LFP084 Insuretech – Using the Internet of Things to Protect your Home with Matt Poll CEO Neos

London Fintech Podcast

The so-called Internet of Things is much hyped and early examples (smart toasters anyone?) are worthy of ridicule. However market-leading Neos have taken it to the next level – using insurance, your phone and devices installed in your home to protect you against fire, water and burglary – or at least notify you and then get their servicers to fix the problem – even when you are on the other side of the world.

If like me you had never heard of smart doorbells and smart valves – or if you have – this is a podcast for you.

Matt Poll was a 20yr insurance man, latterly running More Than at RSA until he joined the world of startups and founded Neos.

In this show we dive beneath the froth and the hype to find out how you can sleep easier when on holiday, or simply in the office and why the Internet of Things is becoming a reality available to us all now.

Topics discussed on the show include:

• Singing for and meeting Princess Di
• the media’s disrespect for private conversations she had with George Michael publishing them just to make money
• the media’s massive and outrageous distortion of former Google engineer James Damore who wrote an internal memo surveying the state of academic research on gender and about worrying over Google becoming an ideological echo chamber and maybe it wasn’t all sexism but different gender preferences and was fired and libeled for his sins
• Google has spent a quarter of a trillion dollars (!!) on diversity efforts with little change in gender composition
• concerns around Google/Youtube having a political bias in what they ban. An example of the recently crowd-funded Gab (like twitter but uncensored) which they promptly banned from their App store (ie from Google Play)
• cf telecoms where the firms are neutral carriers (they don’t censor your conversations based on their standards)
• Matt’s career journey
• how the problem’s with insurance led Matt to a new concept of insurance – one to reduce claims – for the benefit of both insurer and customer; but secondly to give value to folks who don’t claim
• Neos arrangements with Aviva and MunichRe – the necessity of partnerships for Insuretech
• every year roughly 10% of folks claim on their home insurance policy
• Matt’s use of the smart sensors at home; uses of door sensors
• by now we have largely passed through the hype phase and real use cases are emerging
• tens of billions of devices (“internet of Things”) are expected around the world in the next few years
• security is customers main concern – main reason they buy home systems
• smart doorbells?! (actually sound more useful than you might imagine) About 95% of burglars still ring the doorbell to check if someone is in
• detecting water leaks – ~30% of all claims are for water damage; point sensors, clip-on devices and AI-enabled (?!) smart valves
• smart door locks
• a recent upgrade to one type of smart lock which bricked it
• the importance of human beings in the chain in order to fix problems – getting notified is only the first part of a process
• Neos organise repair folks when you are on holiday if there is a problem
• Privacy and security
• “Connected devices” (ie dumb devices eg a window sensor) vs “Smart devices” (eg the clever water valve which can analyse and be operated remotely)
• Neos offer three packages with varying numbers of sensors-devices (3-10)/insurance/service – very comparable to traditional insurance
• they offer an installation service
• Neos future plans

And much much more

Share and enjoy!