Nick: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Reinventing Finance. As usual, I have the pleasure of not just being here by myself, I have my lovely co-host on my side. Tom, how are you today?

Tom: Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Nick: Likewise. And today we managed to convince Raymond from Evertas to join our little virtual show. Raymond, welcome abode.

Raymond: Thank you. Thank you, Nick and Tom. I really appreciate it.

Nick: We appreciate it, truly. So maybe to kind of, why don't we kick-start this with Raymond, why don't you briefly introduce, you know, yourself and, you know, Evertas and what you guys have been up to?

Raymond: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with both of you and the audience. You know, my name is Raymond Zenkich. I'm a co-founder and president of Evertas. In addition, I would say to, you know, my background; I had a career in insurance. I've also had, you know, an extensive background in technology development as well, which really led me to start Evertas and really build a unique company. We'd won a crypto asset insurance company. And this was over 10 years ago, when we had the initial vision. You know, we're a Lloyd's cover holder. So for the insurance geeks who are listening, that means A-rated paper, which we always find is really important to stress. Although we are based in the U.S., we offer policies globally with limits of $360 million on a per policy basis. And that's really unheard of in terms of the size of the limit. We'll talk about more of that later on. Also, really excited to announce that we have one of our European offices, our first European office, slated to open later this month in Germany. So I'll be closer to both of you.

You know, and it's interesting because as I was preparing for our discussion today, you know, I was reflecting that it was really back in 2015. You know, it's hard to believe that was years ago.

Nick: Time flies.

Raymond: Yeah. You know, I held the first blockchain and insurance conference here in this. And, you know, my view at the time, which is still is true, is that this is, you know, crypto at the time was nascent. It still is, I would argue. And, you know, insurance solutions are going to be needed. It's a way to professionalise any new industry. And, you know, that's where the journey began to build an insurance company with my co-founder and I. And, you know, so for Evertas, and we are an MGU to be more precise, and that may have a more of a North American context to it, but it's a, you know, managing general underwriter. So we really focus on underwriting and we're specifically focused on insurance solutions for crypto. You know, and so today we offer a full complement of coverages for the crypto industry. We can go into detail on any of these later on, but, you know, prime or theft loss, which is obviously relevant if you're a custodian of private keys, then also extensible crypto and fiat, fidelity products, property, tech, you know, or what we tend to call, you know, platform failure that includes slashing and staking, you know, smart contracts and cyber. And so we've really built out a suite of products for the crypto industry. And what we felt then, and it's really, you know, as a company has developed and the industry has developed, which has really been shown to be the way to go, is you really need to get the underwriting correct and to build up the internal team to know these risks inside and out. And so what was true then and is still true today that it's really our underwriting capability. And, you know, the people, the processes, technology across these risks that, you know, make us unique. And what I'm excited to talk about today, you know, we have people, with amazing backgrounds who have been involved in crypto assets and digital assets for decades. They've built custody systems. They really lived and breathed in the scene, almost everything. So, you know, it's a bit about us and our background.

Nick: There are a couple of avenues, I think, that at least I would find interesting to kind of venture in. So I think one, if I paraphrase that. So your customers are large crypto businesses, right? So first of all, we're not talking about end consumers, right? You do not insure me if I lose my key or my crypto wallet or whatever gets hacked or stolen. Right. So we're pure commercial play. And we're talking because I don't need a 350 million limit either.

Raymond: Maybe Tom does.

Nick: Maybe Tom does. I mean, he's in Switzerland. Who knows? So maybe he does. So we're doing that. And really it's about for these companies to be able to make me more comfortable. Right. Because what if, for example, I have I'm on an exchange. I put my bitcoins there and if they get hacked, am I comfortable that their balance sheet can withstand that? You know, that's kind of one of the core premises of what you're what you're protecting. And then there are different risks of, you know, how they might lose my coins. Is that a fair layman's term summary or?

Raymond:  No, exactly. And that is the, you know, the part of our coverage that relates to digital assets. So we think that that part of our business, you know, when we initially started, we developed it's called the coverage for digital exposures. Code is the acronym we use as a code policy. And that's exactly what you described. We work with the institutions where your digital assets might be stored. And they want to have protection, right, they want to have that balance sheet protection that we can offer through our through our products. But in addition to code policies or crypto asset related coverages or custodial coverages, we also. And we're trying to serve the whole industry, so, you know, mining operations are also a very important aspect of the crypto industry, and, you know, we recognise the similar issues with rate related to lack of capacity for mining operations or for mining infrastructure. So that's another area where we've been building out our set of products.

Nick: What are some key risks of mining operations? I mean, there's obviously like property risk, but where does this require specific crypto? Because I understand, on the exchange, you really want to understand from a risk management and underwriting perspective how secure a system is. Right, but on mining, what are some specific risks and where to some specialist underwriting knowledge comes into play? I would have just naively thought, yeah, you know, it's just some expensive hardware and maybe a very expensive business interruption policy. I don't know. But, you know, what would be some specificities in that area?

Raymond: Well, you're absolutely right that those areas, the ones you mentioned are, in fact, the ones that come first to mind is also infrastructure. So think about the transformers or the electrical grid supplying the mining operations with data centre. These are very typically very large operations, as you could imagine. And so a lot of the property risks that you described certainly come to mind. The real or some of the unique aspects are really tied to how you value and how do you monitor changes in the value. And that's that is really some of the more unique aspects.

And it's having a team that can not only underwrite the let's say the more traditional property side, but also understand the valuation. And that's really where I would say some of our secret sauce lies, because, yeah, once you go beyond the more obvious or sort of superficial areas of the risk, that's where we excel. And because we've been in that space and our team has been in that space for years. We know all of the major mining operations and we're able to very quickly establish credibility with them in our underwriting discussions and the brokers who obviously distributed through work through. They like that because we were able to demonstrate knowledge and expertise that it's very challenging for a broker to have to match our level of knowledge right across a wide set of products they may carry. And so we're able to very quickly understand the nature of the risk, understand the potential issues around coverage and do that relatively quickly. So we do a lot of mining operations and typically from a couple of days to maybe a week or week and a half, we can turn things around. And we're also focussing a lot of our energy on internally building out the processes and technology to have our underwriters be more efficient in the underwriting and also develop our own set of knowledge bases that we can assess any aggregation of risk by region, for example, or by facility. So anyway, I hope that answers your question.

Nick: And when you just out of interest, when you say valuation, what type of valuation do you mean? Like the hardware valuation? Is there like a financial loss valuation? What do you mean by that?

Raymond: It's typically, yeah, when I'm talking about valuation; I'm talking about the valuation of the mining rigs themselves with the hardware.

Nick: OK, OK, understood. And I guess from, would you call yourself an insurTech? I mean, it's not as cool anymore as it used to be, by the way, but this sounds like a very, and I mean that in the best sense, classical MGU, MGA model, you understand your target customer, you understand the risk, you have lots and lots of expertise, you look at the risks, you underwrite better than the rest. And that is why you, that's where you excel. You know how you get in, like how good speciality businesses are built in insurance.

Raymond: It's interesting, you know, we're backed and we're funded by the crypto industry essentially, right? People who shared our view that insurance needed to be solved. And because of that, you know, we had these discussions early on, are we insurTech? And I think the short answer is, you can maybe make that case, but we don't, we don't really strive to make that distinction. We, if anything, we're probably more of a crypto orientated company. It's given the expertise and the people on our team, and we're trying to provide solutions for risk management to the space. Some of the solutions we're building internally, you could argue, maybe have a bit of an insurTech flavour to them, but I would say in general that we don't sort of view ourselves with the insurTech sort of umbrella.

Nick: And when you kind of mention expertise, underwriting expertise, are there some more, let's say, exotic examples and of previous work histories of some of your colleagues and employees? No, you don't need to name names, but just kind of, what's the kind of flavour of people that provide the relevant expertise as an aggregate? And just kind of give us a little bit of a flavour, you've already said, you know, these are people who've built a custodian platform. Yeah, make sure, you know, someone who's built a custodian platform probably knows the ins and outs and, you know, the weak points of something, are there any kind of other such examples to get ourselves a little bit, who are not part of the crypto industry, just some flavour?

Raymond: Well, you know, it's interesting because there's a very large overlap with, I would say, broadly speaking security or, you know, information security, what you might consider cyber-orientated security. And the skill sets are very similar in terms of what you would want to see in sort of the people and the thinking that goes into not only our policies or the coverage, but the underwriting, and I would say the thought leadership. And so we do actually have a professional services group that, you know, is led by Nick Selby, and Nick's background is one of this, you know, decades of experience in evaluating security risks for, you know, across many industries. And so that becomes an indispensable tool because a lot of the, I'll say issues, but a lot of the things that we see in our underwriting that need to be addressed, you know, they can be crypto-specific, right? If you're talking about a custody system, there are certain things around key management that you could argue might be crypto-specific, but a lot of the areas that we probe end up being, you know, somewhat common, right? For example, you know, we want to see programmatic enforcement of policies, for example, around segregation or transfers. And what happens is, you know, unfortunately, there is this trade-off that gets made between, let's say, need to push out features or need to hit, you know, development and release deadlines and safety and security. And so those are unique to crypto, you know, those broadly speaking affect, you know, a lot of industries. And that's where the people we have are very unique in literally having decades of experience and seeing these, understanding the kind of questions that are going to help us very quickly understand, is this the type of insured, you know, where we can put together a policy for them? So at the high level, I would say it's a question of, you know, is this potential insured? Do they have a security-first culture? Or is it more of an afterthought of security? And if it's the latter, that can be very hard to overcome those deficiencies, even with a lot of exclusions. And what oftentimes can happen is we might say, look, you guys aren't ready. There are a lot of, you know, issues that we're seeing here. And oftentimes it can be because it's a younger company, you know, venture funded, trying to move quickly where, you know, we can give some direction, right, on how to address deficiencies. And coming back to your question about as a customer, a retail customer, and wanting to have some comfort, you know, there really isn't a lot of places you can go to get that, right? So there's no seal of approval. But one thing you can do, and this is, you know, true in a lot of other industries, and is you can at least see if they have underwriting or insurance policy in place. Because if that's the case, hopefully it's been, you know, objectively underwritten and that can give you some potential insurance. And so, you know, one thing I did back in 2021, this was a response to an SEC letter, is I wrote a letter to the SEC back on this topic and talked about how, you know, insurance, you know, throughout, you know, history, you know, can help professionalise an industry. And, you know, our view is, you know, insurance can really drive standards in a way that if you end up having a lot of intrusive regulations, you know, that can end up stifling an industry. And so we do see insurance as, you know, being unique in that respect. And it's actually what excites us and the rest of the people on the team, is that, you know, we do see what we're doing in Evertas more broadly as being a force for good in this industry. And unfortunately, the headlines you see in the news may talk about, you know, crypto and perhaps put it in a negative light. You know, our view is that crypto is here to stay. It's going to evolve. And, you know, insurance needs to evolve as well. And if you rely on regulators to do that, you know, independent of the, you know, centralised versus decentralised debates you might want to have about crypto or digital assets, we think that will stifle the industry and will unfortunately, you know, lock the industry and lock the industry in a way perhaps around not best practises, but, you know, in some cases, less than ideal practises.

Nick: I think that the true benefit of insurance as a tool, you put a price on something. That's the, you know, saying no, yes or no, it's kind of binary and it might not be the ideal option for something. But pricing something, I think, is really helpful in putting positive signalling into or negative signalling into the space. I also absolutely want to pick up on your view about, what's the benefit of crypto in your view? Where does it develop? Before we do that, I just wanted to finalise a few of my thoughts around your kind of business model and the kind of more Evertas specific aspect. So, if I've understood you correctly, you go to the market through brokers, right? Correct. As you've stated, and they like your expertise, because as a broker, you usually have a whole palette of products and you might have your specific speciality, but it might not be crypto. Why don't you go directly to the big exchanges? If you have all the knowledge, if you have a crypto background, why have the broker in between, what value do they add or, what type of brokers would you want to work with? Because you obviously don't want to work with someone who doesn't have value. So I just wanted to get my head around that.

Raymond: Yeah. So I should clarify that we do work primarily through wholesale brokers. And so that, again, may be more of a North American phenomenon, but we do work with primarily through wholesale brokers.

Nick: How would you define them? For more of our European audience, what differentiates a wholesale broker versus a, is it retail, but retail probably could still have commercial customers just so we get the definitions right.

Raymond: So it's best to actually think about it from a retail broker perspective. So this obviously is the space we're talking about now, crypto asset insurance is highly specialised. And so in the States, we are under what's called the excess and surplus lines type of product regime. And if you're a retail broker, it's not very easy for you to say, oh, I'm going to go talk to this market or that market. In fact, it's very, very difficult because it's so specialised. And that's really the role where a wholesale broker can bring a lot of value to the table because the wholesale broker understands it's really, it's a big aspect of their business. It's to understand the set of markets that can solve the problems for the retail broker. So the retail broker may have their own relationships with markets, but in certain situations, the value of the wholesaler brings is, is they have a view into a wider set and they can bring that, they bring that to the table. And so that helps us because we will invest a lot of our time in educating the wholesale broker around our products and what we look for.

Essentially, it helps us be much more efficient. And so that's ultimately, you know, it's the question around what is our strategy with distribution? We had no aspirations about building a global set of agents and brokers worldwide. You know, where we saw ourselves in the value chain was closer to the carrier, in this case, being a Lloyd's cover holder, having access to capacity and leveraging the underwriting. That to us was the unique value we bring to the table. A lot of the, a lot of the insureds just do know about us, just given our, the fact that we are in the industry, given who we have on our team. And what they will do is reach out to their broker and oftentimes say, you know, we want you to be working with Evertas and then the relationship there, as I said, goes through a wholesale broker, at least in North America, I would say.

Nick: Okay. And I think just for definite, when you say markets, that's, you know, synonymous to carriers, insurers, capacity, right? Okay. Who are your competitors? How, easy is it, if I were to advise one of a friend, right, who were to run, I actually have a few friends who end up running some of these companies, is there even competition? Is there choice? I would imagine I could go to one of the big cyber insurers and hope that the policy is adequately worded.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I don't know. Are there other specialist insurance companies or MGUs, cover holders, such as yourselves? How big is the space?

Raymond: Yeah, great question. And I would say it does actually come back to the role of the broker and, and the value that they bring, right. To help navigate for the insured, the question around coverages, the question around policy forms, the one rated paper, for example. And so, you know, we don't believe that anyone matches our underwriting, our, our purpose built, purpose built forms and our, our per policy limits on A-rated paper. We're in this space day in, day out. And that ultimately is what differentiates us. So we built a custom form for these risks. And that was a really significant investment in time, both of our technology that, you know, technical investment as well as a legal investment, as you could imagine. And what we're often, what was oftentimes presented in the market is, you know, perhaps a more traditional crime form that is basically been a, a cut and paste, for lack of a better word, around a crime form that really doesn't address the risks we, we believe. As completely, and it's clearly, I mean, because ultimately the policy, you know, the reason we believe our, our policy is market leading is it's both in terms of its scope and also its clarity of coverage. And that's really important. And that's the feedback we get from brokers, you know, and it's rewarding when an insured might even ask the broker for our coverage, because it shows that they understand the issues and the complexity. And I would argue that the more sophisticated and risk aware the insured is, they're going to want to see clarity in that policy. They're not going to want to see, you know, question marks. And, you know, I'll give you an example. You know, we've seen policy forms that might, let's say use terms like hot, warm, or cold storage, obviously very important to include. But yet they're not defined. And, you know, specifically for terms like that, that are so central to, to crypto assets and the custody of them and the move towards warm storage. Well, the last thing you would want is there to be any question around what that definition is. And so we actually define those terms in our policies. And we actually have those things defined. We define those terms on our website in the spirit of trying to build standards and consensus, you know, around their use. And so it is ultimately the market that I would say is going to be the clearest voice on competition. You know, our growth has been really remarkable beyond our expectations. And it comes down to, I would say that that expertise that we've pulled together, when we hop on calls with the insureds, they get instantly that we understand their business and we understand the risk. And so, again, that adds a lot of value, you know, to the broker as well as the insured. And that's our broker partners, you know, they really appreciate that credibility because they can, they're navigating different coverages, right. For the insured oftentimes. And so this is an area where it allows them, the broker to strengthen their relationship with the insured.

Nick: Would be just out of interest, would you briefly define hot, cold and warm storage? Just for all of us to kind of get a little bit of our crypto lingo. And I think I have an idea of what it is, but you've mentioned it. I think that would be interesting.

Raymond: Yeah, no, I think, you know, there's a couple of ways to think about it and maybe I'll try and keep it at a high level and I would encourage anyone who wants to learn more. We have some of this material on our website. You can also give us a call, you reach out to me as well, and we can certainly, you know, have a more detailed discussion. And what I will say is that this is also an area where the technology in the space is moving very quickly. And so that the rough definitions we try to come up with are sort of buckets that more or less we think can be accurate for a period of years. You actually have to make some tweaks along the way. And it really, the simplest way to think about. Cold storage can be something like a piece of paper that has private keys written down on them. In some cases, it can be a piece of metal where the keys have been etched on them. So it's cold in the sense that it's not connected to the internet. It's probably the first way to think about, I'd say, differences in storage. The moment the wallet is connected to the internet, you're now in a world where it's, okay, how do you access that wallet? Is there a single signature required or is a multi-signature required? These are sort of different ways to access the wallet. And what most people are aware of, many people can think of in terms of hot storage is, is this like an on-chain wallet? Is it a smart contract? And that's really hot storage. In the loosest terms, it's probably the riskiest because if a bad actor were to get access to it, it's most quickly stolen, unfortunately. Warm storage really starts to think now about hardware security modules or HSMs. And there are many ways they can be implemented. And typically what we look for, I would say, loosely speaking, what we see is that warm storage tends to be multi-signature in nature, as opposed to single signature, and on HSMs, we in our underwriting address things like FIPS rating, so HSMs can be rated. So again, the simplest way to think about it is connected to the internet, yes or no. And access to be a single signature or multi-signature is kind of the next level, helps you distinguish between hot and warm. And the simplest way to think about it is hot storage could, in many cases, unfortunately be accessed very quickly by bad actors, and therefore it's riskier. And where much of the industry is moving today is towards warm storage, which, for example, would allow a custodian, if there were some type of an event to implement, well, they typically have implemented, but allows them to leverage time locks around movement of assets.

So you can perhaps contain a potential loss.

Nick: And you've mentioned that you've been happy with your recent growth. Any kind of metrics you are happy and at liberty to share?

Raymond: Can't share any metrics around sort of GWP, for example, but I can say that our goal is to double our gross written premium this year. And we're on track to do that, which is very exciting. And yeah, it's just been the growth has come from, obviously, I mentioned earlier, the mining coverages or property coverages. It's really coming from the digital asset as well. And some of the newer products like DNO. So unfortunately, I can't give more specifics, but we're very excited about 2024.

Nick: Fair enough, fair enough. Let's maybe move a little bit into the kind of crypto space in general. You've said, why does it matter? Because I would say the headlines are more negative than positive. It's just my personal subjective assessment. You know, energy usage, fraud, just to kind of name two. And I'm absolutely aware that there's a bias there. But what's, in your view, the benefit about why do we have crypto? What makes it? I mean, I like my bitcoins because they went up. I don't really understand why, to be honest. But, you know, what's the beneficial? What's the force of good that you've, you know, if you have force of good for crypto, what's the force of good of crypto?

Raymond: Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people who I would say have spoken more eloquently and more comprehensively on the case for crypto. What I would say is, coming back to my background, to me, it's really about blockchain as a technology. And, you know, anything I'm going to say here is probably going to scratch the surface of the potential impact, you know, down the road. I mean, you know, technologies can be used for good and bad ultimately, right? And what we're trying to do here, what, you know, the promise of blockchain, if you go back to its origins, you know, is to try and, at least in terms of crypto also, is to, you know, decentralise access to stores of value, to allow, to potentially not have intermediaries or centralised banks involved in people's lives. You know, I'm not going to have a strong point of view on that. But what I can say is that it's really the underlying technology that I find very exciting because it's really going to be the innovators. And the reason you see so much activity in the space is that there's so many applications for the underlying technology, whether it's cryptographic tools or libraries or key management. There's a lot of work being done in this area, not just academic work, but real people and dollars or investments being put to use to I would argue, create a more resilient, secure, and sort of transparent or transparency in society that I don't want to sort of get too elevated in my thinking here. But, you know, ultimately, the technologies allow what has previously been cumbersome or almost impossible becomes feasible in a very scalable way. And that to me is ultimately what is very exciting. So the economic value, there's a direct and indirect economic value. You see some of that in, for example, the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies. But there really is, yeah, to answer your question as shortly as possible, it's look where people are investing time and money. And it just shows that people understand there is a large opportunity to take this nascent technology and in our view, at least do a lot of good in the world.

Nick: Fair enough, right?  We don't intend to scratch more than the surface, but to kind of pull that thread a little bit further, where are dollars spent in the crypto space? So if you were to say there is a certain level as a proxy, where are dollars spent right now? You know, what blockchain applications are scaling today? Or, you know, maybe also where dollars have been misspent, if that's easier. Just like two or three examples that maybe come to mind. Because it's still very, again, I'm a layman in this. It's still very abstract. And certainly in insurance, there sometimes seem to be this joke about, blockchain is a solution looking for a problem to solve. And I don't think that's, that's clearly not what you're seeing. So I would just love to get two or three examples, if any come to mind.

Raymond: Yeah, it's not, it hasn't been an area where I have been spending a lot of my personal time. You know, building our capability, and being sort of laser focused, sort of requires that. It might be worth another call. I mean, on our team, we actually do have people who really have exposures, like sort of the broader, I'd say, investments in crypto, and where money is being spent. And look, because this is early days in many respects, you know, for example, where you're seeing venture capital investment, the majority of those investments won't work out, right? It's going to be, that's going to be a handful of the ones that do, that will have proven their relevance to the market, and they will grow and be successful. But you know, you will have a lot of failures along the way. And that just is the nature of a creative destruction to borrow from the Austrian economist Schumpeter, correct?

Nick: Fair enough. And let's discuss this offline, whether we would take you up on your offer to kind of go a little bit broader in crypto and blockchain. What is the craziest storey in crypto that you've heard or been, and had some personal exposure to that we might not, you know, where there hasn't been a Netflix series done about, or something, because there's a few of those. But any kind of and it doesn't have to be crazy. It doesn't have to be bad. It can just be, from your point of view, interesting or good,  what kind of, what comes to mind?

Raymond: Yeah, you mean that you don't find the world of insurance glamorous and exciting?

Nick: I love it. But at every party, you know, I'm left with the accountant in the corner. So yeah, you know, and it's fine. We usually have a good time. But, and, and I'm also okay with, you know, my wife still not being super enthused about, you know, insurance and it's your tech. It's okay, you know, but this is a safe space, right?

Raymond: Okay, good. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, there are a couple that come to mind, you know, very early on, we were just setting up the company and getting, you know, moving in the right direction. And we would have brokers reach out to us and call us. And there was a, you know, some broker who called us and had a, you know, potential insured enquire about coverage related to blockchain technology. And the broker had called me and was talking about block train coverage, not realising that it's blockchain and not block train. That mistake doesn't occur anymore. But it was a bit, it was humorous at the time.

Nick: So it's absolute subject matter expert that broker, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Raymond: Exactly. You know, there have been, you know, moving from now to kind of the more humorous to, you know, ones that are, you know, I would say, identify a need for more education for, you know, both institutions and even for, for customers, retail customers is that we've seen many examples of, of insureds, you know, in our underwriting process, you know, they'll describe the insurance coverages they have, and they don't understand why, for example, they might need crime or theft coverage. And, you know, there's been more than a handful of times where, you know, the insured has said, well, no, no, we have coverage against crime, theft, loss, etc. And we're like, really, you know, can we see the policy? And it's a DNO policy. And so, you know, again, I think brokers do have an important role here, and it's to make sure the right coverages are being discussed. And in situations like that, you just really worry, you know, that someone thinks their DNO policy, you know, has covers, or has the same coverages as a crime policy. We also, you know, recently saw a case where there was a need for digital asset coverage, and the person said that they had security coverage. Again, nomenclature gets oftentimes confused, you know, cyber security, security, and what this person had was a policy covering security guards that were on their premises, had nothing to do with what we would, you know, in this conversation, describe as digital asset coverage. And so we see a lot of cases where I think this is fundamentally education, obviously. And, you know, while they're sometimes humorous, they do highlight the need for more education. And so we actually are updating our website right now to have a more robust sort of discussion around, you know, education and research. And yeah, so share a couple of those anecdotes with you.

Nick: Thank you so much, Raymond. Conscious of time, first of all, Tom, anything you need to get off your chest before we ask Raymond if he needs to get off his chest?

Tom: I was just wondering if he, if Raymond, if you wanted to dive into your plans for Europe, because I think you mentioned this in the beginning of the podcast. Did I understand this correctly about Germany or not?

Raymond: I had a hard time hearing Tom there. Nick, repeat the question.

Tom: I mean, I think at the beginning of the conversation, we discussed on the one hand, the coverage or the consolation with Lloyds. And did I understand correctly that you also wanted to come to Europe?

Raymond: No, that's right.

Tom: Do you want to, do you want to say something about that? Because I mean, probably the biggest part of the audience is a European audience.

Raymond: Yeah, it's very exciting for us, you know, being a Lloyds cover holder, you know, again, the large limits that we have on A-rated paper really position us uniquely in the market to the extent where, you know, we really have a great product. After Brexit, how we, or how companies like us establish ourselves in Europe changed. And so we had to set up a separate entity for Lloyds in Europe or a separate Lloyds entity, I should say, that's focused on Europe. And so that has been a journey probably over the last 12 months. It's taken longer than we would have liked. But, you know, we have to obviously satisfy Lloyds and also the German regulators. And so we're very excited to say that we are in the final stages of that and being up and running in Europe, which is going to be, you know, we also believe a large growth area for us this year. And so, yeah, ultimately we'll look for an announcement from us most likely end of April, beginning of May regarding our office in Germany that will allow us to work with brokers in Europe to, again, bring these products in, as I mentioned, solve the insurance needs for the crypto industry. And it's also really important for us to have the presence with Lloyds in Europe specifically because in some respects, this is, you know, there's the fundamental tenet of crypto is that the assets themselves, if you're a large custodian, these assets, you know, exist independent of geography. And so when that's the case, the policies, if you're a large global custodian, let's say, your policy needs to cover all the countries you're operating in. And that will include, you know, let's say the U.S. or North America may include Asia and it most certainly will include Europe. And so, you know, allowing insurers have access to our coverages globally, we think really will help simplify these type of policies for the insurance as well.

Nick: And Raymond, conscious of time, is there any kind of aspect or thought that you would like to touch on before we wrap up this great conversation?

Raymond: No, I think we really covered a lot. We could probably talk for hours, I would say.

Nick: One hour always flies, Raymond. How long is it like, trust me, we can always...

Raymond:  We're the life of any party. So no, what I would say is really, you know, if there are, you know, if this conversation has prompted any thoughts from anyone listening in the audience, feel free to reach out to me, go to Evertas.com. You can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. You know, reach out if we can be of any help. And this space is quite complex. It's moving very quickly. We do take a lot of our time to help educate brokers or even their insureds on these topics. And so we would appreciate from hearing people that they got any questions they have.

Nick: Perfect. Raymond, Tom, thank you very much. And everyone listening and watching. Yeah, I can only recommend you pick up Raymond on his kind offer. Certainly one to educate you about crypto and crypto insurance. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.

Raymond: Thank you. Bye.

Nick: Bye.