Mark Dennis: Building the first wave of digital ecosystems

On this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Mark Dennis, a seasoned insurance executive with strong expertise in software platforms.

Mark was the Global COO and Europe CEO for MunichRe Digital Partners, one of the most renowned InsurTech ecosystem builders which has now been re-integrated within the core business of the MunichRe group. Today, Mark works with various young ventures and helps them with their scaling strategy.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• In my time we’ve partnered with 25-30 InsurTechs and we’ve invested in less than half, so we’re quite selective about where the capital has gone. The examples where we’ve got it really right are where we’ve blended out products well. 
• In the early years we were probably more invested in technology and our assertion at the time was to offer the full tech stack of policy admin. In the middle of that five years period, we looked at the market and realized there were people out there who could do it a lot better than us, there were hundreds of policy administration vendors. You could pick whether you chose to buy rather than build. So we pivoted that model away from building everything to having a network of best-in-class providers that we could connect to our InsurTech customers. Later, we focussed more on data infrastructure and collaborating with our InsurTech partners to leverage a data advantage.
• It’s folly to seek perfect alignment, it’s better to seek out what everybody gets from the partnership, and it’ll vary and move around over time, but as long as everybody gets some kind of upside then that’s being in a good shape. Seeking perfection is nonsense really.
• Insurance has always been data-driven, even 4,000 years ago with the Phoenician traders. They’re always figuring stuff out based on data points (e.g. When’s the safest time to sail across that ocean to deliver goods?) Now we have the benefit of technology that allows us to process a lot more data and everybody’s trying to capture data points and gain a data advantage, though sometimes I think we don’t always know what we’re doing, we’re capturing data without necessarily a clear purpose. It’s much more around risk prevention and prediction rather than the cure. It’s more a force for good now though I don’t think insurance gets the credit it deserves. In a way, it certainly needs its own PR campaign!

BEST MOMENTS

‘The key for me is wanting to be a partnership business and we try to treat all our InsurTech relationships as partnerships, rather than too transactional.’ 

‘Without knowing it – because there wasn’t that much competition in the early days – we built the first InsurTech ecosystems, it wasn’t by design, it was just how it worked.’

‘It boils down to a few key questions: Is the team the right team? Are they balanced? Do they know the industry or are they being deliberately disruptive? Are they being positive with their disruption?’

‘You have to respect your insurance partner, they need to get something out of this and create value.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Mark Dennis says: In 2016, I co-founded and built out MunichRe's Digital Partners business from scratch to what is now a large, global operation employing more than 100 brilliant people. With our insurtech and disruptive partners, we have helped build more than 20 insurance businesses.

As part of my role, I introduced a flexible working model with employee wellbeing and care at the heart of what we do. For more than 5 years we have operated a flexible model with meeting free and wellbeing days, extended breaks, flexibility for working parents, and so on. I am proud to say that some of these ideas have now been adopted more widely in the other MunichRe businesses.

I am also passionate about giving people a chance. DP recruits people of all backgrounds and with diversity in thinking. I was also an executive sponsor on Munich Re UK's inclusion and diversity programme and for the Re:Connect charitable foundation.

I now lead an independent consulting business with a focus on insurtech scaling, operational resilience and change management. We also aim to work with more established insurance businesses in developing and executing their innovation ambition.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-dennis-07908313/ 

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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