♘♘ Strategy Saturday ♖♖ The Insurance Nerds Newsletter (May 17, 2025 Edition)

When we focus on the competition, we become reactive. When we focus on improving ourselves, we become creative

- Simon Sinek

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Focus On Underserved Markets, Not Your Competitors

by 🇺🇸 Nick Lamparelli

I see so many businesses—startups, small companies, even some mid-sized ones—obsessing over their competitors. Like, full-on stalker mode. Watching their every move, analyzing their strategies, trying to copy whatever shiny thing they’re doing.

I get it. Keeping an eye on the competition is part of the game. But here’s the thing: if you’re spending much of your time watching what they’re doing, you’re not spending enough time on what you should be doing. And that? That’s a problem.

So let me break it down for you. If you’re a startup or a young company, your number one priority should NOT be your competitors.

Nope.

It should be figuring out how to create value for your potential customers and prospects. That’s it. Full stop. You need to be laser-focused on product/market fit. Like, does your product actually solve a problem for people? Are they willing to pay for it? Can you scale it? These are the questions that matter.

Sure, you can glance at your competitors here and there—see how they’re doing things, how they’re capturing value—but don’t let it distract you from your mission. Your mission is to create something people actually want and then figure out how to deliver it in a way that makes sense for your business.

And for those of you who aren’t leading the pack in your industry—maybe you’re in second place, or third, or even further back—this advice is for you too. Stop trying to play catch-up by copying what the leaders are doing. You’re not going to beat them at their own game. Instead, focus on creating something different. Something better. Find those underserved markets—the ones the big players are ignoring—and pour your energy into creating value for them. And it doesn't matter the industry, the big players are NOT equally serving all customers!

Even in industries where there’s a clear leader or a handful of dominant players (hello oligopolies), there are always gaps. Always. Let me give you an example. Take the property insurance space.

Catastrophe models are pretty much everywhere, right?

Wrong.

Most P&C carriers don’t have direct access to those fancy catastrophe analytics because they can’t afford to license them from the big guys—Verisk and Moody’s—who basically have a duopoly on the market. So what do these smaller carriers do? They rely on their reinsurance brokers for analytics.

Now, think about that for a second. These smaller carriers are competing with firms that not only have bigger budgets but also have better tools to make smarter decisions. It’s not exactly a level playing field, is it? And yet, the underserved market here is massive—thousands of firms that could benefit from a different pricing or offering model. But instead of innovating, most of these companies just follow the same old business models that got the big guys to the top in the first place. Spoiler alert: that’s not gonna work out well.

Here’s my advice: stop chasing your competitors’ tails and start looking at the people who aren’t being served right now. How can you create value for them? What can you offer that’s different? And how can you structure your business model so that you’re not just giving away value but actually capturing some of it for yourself? That’s the game you need to be playing.

It's NOT easy. It’s not. But if you keep obsessing over what your competitors are doing instead of focusing on what you can do differently, you’re just going to stay stuck where you are. So stop watching them and start building something amazing for the people who need it most.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Upcoming Webinars

Reinventing Data Intake: Innovations for Faster, Smarter Underwriting - (Tuesday June 10th - 2pm ET/ 11am PT)

Data intake is a challenge for every underwriting organization. How do we collect submission data, at scale, and be able to underwrite it in the manner we need to, with tight deadlines?

Insurance carriers often grapple with incomplete forms, messy PDFs, and a patchwork of tools. In our upcoming webinar, we're exploring how Al and integrated workflows are streamlining underwriting data intake-fast. Featuring insights from Next Insurance and Feathery.

🇺🇸 Nick Lamparelli will moderate a panel, including Lance Poole Head of AI Underwriting at Next Insurance and Zack Khan Co-Founder at Feathery

REGISTER, WATCH & FOLLOW HERE: https://www.linkedin.com/events/reinventingdataintake-innovatio7326264185221242881/theater/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Latest Career Opportunities

Over 450 career opportunities in actuarial, product management, underwriting, legal, claims, brokerage, Business Development, and software and technology

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Latest Podcasts

• Nick interviewed John Rusk from ProSentry about water detection sensors that saved over 3000 claims in NY/NJ just last year
• Tony chats with Andrew Townsend 💭 , Marketing Operations Manager and Ryan M. , Senior Product Marketing Manager at Smarty . They are an address location intelligence company. They do geocoding helping you find the exact coordinates of any address. Their autocomplete helps forms get completed faster when it comes to addresses. They can help you increase your revenue, streamline your processes and reduce your risk.
• Tony chats with Cortney Helfrich - SCLA Gold , Chair of the RISE Professionals Education Committee, they have been doing AWESOME work that you should not miss. They are starting to create an Introductory Certificate Program for Insurance which will cover Auto, Property, and Subrogation with much more to come.
• Tony chats with Luis Diaz , Founder & CEO at ClaimMentor , they are a reimagined solution for claims recorded statements handling everything from scheduling to an intelligent summary of the meeting. Your average adjuster spends 2 to 2/12 hours per day just on scheduling calls. That gets automated with ClaimMentor. They then guide the adjuster on what to ask and especially feeds the adjuster the right followup question that a senior adjuster would know to ask.
• Tony chats with Yandy P. , Founder & CEO at DataHaven Software, Inc. , they are a core infrastructure company solving the foundational data problem. They live in the intersection of carriers and TPAs. Core focus on making sure the foundational data they make sure there are no data silo. If there is no fully automated data lakehouse yet, they can build it for you in an automated way. They offer a fully managed solution focused on the $200M to $700M in Annual Recurring Revenue regionals and super-regionals and looking to eventually grow into the Tier 1 carriers. This is an episode you don't want to miss!
• Tony chats with Wendy Davis Johnson , Author of "Faith & Purpose: The Life and Vision of Insurance Icon Brian Duperreault . A cannot miss conversation about the most important insurance biography of our time.
• Tony chats with Jamie Luce , Co-Founder and CEO at AIR Parametric,Inc. , they are paying customers for their economic losses from extreme weather. Events like extreme rainfall and extreme temperature changes cause significant economic damage and weren't covered by traditional insurance products.
• Tony catches up with William Ross , CEO and Co-Founder at Federato about two incredible new products Federato is launching. Federato is an underwriting platform focused on helping organization win the right deals faster and help you systematize winning. Will digs deep into their two new products: Submission Triage and Orchestrate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 4-5

Insurtech Insights Javits Center, NYC

🇺🇸 Nick Lamparelli to moderate - MGA Mastery: Transforming Insurance Distribution Models

Panel Date, Timing, Location: June 5, 2025 2:05 PM → 2:45 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 10-11: Ohio Association of Mutual Insurance Companies

Columbus, OH

The New Normal - Managing Cat Exposures and Mitigating Risk to Financial Stability

With the increased prominence of catastrophic storms, it is crucial for property insurance operations to more effectively manage their aggregate exposures by adopting a more proactive approach that combines modeled loss output with actual hazard exposure. This means to methodically assess and monitor the total amount of risk across all policies to prevent exceeding their capacity to pay out claims in the event of widespread disasters or a series of smaller losses. This session will describe how this type of risk management strategy safeguards insurers’ financial stability, allowing them to continue providing excellent coverage to policyholders.

Ohio Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (OAMIC)

Conference Link

Nick Lamparelli Managing Partner | Insurance Nerds

Joseph Petrelli CEO | Demotech, Inc.

Peter Crowe President | FOCUS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 16-18

The RISE Leadership Summit & Awards Gala is perfect for emerging leaders, established executives, and anyone looking to advance their career! Two specialized tracks, interactive workshops, and invaluable networking await. We’re partnering with RISE Professionals so you can save $100! Use code INSNERDS when registering!

#RISEAwards2025 http://bit.ly/4kCvTwj