Host: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Reinventing Finance. I'm very happy with my current guest, Lars. Lars, how are you today?

Lars Gehrmann: Very good. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Host: For those of our viewers and listeners who don't know you yet, why don't you just briefly introduce yourself? Who are you and what do you do?

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Look, I'm German. I think you can hear this. Yeah. But after working and studying a while in Germany, I actually moved to Spain, where I've met my wife. And then I moved to Zurich. And in the last three years, I have been in Qatar in the Middle East. I consider myself a digital entrepreneur. I've built companies for companies or for myself. Some things worked out and others rather a learning curve. But I think this is what I like to do. I'm doing new things and I do this professionally right now in a function of being the chief digital officer of Qatar Insurance Group.

Host: It's interesting. Do you have some examples of both some kind of businesses that you've built for yourself or for others? And more importantly, what are some maybe intuitive or even counterintuitive learnings, something that you don't get on your LinkedIn meme startup, you know, kind of mumbo jumbo that everyone seems to adhere to some counterintuitive learnings, if there are any.

Lars Gehrmann: Look, I think one thing that maybe is interesting to share is, obviously, I have a couple of gray hairs already. And I was able to build together with a team from our client, a digital bank in Spain in the year 2005 to 2007. And if I look back, back then it was almost everything around IT. And if I look now where we stand, yeah, 15 years later, it's not about IT anymore. It's about products and getting the right setup of the organization in place. So it's actually interesting how we have built things in the past and how we are building things right now. Because this agile way of thinking and the flexibility that you have with IT not being a problem anymore, it's really changing the way how we address business challenges. So I think this is one of the learnings.

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah, I think the second learning is that IT is ever changing. Yeah. And I think the AI is helping us to do things differently, even though it is still a lot of hot talk about it. But if you go deep, and I think we go deep, you see things. So you say, wow, it's really interesting what you could potentially do. I feel, I feel remembered somehow in the time when internet came up. And we all have been thinking about what could internet actually mean for us as people? And what can it mean for the business in the year 98 and 99, 2000? It was a really interesting time. And I feel a little bit like this. Everything is new, could be done differently. It's there, most probably it's not there. But the chances that we're getting interesting things are actually coming up. So it's an interesting period of time to live. And I think what I based everything on it is this experience that I have and building successfully or not successfully companies and products. And I think it all comes down to people that you work with that either fit or don't fit or get to fit together. A little bit of luck or a big part of luck, because I think you, Nick, you have good companies as well. So you know, it's just a little bit of luck belongs to a company success.

Host: But also the division and the way how you execute, I think this is what you need. And at certain times, if I look back on the things that didn't work out, apart from the people issues, sometimes you have to understand that what you've built may be funny to do, but there is not enough market for it, even if you earn some money, but it's not enough market. And then you have to be radical and say, well, that's it. You cannot continue. You have to find something else.

Lars Gehrmann: I think that's interesting that you kind of bring it close because I wholeheartedly, as someone who sells IT, I sometimes want guys, don't worry about it. The business case is not going, you can absolutely fuck your business case with the wrong IT. Don't get me wrong. But it's not going to, you know, what's your business? What do you need? You know, IT follows whatever business problem you're trying to solve. And, you know, there's enough IT infrastructure out there. Don't worry about it. Worry about, you know, product market fit. But then I thought it was quite interesting that you said, and I feel this is what a lot of kind of insurtechs, everyone was now about product. But then we build all of these products, but at least in my view, there's been not as much uptake as you would have hoped. And so I feel almost that, and you've mentioned that as well, there's not enough market. I kind of go, even forget product for a time. What's your market? What's your problem? You know, if you don't have distribution, it doesn't really matter. And just to say, and if it's B2C distribution, then the key point should be, how do I manage customer acquisition costs? And not just, oh, well, growth hack it. Right. But I agree. It kind of comes back full circle. And it's just to say, where's the problem? And then working backwards from that. And I feel it seems like a normal journey when starting new things. There is a meme out there, first time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution. And I feel that's true. I think it's even more an insurance where you really have to push product, right? It's not the product that everybody wants. It's like, you have to get it out. So you don't solve the distribution problem, then you don't solve for anything. Yeah. So I think this is key for it.

Lars Gehrmann: And then the second thing, and let's kind of dig in because as you've said, AI is everywhere, right? Everyone's kind of playing with it. I would just like to, and we don't know, right? But what is, maybe two things. What are some use cases that you feel are beneficial to use right now or which you would like to use? And maybe what would you, if you could venture a guess to kind of keep your eyes out for other insurance and insurtech professionals to not get bogged down in the hype, but also not, ah, it's not working for me. I'll ignore it. What's your sense around AI?

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah. I think I did refer back to the period of time when internet came up and I said, internet, not social media or mobile apps, those are tools. Really internet changed the way how we were thinking about business. And I think this is for me, the core of doing everything in AI. Yes, it's a tool set that can do things faster or differently, but in the end you're trying to solve a business problem. Yeah. So getting something out differently with a different mindset. Until recently we were thinking we need our brains in doing it or hands to do it, but the LRMs give us opportunities to potentially do it differently. Yeah. And this requires a certain kind of mindset to find out what it is. And then obviously, yes, there are the classic AI use cases for in the insurance sector. But I think rather than talking about this, it's for me, what I've learned, it's rather a transformation journey that you need to go through. So understand where's your company? Do you have enough people that are able to grasp something totally new that is not charter territory, but actually you have to think about it and see the options, the opportunities that are there and see how to get it done. So you need to find the people that can go with you on the journey. And then as a lot of things are promised, yeah, you actually have to do the journey on yourself, right? It's not about getting 20 different providers in and you buy something from anything. No, I think, but I fundamentally believe this is changing the way how we operate in insurance. There's a change in the way how we move within the insurance value chain. And this is not to be outsourced. This is something that I strongly believe you need to execute on your own. You have to make your hands dirty. You have to learn because we do this. We see things that I thought were easy to be done. And finally you come to the component. So yes, the small component is still lucky. And until this component is solved, you have to put it on a shelf and actually wait for half a year until somebody has solved this problem. So it's really interesting, exciting times because your brain is requested to think and to test things. And as it's easy to say, you go claims, you get call center, you say one-to-one marketing. So those are the use cases. Yes, but how do you implement? And this depends on the company you work for because everybody has it differently. So there's no blank thing or thing to copy from. You really have to adapt it to your own structure. So this is how I believe it.

Host: That's really funny, really interesting. And would that mean, if I'm kind of understanding you correctly, is that you would recommend putting out some serious money to hire that talent, which is rare and expensive, and sit around and come up with, present them with problems and come up with novel solutions as you don't feel that a, let's say, consultant or vendor relationship who might allegedly or truthful or not truthful provide these services? And how does that tie into that creating something totally novel? How does it tie in with the learning that we've shared previously to say, you know, if you don't have distribution or user, call it user acceptance, right? That's the same thing, right? If it's an internal thing. If you, you know, don't, wouldn't they then solve or how do you overcome them solving problems or providing solutions to problems that the users or the distribution channels didn't even ask for? Yeah. And then you just create expensive product again. That's great. But it's just, you know, innovation without adoption, that kind of thing.

Lars Gehrmann: Exactly. And I think this is what nobody can do. I think we went in all the innovation departments through really two hard years. Yeah. I think it seems to, we have seen the ground, but I think if you look into innovation and insurance and see the head count globally, I think it went down to 50% at least, right? So we have been going through hard times. Yeah. I think everybody in the dust, new things in insurance just need to justify a lot why we're doing it and what's the business outcome. So this on the later part of your comment or question, but maybe coming back to the original part of the question, what is the way how we can execute? And I believe at least for us, it's not about hiring hundreds of new people that are all AI experts. Few insurance companies are big enough to actually sit on that much data that they can build their own LLM. But we are medium sized. We are one of the biggest one in the Middle East, but we are medium sized company and compared to the global peers. I don't think that we need to, but you really need, and this is what we're trying to do as a small team, five, six, seven people, which is in the end, an HR team of one or two people that are thinking business and two people that think about IT. And what we do is using the capabilities that are available on the cloud for AI. And this is where we see a change compared to two years ago. Two years ago, if I wanted to go claims and AI, I need to go to one of those three, four, five providers that did AI and claims and insurance, because they have been invested a couple of years and they had a unique engine that would work for me. With today's landscape, I don't say we can, but I believe we are on a good way toward it. I can replicate this with our own data in a matter of weeks. In some areas, days. And we have proven a couple of business problems in days. So I don't think that what you said, do we need to hire super expensive people? Yes, you need people that understand a little bit of IT, but it's not that complicated anymore. If you work on the cloud and work on the tools that are available on the cloud, you can do things for your organization that are much faster. And this again is some sort of paradigm change because everything fancy came from Intertech in the past, working with Intertech, and I've been working in a previous company with you as well. So I believe fundamentally we changed this relationship. So if you're rather going back to distribution and products, working with Intertech, while the IT part is something that we need to figure out on our own. Why? Because I'm sitting on a wealth of data, so I can train the models that I get from Google Cloud much better than you can because you don't have the data. So I think it changes the way how we cooperate. And then like anything in this world, it's not that you need to do everything on your own. We work on our own, but we have a couple of consulting partners with us that help us in certain problem statements that we just don't know how to do it. The key message that I want to give here in this podcast is, do it. Don't wait on the sidelines. Don't wait until you hired somebody that is really the crack. You don't need to be a crack. If you think about business, if you have somebody that has a little bit of IT, bring those two people together and give them half a year to work on things. And in a matter of six months, you most probably can do three, four, five POCs. And you can execute them that fast because the tools are fast in the meantime. So I believe, again, it's the way how we operate is changing. And as consequence, it changes the way what we can do as impact for our own company and the international value chain.

Host: I mean, to me, that sounds like everything that, you know, how to move under high uncertainty in the early stages of POCs or startups that has been true for all time, you know, move fast, bring it, bring it out. I would say, you know, whether you, quite frankly, I think whether you insource or outsource something is a matter of access, speed, you know, I think, you know, depends, I would say. I think it likely depends on what you're trying to achieve and how much time you think you have on starting to get on that journey, as you say, because it'll be unlikely to kind of say, now it's a pop-up in my, you know, in my whatever, a Google pop-up or Microsoft pop-up and that's it, right? I think it needs that iteration. And I think we now just have, is it just an additional accelerant to what we have before? I'm just trying to understand. I'm not sure I do understand. I'm not hearing a step change yet. To me, this all sounds super sensible and, you know, just how doing innovation leaner.

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah, I think it goes beyond that. It's not just one crazy idea that you try to follow up. I fundamentally believe it impacts almost everything in the way how you operate and in big and small. Yeah. So if you can look into the business process of one individual person working for a company, you most probably can identify a couple of things where I can do things totally different and let his brain work more and doing less manual tasks. And this goes to the next level, which is department. So I'm coming back to what I said in the beginning. For me, this is what a transformational journey. Yeah. Because you need to take the team with you and you need to take the organization with you and understanding what is the opportunity. And I don't think that I crest everything. I don't have a good feeling on where we could be in the next two or three years, but it's also clear that you need the people with you. So for us, and I don't say that's the right way of doing it, but for us, we have been starting at a point where we're assuming. And I think it's rightfully that most of our employees have been exposed to a chapter PT and these kinds of sorts in the last 18 months. So what we said, okay, if you have been trying this in your private life, then let's see, can't we try this in our professional life? And as such, we've identified a couple of people that really have been power users. I wasn't aware because they were just powerful using the chativities of sorts. And we built a group of people that really had an exposure there. And for them, it was quite easy to contemplate what does it actually mean with my work? And we discovered not hundreds of business cases, but a lot of business cases out of comparing what I do in a private life to how can I use this in my business life? And out of this, then we have started a couple of projects, but you need a baseline and you need people with you that are thinking, because in the end, it's not like the typical innovation. We see this, wow, this is a fancy idea. Somebody has done it and I bring it in. On this side, I think we work differently. We'd rather work as a crude organization where everybody has an idea how to move on. And you need to activate those brains of the people to get the ideas to you, and then you help them to get them executed. So we need to have an execution that helps the business departments or individual users to make the best out of what AI can do. So it's rather a classic business transformation. I think this digital transformation is mainly used or misused by IT providers. They say, oh, digital transformation, they say, they want to tell me a tool. No, I mean business transformation and transforming people's life and people's way of work. And AI can help in doing it really interestingly.

Host: Awesome. No, I understood and can confirm that I think there certainly is tremendous potentials with people being educated increasingly around the potential and limitations of what these large language models can do with their use of chat GPT and kind of grassrooting it. Because that is, I'm a big believer if an organization just improves 1% any kind of smaller timeframe and you just add that up, it just compounds beautifully. And it's certainly something that I would encourage any organization to add to their roster of whatever growth, profitability, transforming, whatever label makes sense and is part of your strategy. I think it's

Host: It's just continuous improvement in a different shape. And thank you for sharing that and appreciating it's a developing field. If we kind of just take a step back to your role and what you're doing as group chief digital officer, but also head of your digital ventures partners, do you have some examples other than what we've described in AI about the things that you've, what's your, what does success at the end of the year look like? What are your KPIs and what are some things that you have done and that you would continue to do or might change so we can glean some learning from you?

Lars Gehrmann: Yes, thank you. Look, Catania Insurance Group, even if you have Catania name, they're a regional insurer. One of the biggest, the third biggest in terms of premiums, the biggest one in terms of assets in the Middle East. We are in Qatar, market leading, number four to five in UAE, three in Oman, in Kuwait. And the other half of our business is down in London, where you sit from time to time as well. The tag is re-insurance and Lloyds Syndicate. So it's a really interesting group. We do have the whole portfolio in retail. We have the whole portfolio in commercial insurance, plus the re-insurance and the Lloyds. So it's an interesting company set up where you can do a lot of things. We have the capital strength to take risk on our own books, which helps you to do more with insurance value chain. You just don't have to focus on distribution and get your couple of percent out of it. Plus an organization that is in the place for a couple of years or for 60 years already. So we have a brand. And you know insurance at least on both sides. We need to be able to see the brand. If you don't have it, it's really expensive to build. We have it. So my job when I came here was to see what we can do and identifying new digital business opportunities. And I don't mean channels. We have somebody really good in doing the channel work. And I think we have been growing really massively. But rather seeing is there anything new coming up that we can do our business differently? Are there products out there that we can do differently? And for that, we have built this unit, QRC Digital Venture Partners. And as the title say, we are trying to bring in products that somebody, other person, or company has invented outside. So we bring them into the region. This could lead up in some sort of venture, even though that you rather focus on getting the products in. We do invest into intertechs that fit into our investment theme. And this is mainly around companies, again, bringing products in that we don't have that we want to get to our portfolio, or companies that are in markets where we are not in but have an interest in. And over the last three years, we have been one of the, if not the, most active intertech investors in the Middle East. If you exclude accelerators, I think then by far we are the most active one. We're not a VC fund. We don't have 20 companies that we invest in. We need to fit. But nevertheless, we are constantly looking into companies to invest. And I think the third pillar that we do in Digital Venture Partners is ecosystem work. So when I came here, we actually seen that compared to Europe, US, or Asia, the intertech ecosystem was not really strong. So we've tried to work on this. And you cannot work this as one insurance company, even one of the dominant ones. So we invited other companies to join us. And we've built the MENA Intertech Association and initiative to work together on this level. We can compete on product. But on this side, we work together with the biggest insurance companies. And then I think in the last three years, we have established here a couple of knowledge sharing events. One is the MENA Intertech Summit. It's a yearly event that we have here in Doha. In 24, we had 120 people, speakers, 120 speakers with us coming from the outside region that come to learn from the region. And the region learns from them. The very best intertechs, 45 investors, 45 insurance companies, are really interesting networking events where we do things together. And I wanted to invite everybody here in the podcast to join us there. This is obviously not clear, but I think this is what we do. And doing this work on identifying products and partnerships, investing, but also seeing the ecosystem moving helps us in our job. And our job is, in the end, even though we do a lot of innovative work, but in the end, I need to contribute to the bottom line. So I really need to bring in the products or investment opportunities that help us to grow QSC. So we do this. And over the years, I think we had a couple of changes in the organization on our side and a couple of changes in terms of focus, because you start with something and then you learn how it's actually working in a different region. And then you adapt it. But I think we have built a name around us on what we do.

Host: And since you're mentioning focus, could you elaborate a little bit what you're, because I think what I'm trying to kind of distill is a little bit that I think you're right that there's been a change in how insurers consider innovation. I think there has been certain, let's say, not all expectations have been met around what has been invested and whatever return time frame someone would have taken. And I think it would just be interesting to kind of share around where your focus originally was, what your focus is now, and why that is. And if anything, there are any kind of best practices that you would recommend some colleagues in similar situations that have kind of worked for you who might be working either dedicated in an innovation team but just trying to bring the company forward whilst management and shareholders might look at quarterly results. Any kind of concrete examples, I think, would be super helpful.

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah, so look, I think we have done a couple of things differently compared to three years ago. But this is an individual and market-specific action. So I don't think that my wisdom speaks to anybody else. It's the specific findings that we have. But I think two things that we have done is, one, we started our journey with some sort of venture building activities. I thought this is a sensible thing to do because we haven't seen enough innovation in the region in terms of intro tech. So we thought we need to impose this by building our own ventures. We came to the point last year that even though that we had a proper team in this, that we are not fast enough. And the market, this is, I think, another of those points, the markets we're living in are really small. So you know how complicated intro tech, being on a product or an IT site, is in small markets. You need to scale to other markets. And there are 17. So we found that we are not executing at the level that we want it to be. So we have changed the setup there. And we really focus on what we've done in the past, new products, but not new products as ventures, but new products as getting them into our ownership. I think this is one. And then in a second, it took us a couple of years to get us known and our initiative known, but also see how the ecosystem reacts in terms of new founders, new ideas, and getting things out. So we have been running intro tech competitions for a while. And we've changed this this year because we see the ecosystem behaving and seeing things on its own. We don't need this impulse anymore. So we're actually moving rather into what we believe is a missing part, an intro tech accelerator, and not accelerator for an idea, but accelerator and companies actually have something. And they need a specific insurance guidance to get things out. So we talk about this being front-end partner, capacity partner. And I think insurance or intro tech for products, intro tech for tech, just works differently. The different timelines, different ways how we operate in the regulatory framework. And it is push product. It's not a product, the banking that you just take. You need to push this product. And this makes us different to banking. So I think those things we have learned. And then we'll be coming into the third area, how do we create the impact? And I think we created impact with the core of our business. But we always, and I think this is important, had to look into how can we help our core company with input, with possibilities to change, even if there was a hidden change. And we see this a couple of years later. We actually see what we have done as an impact for our company to change, to think differently, to be more agile and getting more ideas into and through the whole organizations. So it's not about CVC or innovation and do crazy things. You have to create an impact. And this impact is not measured necessarily in three months. You can do projects in three months. But even if you do something in three months, you cannot measure it. So we have in this front always this problem. But after a year working on it, you see that actually you have impacted a company. And the people around you see that you have impacted it. I think this is the best way of getting the things out and stabilized in a more complicated environment where innovation is, because you have your S curve. It's going up, and then it's falling down. It will fall down. So you need to have something in the piggyback to actually move on.

Host: So do you think that can it even be measured that, let's say, non-tangible or less tangible, a more qualitative aspect? Should people try? Or is it literally a matter of communication? And at the end of the day, sometimes also trust. I think the main point about innovation is it is novel. It is uncertain. You do not know. That's the whole point. So are we back a little bit? Is it a conviction-driven thing? Or can you put that into a balanced? I don't know whether people still use balanced scorecards. I'm just making this up. A balanced scorecard to say, this is novelty. 10 ideas put in is the same as bottom line or commission income or gross return premium. Is it even worth it? I mean, I think it's not, quite frankly. You either believe in it and you have the resources and the stamina. And the current situation in your company where you feel, this is beneficial for my company to leap forward and we're not wounded or need to lick our wounds and need to make sure that we don't get wiped off the board or something else. It feels a little bit like that, but I don't know.

Lars Gehrmann: Spot on. I think, yes, if you talk to consultants, innovation consultants, they all come with their KPIs. And no, I don't believe that you really can measure it. Not measuring in KPIs that you find before. So this is really complicated to get things through, because in the end, it's everything new. So how do you measure something new that you're doing? But I think it's important, similar to if you work in an agile environment and you do the sprint, the spectrum sort of reviews. If you go back after half a year or after a year and actually think about what have you done and how have you impacted the organization, and then talk with people and explain them how you've impacted it, actually you say, oh, there was something that I have done. There was something that we actually brought to the company that is not measurably but a core PPI. So for me, it was around the summit that we did. So I think this way of thinking how we are faster, how we grasp opportunities, how we are getting things done, it's different now compared to when we started this journey. And this is obviously, who are CEO that wants to do those things differently, but then you need to go through the organization. And there's a lot of people that don't like changing things. So you still have to keep fighting, and then fighting different ways. And then you can, at the end, explain even that. So yeah, there is something that we built. So is this something enough to justify your work? Well, that's a debatable thing. And this is where we are in innovation and everything that we do. But yes, you need to at least attempt to get a bottom line impact for the company. And I think every forward-thinking CEO understands what we do is relevant, because you actually take the organization with you and you do it. But this is how we have done it. We always looked not only from the external point of view, but we also looked into how can we, with our work, influence our own company to the better?

Host: No, I think that makes sense. It certainly resonates. And in the beginning, you said you have to have luck. But in order for Fortuna to be there, you also need to have resilience or stamina. And so I think the expectation to come up, it's, again, like anything. It's the thought that the idea has such a big impact about the full transformation journey is only for those who only have had ideas and haven't had to work through. You think the idea in the pub, it's like that guy, I've had the Uber idea in the pub. It's like, yeah, but you continued drinking your 15th beer and you didn't follow through. And I think it's that grit, that tenacity, and sometimes just being there when the timing is right, I think is important. And so I would, as you've also said, I think rather than looking at trying to find, it's like finding your team, rather than figuring out, here are all the metrics that I want to control you with because I'm so scared that I might have picked some wrong. Just focus on getting the right people and trusting in the input because the output, you quite frankly cannot really control all that much. I think that resonates. I think it holds true and it goes a bit against this whole thing. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it, but maybe that's the thing, you can't really manage innovation. I think those two things don't really go together because if you could manage it, it wasn't innovation, it was something else.

Lars Gehrmann: Yes, I agree with this. Yeah, I think the big consultants have all the frameworks, but in the end, it's about what you said, stamina and getting things done, right? That's the difference between a consultant and actually doing it in a company. Yeah, it's not innovation theater. It's actually, it's complicated. So if we were to shift a little bit towards the market and other things that you've mentioned, what type of products, solutions, approaches do you think should some of our listeners who might come predominantly from Europe, but maybe also the States to kind of, and who might think, Middle East seems to make sense. Where would you say, kind of from a pull factor to say, you would like to see more of X in the market and maybe don't, we don't need another Y here because we've gotten enough, some sense checking there.

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah, it's a really good question and this is what we daily work on, right? I think the market here in the wider region really only knows until now, classic insurance products. Yeah, so you have your motor car, you have your health insurance, you have a little bit of life, but this is why the environment is different. Yeah, but we only have standard products. We don't see very specific products for specific use groups yet. And this is where I believe big opportunities are coming in. The structure of the insurance companies here in the Middle East is that, that maybe you have one handful, maximum two handful of companies that are strong enough with a bad industry to take risks. All the others call themselves insurance companies by rather brokers. And if you're just a broker, you just don't have the money to do new things, you just have to follow. So responsibility of getting your products in is laying with those handful of bigger insurance companies that you know how this is. Bigger companies are not the most, the fastest and most innovative ones. So I believe this is where we are. So if I look into it and we work on this daily, if you have an interest in joining us in the Middle East, the markets are really interesting. There's money, there's growth. There are two things that need to be clear. One, there are small fragmented markets. So it's really three, six, 10 million people markets and it's not EU. So there's a regulation differently in every country. So scaling from one country to another is a challenge. So you need to think about this, this is one. And then second, if you're thinking about product and not IT, coming back to what I said, only a handful of companies are able to do new products. If you come at a product and you just have an idea or have used this product somewhere else and you're not coming with re-insurance capacity or your own or a friend at Lloydsbrook are behind you, this most probably will not fly because the underwriters and directors that we're having don't have the experience in building massively new products. So it's easier to come in with a set of things. It's my product, I have this experience, I have data, I bring the re-insurance with you, I need you to join as a fronting partner and take part of the capacity. I believe that's the easiest way. And I think we're working with a couple of companies and a couple of those companies are part of our MENA InsureTech Accelerator now, with accepting this set, because this is easy and this is quite fast to getting it out here in our region. If you think about-

Host: What do they need to bring? Sorry, what do they need to bring with? Is that, so do they need to have the, do you then expect they bring their own business development personnel, operating personnel? You know, how boots on the ground does this need to be when, for example, working with you as, you know, they might not have yet.

Lars Gehrmann: Yeah, and they don't need, yeah. I think this is depending on with whom you partner. On QSC, through our digital venture partner structure, we have those things, yeah. So I don't need business development to be able to integrate this into QSC. I think the other big insurance companies have similar setups, maybe not as, let's say, progressive as we are, but there are similar setups there. What you really need is an existing product that works in a different country, yeah, and some sort of reinsurance, and the data behind it validates what you actually can do. Right, and then I think there's a way into the market. If you just have an idea, it's complicated. If you just have a little bit of product experience, then usually it doesn't work. So that is what is needed.

Lars Gehrmann: And as I said, all the markets are really small. So if you believe you need your own license in a market, then you need to have teams. If working with you as the fronting partner and the capacity partner is good enough, and then you'd sell this product not under your name, but you're licensing out this product, then I believe you can easily and quite lean into the MENA market on insurance products. Tech is something else, but we can talk tech as well.

Host: Yeah, what else would you say? So this sounds to me, I'm an established MGA or a business, and I have, and then I'll get, I can go into the MENA region for fronting capacity and some, but also business development and operational support, depending on how that product looks like. That makes sense. Do you see interest in other enablers around the insurance value chain? Not all IT, but could be TPA, have you seen, or do you feel, nah, listen, we have our own ecosystem or we do it ourselves. We're really looking for, at the end of the day, what you're really looking for is kind of validated product innovation that might come from different markets, not an EU-based chatbot that does AI. I don't know, maybe you are, I don't know.

Lars Gehrmann: Look, and I think just, if you ask the question in Europe, you would get answers in favor of both, depending on whom you talk, right? We obviously are one of the biggest insurance companies, so for us, it's the product side that is interesting to see. Yeah, because we see things, we want to test things, we want to see how we can move them. Do we need another AI chatbot? I don't believe so. We have clever people in the Middle East that are able to build those things. And as I said in the beginning of our call on the podcast here, I believe the way how we interact with intratech on the tech side is changing. But this is our case. If you level down into the smaller insurance companies, they don't even have the infrastructure internally to do those things that we do. So for them, yes, certain IT solutions are relevant. So it's just a matter of to see who is really your target segment. Everybody goes for the big ones, but the big ones usually have an environment where they can deliver it. So you need to go a level deeper or lower. And I think there are clients for IT solutions as well. But again, it is small markets, and it's a rather, even though they call themselves insurance, but the majority is broker-driven. So there is limited use for IT solutions in the smaller market segments.

Host: So just to kind of finalize that point, what would be your, any additional recommendation of how to be successful in the region? You know, being, let's say, an established MGA business with a unique underwriting edge that also applies to your region. That you would, that's specific to the region that you might be a bit surprised to, let's say, some other, you know, Europeans who also been traveling, et cetera, right? You know, we're not talking about people who've never left Germany or something.

Lars Gehrmann: Look, I think this goes a little bit too deep for the time that we're having here today, but I have this discussion every week with companies that have an interest in it. I think there are two things that I think come to mind and that's maybe misunderstood. So one, maybe if I, so one, the wider political situation that we're living in here with the conflict that we have in the middle of the region, it's not really helping, but the diversity of countries, beliefs, and ecosystems and economies is massive. People need to start thinking really about what are my markets. And it's not necessarily the market that is the loudest like UAE for insurance, that might be not the best market for it. So it's really, you need to, like going to a new continent, make your homework. So this is one. The other is that even if it's Arabic countries, it's not necessarily needed to have everything Arabic. The majority of the people, if we exclude Saudi, yeah, at least here in the Gulf area, are people from the outside. So English is the mandatory language on everything. So you actually have an entry barrier that is lower compared to what people think, because everything, oh, I need to have Arabic. Depending on what you do, not necessarily. And connecting to that, we have an unbelievable diverse population. With people, million of people not coming from the region, but coming from different countries. Name it Philippines, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. So, and depending on which country you have an interest in, the population quantity is different. So it requires usually somebody from the region to help understand how to do the right steps. And I think this is where we, for example, come in, because we have, we are in four markets here. So we understand this quite well, and we have partners in the other markets, so we can do things. It's a little bit like Europe, yeah? But only a little bit, yeah? Because in Europe, we have this one framework where you can almost execute everything in all countries. I'm sure it's different, but it's easier to get licensed. Here you don't have, it's regulated, and you have specific market needs from people that are not coming and staying forever. I would say 90% of those people living in the Gulf come for a period of time, be it three or 25 years, I don't know, depending on the population that you talk to, but everybody goes home eventually, except the locals, and there's a small percentage of locals living in those markets. It's not about, really, as money, market are growing, I go, it's more complex. Yeah, everything, the going is complex. So you need to find the right people to talk to and see how you can grow your business.

Host: I'm conscious of time. Do you think there's something that we haven't touched on yet that you feel might be interesting for our listeners or anyone interested in working with you guys or entering the region in general or something to learn from the region that we haven't been able to cover yet?

Lars Gehrmann: No, I think your questions are really good. I think we have covered the main things that I believe are interesting to the region. We continue the discussion that we just had. What do we need to do if you want to have an interest in a region? What I would do is invite people to this conference. The MENA Angelic Summit will happen again next year in May, 10, 11, or 12th of May here in Doha, which is really an epicenter here in the region. We have a three-day event, getting everybody together that has something to say around digital insurance, AI, intertech, investing in intertech. It's a powerful networking event. And for a couple of selected people, and you have to talk to me, we even do a trip to the desert. So we usually take something like 75 people into Jeeps and drive through the desert and have a powerful networking there. And then we have two more days where we do a deep networking and really interesting conference meetings and panels. So if you have an interest, I think that's the best thing. Talk to us or just join us in our conference. I think we will find a way how this podcast get a discount for the tickets as well. So then we take it from there.

Host: Last, thank you very much for taking the time and sharing your experience. I'd say anyone considering entering the region, they'll hit you up. You certainly have some more stories to share. Thank you so much for your time and insights.

Lars Gehrmann: Thank you so much for having me.

Host: Goodbye, everyone.