A 175-year-old data science innovation conversation with Penn Mutual

Anthony: Welcome, Greg.

Greg: Thank you for having me, Anthony.

Anthony: So the, the transformation of life insurers over a century old has become kind of a theme of the life accelerated podcast. I guess that was inevitable that it would happen if we talked to important companies in the industry, Penn mutual is actually closing in on two centuries. Tell us a little bit about the company's identity, market position its recent technology history.

Greg: Yeah, well, first of all, it's good to hear that. You're seeing themes of modernization and, and advancement within the industry. Right? We. Penn mutual do believe that, we need a healthy industry, not just a healthy company, but a healthy industry to be successful. Penn mutual has been in business.

We celebrate our hundred 75th anniversary just this past March. You know, I, I lightheartedly call us one of the original data science companies. I love the fact that we have been analyzing information and accepting risk, based on that information across that 175 years, we are a us based domestic, only individual life annuity carrier with a broker deal or an asset management arm.

We've seen some tremendous growth over the last 10 years. And we primarily position our products to be distributed through financial professionals. we do have a direct consumer, firm that we work with our own. but it's a very small portion of our overall business activity, right. We have historically distributed our products through seasoned, licensed financial professionals. We feel that model is best equipped to handle the financial and diverse needs of the American family and, and small businesses and other parties that would be interested in our product set. You know, it's been an interesting ride for the firm.

Greg: Um, when I joined back in 2004, I came to the realization that it was a little slow to adopt, right. A lot. I think a lot of individuals look at insurance as kind of a sleepy. Industry in the financial services realm. I don't think we're there today, right? I, I think over that 175 years, if you take us up to 2022, where we sit today, it is a robust, highly active, highly innovative industry, that really has, taken a tow hold.

Right? I think the industry numbers are up over the past couple years. I think people understand the value of our product. Um, and the protective nature it offers, again, another firm kinda mutual belief is that our products, are the basis and foundation of a sound financial plan. Right? All good financial planning, is based on duration.

So we do believe firmly that our products are, sound and, good investment, for all American families and small businesses.

Anthony: Greg, tell us a little bit more about how you came to Penn mutual, maybe you could, describe your own outlook has changed with your experience at Penn mutual and how the company has evolved.

Greg: Sure. I joined in 2004 with experiences in both financial services and healthcare, and had it been afforded the opportunity to work on really leading edge and innovative opportunities. I had, early in my career, an opportunity to work on one of the first financial transaction based internet sites ever developed.

Um, and in the healthcare realm was involved in serious consolidation of call centers and movement to, broad services. that were 24 7 365. So really the bringing of internet capabilities into even our healthcare arena at, at that employer. but when I joined Penn mutual, it was a firm that was kind of brought back to earlier decades. I came to the realization that, life insurance in particular, especially with all the merger and acquisition activity that occurred and those going public in the nineties and two thousands had led to these broad kind of, broken apart ecosystems you know, a lot of technology solutions, a lot of blocks of business, relying on different platforms, silos.

Yeah. You couldn't get these things to talk to each other. And, and, you know, conflicts within data, and also an industry where most of the information was being presented either on printed paper. Or over a telephone call, right?

There was very little in terms of internet capability. And a lot of that was because of the disparate systems, right. And these silos of information. Um, and I felt when I joined Penn mutual, my first couple years was replay some things I had done earlier in my career. Just to bring us back up to a foundation.

And one of the inflection points for us as a firm and as a technology, push was around 2008. Um, you know, we went at the financial crisis of oh eight, fairly aggressively. We had a very firm and stable balance sheet. and we really used that to speak to financial professionals that we were a mutual first company.

We were stable. and we also used that as a window to reinvest in our technology capabilities. Um, and, and for me, that was when I became CIO of the firm around that oh 8 0 9 timeframe.

And my first push was in. Right. We had to get better at data management. We had to get better at data movement. We had to get better at data presentation, both internal to our building, outside service providers, um, our own user interface development, et cetera. So really that oh 8 0 9 timeframe was a major inflection point for our technology capabilities. So where would you say Penn mutual is now with regard to measuring up to the benchmarks of the industry piece? Sure.

I would put us up against just about anybody in terms of our operational data. We took a serious run, a decade ago and continue to advance the same platforms that we started, that time ago.

Greg: Right. We were an early adopter in the financial services industry and definitely a leading edge adopter within the insurance industry of big data technologies. we took a run at. What I call course grained, SOA architectures. Right? We wanted to model out our policy, information, our field information, our client information.

And we created this concept of a triangle, right? From every policy you can get the client and the financial professionals involved from every financial professional. You can get the client and the policies involved, and we pushed that triangle forward over the course of a couple years. To the point now where that model, that triangle is a micro API architecture.

That is a significant integration layer and capability for the firm. We can move quicker. We can create solutions at a rapid pace, um, by lasing together, outside solution providers, our own internal capabilities. Um, so even if we feel like somebody was to move the needle ahead of us in some of these areas, I think our ability to react and adapt.

Is extremely strong. we have a little bit of work to do in terms of how we manage, what I would call the relationship and engagement data when people interface with us and our ability to capture that report on it. And I have some pretty compelling thoughts on what we can do with that data once we have it.

but for right now, our operational data is I think about as strong as any carrier.

Anthony: Well, that's interesting. I, it provides me with a good kind of jump off point for a broader question. So maybe we can step back a moment from what Penn mutual has done and is doing and plans to do. And I can ask you as a technologist. I mean, you're clearly a technology guy. what would you identify as the most important technologies for transforming the life insurance industry today?

You've mentioned data.

Greg: Yeah, well, data's the foundation, right? You don't do anything without data in this industry. I mentioned early on, we are, we're an original data science company. Um, Fast forward to today. We're a lot better at it, than we would've been 175 years ago. So data is the fuel of the engine, right.

What's going enable that. I think, for us right now, machine learning, is something I am very high on. I believe in math, I believe in pattern. Within data, right? So we have, been a, a pretty significant adopter of machine learning we've implemented in our underwriting, realm, um, and had great success in our ability to accelerate.

I also think cloud services as a long term play for the industry is extremely important. Um, Penn mutual is in the throes of a full cloud, migration. We are gonna vacate our data center in, in 2023. And I do think about 15 to 16 months from now. I'll be able to say that we're an entirely internet based company it.

Anthony: big step. what was it like to persuade? the corporate management of that move,

I didn't have to do a lot of persuading, you know, I think, our technology team, has a really strong track. It has a significant amount of trust, in terms of where we are as a company. and I think we, as a firm recognize that there's, you know, certain areas, Anthony, where we have to, push ourselves to lead, right.

Greg: Not all areas, but there's certain areas. Again, I think our underwriting realm, when I talk about machine based learning and how we handle data there. I, I think getting into a full cloud environment is gonna help us from a business continuity resiliency standpoint. It's gonna help our scalability. Um, we're already seeing benefits in many of our actuarial areas in terms of modeling and, our ability to interrogate data, and do projections, decades out.

so, to give us that flexibility, elasticity, resiliency, get away from a facility. These are all good things for the long term health of the firm.

Anthony: are some of the other technologies like low code, no code, for example.

Greg: Not necessarily sold on that one quite yet. Anthony, gimme time. I, I think II may have some battle, scars probably from the nineties and early two thousands on kind of, um, drag and drop, you know, low code, environments. Um, we're a Java shop. I'm not necessarily we to the language itself, but it's how we've grown up over the last 10 years. You know, for me, I think it gets into that service mindset, Anthony it's like, what are you trying to solve?

Right. And then the technologies follow what problems you're trying to solve. And I think the problem we're trying to solve is to make sure our products are accessible and engage. Where a person wants to, at the time they want to over the device, they want to, right. Whether it's a telephone, whether it's, a computer, whether it's a mobile device or a tablet, um, we're trying to play in all those mediums. An interesting statement. I think that. Speaks to how we view things at Penn mutual is we believe we are a company that's powered by people enabled by technology. So we're always gonna lead with our people. and the technology is there to support our people.

Anthony: Yeah, something you said reminded me about an earlier conversation. We've had how you look at the build versus buyer, the buy versus build question. And, whereas in many respects, Penn mutual is very advanced for life insurance company.At the same time, you're very much a programming shop and when it comes to differentiating capabilities, you're very much dedicated to building those yourself.

Yeah. It's.

Greg: Yeah, it's been, um, probably a mindset shift for me. Again, I don't know that I'm ever, we, the. Or the other, I think it's making the decision, the best decision you can with the information you have at hand and, and trying to meet their strategic objectives of the firm. Um, we've shifted a bit, right?

Probably from more of a third party service. provider into insourcing a little bit more of our platforms, being driven by a areas we wanna differentiate, right? We want our interface to be our interface. We don't want to be genericized in the third party's user interface and look like 15 other companies.

We have to have our own look and feel and, and we feel we're good at it. and our investment and talent. Right. I, I mentioned when I joined the firm in 2004, You could feel that we were a little bit behind the times, especially in some of the things I had done in my career.

Greg: I can't say that today, right?

We are progressive, advanced, innovative firm. And a lot of that has to do with the talent that we've managed to bring into the company. personally I view talent acquisition and, and talent retention and growth is one of my primary responsibilities. I'm a firm believer that if I can get the right people in to the right chairs, And deliver them the messaging of where we want to take the company, then I just have to get impediments out of their way.

Anthony: How do you find those people today? Are, are you experiencing the rigors of the great resignation?

Greg: That's a, that's a great question. Um, and it's one, I've spent quite a bit of the last, quite a bit of time in the last, especially six months on, I think there's a, multi-front answer to that. You mentioned young talent, right? So we have to go after all talent.

But we do have good pipelines into the university setting in the Philadelphia region. We've established those over a few years. Um, really work closely. Drexel university. We have a number of their co-ops come in on every cycle and, and that's a bit of a pipeline for us. When they reach graduation,

Greg: It is my Alma mater. We're also engaged, with temple university and their PhD program where we've had them really assist us in research and development opportunities, especially around machine learning and AI and big data. That's been a focus area of our engagement, we kind of sponsor these engagements through the university.

That's one way we're tapped into the university setting and, and Anthony, honestly, we've had to shift. our mindset, right? Penn mutual has embraced a fully remote workforce. as we went through the pandemic and we were coming out of it, we feel like we have been operating at a very high level over the last couple years.

We really haven't missed a beat. So, We've opened up our recruiting to, to a national footprint right now, what about the different kind of and expectations on the part of the newer talent that you're recruiting? How how's that going? And what kind of an adjustment does that require?

I mentioned it takes effort, right? Um, even think about what I do. I would, I would walk around the building. If a new employee started, stop by the desk, do the 10 minute. Hello, and welcome to the organization. Well, now it's a 30 minute zoom, right? When somebody joins the organization, I'm on screen with them for, you know, to do the intro, to say hello, learn a little bit about them.

Greg: Have them learn a little bit about me, not informal, really light. um, and that takes effort to continue to get those types of discussions on the calendar, right? you're not having that bump into with individuals in the hallway. You know, I can see you're working outta your home. This probably doesn't sound very far to you, right?

You, you have your coworkers and you're engaging with them and how do you do it? We have to mimic those same things. You know, I I've been part of panels. Anthony has been interesting over the course of the couple years. And everyone's talking about how you doing the work at home. What's your culture like?

There was a conversation. I heard once where our firm said, you know, my CEO says we invested in culture for over a hundred years, and now we're taking debits out right now, but we gotta get back on site so we can invest back in culture. I don't agree with that. Right. Culture is kind of a mindset and an approach.

and you know, as long as you're conscious of it, and as long as you invest in it, I think you're gonna be successful.

Anthony: So let's talk a little bit about Penn Mutual's understanding of digital, what role that plays in your agenda and how this fits in with the corporate objectives of the company.

for me, digital Anthony is the idea of meeting a person where they wanna be met when they wanna be. Right. And frankly, that can be a telephone, right? An old IVR is still a digital interface. If you think about it. Um, obviously it's not the advanced or forward thinking interfaces that we like to look at, but our investment in digital is really to hit our stakeholders and constituents where they need to be met.

Greg: That is our employees. Especially in this remote world, right? That they have the equipment that they have the data interfaces to be able to do their job successfully. Our financial professionals are we providing them the data and insights that they need to do their function, Not sit here and fight through paper or fight through and try to acquire information.

Are we giving them the information that they need at the time they. And at the time they can put it to use. And also for our policy owners, continue to build out all of these interfaces for all the stakeholders. and what's hit me over the years is we've developed a pretty nice, financial professional portal.

We brand it Insights, and it touches on enforce pending. It touches on our ACE platform, it's got their commission information, et cetera. And one thing we've been able to do is take that same code base and same user interface and then create a client portal. And then we've taken that same code base and that same user interface, and we've taken it into our call center. So now we have a common code base, a common user interface across all three of our stakeholder groups. And we can introduce feature and function in a method that we want to. Right. So right now we're working on a couple transactions for the call center.

Greg: And once we're comfortable there, we'll bring them out to the financial professional or the client. And it'll be the same exact transaction set, this is also built on, on a concept of unified data.

It is right. This go all goes back to the triangle that I mentioned, a while ago in the micro API architecture, it's all residing on top of that architecture. that development over time has really been fortuitous. You know, it accelerates our ability to. bring features and functions and capabilities out to all our stakeholder groups.

It's also led now to the ability to create interesting interactions. I think the next phase for us is, a phrase I started introduced to the company last year, around the digital ecosystem. we have our financial professional. We've created a new marketing digital website that we call gateway.

Greg: Um, we have our ACE or accelerated client experience, life, new business application, and underwriting process. Um, and we're currently working on, a new illustration system that we hope to deploy, probably towards the end of this year or very, very early in 23. And those four will form the basis of, of what we think will be a digital ecosystem.

We'll serve the company for a decade to come. How do you create interesting interactions across these, properties? and what opportunities are they gonna present that we haven't even thought of yet? if I'm in an illustration, can I quickly run an underwriting, experience through our ACE platform?

If I'm in force, can I go back to the marketing material? That was presented to me about this particular policy, or can I pull up the illustration and see my actual versus my illustration, um, in terms of maybe a variable product or something that, you know, an IUL or one of those types of products sets, um, you know, a lot more to come.

And, and to me it's exciting, right? This, this is the type of conversation that brings a smile to my face.

Anthony: Well, that's great. Could you tell us a little bit about how ACE was, conceived, where it fit with, where Penn mutual was and where it wanted to go. and then how the implementation went?

Greg: Yeah, ACE really a threshold moment for the company. Um, I, I think it's one of the highlights of my career. I mentioned I had an opportunity to do a first in the country kind of service back in the nineties. And, and I think we had another opportunity here to do a first. within the industry with ACE.

So it was 2016, there was a conversation occurring around data driven underwriting. There's some, engines out there that are reflexive question based that try to get you a rating. and many of 'em were really, oriented towards tele. Interviews. Right. So the idea that you would have some type of an individual with medical knowledge on the phone with an end consumer looking to buy a life insurance policy and walking them through life and health questions.

And we were, of course, looking at this like many other, manufacturers are and had been, and. I asked the question. It's like, it's like an Oreo cookie, right? With two bad cookies in a really nice center. what if the upfront experience is terrible and the backend experience is terrible because it's all paper based, but you have this data driven capability in the center.

So you accelerated at the center, but the book ends of it still have these long tails to them. Like this doesn't feel good, you know? So what if we took a run at this thing end to end, and this was the president of the company at the time, really pushed. And he pushed us on timeline. He thought we had a small window, to create something that maybe no one else had and he leaned into us, but he also gave us the resources to be successful.

Um, and at the time Penn mutual had just shifted to an all agile environment. We were SDLC in, in the early 2010s, but by 2015 we had shifted to a 100% agile environment where we had become accustomed to two week sprints and delivering, you know, workable software and doing demos and having those that sponsored the teams, be able to see what was being created over the course of time.

And I think that's important because ACE doesn't happen without the data platform I've touched on and ACE doesn't happen without the agile. That we had taken as a software development team. Um, and we made that thing happen in about 16 which still is kind of stunning. Um, we launched in September of 2017.

and we had one individual start the first case and pretty much 40 other people within the it realm, watching the data, move through the system. and literally given themselves a standing ovation when it went all the way through the very first case for me, the telltale moment had been about six or eight weeks prior when we were given a demo to the president and the CEO of the firm.

Greg: I had seven agile teams set up each delivering components. Right. We had the front end, application. We had backend policy delivery. We had backend client portal. We had the data driven underwriting engine and others. Um, and we did this demo for the very first time with all of the teams, software talking. And I made this joke like, oh my goodness, Frankenstein walks, right. We stitched together an arm, a leg, a head, a torso, and it got up and it actually walked and it needed some handholding, but it got off the table. Um, and by the fourth quarter, we had plans for a big controlled rollout. we were gonna walk this thing out to our distribution over the course of four to six months.

But it worked and it worked really well. And the president of the company offered it up to our entire distribution during the fourth quarter, about six to eight weeks after launch. And you know, my stomach turned, I was like holding onto the chair. I wasn't sure how this was gonna work.

Greg: I felt we were, gonna maybe, get crushed under the. of an extended user base. It didn't and we've continued to invest in it. And we're five years in at this point and we've probably done hundreds of releases across all the components. and we're at a point right now where 80, 85% of our applications come in over ACE. We are delivering 50% faster, information needed.

Anthony: Cornerstone of your new business.

Greg: It's a differentiator for us as a firm, it's not just a cornerstone of new business. It's a differentiator for the firm. We recruit to it. I think people who experience it are enamored with it. and I think even if you think about where we were with C, it was a complete game changer, right? It was a, it was a socially distant selling system.

Anthony: Let me, ask you then about the timing, because you had said that the company's leadership or the, the president at the time had given you a window. Did you come in a ahead of that window? Obviously? No.

Greg: Yeah. You got to go back to 16, 17. We were probably two months off his desire. Right. I think he, he said, you know, you got a year. We came in at about 14 months. You had a year for this major technology project.

Anthony: he, he unfamiliar with the insurance industry?

Greg: He is darn familiar with the insurance industry. He is an extremely smart, he is extremely smart but he is also extremely challenging.

Anthony: That's a really, that's a really tight timeline for, in an initiative like this.

Greg: and, and, you know, Anthony, one thing to keep in mind is we had to stop a lot of work. Right. You, you know, we, we're an environment where people are looking for things across a broad spectrum of, of capabilities, right. And we had to shut down a lot of work channels to, to take all our resources, you know, a good number of resources and truly focus on this without the distractions of additional work.

Anthony: about using internal resources for differentiating capabilities. Was there also a, a partnership component to your resources, whether that means consultants or software components that were part of the mix.

Greg: Yeah, there was a few areas. There was a few areas there where it was like, okay, do we build this capability or is it better to buy this capability? Do we wanna own the interface or is it okay that somebody else owns the interface? Um, you know, we worked with an outside, financial services firm that also was dabbling in software development firm by the name of porch.

And they worked with us on the application interface. So the actual UI that a and consumer sees, and enters their information in and, and goes through the workflow on the back end on policy delivery, we worked with iPipeline on their doc fast tool. So that's the delivery aspect of it. And even on the client portal, this drops somebody right into our client portal.

So at the end of policy delivery, you have an account within our client portal and you're asked to pay your first premium. Um, and we engage with JP Morgan to handle first premium payments. So, you know, there's some other vendors that were mixed in there as well, but you can see where we've taken these opportunities.

We ask ourselves the question of what are we good at and where should we look to acquire that capability or develop that capability and there's cases where we do look to acquire.

What's your experience with the inure tech movement been? Like, how do you feel about inure tech? How useful has it been to you? What do you think it means for the industry?

Greg: I'm probably a little hot and cold in this area, Anthony, to be truthful, to have startup firms out there and SureTech FinTech firms, um, they're gonna push the envelope. You know, I think they're important for the industries, to continue to identify capabilities that maybe incumbents don't.

Right. They're gonna be able to push the envelope a little bit, but I also believe it's overinflated at this point. I have seen an awful lot of firms come through, that present a solution that doesn't seem to have a high barrier to. It's easily. Replicatable one example that I can touch on is the idea of social profiling, right? Um, those that gather and scour social media, to try to gather a profile on individuals and then use that as a marketing medium.

I've probably seen 15 solution providers in that space and I stopped paying attention to it a while ago. I do think there's, a need for the investment. To push the envelope to find those new opportunities to kind of break down barriers. But I also believe the amount of money, the amount of startups, is just overwhelming at times.

And then in a chair like mine in a midsize company, you know, to make that decision on where are you willing to take that chance? Right. Am I willing to go with a firm that might not be around 12 months or 18 months from now? That's a pretty hard investment for us to make. I can't make too many errors like that.

So we have to be really prudent in how we approach some of these startups and look at 'em for little longevity, look at 'em for their funding, understand, where they fit in our portfolio of services and what would happen if, something happened to that. And they weren't able to sustain business.

So it's really interesting hearing, hearing you talk because there's a great mixture of shall we say skepticism and openness, a hybrid approach based on evidence as it's just as it's discoverable. whereas on the one hand, you're, you're maybe more eager to build things yourself when it's appropriate.

Anthony: also embracing cloud cloud ecosystem, APIs and microservices. So, this makes me want to ask you. What are the implications of these technologies for changing skill set in your organization? How you're

Greg: It's been significant. we went on the cloud migration path sometime back. Right. We've been aggressive on this probably for two years, And I can sit here today and say it it's a bigger.

Then we would've anticipated, 24 months ago, the skillset shift. The organizational requirement, the tooling, the security tooling that goes around it. These are all significant shifts, in terms of skill set. We're going to AWS. There's a limited number of people who have multi years of experience. You know, running DevOps or dev sec ops in AWS. So your pool of talent is pretty thin. Um, and we have to find them and we have to work to get them, to join us and, and make their work rewarding for them. I think it's a little bit of a bigger shift than we anticipated. But we're past that point. I think we've turned a corner. We recognize the. We recognize the tooling and skills that we need. I'm pleased to say, we've launched our first native applications in AWS. and now we're to the point where we're ING out the ability to create and shut down environments. So now we see the acceleration. Right. It was a longer road. The last six or eight months were pretty bumpy for us.

It was a really challenging time. Um, but over the last two months, we've turned the corner and now we're well positioned to see the acceleration of our software delivery. it's not a trivial shift. I've been at this for a little over 30 years. these transformations, these major transitions occur, hopefully with machine learning and cloud services and some of the AI stuff. Um, these are with us for a little bit, and I don't have to go through another significant shift in the next couple years because these have been

Greg: fairly disrupt.

Anthony: can make a, a concluding comment about how the state of technology today is enabling Penn mutual to. Revitalize its promise of its, 175 year existence.

without question, if I think of life insurance, I used to be able to make light to the fact that, to me, it was probably one of the hardest things. of the United States could acquire it took 30 days or so. Right? 30, 35 days from the point where I say, okay, I'm filling out an application till I actually have a policy and effect on my life.

Greg: We have been able to reduce that to under 24 hours for those that wanna move at that cadence. Um, and not for small amounts and not just only on one or two products, we have this across our entire product portfolio. We've taken it up to seven and a half million dollars in death benefit, which is our retention limits.

So we have really changed the acquisition. Of life insurance. And, you know, again, I mentioned earlier, we feel it's of paramount importance of any financial plan, um, because it, it gives you that protection for the unplanned events, the unexpected and events that may affect the family or business.

I'm a firm believer in data firm believer in machine learning firm believer in continuing to drive this industry forward and be a leader on the technology front, by being a leader in the. you almost need to be a leader on the technology front, right? We've been talking for a decade or more that every company is a technology company. Well, that is true, right? I mean, everything is running on a piece of software at this point

Anthony: Thank you for joining us for the life accelerated podcast, undertaken by insurance innovation reporter in partnership with Equisoft for more relevant content, to help you achieve digital transformation, please visit equisoft.com/lifeaccelerated.