With a history in big data and business architecture, Mark Musson’s career has taken him from South Africa to Europe and the UK, where he has worked with numerous high-profile internationals, including HSBC, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, and founded two companies. But it’s data-driven machine learning that really fires his imagination.
As Founder, CEO and Chief Product Architect at Humn.ai, Mark is on a mission to make data-driven vehicle insurance the norm. Building a future where insurance is fairer for drivers and fleet owners, and with a better understanding of risk for industry providers, Humn.ai is using cutting-edge technology to solve age-old problems. And Mark is powering that development.
Humn is a deep tech MGA (Managing General Agent), category consolidator that have developed a vertically integrated risk management and insurance solution for commercial motor that provides fleets with real-time risk management insights and insurance pricing.
— In a single sentence, what does Humn do?
Humn are a deep tech MGA (Managing General Agent), category consolidator that have developed a vertically integrated risk management and insurance solution for commercial motor that provides fleets with real time risk management insights and insurance pricing.
– How did Humn come to be? What was the problem you found and the ‘aha’ moment?
The co-founders of the business have spent their prior career finding solutions to problems using data and have built various data-centric solutions at sectors including hedge funds, banks and tech companies. As a result, they have a deep understanding of the power of data and how it can be leveraged in real time to build highly valuable platforms.
They came across the commercial motor industry and saw an opportunity. In this sector, insurance equates to 13–24% of the total cost of ownership. In many cases this is higher than it should be as the risk pricing for commercial vehicles is broken due to the absence of data & understanding, vehicles being grouped together and high mileage being penalized. Commercial motor insurance has been loss-making for insurers globally for the last 8 years (and getting worse year on year) across the industry resulting in a retrenchment of companies offering commercial motor insurance and those that do remain, tend to price at the worst risk. In turn, this means a costly expense and a poor experience for the fleet managers and drivers.
The co-founders saw this as an opportunity to develop Humn.ai with a data-first approach.
— What sets Humn apart in the market?
The co-founders of the business have spent their prior career finding solutions to problems using data and have built various data-centric solutions at sectors including hedge funds, banks and tech companies. As a result, they have a deep understanding of the power of data and how it can be leveraged in real time to build highly valuable platforms. At Humn they initially were focused on building a data-based risk management platform before identifying that customers are currently served by tools/solutions that typically operate in categories that are considered discrete (risk management, fleet management, fleet insurance) and served by multiple independent solutions.
The core differentiator of Humn comes from our product positioning as a Category Consolidator, as well as the fact that we have developed a next-generation rating model that works with the live data from our platform.
There is no current winner at consolidating this market.
When initially combined, telematics, streaming data, a next-gen pricing model, and real-time geospatial risk exposure forms a consistent and desirable flow that solves an overriding customer requirement.
Humn offers a consolidated solution more cost-effectively for customers and can do so profitably for the company.
Our confidence in the platform to succeed has come from feedback we have obtained to date from industry specialists whether that be insurance companies, investors, brokers, and fleets culminating in the powerful results to date from our first two customers where we dramatically reduced and improved their fleet operational costs. Humn managed to reduce their average claims cost by 24%, their accident frequency by 65%, their FNOL (First Notice of Loss) by 81%, and their premium per vehicle by 10%.
— What milestone are you most proud of so far?
When showing the capabilities of the platform to existing insurance companies and hearing their very positive feedback about what we have built to date and how it really is unique. They can see how our solution can help the industry tackle the problems that every commercial motor insurer is facing through dynamically pricing the risk of these high mileage vehicles, whilst also being able to surface real-time insights to the fleet manager that can immediately lower the risk and the associated insurance premiums.
— Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?
When showing the capabilities of the platform to existing insurance companies and hearing their very positive feedback about what we have built to date and how it really is unique. They can see how our solution can help the industry tackle the problems that every commercial motor insurer is facing through dynamically pricing the risk of these high mileage vehicles, whilst also being able to surface real-time insights to the fleet manager that can immediately lower the risk and the associated insurance premiums.
– What KPIs are you tracking that you think will lead to revenue generation/growth?
Ultimately we are analyzing our platform on 4 KPIs:
– Accident frequency reduction
– Lowering claims cost
– Lowering FNOL (First Notice of Loss)
– Reducing insurance premiums
We know that if we help our customers on these 4 KPIs we will successfully build a scalable and profitable business.
— How do you build and develop talent?
We have invested heavily in engineering and data science as these domains are what makes our solution unique.
Our team although headquartered in London has always wanted to make sure we are not restricted by geography and instead hire the best available talent. We have therefore hired individuals from across the UK and beyond and have had a mixture of in-person and remote working which has successfully shifted to fully remote during the pandemic.
We are continuing to hire leading talent in engineering and data science as well as building out our commercial capabilities i.e. insurance, corporate development, HR, etc.
— What are the biggest challenges for the team?
“Our two biggest challenges to date have been building an end to end insurance company and ensuring our risk capacity partners understood and had confidence in our solution.
Firstly, building an insurance company is not simple as you can’t just launch an MVP, you instead need to build an end to end regulatory compliant company. This took plenty of time, effort and guidance to develop and was a significant challenge for the team. However, it was worth the effort as we managed to get approval from the FCA for our MGA in a timeline of 6 weeks, which comfortably exceeded all timing expectations.
Secondly, our innovative approach to insurance, and the way we price dynamically has challenged traditional actuarial approaches. Therefore there is a sizeable educational process needed to ensure our risk capacity partners understand and gain assurance over the viability of our model and the way we price in real-time. We have therefore spent a great deal of time with actuaries and consultants to ensure our model takes advantage of the strengths of these traditional models so the basis of our pricing is more familiar to these third parties. Alongside this, we have spent a significant amount of time with our partners walking them through our platform capabilities, the data science underpinning it all and the results of our work to date to give them confidence in how the solution works.
— What’s been the biggest success for the team? How did you celebrate?
Becoming an MGA and obtaining our first risk capacity partner to allow us to start writing business. We celebrated with an ‘all hands’ on Zoom which was great although hopefully, we can meet up in person for our next milestone!
— What’s something you’re constantly thinking about?
Making sure the company is well funded to allow us to hit our ambitious goals.
— What advice would you give to other founders?
Making sure the company is well funded to allow us to hit our ambitious goals.
— Have you been or are you part of a corporate startup program or accelerator? If so, which ones and what have been the benefits?
• Red-Herring-Europe-Top-100: Winner 2020
• Startup-Grind: Silicon Valley 2020 Accelerate Alumnus
• Startup-Grind-Accelerate: 2020 Alumnus
• Plug-and-Play San Francisco: Insurtech Batch-8
• Plug-and-Play Munich: Insurtech Batch-4
• Plug-and-Play Singapore: Insurtech Batch-4
• Wayra Scaleup Hub: Dec 2018 Alumnus
These accelerators have been incredibly valuable to Humn.ai. For us to have been recognized by such prestigious accelerators has provided us with the confidence and assurance that we are creating a solution with immense potential. Not only this, but we have gained hugely from the interactions with mentors, program managers, and the corporates they work closely with. We are hopeful that some of these corporate introductions will turn into long and fruitful relationships in the coming months.