Iain Wilcox: Why IoT for commercial property?

On this episode of Scouting for Growth, Sabine VdL talks to Iain Wilcox, CEO of GWT Insight a tech company focused on making cost-effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators, and advisers. 

Iain is an entrepreneur, leader, and visionary who successfully started new business operations from scratch balancing strategic planning and practical implementation. Over a period of 30 years, Iain worked with companies including AT&T and Cognizant, and 5 years ago he launched GWT Insight.

During the conversation, Sabine and Iain discussed four topics: What is GWT Insight from a company, branding, and team perspective? Why both, property and commercial building IoT, are unique markets around which to build a risk mitigation ecosystem. Benefits that are delivered to the property and insurance markets (including preventative maintenance to prevention). Lessons learned from moving to the entrepreneurial space after years of working for large companies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• I’ve been delivering consulting services for 13 years to large corporations and witnessed just how difficult it was for them to marry the need to provide the structure and control around their investments and to ensure that they do not hinder their innovation initiatives. There was recognition by the Tier 1 carriers that they needed to start working with startups. I was working with a large India-based IT company and they recognized that both those organizations needed the agility and speed to market of a startup. This led to the formation of GWT Insight.
• When we were formed in 2017-2018, it was in the very early days of people understanding that they could save money around how they use and consume energy. Now, with rising utility prices, people are very focused on energy optimization and we see ourselves as not only being able to deliver on the governance part of an ESG model, with the risk management solutions that we develop with our partners, the insurers, and their brokers, but we’re also being able to deliver on commercial property owners’ desire to deliver a better understanding of how their buildings are performing and being able to reduce their costs.
• Property can account for 20-30% of the overall premium on a portfolio when you’ve got business interruption, public liability, and employee liability. You’ve got an area of the insurance paradigm and the value chain that impacts quite a wide area.
• We’ve got use cases across a variety of different examples and verticals. We use data in real-time from manufacturing units, offices, hotels, schools, hospitals, and central government departments (MoD and local authorities). Some of the use cases and benefits we’re looking at are picking up fire control data so you know that if there is a problem with the alarm it helps them to proactively go to their clients and warn them. We’ve also been able to identify loss events with our insurance clients and stop them from happening.

BEST MOMENTS

‘When buildings are built they have a number of IoT sensors built in already. Even though a standard office will have 5,000-10,000 data points, GWT Insight recognized that there was an opportunity to pick up that data by listening to the existing, in-house building management system. We developed the GWTI Observer to do just this and create a better understanding of risk for our users and customers.’

‘Risk managers want real-time data because it’s about loss prevention. We’ve still got a little bit of education to go through in the underwriting community, a lot of that community still has a very traditional viewpoint on how to use data and what is out there. With regards to owners, a third of this market is bleeding edge and want to risk manage their properties, a third is interested but not ready for it, and a third does not manage that data and insight proactively.’

‘I think the "data" topic will change the way insurance is sold, because when you’ve got the data you can make better, informed decisions about how you’re managing your property, the risks impacting your property, and how that impacts the rest of your business.’

‘In every building in every portfolio, there have been areas where we can help improve the operational efficiency of the building and provide a better customer experience for their own customers, employees, and stakeholders.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Iain Wilcox is an entrepreneur, leader, and visionary that has successfully started new business operations from scratch with software, IoT hardware, and services companies in the UK and Europe. Primarily worked in the startup development phase, building a unique customer base and revenue streams from the start. 

Iain manages the delicate balance between strategic planning and the practical implementation of market entry, business development, and revenue delivery for new and established operations.

Iain set up GWT Insight approximately 5 years ago.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iainwilcox/ 

GWT Insight is a tech company focused on making cost effective commercial building data available to their owners, operators and advisers. Whether reducing risk, improving quality of customer experience or saving money, access to reliable, real time and relevant data is now underpinning new ways to improve business performance. With origins in the insurance industry GWT Insight has developed technology to provide the answer to complex data capture challenges in commercial buildings. GWTI's device is simple to install, working across open protocols and many of widely used closed protocol systems it is plugged into the building's BMS, once connected it listens to building systems, sensors or business specific equipment without affecting their operation. Unlimited data can be captured, classified, standardised, compressed and protected with advanced security protocols. The data then flows via the cloud to client information systems, dashboards and user interfaces including tablets, desktops and mobile phones in near real time. The unique approach to data management and ability to deliver real time data on what is happening, and critically inform ‘why’ makes GATTI's solution a highly cost-effective platform to drive material benefits for anyone involved in the performance of commercial property.

GWT Insights: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gwt-insight/ 

ABOUT THE HOST

There are over 140,000 FinTech ventures out there, including FinTechs, InsurTechs, HealthTechs, and WealthTechs. And the number keeps on changing every month. One statistic remains the same: 25% of these ventures have received investment and support from the financing world. 75% of these businesses still seek financing support from institutional and corporate investors alongside value-creating commercial collaboration opportunities with Global Fortune 500. 

Through this podcast series, I would like to demystify the world of corporate venturing, including how corporations collaborate with growth ventures, how venture capitalists and corporate venture capitalists make investment and collaboration choices in ventures and give tech founders and entrepreneurs, the strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques to build, grow and scale their business by understanding how those with financing power think. So, listen in, share and comment as you see fit.

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