Tech-Forward, Budget-Smart: How MGAs Can Innovate Without Overspending

Welcome. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar, tech forward, budget smart, how MGAs can innovate without overspending. I’m Rhiannon Naslund, Chief Marketing Officer at Origami Risk. Today, we’ll unpack how MGAs can make smart, scalable technology investments to drive growth and innovation in today’s competitive insurance market. We know MGAs face a unique challenge, balancing the need for underwriting precision, faster speed to market, and niche product innovation, all while operating with lean teams and tight budgets. Our goal today is to provide you with practical strategies and real world examples of how MGAs are successfully navigating this balancing act. By the end of this session, you’ll walk away with frameworks and real world insights to guide your own approach to technology adoption without compromising financial discipline. Here’s what we’ll cover today. How to prioritize technology investments that directly support growth, underwriting efficiency, and speed to market. We will also discuss the benefits of API first and modular tech stacks that integrate seamlessly and scale flexibly without heavy upfront spend. We’ll share frameworks for evaluating ROI on new tools. And finally, real world MGA examples, lessons learned, what worked, and what they’d approach differently next time. We’re fortunate to be joined by two fantastic experts who bring both deep industry knowledge and practical experience. First, I’m excited to introduce John Varner, founder and president of NEMT Insurance. John has spent over forty years in the insurance industry, starting out at some of the world’s leading brokerages and working with Fortune five hundred clients before deciding to build something on his own. He went on to lead a successful retail brokerage firm for nearly fifteen years. And in twenty twenty, he launched e NEMT Insurance. Today, John brings a wealth of perspective on how MGAs and specialty providers can thrive in this evolving market. Joining John is Tim Slevin, who leads the MGA market at Origami Risk. Tim has spent more than fifteen years in insurance technology with a career path that’s taken him from business analyst to presales engineer to senior sales executive. For the last decade, he’s been laser focused on the MGA space, helping organizations tackle complex challenges around policy administration, billing, and claims. On top of that, Tim brings hands on experience from his early career as a claims adjuster and commercial lines account executive, which gives him a really unique, well rounded view of the industry. Before we jump into the main discussion, I’d love for the audience to hear how the two of you first crossed paths. Can you share a little bit about how you know each other and what’s kept you connected in the MGA space? Yeah. So John came John and I were introduced to each other in in twenty nineteen. As as you mentioned in your introduction, he started NEMT in twenty twenty. And if you think about the path of purchasing software, that that journey begins well before, the actual launch of of of the MGA. So John and I had a had a mutual colleague, in the industry that I had worked with in the past. I had built a great rapport with him, me and and a team of folks that I was working with at the time, and he referred John to me. So John called us up, said, hey. I’m launching an MGA. I have some some software needs. I need I need a policy admin system. I need to get to market. How can you help? And that’s how John and I were introduced in in twenty nineteen, and we’ve continued to build our relationship over six years. Well said. And we, we share our love for college football, and we joust with each other, quite quite frequently, as we have for the last six years. Well, thank you both for sharing that. It’s always great for the audience to hear the personal connections behind the experts. I’m gonna go ahead and pivot to the heart of today’s discussion. One of the biggest challenges MGAs face is aligning bold strategic goals, like expanding into new markets or launching new products, but the financial realities of lean budgets and limited resource. So, John, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the balance between strategy and financial discipline. When a new technology comes to market, MGAs are often tempted to jump in, but the real question is whether it actually supports the long term goals and and fits into that tolerance for risk. So from your perspective, how do you evaluate whether a new technology truly aligns with your strategic objectives? Well, for us, we had a a very, specific, industry that we were we were targeting and working within, nonemergency medical transportation, around the country. And so, you know, our evaluation there was frankly a a bit more simplistic. We were simply back in two thousand and nineteen and then subsequently when we ultimately made the move over to Origami, we were looking for a partner, not a vendor. And, the older I get, the more I realize that fewer people truly understand what the definition of a partner is, but it’s someone who stands with you through thick and thin in my book, and it’s someone who helps you see the options that you perhaps can’t yourself because of your limited understanding and expertise in in areas that you you know you need, but you don’t know as well as the professionals in that arena. I feel like that when we worked with Tim in a prior company and we’ve worked with Tim here with Origami, we’ve gotten that partner, out of Tim and the people that he has brought to us, and we’re very thankful for that. Jen, I love that piece around kind of looking around corners and and leveraging your partners to help do that work. Tim, from the vendor side, you’re often in conversations where prospective clients are excited about a new tool, but they might not be focused on the right priorities or maybe not fully ready to make that kind of investment. How do you handle those situations? I I think from from our perspective on the software side, it’s important to listen to to the the prospective customer or the customer. Right? First and foremost, we have to understand what are they looking to accomplish. Right? I I can pitch them a piece of software, but if it doesn’t help them accomplish their goal, then then it it does neither of us any good. So what does John need to do for day one of launching his MGA? He needs to rate quote, find an issue policy. Those are the three main things and report data. So let’s make that four four thing. Those are the four key pieces of functionality he’s gonna need as he begins his journey as an MGA. So it’s great to look at artificial intelligence and and integrations and, you know, building out the true Cadillac of software. But what does he need to get his business operational? And then let’s talk about adding in those bells and whistles so that he can really expand his business and grow his business and make him more efficient as an organization. I really appreciate that focus on that value delivery and then scaling that incremental value. I think that would make a lot of sense to to a lot of people in John’s situation. John, question for you. How do you involve either your underwriting or finance teams in evaluating different tools and technologies? Well, the the good news about working for and with a smaller organization, pretty much everyone understands everything that is going on. And for some people, that can be a little unnerving. But, when I worked at at much larger companies, many times, we really, in our little silo, knew knew nothing about what was going on in the broader context of the company. In our company, we have roughly fifteen employees, and so that spans underwriting, admin, finance, HR, safety management, policy service, client service, and the like. And so everyone really knows everything about the company in its totality. And, again, that can be, you know, very illuminating, and it can be very scary at the same time because you do know what is going on and you know the challenges. But, I theorize personally that having worked with large companies over the course of of my career, many large companies, you know, part of their part of their, challenge is communicating throughout the organization so that they do, in fact, know what each, you know, part of the machine is actually trying to do. In our company, we’re so small with fifteen employees. Everyone knows what is what is happening. And so when we look at technology, just like we look at any other infrastructure aspect of the company, we’re looking at it holistically, comprehensively with all eyes on deck. And so there’s really not, like, some of the turf wars that you might see at some of the larger organizations. We don’t have any of that. It’s a it is a completely transparent and collaborative process, very friendly process. So that’s that’s how we we adjust. Well, John, your team sounds incredible and, also very efficient. And you’re very fortunate to have a team that’s in tight communication and so expert. Tim, question for you. When you see other organizations that might not be as fortunate as John’s where maybe they’re a little bit larger or the expertise isn’t as consistent. How do you help assure that the right teams are involved in the process and decisioning? Yeah. So, typically, when when folks come to to to me for for help or evaluating a system, they have a need. Right? So whether it’s a technology need, the current tech stack is not performing and scaling at the level that they need to or a business need. Right? They have to get into new lines of business, which their current technology doesn’t support, or it takes that current technology too long to to to get that line of business up and running, get that new program up and running. So we see it as two people come to us twofold, whether it’s through, you know, the business side of the house or the IT side of the house. And it’s really again, it’s understanding who you’re talking to. Right? I’m not gonna talk about, you know, a complex rating issue with somebody in IT, and I’m not gonna talk about, you know, SOC two compliance with somebody who’s on the business side of the house. So it’s understanding who you’re speaking to, what their need is, and really addressing how your software or your solution can help them in their particular situation. That makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like listening is key and then really understanding your clients so you can tailor the the information and messaging so their needs are met. I I’m gonna move us along to talking about the investment of it all. You know, everyone is looking to really make their dollars work harder, make sure that each investment that they make has a strong ROI. So that makes evaluating the ROI of tools and technology investments super critical. What type of frameworks, John, or even practical rules of thumb do you rely on to decide whether a new technology is worth the spend? Well, for us, ROI to to to us is frankly big company speak, and we’re we’re not a we’re not a big company. Do I understand the concept? Of course. But, we looked at it through the lens of we have a need and, you know, of of all the options that are available to us in today’s marketplace, what system is going in this particular case, Origami, what system is going to allow us to be operationally effective? Because without this software, we do not have a company. So operational effectiveness uptime is of utmost critical importance. And then secondarily, frankly, the the efficiency of working in the system in terms of our our people’s ability to work inside the system to do the job that they need to do, to Tim’s point a moment ago, to underwrite, rate, quote, bind, issue policies, service, their ability to do that efficiently. And then from my my vantage point, what is the overall cost of the process? And a lot of people get penny wise and pound foolish. We look at these expenditures as investments, not as cost. Yeah. I really like that focus on impact and ease of use. Whenever technology is brought, you know, change can be hard for folks. So that ease of use and ease on the adoption of something new feels really, really important. And I think it is a wise choice to focus on the overall impact that that tool can can provide for your business. Tim, in what you see with folks, you know, like, across the ecosystem, are there any other benchmarks on either ROI or evaluating impact that you would guide us towards? Yeah. So so there’s there’s a there’s a slogan we use here at Oregon called speed to value. Speed to value, what that really means is being able to get things up and running quickly and efficiently. In the MGA market, the market’s always evolving. We have MGAs that come to us and they say, I’m gonna be writing commercial property in fifteen states on day one. And we think that we can really write, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty million dollars worth of business in the first year. And then the property market hardened, and they can’t that they they just can’t get the scale that they want out of that that line of business. And they say, well, we’re gonna pivot and we’re gonna start writing workers’ comp. Well, they need the system to be able to write workers’ comp. Right? So we need to be able to as they need to adapt their business, the software needs to able to adapt with them as well. So we need to go get that work comp line of business up and running quickly, efficiently with the rates, rules, and forms that they need. Because the longer that the software doesn’t allow them to get the mark to market with that, they’re missing the mark and the opportunity in that space because we see this market constantly changing. Again, it hardens, it softens across different lines of business, across different classes of business, and MGA and their software providers need to be able to adapt with that. That’s that’s excellent, Tim. And when we think about making these changes, John, what was the catalyst for change for you? Like, what what initially, made you look for a new technology? So that’s a that’s a very interesting question and answer because, it it kinda goes to the to the heart of, frankly, the service and breath offering that Origami brought to us. We originally and initially started this process thinking that we would be using Origami as a claims management system. And as we continued the evaluation of both internal and external resources as well as the current vendor that we were working with relative to our policy admin side of the business, we came to realize that it it really made more sense for us to pivot on the policy side and and put the claims side of the equation, you know, on hold in looking at all of the available vendor options that we had. And, again, we were not looking for a vendor, but whenever you’re starting the initial phase of a of an evaluation, everybody’s a vendor until they become a partner. And so we were looking at all this host of array of vendors and their their cadre of skills and capabilities and breadth of services. And, frankly, for us, personally, there was no one that that came close to the offering that Tim and Origami brought to us, and we knew that we had the partnership and the commitment out of Tim personally, and that meant everything to us. And so we ended up making the move. But it it’s interesting that we made the move not where we originally thought we were going to be making the move. No. It is it is interesting in the process of evaluating your options, just learning about, you know, what can help illuminate what is really valuable and also identifying a partner that you can grow with. Right? You’re looking for a need today, but you know tomorrow’s come, and you don’t you don’t wanna be changing your technology all the time. So that that’s excellent to hear. So in terms of technology and that change again, how do you balance that excitement for what’s new with the need to stay a little bit cautious? Right? So you choose a system, but you can’t choose a system every year, and there are kind of trade offs that come with with those updates. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you think about that? So for us, again, everyone in every class of business has a great marketing brochure. Right? And so it’s important, and it was important for us to look beyond the marketing brochure. You know, obviously, Origami has an incredible website and talks about all the wonderful things that you do. But for us, we knew that we had a very, you know, specific need, that we were trying to fulfill, and and we wanted to get past the the marketing presentation, if you will. We wanted to get into the meat of the matter. Why and what and how? Who is backing this infrastructure? Who are the personnel? What is the core capabilities of the company, their infrastructure? You know? Or or or is this, you know, three three people in in in the in the back office somewhere, or is this a company that is serving hundreds and literally thousands of other companies with a very successful track record? Those sorts of things we take strongly we took strongly into account as we were evaluating who we were gonna make this move to. And you’re right. We this is not something that we, will be hopefully ever doing again because, you know, we it it is a very, very time consuming process. You know, whenever you take about you talk about having all the personnel learn how to drive a system, it it it’s not days or weeks to gain efficiency in in how they they interface with the system. It’s literally months and years. So we we did not take this process lightly. We looked at and evaluated many, many options, and we ultimately settled on Origami for what I believe to be all the right reasons. So you you said something about timeline, and I think thinking about the audience that we might have listening today, when you thought about that timeline, when you thought about making that transition, what were some of those considerations? Any guidance that you have for folks there? Yeah. Here’s a here’s a here’s the the biggest takeaway that I could give anybody, and and and please get a pen out and write this one down because it’s important. You can’t get started early enough. I mean, the the reality of it is making a a system change, of this size and this magnitude even for a a relatively smaller company like ours, it takes a lot of time on our side, on Origami’s side, and and in between. And so, you know, we were looking at it through the lens of, okay. We do have an operating system right now that we are, you know, paying paying for that privilege. Right? And if we were to work with that same vendor through their normal expiration of that contract and we say, oh, by the way, we’re thinking about making a move and we would like to have an a year extension while we transition the book off, frankly, we’re gonna pay, you know, two or three x the price for the privilege of that transition. So we we time sequenced, our evaluation, and so we’re we’re we’re actually running duplicative systems, as we speak. We’re we’re we’re using the legacy system for the legacy program, and we’re using Origami on the go forward program. So in effect, we’re we’re we’re paying, we’re paying for two systems for this twelve month window, but then we’ll be, that legacy system will will be, you know, off off of our, p and l, if you will. But getting started early so that you can take your time to do the things that you need to do to implement properly, and you can time sequence your transition is hugely important so that you don’t overpay for the process of the transition. It does seem like that continuity is an important consideration, and the the early guidance seems really, really smart. Tim, on your side, how do you help partner with clients to help them prepare and and guide them through this process? Yeah. What I tell folks is you are an MGA, and your job is to write business. You are insurance people. You’re business people. You know, John knows nonemergency medical transportation better than anybody in the country. I don’t know much about nonemergency medical transportation other than I see the ambulance go down the street and it called up the doctor’s office. What I do know is I know from my experience of selling to MGAs, to John’s point, what that timeline looks like. Right? If we have to rush to implement software, you have to make some hard decision, and that’s okay. We can get you there. Whereas if you take the planning, that, you know, John has done and taken a little additional time, it’s a much smoother process for everybody. So for me, it’s about education. Right? It’s sales through education. It’s, hey. This is my experience. With MGA a, we were able to do this in ninety days, but they had to make some tough choices. With MGA b, where we had an additional ninety days, we were able to really do some thoughtful planning and execution to get them where they need to be. So for me, it’s all about educating them and what does it take to implement a piece of software and what does that rollout look like? Because again, they just they’re not in the technology space per se where they’re really implementing with multiple customers a year where where that that’s the advantage that we have on on the software side. That’s great insight. And as a planner, I hope the these wisdoms from both of you encourage people to to plan their year and and plan their technology evaluations. I know one of the biggest challenges with adopting new technology is making sure it actually plays nicely with what you already have in place. So, John, from an MGA perspective, how do you approach ensuring new tools integrate smoothly with your existing underwriting and financial systems? So, again, back back to, the partner concept and the breadth of of the offering, you know, the reputation of the company, the infrastructure of the company, all of these things work in stereo. You know, we we work with a particular vendor relative to motor vehicle reports. We work with another vendor relative to safety management and the tracking of the vehicles and things of that nature. So and we work with another vendor, who is in our, claims administration side. And so what we were looking for is the ability to pull all of that information together in a way that allowed us to view the information through the lens of, of twenty twenty five that, frankly, before now was almost impossible to do. But being able to pull all these datasets from these different companies that are doing different things that are important to us allow our underwriting team to look into the data to make better data driven decisions relative to the underwriting and pricing of a business. Because at the end of the day, yes, we’re we’re charged to to go write business, But our insurance company friends, you know, on the other side of this equation, they’re expecting us to do so in a profitable way. And the only way that we can do that is to gain greater knowledge. And the only way we can gain greater knowledge is to pull a host of data from a host of different companies and make it useful for our underwriting team. And, frankly, we’ve been able to accomplish that with with Origami. So it sounds like for your, integration, is for you, is it a combination of both internal and external vendors specifically to the integration? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, while we have internal people that are that are engaging in all of these systems in these in these different and I I use the word vendor, but just like with Origami, I I will say those parties have turned from vendors into partners. Okay? So we’re working with those various partners to bring that data into our system, into Origami, through an API, and, again, allowing our underwriting team to see into that data. You know, back in the back in the in the stone age when I started, in this industry, you know, we had these supplemental you know, we had we had applications, and there’s still applications in this business. But many times, insureds will tell you that they’re doing something, but then the real time data from your telematics information might tell you something completely different. Earlier today, I I get a communication from our safety manager that a particular client that we wrote, here recently, well, they’re out driving, rapidly at, two and three AM. Well, they’re not supposed to be. And we would never know that had the system not been able to interconnect and alert us to that reality. So there’s just lots of things that are available to us today that were never available to us even five years ago. And so we’re really, really excited about embarking upon, you know, the the the new world with Origami’s help. Data is king, isn’t it? That’s a fantastic example. Just a curiosity, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Meaning, did you choose Origami and then choose your integration partner, or did you already have that existing relationship? All of these parties that that we’re working with, they have gone through some level of evolution. But more often than not, if I’m looking up the the list here, in my mind’s eye, all but one, are are the same that we started with back in twenty twenty. And so those those parties were already there, but having the ability to pull the data together in in a in a in a central means that we can look at and truly make better underwriting decisions, that didn’t exist. And so, you know, again, we’re thrilled that we’re gonna have the ability to pull this data together because, otherwise, I’m having to task my underwriting team with going into, you know, this particular system to look at this particular data, this particular system to look at that particular data, and so on and so forth. And it’s very time consuming, and it’s very difficult to see macro trends. You can certainly see into the individual account what they’re doing. But in terms of your ability to see more holistically and comprehensively, you really just cannot do it without the tools that a company like Origami brings to us. That’s excellent. Tim, on your side, how do you help support your partners through the change management of it all? Yeah. So so they’re always evolving. Right? John’s business is always evolving and changing. And I think what what we really focus on, and and I’ll give you an example with John specifically, is what do we do best with Origami and what do we need to leverage our network of partners or people that we’ve done business with in the past? So as John’s business changes, right, he may need another vendor. Let’s use surplus lines taxes, for example. John’s program used to be admitted. Now he’s moved into the non admitted space, and he needed to now track surplus lines taxes. Can you do that in origami? Sure. You can do that, but it’s it’s it’s a heavier lift than with somebody that’s actually monitoring these these changes on a daily basis. Right? We’re we’re really focused on, you know, the security of origami, the rate quote bind issue on the policy side, the policy functionality, the claims functionality, where somebody else is solely their software is solely focused on surplus line taxes, fees, surcharges. That’s a natural place for me to say, John, you just you need to call this company. Here’s a contact. We’ve worked with them in the past, and we really we think very highly of them. Right? So it’s as John has built up his network through forty years, we’ve also built up our network in the technology space. When you bring those two things together, they they become very powerful, and they help people be successful. And that example really speaks to the true partnership is leveraging the strengths of the origami offering, but also leveraging the expertise and other partnerships in the industry. That’s really powerful. So we spent a lot of time talking about technology, but I think as we all now all know, innovation isn’t just about the tools. It’s about the people using them, and and teams are, you know, a a huge asset to all of our organizations. How do you encourage your teams to embrace innovation and make it a part of their day to day work? I think across any organization and at any team, there’s some folks that are very excited to adopt new technologies, and sometimes there’s those that are maybe less excited. So, any what’s the approach, John, that you’ve had to help, maybe not incentivize, but encourage that tech adoption? So for us, we we knew that we needed to evaluate a different system. And so we started out with the host of vendors, and then we we we narrowed the field down, quite dramatically. And it was a group decision. You know? The the the ability to get people to buy in, to any decision is to involve them in the decision making process. And, again, the benefit of a of a smaller company, we we have that ability. Whereas in a larger company, you know, the that that’s really, really difficult to do. But in a smaller company like ours, we had the underwriting team involved. We had the safety and claims team involved. We had the admin and ops team involved. Had the policy services team involved. And so everyone is looking at, you know, the the the core services in this particular case that Origami was going to be presenting to us through their particular lenses and having a collaborative conversation simultaneously, and reaching the decision that we reached. And and, frankly, as a result, there was there was zero impediment to adoption because they were all involved in the decision making process along the way. John, it’s it’s I I know you have an ease potentially because it’s a smaller organization, but I think it still holds. Right? Even if it’s slightly more challenging at a larger organization, I think you’re exactly right that bringing folks from the beginning of the evaluation through the decision point, looking at it from their perspective, expertise, lenses is a a critical success factor. Would totally agree with you there. Tim, I’m guessing in your time, you have seen, some individuals, teams, etcetera, resistance to change. How have you handled those instances? Yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna give you a story from very early in my career. I was at another vendor at the time. I was doing demos, so so the policy admin demos. And it’s and it was at a larger MGA in the Midwest. Probably about a hundred employees, well, you know, quite a bit bigger than than John and his shop. And we get the demo script. We configure the system. And we missed the mark on something, account clearance. So they need they had a very specific account clearance process, and we missed the mark a little bit. And one of their underwriter users who was very resistant to change, whether it was our vendor or another vendor, and she did not she she made it known that she was resistant to the change. She she told us, hey. You guys missed the mark, and and and and this just isn’t gonna work for us. So we said, Help us understand why we missed the mark. And she explained why. We said, let’s come back tomorrow, and we’re gonna re we’re gonna re show you this platform. We’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna redo this. We’re gonna get our folks to to rebuild this. We’re gonna show you how it works. We rebuilt it just as she said it as she asked. And we walked through it, and she goes, nope. That doesn’t work. And we’re sitting here like, well, we built it exactly how you said you want. And ultimately, we we very politely said, okay. Explain to me why what we built does not work for you and your business. And after a brief pause, she said, well, I guess it works. Right? And the the value in that was there was about fifteen other people in the room that were, you know, evaluating the software at the same time. Right? So, again, it wasn’t meant in a disrespectful or a demeaning way. It was just, hey. You know, you’re really pushing hard on us. Help us understand why we missed the mark. But it gave us a ton of credibility with the other individuals in the room because they, you know, they knew that that that there was detractors. And and really, you know, you’re you’re changing people’s day to day business and and how they work. Right? So so it wasn’t that she didn’t like us. She didn’t like our software. It was that change that she was terrified of. And eventually, you know, users just have to get used to the fact that things change and businesses evolve. But it’s also our job to help make that that change and that in that fear as minimal as possible. Yeah. I I think it is great to have empathy as change is introduced for sure. But, also, what I’m hearing from what you shared, Tim, is that real listening. What is it that you want built? How can we help you? And then just kind of bringing that around to that functional operational solution that meets that need. I I I think there’s a reoccurring theme through all of this that that it’s important to listen to your prospects and your customers to really understand what problems are we trying to solve. Absolutely. So we’ve talked a lot about, John, your current solution that you’re very satisfied with. Kind of thinking about the the next step, what are the technologies kind of future looking that you’re most excited about? And that could be with the Origami platform or, you know, or beyond. What are you excited about? A lot of things. First and foremost, I’m a I’m a I’m a graduate of of multiple experiences with my good friend Tony Robbins. And Tony has a he has a saying, can I, continuous and never ending improvement? And for those companies who are satisfied with the status quo and and this is good enough, well, that doesn’t apply to me or any EMT insurance. We are constantly pressing the the edge of the envelope in all ways of how we can constantly do better and be better and get better results, get better client satisfaction, get better underwriting premium and loss ratio results, and and the like. So we are constantly and and I I really push this through through our organization as hard as I humanly know how is never be satisfied. Constantly work to improve. We can get better at everything that we do. We just have to look at what we’re doing and what outcomes that we’re having. So one of the things that that I mentioned a little bit earlier is, you know, we we do have these these datasets, from from these other companies and, you know, much like what Tim said about the surplus lines, organization. Okay? Well, you guys can do that, but you don’t do it as well as the person who specializes in it. And so we took Tim’s advice, and we went and we partnered with that firm. So that’s operationally more efficient for us. Great. Looking at the other components, you know, again, going back to the core mission of of our business, our business is to write insurance and write it profitably. And the only way to do that is to pull data from the the vast number of of places that we have data, but we can’t use. And so having Origami, you know, to to be our partner and to help us bring the various datasets, and I’m talking five different datasets from five different outside companies that allows us to pull that information together, and we are on the forefront of it. We’re we’re on the we’re in the infancy of it. And, again, I’ve done this for four decades, and I have never had the opportunity to look inside the data. Oh, I wouldn’t know that this vehicle is driving around two AM at eighty five miles an hour two nights ago, but for the systems integration and and the red flag that came to me. You know, we’re we’re gonna be able to see into that and be able to make better decisions and better coaching with our clients, bringing value to their ownership, that, hey. Did you know that van forty six was, you know, out at three AM driving a hundred miles an hour? Well, they probably didn’t know that. So we’re excited about the the ability to see into the information, help ourselves, and help our customers, and ultimately, by doing that, helping our insurance company partners have a profitability relationship in this business. Yeah. It sounds like, on the journey ahead, it’s incremental data, incremental integrations. And then there’s a piece there that it’s these incremental insights and then kinda building that into the process. And now that you have access to this really deep information, how do you kinda make that the flywheel to drive that profitability? That’s really interesting. Tim, on on your side, how do you stay well informed about what’s next in the industry? Yeah. I think, you know, it’s constantly reading publications of of, you know, what’s out there. It’s talking to our partners. You know, we it’s trade show season coming up here as we enter October. It it’s it’s actually going to the sessions and listening to, you know, experience, you know, if there’s an MGA specific session where they’re talking about, you know, some technology that’s helping that MGA. Go sit in that session and listen to it. Right? We talk to a lot of people in sales. Right? We’re exposed to a lot of people across a lot of different organizations. And as you build these relationships with folks, it’s important to ask questions. Right? What hey. What are you guys seeing? You know, what are you doing on the claim side? You know, we’re hearing rumblings that that more MGAs are bringing claims in house. Are you hearing that? What what what are you seeing from your perspective? Right? So there’s just a vast number of resources across, you know, partnerships, our network, trade shows, the Internet. Right? I mean, everything’s out there, whether it’s a business insider or or or or publication like that. Right? And it’s just taking the time to, to comb through those and and just, you know, see things and and and and read and listen to things that pique your interest. It really is a unique seat, Tim, that you have. You know, all of these fantastic conversations with prospects and clients and really seeing what’s on the inside, what the what problems folks are solving, how they’re solving it, and playing that expert role. Really interesting work there. I guess this is a question for both of you. What one piece of advice would you give to an MGA executive just starting their digital transformation journey? Maybe, John, we’ll start with you. Sure. To me, it’s it’s about reputation. Did you say what did you do what you said that you would do for what you said you would do it for when you said that you would do it? You know, that’s a that’s that that’s the core of the reputation. And for us in this evaluation, again, you go back to the to the marketing pitch. Everybody’s got a, you know, a nice brochure and a nice website. Great. What’s really behind the curtain? And and that’s where, you know, the the true detailed granular evaluation took place. The the and we asked the we asked a lot of questions, a lot of tough questions, a lot of questions that probably weren’t enjoyable to to hear or to respond to, but we felt like we needed to really understand because this is a massive decision. You know? This is this is a once in a five or ten year decision, and it is not one that you frankly get to redo. You don’t wanna mess up. You want to make the right decision. And for us, we we leaned in hard organization wide. And, again, as a as a smaller company, it’s easier for us to do that than a larger organization, but it it was critical to to do do it the way that we did it, and we we feel very convicted that we made the right decisions. So we did promise the audience that we would share some lessons learned. Is there anything that you would do differently? And that could be in the whole suite of that that journey, of course. So I can’t really say that anything jumps out at me that we would do differently because, again, you you gotta remember, we we started looking at origami, and I started the the conversation in a in a in a particular way relative to claims and and claims management and and so forth. And we ultimately ended up pivoting in a completely different, way towards policy. And, you know, Tim helped us, you know, navigate, you know, that entire that entire process. If if I look back and I and I look at all the vendors that we talked to and I looked at how we talked to them and the data that we received from them, and the ultimate decision and the buy in across the organization, I really can’t say that there’s anything that I would have done differently if someone elected to go and just try to make these decisions in a vacuum. You know? Hey. I’m the guy in the corner office, so consequently, you people are gonna do what I want you to do with who I want you to do it. Well, okay. Those organizations, I think they have a lot more challenges with integration and evolution than a company like ours that is very open and very transparent and very collaborative. So, you know, my advice would be be more open, be more transparent, be more collaborative, and then you will simply avoid a lot of the challenges that, you know, you’re kinda mentioning here, with adoption and acceptance and change. I’m sure that that lady loved Tim. That’s probably why she didn’t wanna make that change earlier. But, you know, in all due candor, if you if you build consensus and allow the the people that are going to be working in the system to work inside the system and evaluate the system and voice their concerns legitimately, transparently, you you avoid all those problems, and it’s and it’s worked very well for us. You know, reflecting on some of the things that you’ve shared, John, some of the the insights that you’ve shared is really that planning, like, getting ahead of of the planning and being thoughtful there. I love the message around accountability with evaluating your partner and then accountability to your partner. As you just stated, the bringing all the stakeholders along with you in that consensus building. And then the one that I I also think is fantastic is really staying open during that information finding process, You know, understanding what’s out there and being able to reconcile that with the needs of your business in a dynamic way also is is super interesting. So thank you for sharing all of that. Thank you. Tim, on your on your end, what would you say is one small step that can make a big difference for folks that are looking to start this journey? Yeah. I I think it’s planning. Right? When you when you true when you build a house from from the ground up, when you buy a piece of land and you build a house, there’s a plan. You architect it and you build to that to to what you’ve architected. Right? Software is very similar. I use the house analogy a lot in the software space. If you do the proper planning and layout a game plan to go from day one till the day you go live, you can have a very smooth a very smooth process. As you have to speed things up and and make, again, make tougher decisions when when timelines are less constrained or more constrained, and there’s less of a plan, things can be more chaotic. Right? So in John’s case, you know, he he said, we plan. We we came up with a plan. We knew the earlier we started this, the smoother go. And I I just I can’t reiterate that enough. There are certain things with technology. Yeah. We we can do things quickly. But if you actually plan it out, it will go a lot quicker. That’s a really great one, Tim. Well, we are nearing the end of our time. I wanna thank both of you for your candor, your real world experience. This time together has been so fun and so illuminating. And, John, we really appreciate you being the partner with Origami that you are, and we’re excited to to grow into the future. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Again, thank you, Tim, for all the support that you’ve given us over the years and especially this year as we’ve made this, transition. It has, been, as any transition is, challenging and time consuming, but you guys have made it as as pleasurable as humanly possible. And, we’re we’re excited to, you know, be writing business and and writing business, you know, through the Origami system. So thank you all on your side. And and if anyone anywhere would ever like to talk with me about origami and my experience, please feel free to reach out to me, and I will tell you the straight and skinny. I don’t think, John, anyone doubts your authenticity. Good. Because you always know where you stand with John, and and and, you know, we appreciate John’s partnership. And and and, again, it’s just more proof that if if you take care of your your customers and your network, you know, they they will follow you. They’ll come back to you. Right? John wouldn’t be with us here at Origami if I had just sold him a piece of software back in twenty nineteen just and sent it to him and said, good luck. Go get them. Right? It’s about that it’s about that networking and that partnership. And and when John’s successful, I’m successful and vice versa. It is really fun to unlock all those possibilities for our clients. Well, thank you again both, and we look forward to hearing from anyone who has any follow-up questions, of course, at origami risk dot com. Thank you all so much.