Connecting Financial Professionals Through Actionable Data With Ken Leibow

Ken Leibow has over 36 years of insurance industry experience. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InsurTech Express, a one-stop shop for insurance resources. He has held strategic and executive roles in Fortune 500 companies and proactively managed operations in alignment with the company vision. He is a recipient of the NAILBA ID20 Award, ACORD Leadership Award, and was recognized in 2016 with the NAILBA Chairman’s Award.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Why LinkedIn can be a powerful resource for connecting and forming a community
Ken Leibow explains unique ways to engage with your customer and virtually explain your product through AI
How to solve the problem of a dead lead: follow up!
Ken talks about focusing on one type of solution to problem solve
What technology can do to help promote insurance agents
Ken shares an example of a blockchain breakdown and a subscription model to remedy it

In this episode…

In a technology-run world, is it possible to present information to maximize leads?

It’s crucial to engage with customers using relevant information and a value-give. Ken Leibow knows that once you continuously engage and bring solid information to people, you can build a community. The essential part is to maintain a stream of resources and engage after the initial touchpoint. Using new AI technology, clients have access to fast information, and you have the opportunity for sales and client meetings.

In this episode of Advisor Today, Suzanne Carawan and Chris Gandy sit down with Ken Leibow, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of InsurTech Express, to discuss working with advisors to solve challenging technology problems. Ken talks about why online platforms are a valuable resource, focusing on follow-up, and leveraging a blockchain for success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by InsurTech Express.

InsurTech Express is a principal technology resource for businesses in the Life & Health Insurance and Annuity Industry. Bringing the insurance community together (Carriers, Reinsurers, Distributors, Insurance & Financial Advisors, and Solution Providers) while partnering with all the top industry associations. As an insurtech company, we have the largest industry network exceeding 180,000+.

InsurTechExpress.com is a secure online information and sales platform for insurance technology. There are many tools and resources from the hottest industry events to industry discounts, job opportunities, and advisor tools. Our Services include software development, strategic consulting, marketing, training, and an online store selling the top insurance software solutions.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:02

Welcome to NAIFA's Advisor Today podcast series, where we focus on how financial advisors work, live and give to their local communities and our greater financial services industry. Now, let's get started with the show.

Chris Gandy 0:21

everyone this is Chris Gandy and our wonderful co host, Suzanne Carawan. And thank you for joining us for Advisor Today podcast. We have a wonderful guest today, Ken Leibow. And Suzanne is going to be in the front seat driving today, as she's going to interview Ken, and tell us all the wonderful things that NAIFA and Ken are doing specifically around unique strategies and ideas. So Suzanne, would you share with us who was our sponsor for today?

Suzanne Carawan 0:51

Sure. So actually, our sponsor today is coming from the NAIFA's Business Performance Center where Ken Leibow is one of he owns InsurTech Express. And if you're not familiar with that site, I'm sure Ken will tell us all about it. But it's such a great resource. And so we're gonna delve in a couple of technology topics today. Ken has been partnered with NAIFA's we started working together pre COVID Can does that seem right?

Ken Leibow 1:15

Does anybody remember that is correct.

Suzanne Carawan 1:16

If anybody remembers pre COVID And, and we we instantly all hit it off, and we say oh my gosh, we need this guy in our circle. Because he's such a good resource to go to about technology. And his he lives his world really in that FinTech space, where a lot of our advisors, they they're actually there, they maybe are happily unaware of what's happening over in the FinTech world. But Ken helps us to make that bridge between those worlds, and then break it down for our members and our advisors about top tools and things that they need to know about. So Ken, thank you very much for joining us today. And we just already know you live to us from North Carolina. Right. So you're actually sitting down for once and prior to this, we were just talking about Ken's travel schedule. And it is it is it's up there with you. Mr. Gandy, it is up there. So it's a lot of trailer. But he's back to it. So Ken,

Ken Leibow 2:13

thank you. Nice to be here.

Suzanne Carawan 2:14

Yeah. Do you want to start? Actually, so where we first kind of connected with Ken, and just everybody knows what a go to resource? He is like Mr. LinkedIn. Right? He is like so how many LinkedIn connections? Do you now have Ken? Well,

Ken Leibow 2:28

the max that they allow you is 30,000. But you can bet followers, you can have more than that. So I have well over 30,000 followers, the 30,000 connections, and they're all organic people have said, Ken, how can you get it and I've been in the life insurance space for 36 years, I think I've been a LinkedIn member of since 2013. So if you want to spend the next 10 years go into all these industry conferences and trying to get, you know, building up relationships and building up a network, that's doing it the hard way, but it's organic. That's why it sticks. So,

Suzanne Carawan 3:04

so how many hours how much time you spend on LinkedIn, I guess a week? Well,

Ken Leibow 3:11

me and my marketing team, because we have a we do a lot of marketing for our technology partners. I don't know it's how many hours do we spend a day, I mean, I spend at least a couple hours a day minimum. And I know my marketing team is we're meeting and then they're doing some posts, I'm doing some posts, we're answering messaging questions and things like that going back and forth. It's quite extensive out of all the social media, that's the one that we spend the most time on.

Suzanne Carawan 3:40

And any advice there just for advisors listening on LinkedIn as a whole? Because, you know, the big Yeah, it's like compliance doesn't allow our two people still very new to social media. Yeah,

Ken Leibow 3:52

I mean, there are Yeah, I mean, obviously, you have to follow the rules around your your compliance and, and company policies. And there's a difference between having a personal LinkedIn and a business even though it's all you know, it's all typically b2b. But I think it's very important to, to engage, you know, it's not about advertising and doing a commercial is providing good information that people can get value out of, and it's and it's good to tag people that are relevant to it, don't tag people that aren't relevant because they won't be happy about that. And also to use certain hashtags. So you can kind of build a form or a community around certain topics, and then being engaging with what other people are posting. And staying engaged is very important in providing value out there and good information to educate and help people. So So speaking

Suzanne Carawan 4:51

of value, one of the top things that you do is is you're really looking at that technology tool space, right. And so Oh, yes, let's talk about what is happening out there right now, give some advice on what tools that advisors should should get in front of them. Right, the the issues in 2023? Maybe they've been skittish, you know, maybe they're not using stuff, you know, what, what are you seeing out there, that's really making a difference and advisors businesses.

Ken Leibow 5:20

Yeah, so I like to put put it in three categories, one is a point of a sales tool that will really help engage with your customer and visually explain the product, the problem that you're trying to solve with the insurance as a solution. The other is your back office tools for your running your practice, you know, day to day. And then the third one is connecting up through a hierarchy or an IMO, or propagation, seer, whatever that has technology that they offer to you to help your practice that, you know, so having that kind of partnership. So I think those are the three, those are the three categories that are important. What we try to do is when we look at consumer, for the, for an advisor, to engage with the consumer, we like to look for tools that you can, that are, in many cases, our carrier agnostic. So regardless of who you're who you're writing business with, you quote, the idea is that there's a presentation layer, that can really help educate the consumer, about the product that you're trying to sell them, right. And, and so, on our website, we have three for three different categories, we have annuities, genius, on the annuity side, we have one protection for which is for disability income doing in protecting income. And then for more advanced type, permanent Sales Index UL, there's a new startup called Lisa, which is Life Insurance analytics strategy, which really helps you to come up with different strategies using index UL. And it's kind of a different approach, and all three, provide free trials. So you can try the software without making any financial commitment. And there's videos that educate you on how it works and what the value propositions are. And they're all available on my website insurtechexpress.com. So, but yeah, those are the Those are types of things on the sales side, on the back office side. You know, I think CRMs marketing tools are very important. And if you don't mind me saying there's a doubt AI technology, and I hear a lot about that chat. GPT. But, but But just now AI technology for selling because what happens when you do get a lead, regardless of where it came in, you did a marketing campaign on Facebook, or, or you know, incoming calls or email campaign, whatever you got to lead from, the important thing is how do you maximize that lead, especially if you've bought a big, a big block of leads that you've invested money in? And some of them I know are qualified and warm and cool. Yeah, I know, there's all different types of models and prices out there. But to maximize those leads, and try to turn them into client meetings and sales opportunities, there's AI technology out there that can do all of that for you. ATS global is one with a product called Converse Sikka. And so they really, really engages with these prospects, if they think they're talking to a real person. And, and, you know, and it knows, and it tries to get them to, to really say, okay, yeah, let's have a meeting type of thing. So. So I think that's important on the back office side,

Suzanne Carawan 8:55

can you can you break that down a little further, like, how does that actually work? So you're saying, like, I just bought a block of leads. And now what I'm gonna fix? There's some AI magic here who's gonna? It's actually

Ken Leibow 9:05

yeah, so that this kind of so there's, there's two kinds of AI solutions. Another one is, so I can answer your question. One is a company called insure wear, which is very insurance targeted, okay. But that really, instead of buying leads, that's looking at your block of consumers and looking at let's say, a client went on to went online and they applied for a mortgage, right? Well, they may need more insurance, or they register for you know, baby for, you know, baby shower, baby type thing registry. And so therefore, they had a life event and therefore they may need more insurance. So there's that type of AI that looks at looks at the the, the activity of your current client base, and then there's the one about buying leads, which is generic, I don't care what type of industry you're in. And that's what this conversar kit does, which basically you buy the leads, okay, and let's say you We're going to do an email campaign. All right, so you did say the campaign goes out? And and then what it does is it intelligently tries to follow up and based on a response that they get it knows to say, to direct them into a certain direction and really get them interested. Okay, so imagine, imagine you bought even 100 leads, okay? Do you really have the manpower to okay, you did it you did a campaign, using HubSpot, or whatever your marketing tool is, okay. Salesforce or whatever. But then how do you like follow up with all those people are? How do you really get them engaged? Because they went out. And some people might have responded back. Okay, and so it looks, it's intelligent, and notice what kind of response it is. And then from there, it keeps trying to get them until they can schedule and then they can actually schedule the appointment. Okay, and it does all of that. It's, so it's and so it's almost like having your staff that saying, Okay, this, this, this prospect, says, yeah, maybe I'm interested send me more information, or maybe not really, or, and then it knows that it knows what questions to ask, and knows how to get them interested or enticed into it. And so it's like having a team of people that are sales experts, but it's just a software doing it automatically, and they think they're engaging with a real person. It's that it's that advanced and powerful.

Suzanne Carawan 11:26

Well, I know that I know, we've seen a lot of trends lately of a lot of advisors also looking for, you know, offshore, kind of virtual assistants and things like that. But how, what's your estimation? How would this kind of match up? In comparison? Was this, like, price wise? Or timeline? Accuracy wise?

Ken Leibow 11:43

Yeah. So price wise, it's not the it's not the least expensive solution. But they do have a, what they call it a CBA, or cost benefit analysis, where if you bought X amount of leads, what percentage, you know, are you going to get we're going to be able to actually set up a meeting type thing. So they justify the price. Okay, yeah. And I would say that, it's, the more volume that you're throwing into it, the more value you get back from your investment, so it's not the least. So there's so long that is offshore virtual sensors are going to be much cheaper than the than the converse, go one. However, as far as effectiveness, I would, I would definitely say that this would be better if you're buying large blocks of leads. If you're heavily marketing, then then definitely you're going to maximize your investment on those leads, and get return on investing into this AI tool.

Suzanne Carawan 12:41

That's incredible. I think probably a lot of our loyal listeners, probably their minds are already blown. That you can do all this and then, right. And I think they're already thinking like, how does that work? And like, what's the next step right, and all that, but it does free up your time. So you can actually get to those meaningful relationships, right? Where the AI can't do what humans can do. Yeah.

Chris Gandy 13:04

Okay. Let me ask, let me ask you, let me ask you a question as an advisor. Sure, are you you're saying you're saying is that the tyranny, I always hear advisors talk about the tyranny of the or. Right, and that's have to do this or have to do this? I like that. I like the complexity of saying, and I think you I think with this type of tool, this is how you could potentially scale your business by doing this and doing the traditional prospecting that we're so used to doing. See, I think, personally,

Ken Leibow 13:36

I would 1,000% agree, I think you're right on about that. It's not an or, you know, it's absolutely an end. You're You're absolutely right.

Chris Gandy 13:46

Yeah, you know, you know, we're advisors, right. And advisors always looking for reasons not to do the hard things, right. And so they'll say, oh, okay, well, I don't have to do that hard one anymore, because this one makes it easier. Well, it's not the or SDN. So So Thanks for bringing that up. That's a great, that's a great tool.

Ken Leibow 14:05

And let me tell you, since I'm speaking to an advisor, I think the other thing, you you sit there and you look at the client acquisition costs, and you said, okay, there, you know, hundreds of different types of lead companies out there. And some would say, hey, we'll get you a warm lead on the phone and do a transfer we'll do get you a list or whatever it is, or an age lead, but that are just pennies on the dollar. I bet you'd say Hey, I can't believe I spent all this money on these leads. I did a camp marketing campaign. And I almost got nothing out of it. And then you feel deflated, frustrated. I didn't really, but it's not really true. It's not that you got some badly everyone said I got I got a list of bad leads. No, it's the execution of following up on those leads. And that's where they say I solve that problem for you. Yeah, that's,

Suzanne Carawan 14:58

that's really fascinating. I'm Wondering how many like you have it sounds? I mean, Ken, maybe we should back up for a second and talk about how much? You know, while you're a technologist, when you spend the, you know, you said, You've been in life insurance and insurance for decades, but you spend so much time talking to advisers? So, are you finding them resistant? Like, or is this brand new? Is it? How are you getting people to say like, because I think a lot of advisors, I know that our members go, like, that's got to be somebody else, like, I don't have time to, you know, what I mean? Like, I need to outsource that to someone. And so yeah, kind of provide that sage advice as to what makes sense for their business.

Ken Leibow 15:36

Yeah, and, um, and I find that there's a mix, because, you know, generationally, there's a mix of response to using technology, like I said, either in your back office, or, again, to try to generate sales, sales tools and marketing and things like that. And so I would find that somebody of my generation, from obviously, from the older generation, will see that they're more hesitant, because they're like, Okay, I'm going to spend these kinds of dollars, what kind of results am I going to get, but yet, they don't want to make the commitment to have a formula for success. So it doesn't work for them, and then they they immediately back out, or they're very hesitant to get into it right away, where somebody of a of a younger generation is already used to that kind of world, you know, technology world, online world, etc. And social media world, they're for they, you know, they're more, they have more of an appetite for it. And they're like, Okay, what do I need to do to make this work and show me what it does and all that stuff, and they're more they're enthused about it, versus saying that instead of being skittish about it,

Suzanne Carawan 16:54

does that make sense? It does make sense. Yeah.

Chris Gandy 16:57

Can you brought up something something that I always talked about specifically on this podcast is the difference between an interest and a commitment? Is the younger generation are committed to this as part of their DNA? Versus the older generation would say that this is an interest? And what kind of results can I get right away? And they don't see the results right away. So they lose their commitment, because it's inconvenient. So I think, what

Ken Leibow 17:24

happens time and time again, you're so right about that? Yeah.

Suzanne Carawan 17:28

Well, I think the other thing is, and I think it's the, and I've been in technology for decades, too, and bringing that idea, and it's the The hard part is people keep saying, well, when do I get to stop investing? Right? And the answer, technology's never, right? Like, I mean, you keep upgrading your phone, right? I mean, there are those people out there. So maybe on their flip phone, and they're just holding fast, you know, but it's the same thing. It's like, it's a new model, just doing business every year, you've got to put so much set aside for the marketing for the technology for, for all of that. And I think that is for, for different advisors, that is like a very bitter pill to swallow. Because as a marketer, they're like, they want to spend $1,000, and say, What do I get out of the $1,000, right, and if it didn't work, and if I don't get like a 10x return, it's terrible. And it's the same thing with technology, they really dip the toe in oftentimes, and then commit to it commit to being a continuous investment, right. And now that so much of software really is SaaS model, and it's subscription based, right? I think the overall consumer population is used to now more subscription models, right? You can have a subscription model for everything now, you know, was just your TV or your Wi Fi, you know, but I mean, everything has gone to subscription model everything, right? I just got my dog at doggy daycare has a subscription model for for spa services with the dog, right? So like a subscription model, pay one fee, right? They just automatically groom them, and they just get billed. Everything is a subscription model. And I think that this is no this is finally gotten to the financial services space.

Ken Leibow 19:00

Which salutely Absolutely, which

Suzanne Carawan 19:04

tends to be a little behind. Right, it tends to be behind it lags on the technology side. So I think it's there. Do you do any work there Ken where like you're talking to advisors with their practice and kind of advising them, you know, what kind of spend or what it looks like or how would they get that kind of audit? Yeah, I

Ken Leibow 19:24

think that the conversation has been more you know, if somebody reached out if an advisor reaches out to me, he's he's either trying to fish for something general, or something more specific. And and then we usually say okay, for two for this type of solution. And we get very down on Okay, here are your options and here are your costs. And here's the value proposition and You know, I, I find it and this is an this is a personal problem that I've completely solved over my career is that if I'm talking to an advisor, and I Tom 20 things that's going to solve their practice, we ended up not doing any of them, you know, because it's just like it's too much information to digest. So we need to get very focused on one particular type of solution, provide some options, and then dive down deeper on that. And that seems to be something that though, okay, let me let me researcher, let me try it, send me more that kind of thing. And that seems to be the better engagement the other way, it's just never goes anywhere. So too much. Yeah,

Suzanne Carawan 20:44

speaking of too much, let's kind of let's kind of pivot now. And let's talk about some of the work that you've been doing some of your new work. And talk to us a little bit about the software that you've been creating, and some of the challenges that you're out, you know, some of the problems you're trying to solve with some of your solutions that we were talking earlier about. This is that world of AI blockchain whole thing and it just sounds like gobbledygook to most, you know, kind of regular mainstream advisors. So sure you break that down for us.

Ken Leibow 21:13

Yeah, so let me so first of all, our our website, which is more of a platform, okay, for carriers, advisors and distributors, is is, which is insuretechexpress.com. Okay, has a lot of free tools on there. And I we just, and believe it or not, I know it's just a coincidence, but we just launched this more. So it's, so I'll tell you about that one second. So here are the things that you can do on our website right now that can help advisors. That's, that's developed by my company. One is we aggregate all the carrier portals. So especially if you're an independent, US brokerage space, and you're gonna log into credentials, website, agent, Portal, and Lincoln Financial, even though you may go to your BGA IDs website and get a lot of stuff. But if you're trying to get things from particular carriers that you're already contracted with, and stuff, instead of bookmarking, you know, all these, you just go to one place and searching express.com, click carrier portals, and you got access to all of them, your browser usually remembers your credentials, you log in and you can hit all your different carriers you do business with in one place. So we've had that out there for a long time. Another thing is we have this bench underwriting benchmarking tool for life insurance. And what we did was in November of last year, we partner with the life distribution technology committee. And, and we built which is free again, for the industry is underwriting benchmarking tool. By the way, we won the Libman Innovation Award for developing this back in October, okay, which has all the top 28 tier one carriers underwriting programs. So accelerated underwriting, Simplified Issue non Med, executive advantage. And so it's got all the information, it's so it's not a field underwriting tool. It's got all the information around the underwriting programs, like average processing time, what underwriting class available, what insurance products are available, et cetera. And then it's got a search tool. So say, Hey, show me an accelerated underwriting program that will go for a seven year old or up to $5 million of coverage. And you can just search for it. And then you can get all the details. And then it even has links to the carrier portal or the E app to go right in and get more information or submit an application. And that's free to bookmark on your website, a lot of BJs use it producers use it. So that's another thing you can get free from our website that we offer. And then we have the Self Service demo tools you mentioned today and about about subscriptions. And you're right, everybody has done subscriptions. So a lot of these sales tools that we talked about, like annuities, genius, and one protection for di and Lisa, which is a life, which is for IUL, which is a life insurance, analytical tool for IUL. All of them, you can go to our self service demo page. And you can try it out for free. There's like you know, anywhere from a week to a 90 day free subscription. And then if you do, then you just can pay month a month with a credit card if you like it, but you're not pressured into by anyone to buy it. And you can actually use it and try it. So that's on our website, too, as well. And then the thing that we launched today, I just want to mention is the fact that we have a lot of people in our industry, write books, author books, and they sell them on Amazon or whatever. And a lot more very sales or industry related or technology that we also buy also work with people and technology. And and I think to support our industry and since our network was so big, and by the way, you mentioned 30,000 on LinkedIn. Our total digital and social media network is 200,000 Okay, that's our audience in the b2b insurance and technology world. And, and basically what we launched today was a ie bookshelf, it stands for my company InsurTech Express, you can just go to insuretechbooks.com, or just click books on our website. And you can send, it's free, send me your book, your Amazon link will take a description, the author, the title of the book cover, and then we help and then we'll promote on social media, and a lot of people and it's also a great way not just to sell books, but to get your message out and to engage with other people about the actual hard work that goes into writing and publishing. So we're now making that available for the whole industry, because it just kind of gets lost. And now we've got a central place for it all. And I know a lot of advisors out there and people that write a lot of really good financial books and things like that. Yeah, so yeah. And and talk and teach you when we talk about the blockchain.

Suzanne Carawan 26:00

Yeah. And before you get to that, though, I just want to I want to highlight that point because they listen, NAIFA, members out there who have written a book can just given you a don't forget what he just said. He said, Hey, free offer, that he will list that and get you some extra publicity and promotion. So I mean, Ken, we've got so many people that are met. So we'll start sending that over to you. And then we'll push the IE bookshelf to and make that a

Ken Leibow 26:25

well, Golden's book is on my ie bookshelf. I don't know, Carol, the second book, you know, she

Suzanne Carawan 26:30

has a second one. Oh, no, she

Ken Leibow 26:31

didn't know it came out yet. She was working off the last time I talked to her.

Suzanne Carawan 26:35

It is it is newly released as well. So we'll send

Ken Leibow 26:37

I'm gonna put that on there, too. I sent her an email this morning. I'm just waiting for her response. So yeah, so we'll put her new book. And then we'll promote each book, we promote the bookshelf in general, because we just launched it today. Yeah, I'm going to be doing a press release on it. But as we add a new book, so if someone saw like Carol's second book, I'll sit there and do a big promotion on social media, and then put the link and it'll be on our bookshelf. And so when you know, by the way, we get 1000 visitors that 1100 visitors a day to our website. So a lot of people will be seeing these books, you know, just organically. And so, yeah, so really, if you got if you wrote a book, then just shoot me an email or contact me and we'll get it set up pretty much right away. So promote it out.

Suzanne Carawan 27:21

We have a new Kathleen Owings is one of our most favorite members. She just wrote a specific books directly for women. And she's gonna come join us in Denver for a week. So we'll make sure that she gets set up with that. Yeah, okay. We have quite an awesome. Yeah. And so one of the favorite things I love before we get onto blockchain, by your side, I love also you compile all the industry events. And it's like this massive one stop shopping that just makes it easy for everybody to kind of, you're kind of like the who's who can you're like, at the time square of the financial services world there. Yeah, we

Ken Leibow 27:56

have a dynamic calendar. But it's not just on. It's not just conferences, but it's podcasts like this. It's webinars, live webinars and recorded podcasts and webinars, is there and then some people like we have one BGA that does a series on long term care. Every month, they do a podcast. Angie Hughes, the producers Excel, okay, every month they do a podcast. And so we promote the series, you know, and then we'll promote it out there. But at least you're getting a home for it all in one central place. Like with these books, you can look at industry conferences, you can look at webinars and podcasts and recorded webinars and podcasts.

Suzanne Carawan 28:31

Yeah, so he's doing a great job for us, Chris. We're happy. Thank you, Ken. Along the way with our podcasts, but yeah, okay. So let's go back to the the blockchain.

Chris Gandy 28:41

We're almost Suzanne, wait, wait, can we want to make sure our series is up there? Yeah, no, even even, you know, the super, super highlights, you know, maybe we can make a highlight one and get it over to you.

Ken Leibow 28:53

That would be awesome. That would be yes, please do send it. We I have, you know, my marketing team, Gina Stark, Senior Director. So we got to get everything to her. I know, you guys. Can you guys have her email address? So we add it to her and she'll get it all set up and then get you all the links, and then she'll actively promoted on social

Suzanne Carawan 29:11

media. Okay, that's great. And, you know, just Christians were talking about that. So can we have our, as you know, we have our upcoming congressional Conference, which comes up in May. And prior to that, we have our eighth annual dei symposium, we're doing a whole diversity champion panel this year. Right. And so many of those people will be podcast guests, etc. But in with mica that, Steven Kagawa is one of our past recipients also has a great book. So

Ken Leibow 29:40

I don't know if you know, Vince Vitiello. He has his diversity book of diversity for dollar seven steps on how to Yeah, you know, and so that's on there too. On the bookshelf, so we put it and so you mentioned diversity, and yeah, it's a good book. Yeah, it's a really good book. didn't really help.

Suzanne Carawan 30:01

Vince is just ripping off our he was on one of our trustees this past year. So we're still stay very close with Vince and we're still doing some work with him. So that's good see good people, good birds of a feather run together, flock together. Let's let's go with Blockchain. So what do you got? Okay? So

Ken Leibow 30:21

I know that people hear blockchain, they think of Bitcoin. And, and of course, there's been some, you know, not good news and the, with the with the value of exchange but blockchain but a functional blockchain does solve a lot of business cases. And before I get into insurance, let me give, let me give an example that you can, most people can relate to. And this is something that happened in early 2022, the Walmart stores in Canada have a huge problem, where they have these different trucking carriers or trucking companies that deliver the goods to the Walmart stores. And, and no exaggeration, I think they were dealing with about 70 Different trucking carriers delivering all kinds of goods to the stores. And what happened is, is that they each have a different contract on, you know, mileage and fuel and all this stuff and distance. And here's what we, you know, this is the rate you got to pay. And, and they all had different types of payment systems. Walmart couldn't keep up with it, they had all this manual stuff, some of it was online, some of this manual, and it was just a mess. So what did they do to solve it? So they they developed a blockchain. Okay. And, and what that does is it allows the, what we call a smart contract, which is think of a paper contract, but it's digitally ENCODE, that has all these different carrier rules have all the different contracts, okay. And then in each one of these trucks, we have what we call an IoT or Internet of Things device that feeds data to this blockchain through what we call Oracle's I'm sorry, from tech terms, but feeds the data, the mileage and the fuel consumption and other things, okay, and then the rules of that contract hit on two things happen. One is to validate that when they get invoiced, that they're being billed correctly, okay. And secondly, because on a blockchain, you have what we call distributed ledger technology, you have a way to pay everybody, but this smart contract validates that they're getting billed, and then is able to pay everybody based on that contract. So it's just one system, the data comes in from the trucks, everything gets validated, everybody gets paid. And there's no like 70 different ways to do it. And that's without getting into trying to be too technical about a blockchain and breaking down with us. That's a real business problem that was solved last year, using Walmart Canada. Now from an insurance perspective, what we've done at my company, so we have a we have design and and a commission accounting blockchain. And this happens to be with there's a big problem in the independent brokerage space for life and fixed annuities and indexing and some and some health products, is the fact that when the carrier's pay their commissions and all these contracts, that gets them up with all the different agent hierarchies, okay, there's there is no real validation process, it's a big problem. And what happens is, if you take the average life BGA, they can get a commission accounting system and their agency management system or they by an independent commission counting system, and they have to set up all these different contract levels. And each and each carriers contracts has a bunch of products on it with different rates, first year renewals and everything, they need all of that just to validate that they get paid correctly. Okay. And secondly, a lot of these wholesalers make deals with advisors, it says, I'll give you an extra 10 points, you know, on your agents or an extra five extra basis points on annuities that you write, you know, based on certain production and to track all that and do all that is really a very difficult it's a nightmare, especially on mobilized premium being paid. And so what we designed was is, again, leveraging a blockchain was the fact that you would set up the contract once and the way a blockchain works is is there's public blockchains or private blockchains on private blockchains only certain people have permission to use the blockchain. Right. So here you have your advisors, you have your, your your agencies, and you have your carriers. And so when a contract gets set up on a particular level, and you contract an agent, right, everyone has to approve it to make sure that everyone's on the right contract, right. And then when the Commission's get paid, first of all they get it gets validated before it goes on. The blockchain, there's a utility that would run, then it goes on the blockchain, whereby when you do the reconciliation, the contract is only set up like a smart contract once the carrier does have to build the contract in their system, and then the agency has to build on their system that it's already built. And they just found what we call a micro service against it. And so the carrier can use it to make sure the validate that the before the money goes out that they paid correctly. And then when they get paid, the agency can run it from their permission system against a smart contract to say, Okay, did I get paid, right? And then how much do I need to pay my agent? Right? So the so this solves all of that. So we have we've designed it, we got a patent pending on it. We're just seeking investors to build it out. And then, and then everyone would just again, going back to what you say we just subscribe to it. It's a subscription model, and national

Suzanne Carawan 35:57

auditors would love it, right? The auditors. The agencies would love it. Everybody loves it. Okay.

Ken Leibow 36:03

But I want to say one more thing that we're this is not just something on paper. We have blockchain in production today. So if anybody is a digital asset and enthusiast if any of your advisers, maybe younger advisors, you can go to our website, watch a few, an eight minute video, click become a member. And on your smartphone, you can actually make your own NFT membership card that was designed by a digital artist, and that would then get you you'll meet your own NFJ. And then it'll get you access to a membership program where you'll get discounts on software, some software I'm talking about. And it gets you discounts on conferences, okay, and our digital membership program. And that's all on a blockchain with our own smart contract. It's public blockchain, but our own smart contract, and you can actually get get this and we make educational videos to get real hands on experience on this. Web three Dotto. NFT smart contract blockchain technology. It's in production today. We did a big launch in Vegas last year. So,

Suzanne Carawan 37:10

so So aside from all that awesomeness, also, right? You're looking for, hey, if you want to get in early ground floor, you're wondering how maybe you can be the next bazillionaire? Right.

Ken Leibow 37:24

Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for the plug. Yeah.

Suzanne Carawan 37:28

Because I mean, that, you know, now we're talking real supply champion be able to solve that all the way down. Right, especially and as we all know, in this industry, it's, that's huge, right. I mean, that's just massively to be able to put all that together with the complexity that is in this financial services world is is a is something that yeah, there's a lot of innovation to happen. So congrats on your innovation award to from Linda. That's a huge, huge honor. Thank you. Thank you. huge honor. So I'm Chris, I know, I still have you, I think out there. Yes, you do. All right. Well, I'm gonna turn it over to you because it's time for our lightning round.

Chris Gandy 38:04

Lightning round. I wish we could have like, I wish we could have some sort of like soundtrack or something. Graphics. Yeah, we need like be fantastic. Then maybe we can help us with a technique that will allow for us to do that. What do you think?

Ken Leibow 38:23

Absolutely.

Chris Gandy 38:25

So can we do a lightning round? Here's what the lightning round was designed to do. Everybody's seen kind of game shows where it's kind of like this is the speed round, the whole goal, the speed round is off the top of your mind. Rule of thumb is we didn't prepare these questions. These are questions that I get in my head. I'm just like, yeah, these would be great questions to ask them on. So with that being said, we're going to ask you some quote unquote, unquote, techie type questions. Okay. So since you unfolded some tech opportunities today, with that in mind, we'll start off very, very simply. What kind of phone do you have?

Ken Leibow 39:01

I have the new 14 PRO. And I always made the mistake that I've bought a lot of new phones but never bought the Pro and the pros have the better camera and I'm out at events all year long, and I want to take videos and photos. So I don't care what version of an iPhone you have. If you do have an iPhone, always get the pro if you're big into photography and video, so that's what I got.

Chris Gandy 39:25

Okay, so that one was the easy one. Alright, so here we go. We're gonna speed up first thing that comes to mind you just tell it to me and we'll keep going. Okay, you ready? I got five questions for four or five. Okay. Read your favorite tech movie.

Ken Leibow 39:39

My favorite tech movie, The Matrix.

Chris Gandy 39:46

The red pill or the blue pill? Got it? Okay. So, your favorite tech mentor, who you're like, you know, they're innovative and progressive in the tech space.

Ken Leibow 40:00

An old school, Steve Jobs

Chris Gandy 40:04

with the black turtleneck Steve Jobs or different Steve Jobs.

Ken Leibow 40:08

I only know one Steve Jobs. black turtleneck Steve Jobs.

Chris Gandy 40:14

All right, you're your favorite technology, you use any insurance and investment business today.

Ken Leibow 40:23

If I say that, then some of my competitors may be upset with me. So,

Chris Gandy 40:28

okay. So say you can say I have a handful.

Ken Leibow 40:33

I have a handful. And I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose any clients over this podcast.

Chris Gandy 40:40

And then last but not least, if you could go back in history, right and have a conversation with someone anyone in history, who would it be and why?

Ken Leibow 40:52

Anyone in history Oh, my God. On the state tech side, I would give back to Steve Jobs. And, and John Lennon because I like music, so I don't know. Oh, that's good. There you go. That's where the two I would love to have a conversation with. You know, I said John Lennon because if I have, give me one minute here, 30 seconds when all the Beatles went to India, which was a big George Harrison thing. They had the the the guru guy who was there. And John Lennon hired a helicopter because he's the guy had never been in a helicopter. And he took them up in a helicopter. And when he came back, the rest of the Beatles asked him, Why did you do that? Why did you put them? Why did you go up in the helicopter? He said, Well, I figured I'd give him a ride in a helicopter. He might have slipped me the answer, like the secret of life. Which by the way, he did it.

Chris Gandy 41:58

Yeah, good. Good. Nope. Last question is if you could give advice to anybody started in the business today? What would it be?

Ken Leibow 42:10

Join NAIFA. Oh, didn't

Suzanne Carawan 42:15

put a brown look nice. Thank you can

Chris Gandy 42:18

There'll be the lightning in the bottle.

Ken Leibow 42:22

Absolutely. There was no hesitation. That was lightning round. Yes.

Suzanne Carawan 42:27

And I was just gonna say, Yeah, I mean, actually having Steve Jobs and John Lennon together. Right at a dinner. That would be like an awesome, I bet they would get along really well. Big time. Yeah, I could be like innovation galore.

Chris Gandy 42:40

So with that being said, Suzanne, you want me to close this out? Or you know, fine. Okay, great. Suzanne, do you have anything else before I ask Ken? Any final lighting? Or final words?

Suzanne Carawan 42:53

One last time? What's the website can our one stop shop?

Ken Leibow 42:56

insurtechexpress.com. It doesn't matter it sure without the E but I own both domains take that same place. So insurtechexpress.com.

Suzanne Carawan 43:09

If you can't spell don't worry about it. Get to the right spot. All right, Chris, back to you. Absolutely.

Chris Gandy 43:13

All right. So thanks, Ken, for being here. You're an innovator. You're also a great mind. And thank you for being a part of NAIFA thanks to our wonderful co hosts and super hosts a driver in the front seat today of the bus Susanna and Carawan Applause Applause Applause again, she is what she is the best. It's for all of you. Mark your calendars. We do have the DDI symposium coming up. So mark your calendars for congressional conference. We look forward to seeing you there. We're really putting together a dynamic program and really look forward to everybody being there being included, being part of what we're doing because the AI is the reality of the world in which we live and we serve today. With that in mind. Thanks for tuning in to the Advisor Today podcast where we list support and educate the modern advisor into that in we advocate for our clients and Main Street America to make not only the world a better place, but also the better place for advisors to so they are technology savvy, and they can grow their practices. We look forward to seeing you next week, same time Fat Channel. Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate it. God bless. Have a great day.

Suzanne Carawan 44:31

Thanks. Bye

Outro 44:35

Thanks for joining us for NAIFA's Advisor Today podcast series. Make sure to subscribe to get future episodes. And if you're interested in coming on the show, let us know.

36 min read