree. So my 10-year-old son comes in and is playing piano all the time. He's actually learning to play an instrument. I never did. And so he's-- I watch him doing it, and then I see him-- he started playing "Moonlight Sonata." Beethoven, right?
[00:07:44.34] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm, yeah.
[00:07:45.01] ADAM DENNGINGER: So that's what he's working on at the moment. And so I listened to that, and that is amazing. But I watched the effort that goes in, and yet, to your point, I had no idea. And I think that applies anywhere, though.
[00:07:53.77] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:07:53.83] ADAM DENNGINGER: I actually love what you just said is that you're doing this now. I have no idea how old you are, but given the musical tastes that you gave me, I can maybe make a guess.
[00:08:02.39] REID HOLZWORTH: I'm 44.
[00:08:03.67] ADAM DENNGINGER: OK, for you to go back, and in your mid-40s, and go after something that's completely new, that's amazing. And I love when people do that. I love it when people do it. Not to push it off as an assurance for a second, but I love seeing people do it at work. So they come in, they don't know anything at all about machine learning. But you know what, the world is changing. They need to catch up. They need to understand. And they go, and they spend their evenings and weekends figuring this stuff out. Takes passion and takes energy.
[00:08:28.55] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:29.50] ADAM DENNGINGER: Takes remapping your brain. That's the same thing with the music thing. I love it. I love seeing people do that. So kudos to you.
[00:08:34.97] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, it's been a ride, and I'm really enjoying it. And so I'm thinking I'm going to keep pushing. And it's-- I will tell you that the violin is very, very, very challenging. It's been--
[00:08:45.50] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yes.
[00:08:45.69] REID HOLZWORTH: --so tough. And well, I think the hardest part for me in learning it is it's really hard to sound good, and it's just not that fun playing it when it sounds like shit. And so I can't wait to be able to play pretty good and really be able to rip through some complicated scales, where I can start to just jam out. That's when I'll really love it.
[00:09:10.33] And I think-- I'm going classical now-- I'll move to electric in the future. But I thought about buying an electric now, but if I do, I will just throw it down. I know how I am, the classical stuff and go right into the electric side. So I'm trying to keep myself at bay for what--
[00:09:26.21] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:09:27.48] ADAM DENNGINGER: I think, put differently, when you're bad at violin, you're really bad at violin.
[00:09:33.07] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:09:34.90] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
[00:09:35.29] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, terrible. All the dogs run out of my house. Everybody was like, can you shut the doors?
[00:09:40.63] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:09:40.87] REID HOLZWORTH: I got to get it down here to Key West, where I'm by myself, where I can just do my thing. [LAUGHS] But the birds all fly away off the trees. [LAUGHS]
[00:09:48.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, and scare away the local wildlife. Oh, yeah, yeah. [LAUGHS]
[00:09:53.25] REID HOLZWORTH: All the fish leave Key West. [INAUDIBLE].
[00:09:55.22] [LAUGHTER]
[00:09:57.90] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's funny. That's funny.
[00:09:59.89] REID HOLZWORTH: But anyways. All right, so well, Adam, all right, so high school-- what sports did you play in high school, primarily sports? Did you go from high school playing sports to college? Like, tell us a little about that.
[00:10:09.91] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, I was. It was soccer. So I was one of the better players in soccer. So it was early days in soccer here in the US when I was doing it. He was like, why aren't you playing football? I'm like, I am playing football, just real football.
[00:10:23.44] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:10:25.72] ADAM DENNGINGER: So soccer and then winter basketball and then spring tennis. It was great. It was great.
[00:10:35.18] REID HOLZWORTH: Baseball?
[00:10:35.38] ADAM DENNGINGER: No baseball for me, not really, but yeah, no. So sports all the way through high school, and then you go into college, and life changes, especially for me anyway. So we didn't have a ton of money, so I was working my way through college. So you're working, you don't really have time for fun stuff. You're there for classes. You're not there to do sports. And it wasn't-- In those days anyway, the whole scholarship structure around sports teams wasn't quite the same that it is today, let's put it that way. And I probably wasn't good enough to get them anyway. So yeah, so for me, all through college, it was work.
[00:11:09.62] Believe it or not, I was the guy who actually had a landscaping company. I actually had a landscaping company, and I used that to pay--
[00:11:15.07] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah?
[00:11:15.20] ADAM DENNGINGER: --for college. Yeah.
[00:11:16.46] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:11:16.67] ADAM DENNGINGER: So it went all the way through--
[00:11:18.38] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE] are doing like retaining walls and [INAUDIBLE].
[00:11:21.44] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE] walls. It's Installing gardens, maintaining gardens, that sort of work. Yeah, Yeah. I wasn't the lawnmower guy. I was the actual--
[00:11:31.16] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah--
[00:11:31.29] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:11:31.41] REID HOLZWORTH: --guy. Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:11:33.18] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So did that all the way through, get out, and have a history degree when I get out of college, when I'm--
[00:11:41.03] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:11:42.38] REID HOLZWORTH: You followed your passion from when you're a child. Like, I'm going to be-- and what was the goal--
[00:11:45.83] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, I'm going follow those World War II books that I still have over here. Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to do exactly what it is that I love. You get out and like, oh my god, you can't get paid to do what you love.
[00:11:56.77] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:11:56.98] ADAM DENNGINGER: So find something else. [LAUGHS] Yeah. So then I actually went back. I got a-- before I fully completed college, I flipped majors right at the end, went over, got myself most of a biochem degree, took that, went to a PhD program, and realized, OK, you can get paid to do something you love. But I just don't happen to love this. I made the wrong bet.
[00:12:19.99] REID HOLZWORTH: Mmm. Hm.
[00:12:21.78] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. So years past, working as a scientist, all that knowledge and experience and work product and whatever, turned it in mental effort and energy and training, took it to, you know what, I'm going to go into financial services. It's what actually interests me. And believe it or not, it does actually interest me. So I'm going to go into financial services, flipped--
[00:12:42.76] REID HOLZWORTH: But when you say you're a scientist, like in school, or you had a job as a scientist, and you're like, yeah--
[00:12:48.19] ADAM DENNGINGER: I was in a PhD program, and I was doing it. Decided I didn't want to do it, but they liked me enough that they asked me to stay and continued doing all the research I was doing.
[00:12:57.81] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, wow.
[00:12:57.93] ADAM DENNGINGER: So I just stayed as effectively a professional biochemist but without the PhD and just worked for four years in the laboratories.
[00:13:07.04] REID HOLZWORTH: Wow.
[00:13:07.82] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[00:13:08.15] REID HOLZWORTH: That's [INAUDIBLE].
[00:13:08.71] ADAM DENNGINGER: So doing crazy stuff, making genetically modified animal models, things that would get me thrown out of most-- well, important medically to solve things like what's the cause of multiple sclerosis, and how do you fix it, that kind of thing, really critical things that impact lots of people's lives. On the other hand, things that challenge you ethically because you're literally working with animals.
[00:13:34.07] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Wow.
[00:13:35.11] ADAM DENNGINGER: Now, that's a really tough-- that's a tough space to be in, and it's something that I wasn't a huge fan of, although I completely respect the people that do it because, oh my god, that's hard and important work.
[00:13:46.98] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:47.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: Anyway, so did that for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do, went back, law degree, MBA.
[00:13:53.21] REID HOLZWORTH: Jeez.
[00:13:53.29] ADAM DENNGINGER: Went into the Hartford, and I've been doing it ever since.
[00:13:56.33] REID HOLZWORTH: You went to work for the Hartford. That was the first one?
[00:13:58.98] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yep.
[00:13:59.79] REID HOLZWORTH: What'd you do at the Hartford? So did they recruit you out of school then?
[00:14:03.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: Actually, yeah, I went there as an intern in my MBA-JD, and they offered me a job, basically, at the end of the internship.
[00:14:13.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, wow. OK.
[00:14:14.13] ADAM DENNGINGER: Just to stay on. Went in as a director, so it was a relatively senior role as a director doing research, actually, and strategy for their [INAUDIBLE].
[00:14:25.48] REID HOLZWORTH: In what way?
[00:14:27.20] ADAM DENNGINGER: In what way? So market research work, so general market research work, working both with agents and with end customers, primary, secondary research, taking that and making strategic recommendations to the Hartford on what to do. Great example, the Hartford at that time had in the middle market business. They had taken their underwriting operations and split them between New Business and Renewal Business. So they put their best underwriters on the New Business, and then, at Renewal, everything would kick over to some guy in a center that was a lot lower cost versus pure operating underwriting design.
[00:15:04.59] REID HOLZWORTH: Yep.
[00:15:05.60] ADAM DENNGINGER: I didn't know any better because I'm new to insurance, so I asked the question, hey, 2,000 agents that I'm surveying this particular month, what do you think of this? They hated it. They absolutely hated it. So it led to a complete-- my recommendation coming out is here's how you have to restructure your underwriting business to actually make your distribution partners happy.
[00:15:23.82] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah, wow, that's cool.
[00:15:25.07] ADAM DENNGINGER: All kinds of personal learnings-- and I'm sure everybody on this who's listening to this will have had similar experiences. All kinds of learnings around, OK, I find something that is completely shocking to the executive team at my company, and I think it's the best information ever, and I take it, and I publish it.
[00:15:40.71] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:15:41.88] ADAM DENNGINGER: And there's a lot of reactions to that, when people are told that their baby is ugly, right? So you got to--
[00:15:48.51] [LAUGHTER]
[00:15:51.39] Yeah, there's better ways to engage with an executive leadership team than what I did in that particular case. But end of the day, it worked out best for the Hartford.
[00:16:01.11] But anyway, yeah, so I ended up straight in insurance, and ever since then, it's been-- for me, anyway, it's been, essentially, one larger role after the next inside of insurance, with people seeing me do something of particular value in a particular place. I move into a new role because they recruit me in, usually. I'm in that role.
[00:16:24.60] Usually, I've been recruited into a role where I know maybe a third of things you need to know to actually be an expert. And then you spend a year working 100 hours a week, terrified that you're a fraud. By the end of the year and a half, you actually know what you're doing, you've added all kinds of value. You've changed all kinds of things, worked like crazy. But then, unfortunately, the next guy comes along and says, wow, I love the way you work.
[00:16:48.40] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:16:48.86] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE] the same thing for me.
[00:16:50.49] [LAUGHTER]
[00:16:55.34] Repeat the cycle. So anyway, so that's my-- that's [AUDIO OUT] pretty much. So I guess, if I think about it, though, one of the threads throughout all of that, as I just think about what it is that I've been doing, one of the threads from the very beginning-- so like I said, the first thing that I was doing when I walked into insurance was essentially looking at core underwriting processes for insurance. I remember still one of the first conversations I had with someone, someone named Deb Fox, who is still a senior executive at the Hartford. She was a huge help to me, actually. But she-- one of the things she said to me essentially was just, look, there's underwriters, actuaries, and there's claims, and if you're not in one of those, you're not in the club.
[00:17:46.54] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm.
[00:17:47.86] ADAM DENNGINGER: Those people are insurance. The rest of it is support. And I found--
[00:17:54.36] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:17:54.48] ADAM DENNGINGER: --that to be really interesting.
[00:17:55.80] REID HOLZWORTH: Underwriters, claims, adjusters, right?
[00:17:59.05] ADAM DENNGINGER: Well, underwriters, actuaries, and the claims function as a whole.
[00:18:04.99] REID HOLZWORTH: Yes, [INAUDIBLE].
[00:18:06.32] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yep, those three groups, so basically, underwriting, pricing, claims.
[00:18:10.44] REID HOLZWORTH: Yup.
[00:18:10.98] ADAM DENNGINGER: Those three groups, that's insurance. They're in the club. They actually run the companies. You step outside that group, you're a support function to those three. And as I've gone through, it doesn't mean that the support functions aren't necessary. If you don't have good technology, you're going to fail, especially in today's day and age.
[00:18:30.65] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah.
[00:18:30.91] ADAM DENNGINGER: You have to have that. If you don't have good operational service, you're going to fail.
[00:18:35.57] REID HOLZWORTH: Yep.
[00:18:36.81] ADAM DENNGINGER: It's-- so these other things are essential. But they're not the people that actually run the company. The people that run the company are those three groups. And as I've gone through insurance, that's actually really stuck with me because it's true. It's true that those groups are the core decision-makers around insurance. And if I just think about it like, why? What is underwriting? Let's go back. So what are the first underwriters actually do in the modern era of insurance? What are the first underwriters actually do?
[00:19:03.83] So it was some captain sitting literally at a bar literally in London at a place called Lloyd's, literally sitting there. Somebody puts a description of a ship, what they're carrying and where they're going and who the crew is on a wall, and literally, you write your name under it because you want to take a percentage of the risk. That is the origin of risk transfer, the way we think about it today. It's literally how it started, right, is doing that?
[00:19:32.72] REID HOLZWORTH: Yep.
[00:19:33.81] ADAM DENNGINGER: And that component of insurance, that piece where it's about how much money do I need to take on a chunk of risk, that's it. That's what insurance is.
[00:19:44.47] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:19:44.72] ADAM DENNGINGER: What you could do with pricing, you could do it through gut feel with underwriters. You do it at scale, with lots and lots of little policies that are flowing through. You can do it on giant policies that are coming through, that are incredibly sophisticated, and take somebody three months to underwrite. There's all kinds of ways and forms and structures of it. End of the day, risk transfer, period, full stop.
[00:20:05.08] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. No, yeah, that's a great way to put it, yep.
[00:20:07.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: And if you can explain that and talk about that and engage on that-- this is sort of the thing that's helped me in my career. If you can understand what's happening there and why they're doing it, then all these other pieces around technology, especially, what you're doing in technology, you can prioritize it much more effectively, and you can speak to the businesspeople much more effectively. It'd just help them actually understand what it is that they need to do and what technology solutions will actually help them and why, in their language. So for me, anyway-- and I've gone on a little bit of a diatribe here.
[00:20:42.57] REID HOLZWORTH: No, it's great.
[00:20:43.02] ADAM DENNGINGER: And I apologize for that.
[00:20:44.13] REID HOLZWORTH: No, no, [INAUDIBLE].
[00:20:47.03] ADAM DENNGINGER: OK, OK, good. Keep going. All right, so for me, anyway, the key to success, especially for a group of people like probably the listeners of this podcast, one of the biggest keys to success-- you all know technology. All of us know pieces of technology. We know a lot about the underlying thinking of technology. But that's a generic horizontal function. The ability to understand the actual concerns and issues and needs of the business folks that we're working with. that is the differentiator, least in my experience, between people that have been successful in underwriting technology solutions versus who haven't been successful in those.
[00:21:30.13] REID HOLZWORTH: That's so true, and that goes back to the stuff that we always talk about on this podcast, about people that don't come from this industry that come in to disrupt this industry but don't really understand the workflows and how it actually all goes down, right?
[00:21:44.72] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[00:21:44.83] REID HOLZWORTH: Like you said, on the business side, not just the tech side. And yeah, and so I totally 100% agree with you on that.
[00:21:54.85] ADAM DENNGINGER: I love seeing the guys coming out of-- not to pick on West Coast technology universities, but coming out of Berkeley or Stanford or wherever, yeah, we're super smart, we can build great UIs, insurance, those guys are a bunch of idiots, we're going to come in, and we're going to put a whole new set of UIs out there and completely disrupt everything.
[00:22:11.85] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
[00:22:14.61] ADAM DENNGINGER: It never works.
[00:22:15.57] REID HOLZWORTH: You and [INAUDIBLE].
[00:22:16.47] ADAM DENNGINGER: It never works.
[00:22:17.25] REID HOLZWORTH: God.
[00:22:17.70] [LAUGHTER]
[00:22:21.74] I've [INAUDIBLE]. I've personally talked to so many of those people, and they just [INAUDIBLE]. Not a lot of them are around still, I'll just say that.
[00:22:30.79] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there are a few that make it. They get it because they're all smart people, so they get it.
[00:22:34.98] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah, of course, and some of them figured it out eventually, no doubt, no doubt. But-- [LAUGHS]
[00:22:39.15] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. But it's just so funny to watch that. So it's-- at the end of the day, I think a lot of insurance is just about understanding what the core of it is and then respecting that. So let's use a-- I use this the other day, and now it's sticking with me. I'm using it all over the place. So it's a little off here, but I'm going to use it anyway. So I don't know if you've seen the Star Trek-- oh my god, the one with Cumberbatch in it. Which one was that? I don't know if you are a Star Trek person or not.
[00:23:13.83] REID HOLZWORTH: No, not [INAUDIBLE].
[00:23:14.00] ADAM DENNGINGER: You don't watch [INAUDIBLE]. You're way too cool to watch Star Trek.
[00:23:16.71] REID HOLZWORTH: Sorry, folks.
[00:23:17.81] ADAM DENNGINGER: [LAUGHS] OK.
[00:23:19.34] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:23:20.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: You're like, yeah, you totally lost me Adam. I've got no idea what you're talking about.
[00:23:24.12] [LAUGHTER]
[00:23:24.91] REID HOLZWORTH: What is [INAUDIBLE] about right now? [LAUGHS] I'm just kidding.
[00:23:28.14] ADAM DENNGINGER: There's just scene in there where one guy is talking to another guy because the second guy lost his job, essentially. And the first guy is basically saying you don't respect the chair because it's a captain's chair. You don't respect the chair, so you don't belong there. You're going to lose that because you don't respect it. And I think that that actually is really important for people who come into this industry, especially technologists that come in from the outside. They don't respect that the people in the industry actually mostly have reasons for what they're doing.
[00:23:59.89] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, 100%, right, totally.
[00:24:01.96] ADAM DENNGINGER: There's a reason here.
[00:24:03.28] REID HOLZWORTH: Good reason. Yeah.
[00:24:04.57] ADAM DENNGINGER: Good reasons, yes. And yeah, maybe you can find a better solution. That's fine. But you got to start off with respecting what it is that they're doing and trying to understand why they do it because if you don't do that, you're going to fail.
[00:24:16.88] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, it's so true. And so it's seems so obvious but missed by so many.
[00:24:22.31] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I totally agree. Yeah, so one of the things that I've been working on lately is around underwriting specifically. So I joined Capgemini a little more than a year ago. And my job at Capgemini essentially is to-- so Capgemini is a giant 350,000-person, 50-country organization, and we basically do technology services in all of those countries across multiple industries. We do all varieties of technology services.
[00:24:56.06] But I lead one of the main industries that we focus on, insurance, and my job essentially is the global strategy, the global results overall, and the products that we bring to market, so the offerings we bring to market. And for us, what that means is we take a bunch of our technology capabilities and bundle them up. Myself and my team bundle those up and turn them into things that solve specific problems for insurance companies that actually meet a need in solving a problem.
[00:25:32.60] And one of the problems we've been looking at a lot lately that we're working on solving and have solutions for is underwriting, needs around underwriting. And what triggered us to really focus on it heavily and prioritize it more is the events over the last two years where-- and tell me if you've seen this or if you haven't seen this, but where you see huge amounts of variation in the business environment around insurance. So things are changing faster than insurance companies can handle.
[00:26:00.37] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, fair. Totally true, yep.
[00:26:02.61] ADAM DENNGINGER: And you get knee-jerk reactions by insurance companies, which they have to because they can't actually change, for example, their pricing models, or they can't actually change their underwriting appetite structures or their system front ends or other things fast enough. So they just take rate, take rate, take rate. If a particular state or geography won't let them take rate or raise prices, they'll either leave, or they'll just make it really, really hard for anybody to make an application for new business.
[00:26:29.79] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, totally. Well, that's why that didn't work. They know why--
[00:26:32.95] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah--
[00:26:33.09] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:26:33.61] ADAM DENNGINGER: [LAUGHS]
[00:26:35.30] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, by the way, I've said this before on the show. That is a very real thing that everybody does.
[00:26:40.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yes.
[00:26:41.18] REID HOLZWORTH: See, I don't know why that tech's not working. I got to call IT.
[00:26:44.45] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, I got to figure it out, and it'll take me no more than 2, 3, 5, maybe 10 months to figure out why that's not working. [LAUGHS] OK, I'll get back to you. Yeah, and so we were looking at this and just thinking about, all right, well-- underwriting, as I just said a moment ago, is one of the three cores of insurance, one of the three things that actually is the center of this entire industry. So how do you help an insurance company be able to react to this stuff faster? It's about speed, about speed of response.
[00:27:21.93] REID HOLZWORTH: 100%.
[00:27:23.29] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, and that's one piece. But as somebody that I was talking to at Liberty Mutual who's a very smart guy that-- I won't use his name because I don't have permission to, but a very smart guy. And he said to me, he said, yeah, sure, it's speed, but it's also accuracy. If you can't do both, just speed by itself doesn't help you.
[00:27:41.96] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:27:42.21] ADAM DENNGINGER: You need both. So what are the things that actually enable for an insurance company in their underwriting, the core of their business? How do you give them speed and accuracy from a technology perspective? What do you actually need to do to achieve that? And the thing is, we went out, and we did research, and we talked to thousands of people, literally, and we pulled all kinds of data together. And the problem is not that the data was bad or the research didn't work. Research were great. We got great answers. Everybody agrees with them. The problem is it told us things we all already know.
[00:28:17.94] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:28:18.27] ADAM DENNGINGER: If I told you, in the data space, if I told you that foundational to data-- I mean-- foundational to data-- foundational to underwriting is data, and if you can't get data in two directions, one directly into underwriting platforms where needed, when needed, and separately off into models and analytics platforms where needed and needed so they can then feed into the underwriting platforms, if you can't do that effectively, consistently fast with new data coming in quickly, being able to add that to the data models, being able to feed that through the pipes, you can't do that effectively, your underwriting is not going to be as good. If I told you that, would you be surprised by that fact?
[00:29:01.54] REID HOLZWORTH: Totally.
[00:29:02.02] ADAM DENNGINGER: No.
[00:29:02.36] REID HOLZWORTH: I mean, yeah, if it--
[00:29:03.34] ADAM DENNGINGER: No, you wouldn't. You would not. Yeah, you'd be like, well, that's kind of obvious because underwriting is based on data. Pricing is based on data. Whoever has the best data and the best models is going to win.
[00:29:14.08] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:15.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: It's obvious. So these are the kinds of things that we found, but it was just confirmed in space. So what was really great about the research for us is that it comes back and what it actually says for us in terms of the message that we bring to customers around this now, around underwriting for insurance, is look, you can have the best underwriters in the world. You can have the best analytics capabilities in the world. If you can't get the right data through to them at the right place, at the right time, where needed, when needed, if you can't add new data elements as they come available, you're going to lose the entire pricing and eligibility war. You're going to lose. You're going to end up having adverse selection all over the place.
[00:30:03.03] And so what you have to do is start. If you want to fix your underwriting or improve your underwriting, make it faster, better, cleaner, more effective, if you want to do that, first, you have to make this investment in something that has no obvious ROI. So the very first thing you have to do is go spend money to fix your data.
[00:30:20.31] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm. Yep.
[00:30:22.40] ADAM DENNGINGER: And you know what, fixing your data includes doing things like better integration structures through companies like Ivans, not to give you a plug or anything, but to give you a plug, right?
[00:30:33.37] REID HOLZWORTH: Yep.
[00:30:33.73] ADAM DENNGINGER: So you need to fix your data so that your data is usable and effective and can easily be changed and modified across a whole set of capabilities. So from an IT guy's perspective-- I'm an IT guy. I'm going in to talk to, you know. I had a finance, a CFO, at my company about why it is that I need to do this investment. Well, the story is really-- it's a two-part story. It's-- I need to fix data first, which is the first part of my investment. Second part of my investment is where I see ROI.
[00:31:09.10] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:10.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: And the ROI will be huge if we do it right, but you have to be willing to live with me on this two-step process. And so, with that kind of conversation that comes out, I think, is really great. So it's something that's really useful. But again, going all the way back to underwriting-- I'm talking a lot.
[00:31:28.32] REID HOLZWORTH: No, [INAUDIBLE].
[00:31:29.79] ADAM DENNGINGER: OK, all right. Going all the way back to underwriting, if I just think about how do carriers be effective at one of the three core pillars of their business, answer's clear. It's get world-class data capabilities first, then you worry about the AI on top of it, then you worry about the machine learning on top of it, then you worry about where to put it. Fix the data first. Then plug it in as needed.
[00:32:04.02] REID HOLZWORTH: By the way, this is super close to me personally within our business because we're very, very, very, very, very close to this, especially with the acquisition that we just made with Planck. And so basically like, so here's how I look at this world. And I've-- this is from talking to a lot of carriers on due diligence of this acquisition that we made and then just buddies in the industry just riffing on this. I totally agree with you. I think that there are so many companies that are popping up that are bringing data sets to carriers that they can't get easily on their own, right?
[00:32:47.41] ADAM DENNGINGER: Exactly.
[00:32:48.10] REID HOLZWORTH: Now, where we're at in that right now in this world is everybody's trying to get the base question set information, think, NAICS and stuff like that, right?
[00:32:59.55] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yep.
[00:32:59.97] REID HOLZWORTH: Like, how can I put in a business name and address and then return all of this stuff about this risk from the ether out there? So first of all, let's properly classify what this business is. Now, I'll tell you, to your point, we have a customer of ours today that we're working on with the deal, with this acquisition we just made. I'm not going to name names. Tier one-- I'll just say tier one-- really smart carrier. Today, on commercial auto business, they write a lot of stuff that they haven't properly classified because, at the end--
[00:33:43.38] ADAM DENNGINGER: Right.
[00:33:43.82] REID HOLZWORTH: --the found that, hey, let's just get the deal done. Let's close the deal, because they're very, very smart. Long term, it'll work out in the end. But the reality is, what's happening is people are putting in that, oh, yeah, it's a pizza delivery truck, when they're delivering hazardous chemicals or something, right?
[00:34:06.44] ADAM DENNGINGER: Right.
[00:34:06.64] REID HOLZWORTH: I mean, that's an extreme example.
[00:34:07.25] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE] depending on the pizza could actually be the same? But I totally get where you're going, absolutely. Had this happened to me personally, where some guy was actually-- it was a food delivery truck. They claimed that it was. And instead, what I got-- which is when I was an underwriter for a while. But it actually was delivering was oil--
[00:34:25.13] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:34:25.66] ADAM DENNGINGER: --delivering oil in people's homes. [LAUGHS]
[00:34:27.82] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:34:28.60] ADAM DENNGINGER: --yeah.
[00:34:29.83] REID HOLZWORTH: And so they now are leveraging like they're talking to us about taking it because we can, with Planck-- I'm not going to get into all of what Plank does or whatever or whatever, but they are-- their business is just this. It is going and finding data about these companies that is very, very hard to find and things that are buried in stuff all out there.
[00:34:53.21] So they're using it to say, hey, wait a second, after the fact because here's the problem, too-- the speed that you mentioned. So a lot of these carriers need that data and that return like sub-20 seconds. And when a lot of people don't realize, like they're like, 20 seconds is a long time, dude, some of these polls take a couple of minutes, sometimes longer, because they're searching so much. It's so much processing, everything that's going on out there.
[00:35:20.42] So because of their workflow, because of their conversion and how it works, they're like, we can't wait. We got to just do it, but then, after the fact, let's really dive in technically, not like we've put humans on in the past and kind of grabbed one because there's just too much for people to look at every single one that comes in. Let's go, and let's leverage technology, to your point, to then scrub it and then pull out the ones that go, wait a second here, this is not what they said it is.
[00:35:53.22] And that impact is, I mean, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in just one additional revenue because it's misclassified, but think about the losses, all of it.
[00:36:06.88] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:06.98] REID HOLZWORTH: And so these are--
[00:36:08.20] ADAM DENNGINGER: You're charging them the wrong premiums. It's all kinds of things, right? So stuff you might have declined that you then actually had a loss on because--
[00:36:15.17] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:36:15.81] ADAM DENNGINGER: --oh, the facts are enormous.
[00:36:17.80] REID HOLZWORTH: But here's my thing on this business. So that business, it's like so-- so right now today, we acquired a company that goes-- that didn't really necessarily focus primarily on the base question set stuff. It's all of the really hard stuff after that.
[00:36:36.68] But what was interesting, as talking to carriers, is carriers are like, yeah, Reid, that's cute, like, that stuff's cool, man, like having all of that stuff to say like, hey, wait a second, this guy said that they don't have a deep fryer, but we found 18 Google Reviews of people that love the fried chicken, stuff like that. Or we analyze the people's Facebook posts that took pictures there. And they're drinking beers, but it says they don't serve alcohol, stuff like that.
[00:37:04.33] And so they're like, that's really great, but right now, what we need is we need that base question set stuff, the NAICS and just some of that base information. And they want it as quickly as possible. And it's becoming a commodity in a way. It's almost like a race to the bottom. And so my view on that business, it's like I think somebody will end up owning that side of the business. There's already a few big players, don't get me wrong, where you can kind of get to your classification pretty quick.
[00:37:33.79] It has to be accurate, and the problem with accuracy is time once again because you can return-- I have buddies in this business-- I'm not going to name names, either, and some of them have been on this podcast-- where they can return stuff very quickly and assess like, we think that this is what this is, but if you really want us to find out and really be much more accurate because a lot of that--
[00:37:54.54] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:37:55.35] REID HOLZWORTH: --it's going to take more time, actual time. And so I feel like the one that is the fastest, most accurate-- this is like there's no such thing as good and cheap, right? But the fastest, the most accurate, and frankly, is pretty good on price-- I think that price isn't the biggest thing, but it'll more and more become a part of the whole thing because, I mean, if you're spending a few bucks on a poll, and thousands and thousands and thousands of polls, it adds up quick.
[00:38:29.37] But anyways, the one that [INAUDIBLE] that, I think, almost owns the market. And then, like you said, and totally exactly what you said, then you start to layer on all the really cool stuff. You expand from that into AI, LM, all of it once you get that. But I think people are still struggling just on the basic stuff--
[00:38:55.10] ADAM DENNGINGER: Totally.
[00:38:55.43] REID HOLZWORTH: --right now.
[00:38:56.19] ADAM DENNGINGER: Completely, they are. This is why I always say you, you got to start by cleaning up the basic data state. I know that everybody wants to go have some brand-new gen AI-driven model that uses cutting-edge data that's from drones and whatever. You know what, you can even check right now your basic app data.
[00:39:13.91] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:39:14.15] ADAM DENNGINGER: Let's start with the basic app data first and get that stuff cleaned up, build on that foundation.
[00:39:20.44] REID HOLZWORTH: Yup.
[00:39:21.32] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[00:39:23.58] REID HOLZWORTH: 100%, and I think that right now, that's where I want to say the money is, but that's not really where I'm going with that. It's like, if you win that, then you earn the right to do the AI on top of it.
[00:39:38.26] ADAM DENNGINGER: Right. So that's on your-- on the technology side, I think there's layers to what you're talking about because, first of all, yeah, there's a few big players already. The cost does add up, especially as you get into more small commercial or mass market [INAUDIBLE]--
[00:39:52.24] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:39:53.16] ADAM DENNGINGER: For hitting those databases a ton, it matters. You actually want a lower-cost provider. So there's always room for lower-cost providers to come in that maybe aren't as rigid, maybe don't cost as much. But then, to me, the larger problem even than which data provider do you pick is the fact that all of them have their own data models.
[00:40:10.39] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:40:10.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: And somehow, you have to integrate to all this junk, and all of it has to come back in and be rational and usable [SNAPS FINGERS] like that inside of your system, which is on yet another data model--
[00:40:19.88] REID HOLZWORTH: That's-- yeah.
[00:40:20.65] ADAM DENNGINGER: --or multiple data models, and somehow, all of that has to work together. And so there's layers, layers of technology opportunity out there in your space, I think, for people to go out and just provide real value that still hasn't truly been met. And then, if I'm--
[00:40:36.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Yep.
[00:40:36.12] ADAM DENNGINGER: --looking at it from the carriers' perspective, it's like, look-- and so let's imagine I'm a chief underwriting officer. I actually was once. And I'm saying, look, my reaction to this conversation you and I are having is, guys, honestly, you're making my head explode. Here's what I care about. I want the freaking data I want. Just get it into my underwriting system so I can use it.
[00:40:54.46] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, mm-hmm.
[00:40:55.77] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's the business.
[00:40:56.09] REID HOLZWORTH: They don't want [INAUDIBLE]. This is where people that are outside the industry-- they don't realize, man. Like, they're not going to go use your tool, especially the bigger ones. No way. [INAUDIBLE]
[00:41:06.34] ADAM DENNGINGER: Actually. Thank you. Yes.
[00:41:09.87] REID HOLZWORTH: 100%. Yeah, that's not a thing, people.
[00:41:14.28] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's completely right.
[00:41:15.20] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE] smaller regionals and stuff like that, where they don't have the bigger systems. There is a place for that, don't get me wrong. But generally speaking, no, hell no, [INAUDIBLE].
[00:41:25.58] ADAM DENNGINGER: No, hell no. It's not going to happen. Yeah. So anyway, so to me-- so there's layers and layers to this conversation. It's incredibly complicated. And if I'm a typical CIO looking at this, I'm like, all right, I can do a quick win over here and slap some UIs that cover up some of the garbage, right, to put the quintessential--
[00:41:43.12] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:41:43.37] ADAM DENNGINGER: --lipstick on the pig? So I can do that over there. Or I can go to my CFO and say I want to spend $50 million to do the cleanup of all the data and the integrations and picking the right vendor partners and do all of that, which, by the way, is going to show absolutely no return on investment until I do additional investments later.
[00:42:03.65] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:42:08.57] ADAM DENNGINGER: Like, I'm new in my job. I'm new CIO. Where am I going?
[00:42:11.81] [LAUGHTER]
[00:42:13.27] [INAUDIBLE]
[00:42:17.47] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, I know, and we come from an older industry, too, where the other higher-ups are like, what are you talking about? This shit's making my head spin. Why would we ever do that? That makes no sense at all.
[00:42:27.30] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. So the key, to me, at this point now is, anyway, to fix-- so if I'm thinking about fixing underwriting-- which, again, as I come back, obviously, it's a theme for my insurance career, making underwriting better. So if I'm thinking about that from a technology side, that, to me, the story really is how to help CIOs be able to have that conversation and make their business partners-- who are not dumb people. They have their own priorities and their own objectives. They're just coming at it from a different lens. How to frame the technology need in a way that really resonates with these business people so they understand why and how? That's it.
[00:43:09.26] If you can do that, then you start to see people making real investments to change their underlying systems, which impacts all of that problem set you and I were just talking about a moment ago. But there are a few carriers, big smart carriers, and I'm going to bet you work with a few of them who are actually doing some of this stuff. So there are--
[00:43:26.20] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm, oh, yeah.
[00:43:26.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:43:27.70] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:29.63] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[00:43:29.95] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, 100%.
[00:43:31.16] ADAM DENNGINGER: Give me the single worst-- obviously, don't name names, but give me the single worst fail you've ever seen on a data implementation.
[00:43:43.89] REID HOLZWORTH: On a data implementation?
[00:43:46.06] ADAM DENNGINGER: Something related to the conversation we were just having, some aspect of what we were just talking about. So an insurance company is trying to do something-- integrations, code accessing data sources.
[00:43:55.25] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh my-- oh!
[00:43:56.70] ADAM DENNGINGER: Give me an example.
[00:43:57.43] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, we see it all the time where--
[00:43:59.85] ADAM DENNGINGER: OK.
[00:43:59.90] REID HOLZWORTH: I mean, in our case, carrier does a bunch of stuff, and everything breaks on the integration to all their distribution-- literally. Like, now they have no digital distribution across all channel and no connectivity.
[00:44:15.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Right.
[00:44:16.21] REID HOLZWORTH: And so the only thing they're getting is phone calls.
[00:44:20.31] ADAM DENNGINGER: Very happy phone calls, by the way.
[00:44:22.25] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, right? Oh, yes.
[00:44:23.39] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yes.
[00:44:23.58] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]. Well, and it's funny, too. I've seen it where, literally, that's happened, and people are like, oh, whoa, shit, we forgot about that. You'll be like-- like, it's just, yeah. I mean, yeah. We-- I-- so yes. [LAUGHS] Not to name names, but.
[00:44:44.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's one of my favorites. I was at a company once where we replaced a system that was inside of an older system, and yep, the data model just wasn't properly aligned. And so, when we turned it on testing, all passed. Everything seemed fine. Turned it all on, it literally shut down the entire new business flow for the whole company for a week.
[00:45:05.63] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, yeah.
[00:45:06.06] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's a tier one.
[00:45:08.14] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, I'll tell you--
[00:45:09.68] ADAM DENNGINGER: If you want to see unhappy business executives, there's some unhappy business executives right there. [LAUGHS]
[00:45:14.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, I was on a call a month ago with a CEO of a pretty large carrier that most people would know because we told them-- they built this bespoke thing, and they said, hey, we're going to go ahead and build this and do this integration on our own. And we told them it's not going to work. Like, that is not going to work. Nobody has ever done that, and here's why it's going to break. It will not work. And sure enough, they were like-- literally gave us the middle finger. Like, we're smarter than you. You guys are a bunch of clowns. Fuck off.
[00:45:48.26] And literally, what happened is the whole thing broke. It did break 100%. And what a project that-- it's literally, I don't know, maybe a six-month project for us to do. And literally, they're like, oh my god, you guys were 100% right. We can't revert back, so we need you to do this now. And I'm like-- and it was one of those things because I'll be honest, they were kind of assholes to my team, where it's like-- part of me was kind of like, dude, screw you guys. You were such assholes through this whole process.
[00:46:29.28] But at the end of the day, dude, end users, agencies, they were down, and this is a long timeline to get it back up because these guys could not revert back. Like, it was fucked. And so what do we have to do? Dude, I had to rally all my troops. We had to pull people off of projects and stuff we're working on, and the whole team--
[00:46:47.77] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, a kind of stormtroopers.
[00:46:48.44] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]
[00:46:48.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: I got it, yup.
[00:46:49.70] REID HOLZWORTH: I mean, and it's not about the money or all that. It's like it's up and didn't take six months. I mean, dude, we got it done in no time. But I mean, it was a heavy lift. And so, to your point, yeah, man, we see that stuff all the time, dude, and people just don't think about it. And this stuff's complicated, and for the CIOs, too. The CEO called me because that CIO was the one, and he's like, Reid, tell me the real deal. He's an old-school guy. And I told him, and he's like, ugh! I don't know. That guy's probably going to get fired, for real. And it's so--
[00:47:24.32] ADAM DENNGINGER: You never want to see that.
[00:47:24.76] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE] is hard.
[00:47:26.09] ADAM DENNGINGER: But you do understand how people end up there, right? Understand how people end up there because what happens a lot of times, I see anyway, is-- I'm not saying this is us because I don't think either you or I would go in and tell somebody something that wasn't true. But a lot of times, you'll see companies go in and tell CIOs, tell CTOs a ton of shit. Pardon my language. It's not true. It's, at best, misleading. And so they'll go in and do that. CIOs try it, believe it. Whole thing fails, blows up. CIO gets fired. Everybody sees it. They no longer trust or believe in the solution providers anymore. They just don't believe us.
[00:48:05.76] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, so true.
[00:48:07.70] ADAM DENNGINGER: And so, then, when somebody like you comes in and says, here's how this works and why it's going to work and why it's not going to work, the problem is it's not about you at that point anymore. They're reacting to the person before that screwed them.
[00:48:22.21] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, so true, totally.
[00:48:26.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, so it's tough, and so it's like, how do you actually help people notice there's another big problem? How do you-- because there's a lot of-- let's put it this way. There's a lot of very good marketing that happens out there in the technology space for insurance. [LAUGHS]
[00:48:40.46] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
[00:48:43.15] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[00:48:44.12] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. I mean, I would just say generally speaking. I was a partner at Salesforce for a long time. I watched that whole ride. And even at that level, there's really, really good marketing out there about what some of these things can and can't do, at least when they're going out to market. I mean, not to say they don't get there eventually, but [INAUDIBLE], sometimes, it's, yeah, a little bit rosy. [LAUGHS]
[00:49:12.50] ADAM DENNGINGER: When you get to like a Salesforce-- now, everybody knows what Salesforce can and can't do. And there's the right people that call it Salesforce who will always tell you the absolute truth. So there's great people there, and there's networks, and there's all the support. When there's somebody that's like a vendor you've never heard of before, and they're coming in and saying, if we touch your IT land, it'll turn into a bed of roses and everything else, probably a good time to walk away.
[00:49:39.62] [LAUGHTER]
[00:49:40.91] It's probably a good time. And the other thing is if your own internal IT team is saying the same thing-- Oh, none of these guys in the market have any idea what the hell they're talking about. We can do it better.
[00:49:56.79] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, right? No. Red flag big time.
[00:50:00.52] ADAM DENNGINGER: Red flag, yeah.
[00:50:01.58] REID HOLZWORTH: Big time. Or like--
[00:50:01.91] ADAM DENNGINGER: And sometimes, they can.
[00:50:04.48] REID HOLZWORTH: Or like, I don't know, when my team told that company, nobody's ever done that before. People have tried, but it didn't work. It's not going to work, and the risk is not worth the reward here.
[00:50:14.85] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[00:50:15.08] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS] Nope.
[00:50:18.75] ADAM DENNGINGER: Nope. And I understand your reaction, though. You were pretty passionate there about your reaction. I completely get it all, and I would say you get that, especially this brings me [INAUDIBLE] actually on underwriting and just changes in carriers in general, but underwriting in particular.
[00:50:41.81] It's about the people at the end of the day. So part of the research that we did came back, and we're talking about underwriter experience, underwriter engagement in modern tools, how underwriters change and how the processes change and how people change with the processes, et cetera, et cetera, organizational change management. And there's great data piece there that's most underwriters and underwriting executives believe that AI and ML-- again, data-powered analytics tools. You have to have the data for it. But most of them believe that those things are critical to underwriting success. That's critical.
[00:51:25.04] Most underwriters don't actually use the output from their AI or ML tools in the underwriting process, even though they're given it. And then you ask them why, and they come back with two answers. It's-- again, it's so human and so obvious, but so human-- too complicated, and I don't understand it. So if I can't explain it to my broker, not going to use it. Number one.
[00:51:51.32] Number two, I just don't trust that stuff. It's not dependable. I don't trust it. It's not right. I don't know.
[00:51:56.59] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:51:57.62] ADAM DENNGINGER: And those are the two answers we get. Human, right? You're human. We're all humans. We're people. And you're getting something that's new and complex, and it's different. And you know what, you've done underwriting a certain way for 20 years. You can look in an account, and without even knowing why, you know whether it's a good risk or a bad risk. And now somebody is handing you some machine that's giving you a score that maybe sometimes agrees with you and sometimes a little different. And you're supposed to believe the machine. No, screw that.
[00:52:25.28] REID HOLZWORTH: Right.
[00:52:25.64] ADAM DENNGINGER: I know how to underwrite. I don't know what the hell the eggheads in the back room calculated. But I know how to do this, and I know what the decision is here. I'm going to follow my gut.
[00:52:34.38] REID HOLZWORTH: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:35.48] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's a reaction. Now, if you're going to make a move to actually-- again, you could give all the AI, gen AI, modern new analytics tools based on unstructured data. Let's put all that out there. If the underwriters don't use it, it was all a waste of time and money, every last bit of it. Waste of time. You have to actually get the people to go with you. If you don't--
[00:53:00.81] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:53:01.02] ADAM DENNGINGER: --get them to buy in, forget it. Don't waste your time.
[00:53:04.53] REID HOLZWORTH: Easier said than done, man. I mean, that's the biggest problem, I would say, in our industry.
[00:53:10.94] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. I totally agree.
[00:53:12.95] REID HOLZWORTH: It's tough, I mean, because this stuff-- there is real stuff out there that can help in this exact example, but now it's adoption. I mean, once again, it's tough. We are very slow as an industry to adopt stuff, so yeah, sucks. Actually, that brings me to a question. Here's a question for you. If you could fix one thing in insurance, what would you fix?
[00:53:43.47] ADAM DENNGINGER: Today, right now, the one thing that I would focus on in this exact moment is the ability to have a customer-centric user experience. That's for all that I've been talking about underwriting this whole time as a core. For me, the piece that people interact with, or customers interact with, and the people that in the piece that enables underwriters or claims handlers to be effective, like doing multiproduct underwriting, doing whole account claims management, et cetera, et cetera, all of that starts from customer-centric data that's presented in UX that people can actually interpret and understand and use.
[00:54:21.61] So where do I start? Or even an agent. An agent wants to go sell some of your products to a customer. But imagine that you could actually see all the other products the customer has. Not everybody can do this still. But let's imagine you can actually see the other things and you could actually figure out what the other pieces are that you might want to market. The ability to cross-sell, the ability to upsell, all of this stuff is dependent on having some sort of a agent or customer or internal employee UI set that's built on a customer-centric data model.
[00:54:59.13] I think, once we enable people to do, for example, cross-product underwriting, cross-risk underwriting, cross-whole account or case management for claims, the P&C space, agents being able to have a better idea across the world of information around a particular client, once we actually give people the ability to do those things, you'll see an absolute explosion in competitive behavior and growth in terms of people's ability, one, to sell more insurance but, two, to actually get the right insurance at the right price to the right people. And I think it'll change so much. But that one is a very long ways away because it's part of that whole data model transformation we were talking about before.
[00:55:42.46] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. I guess what I'm interpreting, it's kind of like the golden record. Is that what you're saying?
[00:55:47.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Creating golden record, but the golden record, not around like your homeowner policy. It's a golden record around the customer.
[00:55:56.68] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah no, totally, 100%.
[00:55:58.25] ADAM DENNGINGER: And there's-- yeah.
[00:55:59.02] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:00.55] ADAM DENNGINGER: And so, if you can do that and then actually make that into usable decision-oriented data or options that face appropriate personas across the sort of insurance ecosystem, ta-da.
[00:56:16.54] REID HOLZWORTH: It's tough, man, because I've sat in board meetings about this topic specifically with-- I've sit in rooms with carriers and agencies in a room, and it's interesting. Everybody's mixed on it. Some, like, oh, hell yeah, I would do that because this is all the positive things that would do for us in our business and for the industry. The other side is like, yeah, but I don't really want to share that with others. I don't want other people being able to access that because that makes it a lot easier for someone else to come in and take the business away from me.
[00:56:50.97] ADAM DENNGINGER: It does. It does. So what it does as it is right now is it protects people who are a little less competitive in some.
[00:56:59.18] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yeah, no-- yeah, that's right. I know, but they're still going to push back. [LAUGHS]
[00:57:05.57] ADAM DENNGINGER: Oh, totally. Of course, they are because it protects them [LAUGHS] in some way, shape, or form. But to me, again, that's that, yes, what's the one thing I would change? That's the one thing I would change. But of course, I mean, that's King for a-- well, it'd probably take me a couple of years to get that one. So King for a couple of years, that's the one I would focus on.
[00:57:22.47] REID HOLZWORTH: All right, next question.
[00:57:23.50] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE] survey.
[00:57:25.10] REID HOLZWORTH: What technology do you see having the greatest impact in insurance over the next few years?
[00:57:36.74] ADAM DENNGINGER: Not gen AI.
[00:57:39.15] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS] I mean, that's the easiest answer.
[00:57:42.91] [LAUGHTER]
[00:57:44.93] But I loved how you said "not" because I don't disagree with what you're saying. Go on. Please, please go on. [LAUGHS]
[00:57:51.71] ADAM DENNGINGER: So I think, honestly, the single biggest thing that's going to change people's lives and insurance movement is really living into movement to cloud because in the movement to cloud, it forces them to clean up all the legacy garbage that they have.
[00:58:10.43] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah. It's so true. Like, you're in the weeds in your world. You know this better than everybody. And we talk about this all the time. Like, all this gen AI stuff, a lot of these really shiny object stuff that's happening out there, a lot of it is not possible for the industry yet because they're still on-prem and still legacy.
[00:58:33.59] ADAM DENNGINGER: Literally, their data still isn't built for it. Their data is not built for it. Until you clean that crap up and move it someplace where it can be accessed, you can't do it. So--
[00:58:42.87] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[00:58:43.43] ADAM DENNGINGER: --yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. To me, anyway, it's-- cloud is still the single greatest transformative force for now. Five years from now, ask me again, it'll be completely different. But that's [INAUDIBLE].
[00:58:54.81] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, no, I think that's a great answer. That's a very realistic answer of what's actually happening out there. Now, after that, [INAUDIBLE]--
[00:59:01.72] ADAM DENNGINGER: I'll tell you what it's not going to be. Wait, one more that it's not going to be. Every time I hear quantum, I just shake my head because quantum-- have you looked at what a quantum computer looks like still and the number of qubits it can handle and what that actually compares to a modern server?
[00:59:18.51] REID HOLZWORTH: No, no.
[00:59:20.46] ADAM DENNGINGER: Completely useless. I mean, unless you want to keep things near absolute zero and have all your stuff working off, essentially, vacuum-tubes, it's completely not [INAUDIBLE] and usable technology any time in the next 10 years. Forget about it. So anybody says quantum to you, just shake your head and move on. That's what [INAUDIBLE]
[00:59:40.42] REID HOLZWORTH: [LAUGHS]
[00:59:41.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's what I would do.
[00:59:44.09] REID HOLZWORTH: All right, last question on insurance. Any advice you have for entrepreneurs coming into the insurance technology space?
[00:59:57.24] ADAM DENNGINGER: Going back to my earlier statements, learn a bit about the industry that you're in. So you can't just come in and think that you know how to do a database, and therefore, that means you're going to solve insurance problems. You know how to create [INAUDIBLE], and therefore, you can restructure the industry. You don't understand what the industry is and what it's doing and why it does it, you'll be out of the business pretty quick.
[01:00:19.83] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. I would go further. I would say befriend all those people, get to really know them.
[01:00:26.67] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's--
[01:00:27.10] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[01:00:28.40] ADAM DENNGINGER: I agree.
[01:00:29.81] REID HOLZWORTH: Be their partner in helping truly understand it because once you do understand it and you become part of the team, then you can start building some really cool stuff, driving real value. And then, also, too, you're building a good reputation out there in the industry because it's a small world here. And the ones that come out guns blazing, pop, pop, pop, and we're the best, and I'm the smartest, and this kind of thing, they don't last very long. It lasts for a little bit. You might raise a little bit of capital, but that doesn't go far. It really doesn't. And so everybody talks. Everybody knows everybody, at least in the top rooms. So yeah, I would dig in and become part of our industry as opposed to against it, and [INAUDIBLE].
[01:01:12.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Completely agree. Actually said much more articulately than I did, so well said. Thank you.
[01:01:18.30] REID HOLZWORTH: No, I think that's the first time in this whole conversation, so thank you for that.
[01:01:21.91] [LAUGHTER]
[01:01:25.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: Well. I don't know. [INAUDIBLE]. Actually, this is-- and just one more thought on that briefly. So. to me, also-- so you come in, have respect for the industry, learn people, understand the people, meet people, become their friends. I agree with all of that. Also, don't just go after UIs.
[01:01:52.74] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[01:01:52.99] ADAM DENNGINGER: Don't just go after UIs. Go after-- the UI is something that anybody can do.
[01:01:57.65] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE]. I like that. That's so true. Yeah.
[01:02:01.39] ADAM DENNGINGER: Pick something that actually is like people aren't-- there's not already a thousand solutions for.
[01:02:06.13] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[01:02:06.76] ADAM DENNGINGER: Go do something that's-- because there's plenty to do out there, plenty.
[01:02:10.76] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. It's kind of like, going back to what we were talking about, the data stuff even. It's like those UIs that you're-- it's pointless Like, they don't care--
[01:02:18.53] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:02:21.10] REID HOLZWORTH: --because anybody can do that, right?
[01:02:23.71] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yep.
[01:02:24.50] REID HOLZWORTH: And at the carrier level, a lot of them already-- I mean, they have own stuff. You mean, that's the big thing, too. But yeah, no, I loved it. That's really good. That's really good. All right, let's go. Let's few questions on leadership, and then we're start winding down. Are you ready for this? All right.
[01:02:40.19] ADAM DENNGINGER: Sure.
[01:02:40.42] REID HOLZWORTH: So what does a leader mean to you? What is being a leader mean to you? And I'll just combine it. And you consider yourself a leader?
[01:02:52.75] ADAM DENNGINGER: Best leaders I know are people that don't lead by fear, that don't-- so I know what a leader isn't. It's not someone who leads by fear or intimidation. It's not someone who is yelling at their team to get things done. It's not someone who's not willing to get their hands dirty. You have to be willing to actually do the work yourself. If you're not willing to do the work yourself, then you shouldn't be leading the group.
[01:03:26.25] It's not someone who-- no, I'll go with "it is." It is someone who believes in the people that are working for you and believes that they actually have the capability to do what it is that you're asking them to do. You have to actually believe that, not just say you believe it.
[01:03:47.00] A lot of leadership books about here's how you say in a meeting and here's how you hold yourself and here's the right way to generate passion in a team. Think all that's crap, to be honest. Think everybody's got their own way of inspiring people, of engaging with people.
[01:04:02.83] And the most important part is respect the chair. If you're going to be up there, respect the chair. Respect that what you're doing matters to other people's lives and that the way that you help them grow and get things done and prioritize directly impacts the outcomes for everyone.
[01:04:25.64] REID HOLZWORTH: Love that. Love that. So what do you think the most important trait of a leader is? You had to boil it down.
[01:04:35.27] ADAM DENNGINGER: Willingness to acknowledge their own mistakes. I see so many people who are never wrong, ever.
[01:04:47.34] [LAUGHTER]
[01:04:53.03] And you know what, part of leading is understanding.
[01:04:55.03] REID HOLZWORTH: Never once.
[01:04:55.94] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. And part of leading is understanding-- is learning from the people around you. You can always learn from the people around you, and you're always going to be wrong at times. Admit it, understand it, learn from it, move on.
[01:05:09.97] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. My dad would always say to me as a kid-- because I was an idiot. I'm always doing dumb shit and always making the wrong decision. And so, after that, it's kind of like, well, I'm learning from my mistakes. He's like, no, no, smart people just don't make mistakes. [LAUGHS]
[01:05:26.62] ADAM DENNGINGER: Oh. [LAUGHS] All right, so I'm not really--
[01:05:30.09] REID HOLZWORTH: [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHS]
[01:05:30.28] ADAM DENNGINGER: I hate to say it, but I'm not really with your dad. I'm not with your dad on that. Smart people are the ones that learn from their mistakes.
[01:05:36.68] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, of course. It's kind of a joke, but yeah, 100%. [LAUGHS]
[01:05:40.78] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yep.
[01:05:43.39] REID HOLZWORTH: All right, let's see. How do you define success? What does success mean to you? And not through your job, just generally. Does it mean success in your role, your job, or just success as a human? What does success mean?
[01:05:59.86] ADAM DENNGINGER: So to me, success is keeping your promises. If you're going to make promises, keep them. And I mean, it's sort of a-- a corollary to that is being intentional about the promises that you make. So--
[01:06:16.97] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[01:06:17.77] ADAM DENNGINGER: --be honest and upfront about what you can do, and if you say you can do something, do it and put in the effort and the time and the will to actually get it done and done right. So to me, success is-- it's very simple. It's delivering on what you can do. And that, I think, applies anywhere. It applies in personal relationships. It applies in business relationships.
[01:06:45.73] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, I think-- I see a lot of people hide the negative as opposed to owning it because sometimes, we all make promises that we break, or we can't deliver, or we shouldn't have in the first place. And I think--
[01:07:01.48] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE]
[01:07:04.01] REID HOLZWORTH: --it's almost easier to avoid that and skate around it and whatnot than just face that dragon and say, hey, I messed up. Sorry about that.
[01:07:14.61] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah. Well, that's what I was just saying. So all the people have always been right, they've never been wrong at any time, those are people who are-- they're not willing to face the fact of the commitments they didn't keep.
[01:07:26.98] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man, that's really good. That's really good. All right, couple more questions, and then we're done. How do you give back, or do you give back at all?
[01:07:43.88] ADAM DENNGINGER: So a couple of ways. The first way is through my family. So my wife runs a not-for-profit, so we are-- of course, she gets paid somewhat, but she's running a not-for-profit. But she essentially dedicates her life at, let's say, a lot less than cost to help underprivileged women, so women that are coming out of halfway houses, women that are coming out of abusive relationships, that need jobs.
[01:08:11.43] So she works for an organization called Dress for Success Hartford. It's a subsidiary of a larger organization that's just called Dress for success. Again, it helps these women who are in a bad spot go get a job and then keep a job. And so me helping her and supporting her is actually a part of my giving back.
[01:08:31.63] The other way that I try to give back is actually-- that's sort of the charity side. And it's not really charity because what it's really about is just trying to make it possible for people to have open doors.
[01:08:42.89] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah.
[01:08:43.27] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's not charity. That's just the right thing to do.
[01:08:45.96] REID HOLZWORTH: That's absolutely right. [INAUDIBLE]
[01:08:48.93] ADAM DENNGINGER: The other thing that I do is a work-related thing, and what that's about is taking people who don't have the confidence to do what it is that they need to do or that they want to do or that they should have. And I don't care if they're in my organization or somebody else's. I am more than happy to take the time and the effort to help them learn how to be better, help them have the confidence they should have in themselves, help them learn new skills, help them succeed, tell them how to succeed, and be able to take the credit for the things that they can and do.
[01:09:23.01] I think a part of giving back there is just-- actually, there's another thing a leader doesn't do. A leader never takes credit for what the team did.
[01:09:33.25] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Right.
[01:09:35.89] ADAM DENNGINGER: So [INAUDIBLE] here, it's how do you make sure that these people are seen as the heroes that they are? And that's a day-to-day thing.
[01:09:43.87] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:09:45.89] ADAM DENNGINGER: And I hope it helps people.
[01:09:48.34] REID HOLZWORTH: That's awesome, man. It's very noble of you. That's really, really cool.
[01:09:51.75] ADAM DENNGINGER: Again, is it noble, or is it just the right thing to do? I'm sure you do it, too.
[01:09:55.55] REID HOLZWORTH: Well, I mean, dude, it's easier said than done, man. I mean, yeah, it's taken time out of your life to help people and do that. You're 100% right. I don't disagree that it is the right thing to do. But a lot of people don't take the time to step away and go, man, you're not really seeing who you truly are, and let me help you to see that because I want you to grow as a human and become what I believe I see in you.
[01:10:23.47] ADAM DENNGINGER: Yeah.
[01:10:23.53] REID HOLZWORTH: And It's not self-serving to you at all. You're like-- literally just want them to be the best they can be. I mean, that's pretty bad ass, man. Not a lot of people do that.
[01:10:33.57] ADAM DENNGINGER: Why, thank you. I guess I really hadn't put that much glory on it, but thank you for that. [LAUGHS] To me, it's just what you should do as a leader, I suppose.
[01:10:42.20] REID HOLZWORTH: People don't take the time, a lot of it. I got shit going on. I'm busy because we're all busy. Everybody's busy. We got shit going on.
[01:10:47.30] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's true enough.
[01:10:47.77] REID HOLZWORTH: And it's prioritizing. And that's a priority. I mean, That's pretty sweet, pretty sweet. All right, aside from family, what do you do for fun? And I say aside from family because every time I ask them, what do you do for fun? It's like, well, I got three kids and, you know. And so what do you do for fun?
[01:11:05.44] ADAM DENNGINGER: All right, I'll give you two things. One thing, I love to go explore Europe, all the historical sites, the ruins, the places where ancient battles were, as a history major. I might have mentioned that.
[01:11:17.11] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah. Yep.
[01:11:18.25] ADAM DENNGINGER: And so I love going to see where history actually happened. So Europe, love it. Just love going. I'll go any time I can go. So that's number one for fun. Number two for fun, video games.
[01:11:31.51] REID HOLZWORTH: No kidding?
[01:11:32.02] ADAM DENNGINGER: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHS]
[01:11:32.51] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah? What?
[01:11:34.20] ADAM DENNGINGER: I'm a gamer.
[01:11:34.60] REID HOLZWORTH: Like Call of Duty or Fortnite? Like what? What kind of video games?
[01:11:37.80] ADAM DENNGINGER: Oh, no, no, like more old-school, like The Elder Scrolls if you've heard of that.
[01:11:43.31] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, nice.
[01:11:44.17] ADAM DENNGINGER: Skyrim, that sort of thing.
[01:11:45.95] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, that's [INAUDIBLE].
[01:11:46.51] ADAM DENNGINGER: It's hardcore. Yeah, it's hardcore. Yep, I'm a gamer. I admit it. I'm proud.
[01:11:51.42] REID HOLZWORTH: That's awesome, man. That's cool.
[01:11:53.45] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
[01:11:55.54] REID HOLZWORTH: --actually. Surprisingly, actually, a lot of people are still gaming out there. You know what, we don't all live in the Keys, so we don't all have our boat and our violin and the cats outside and whatever. So [LAUGHS] you gotta have something to do in Connecticut.
[01:12:14.13] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, fair enough.
[01:12:15.10] [LAUGHTER]
[01:12:15.57] Fair enough. I mean, if-- you've been to the Insurance Museum many times. You've seen the others--
[01:12:19.63] ADAM DENNGINGER: Many times. That's right. [LAUGHS]
[01:12:21.72] REID HOLZWORTH: Tired of that. [LAUGHS]
[01:12:25.12] ADAM DENNGINGER: That's funny, Reid. Yep.
[01:12:27.36] REID HOLZWORTH: If you had unlimited time, what would you do? And then I got one more question. We're done.
[01:12:37.91] ADAM DENNGINGER: Unlimited time, OK, so we're talking about I've got a Groundhog Day. I've got the Groundhog Day movie going on. And I just could do whatever I want. Well, I don't so much like where he started off, sort of figuring out every way he could be evil without having it affect him, particularly. I do like where he ended up in that movie, where it's like all the stuff that you always wanted to do to make yourself better, you figure out how to do, like playing an instrument. What would I do?
[01:13:06.25] You know what, let's put it-- actually, how's this? I'm going to do a different question. If I had unlimited money, what would I do?
[01:13:12.12] REID HOLZWORTH: Fair enough.
[01:13:12.56] ADAM DENNGINGER: Or if I had retirement money, straight-up retirement, I could walk away and do whatever I want right now within reason. This sounds crazy. I would go back to school for material science, and then I would go work at SpaceX.
[01:13:30.87] REID HOLZWORTH: Oh, that's sick.
[01:13:32.45] ADAM DENNGINGER: [INAUDIBLE] what I want to do is help us get to other planets.
[01:13:37.97] REID HOLZWORTH: That's cool.
[01:13:38.48] ADAM DENNGINGER: It kicks all the way back to my original goal being an Air Force pilot. So I would go join the engineering teams down there and do something that changes the world. That's what I would do.
[01:13:49.85] REID HOLZWORTH: That's really cool. Wow. A great answer, great answer. That's a first, for sure. All right, last question, what's your favorite drink, and do you drink? Do you drink? If not, whatever. But if you do, what is your favorite cocktail?
[01:14:05.19] ADAM DENNGINGER: I've been known to have a drink once in a while.
[01:14:07.24] REID HOLZWORTH: Alcohol drink of choice.
[01:14:09.92] ADAM DENNGINGER: Old-fashioneds, old-fashioneds. I'm a fan of an old-fashioned, a little on the sweet side.
[01:14:16.77] REID HOLZWORTH: Ah. Do you know what the difference between a normal old-fashioned and a Wisconsin old-fashioned is?
[01:14:21.77] ADAM DENNGINGER: No. You got me. I don't. Tell me.
[01:14:24.02] REID HOLZWORTH: Yeah, so in Wisconsin, if you are an old-fashioned-- so everybody knows if you're in Wisconsin, anywhere in Wisconsin, it's not just a Milwaukee thing. It is very different. It's muddled cherries with orange, and they put Sprite in it, literally. It is-- yeah, and they muddle it with-- it used to be sugar cubes, but now a lot of people just use simple.
[01:14:45.15] So it actually is a sweet old-fashioned, and a traditional Wisconsin old-fashioned is done with brandy. Little known fact that more brandy is consumed in the state of Wisconsin than the rest of the world combined.
[01:15:01.77] ADAM DENNGINGER: Why is that, do you think? What's that about?
[01:15:03.71] REID HOLZWORTH: Because they--
[01:15:05.09] ADAM DENNGINGER: Just [INAUDIBLE].
[01:15:05.48] REID HOLZWORTH: --love those sweet old-fashioneds [INAUDIBLE] for real.
[01:15:07.82] [LAUGHTER]
[01:15:08.55] ADAM DENNGINGER: All right. Next time I'm there, I'm trying it. I'm in.
[01:15:12.18] REID HOLZWORTH: Dude, yeah, yeah. You gotta try it. Yeah.
[01:15:15.33] ADAM DENNGINGER: I will. I will. That's a good one. OK. Wisconsin old-fashioned.
[01:15:20.35] REID HOLZWORTH: Yup. Well, Adam, this was great, man. Thank you for all of your wisdom and everything. This is a really awesome episode. I'm sure everybody's going to enjoy it. And yeah, man, keep doing what you're doing, helping out the world and doing your thing. So keep crushing it, and Thanks again.
[01:15:36.07] ADAM DENNGINGER: And thank you so much. Great to meet you. Really enjoyed the conversation. And let's talk again.