Driving Insurance Policyholder Innovation Through Partnerships

Larry Stern: So welcome to the Sapiens Insurance 360 podcast. I’m your host, Larry Stern, Senior Vice President and Head of North American Sales at Sapiens. I’m glad you’re out there listening today. This is the forum where we discuss the latest news, ideas, and innovations related to insurance solutions and technology. And our episode starts now. Paul, this is the first time I’ve been the host of a podcast, so you may need to carry me on this.

Paul Applegate: Larry, it’s my first podcast as well, but, I think we can get through it together. Let’s give it a shot.

Larry Stern: All right. Sounds good. I’ll introduce you in a second, but let me first set this up. Today we’re talking about ecosystem partners. Sapiens has over 250 partnerships with innovative companies that help us meet large, complex implementation challenges. And one of our valued partners is InvoiceCloud, who’s a leader in electronic bill presentment and payment technology, that helps us simplify complex payment processes and drives digital adoption.

Today’s guest is Paul Applegate, VP of Alliances at InvoiceCloud. Paul has been with InvoiceCloud for four and a half years and has built up a strong partnership ecosystem, which now encompasses over 70 active partnerships. Prior to joining InvoiceCloud, Paul held leadership positions at fast-growing companies like LLamasoft and Opower, while spending the first half of his career at companies you’ve probably heard of like SAP and Oracle.

Did I get that right, Paul?

Paul Applegate: You did, Larry. Thank you very much for the kind welcome. The one thing I’ll add is that, I’ve been at this for a long time. I’ve been working in and around partnerships of varying shapes and sizes for the last 20 years. It’s still the thing that gets me really excited. And so any opportunity like we have today to talk about the power of a great partnership, is time well spent. So really excited to kind of lead in with you today.

Larry Stern: Great. So let’s start by chatting a bit about Sapiens’ and InvoiceCloud’s, working relationship and successes. I think the headline is that when integrating with you, we drive 40% more on-time payments for our joint customers.

Paul Applegate: Yeah, it’s a great stat, Larry. It’s one that we’re really proud of. And I think about, kind of how we talk to CFOs about this. And so when we, when we first engage in organization and we lead with that stat, it gets folks really excited. So you think about the possibility of what that means to your organization from a cash flow perspective. Eliminate unnecessary policy terminations. You know, these are things that across the C-suite, things people get really excited about. The next question, and this is where we kind of really get excited, is when we’re able to kind of dive in and talk about how we do this. And part of how we do it is, is through a great joint story that we’re able to tell together. Primarily because we built a great integration, between Sapiens and InvoiceCloud.

Larry Stern: Right. Where you said from a CFO perspective, that’s the business perspective. This is a technology solution. So let’s pivot for a second to the CIO perspective. What are some of the biggest challenges carriers face when implementing modern cloud solutions to replace legacy solutions? And how can strong partnerships help us to overcome them?

Paul Applegate: Yeah, I think it’s a great question. And I would kind of tease it apart and talk about it in two different ways. One is the cloud portion of that. So every CIO that we talk to, every CIO that you see interviewed, every CIO poll that’s out there says that, yeah, they’re thinking about a shift to the cloud.They’re on some kind of progression to the cloud. But what happens, and I think this is the second part of the question is, there’s so much legacy baggage around big hairy technology projects. The CIO has become a little bit scared, right? In the past, they’ve been burned by projects that take too long. They spend thousands of hours getting them up and running, hiring internal external resources.And so it becomes really important to be able to tell a story, like the one we have together about an integration that’s pre-built, that’s proven, and will help them deliver value within six months. And we go in and we tell that story together. All of a sudden, it’s a different type of conversation. And folks are really able to kind of leverage the power of the cloud.And when I talk about the power of the cloud, I’m talking about specifically this lack of technology drag, for example, everyone on the planet is on the same version of Netflix, right? That happens seamlessly. It happens behind the scenes. And so when I think about a true SaaS offering like InvoiceCloud being integrated to Sapiens, that’s the kind of power that I’m talking about. And luckily, we’ve been able to tell that story successfully across the market, and we really welcome the opportunity to talk to more CIOs about it, as they think about their technology roadmap.

Larry Stern: Yeah, that makes sense, Paul. You mentioned integrations. How do tight integrations between partners contribute to a better customer experience, particularly when it comes to policyholder interactions like billing payments?

Paul Applegate: Yeah, it’s super important. And so, when we think about kind of what we’re doing here with our organizations, we’re taking data from Sapiens around, the premium route to, and we’re pushing out electronic communication that drives folks to pay, so that has to be real time, right? We never want to put our customers or our customer of customers in a situation where they’re seeing incorrect information. So [I’m] really proud of what we’ve built there. If we take it a step further, the real value that we deliver is in and around the design of our platform. So, you know, meeting customers when and how they want to engage is table stakes. So we offer all of the modern payment solutions so folks can leverage Apple Pay and Google Pay and Venmo and PayPal. As I said, we think that’s kind of, a very low hurdle to get over. What happens when you kind of take the next step that is, to drive behavioral change through that interaction, that’s where it really starts to get interesting. We couldn’t do that if we didn’t have that joint integration with you. And so what we’re able to do is allow insurance carriers to really seize on that moment when their customers are fully engaged, that is, when they’re paying their premium to not only meet them how they want to pay, but also, as I mentioned, get them to do something different. And so that might be sign up for autopay, sign up for pay by text, sign up to stop receiving a paper bill, and this has a huge business impact on our own customers.

Larry Stern: Yeah, that that totally makes sense, Paul. So from your perspective, what strategic advantages do insurers get by investing in ecosystem partnerships, rather than building it all in-house?

Paul Applegate: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think I’m going to break a podcast rule here, Larry, and I’m going to flip it back on you. As a senior leader within Sapiens, you know, you and your organization are faced on a daily basis with really hard decisions. And one of them is, is always do we build something or do we partner? And so I’d love to kind of hear, you know, about your thought process. You know, why we decided to partner with a company like ours instead of trying to build your own solution, which, unfortunately, we’ve seen other organizations try to do and fail.

Larry Stern: Yeah. You know, the insurance, the whole industry and the ecosystem has changed so much, Paul, over the years. And thank you for giving me time to actually think about my answer here. When I started in insurance, I think all of the processing, the data resided within the four walls of the company, that’s just not possible anymore today. You know, even though the largest insurer or biggest software company couldn’t build everything in house, there’s too much innovation happening out there in the marketplace. And if insurers want to stay competitive, they’re going to need to take advantage of that. You know at Sapiens, we provide great core insurance solutions. But we need to enable our clients [to] easily take advantage of all the innovation happening in the marketplace. I think that’s the only way we stay relevant, into the future. So we’ll keep growing our partner network. We’ll allow our clients to leverage new capabilities and to swap in different capabilities, when it makes sense for them. You know, you’ve been providing and developing payment solutions for 15 years now. You know, why would any insurer or software provider try to replicate that? That just wouldn’t make sense. So, you know, to remain dynamic, to remain competitive in the marketplace, I don’t think it’s an option anymore. It’s a necessity.

Paul Applegate: Yeah. I love that answer. I’m going to steal part of that next time. somebody asks me a question similar.

Larry Stern: Okay. Paul. So maybe, a final wrap up. Could you talk a little bit about how our clients are always in kind of a modernization and transformation journey? And how together, Sapiens and InvoiceCloud can integrate ourselves with and successfully drive that transition?

Paul Applegate: Yeah, I’d be happy to and I heard something the other day and I’m going to repeat it. And I’m not going to be able to attribute the quote to somebody. But we’re at a point now, today being, we are at the slowest point of transformation that will ever happen in the future. From this point forward, transformation is always is going to accelerate. It’s going to accelerate on a daily basis. And so, when I think about, you know, this push for modernization, we as consumers aren’t discerning anymore between who’s providing us technology, who’s providing us a window into the technology that we want to work with. And so I’m not discerning between my insurance carrier and applications like Uber and DoorDash and Amazon. I need them to be intuitive. I need them to be easy to use. And in some cases, if they’re well designed, I’m going to allow them to change my behavior. And so when we think about that, it’s not an option for insurance carriers to kind of stand back and be fast followers. They really have to dive in and embrace technologies. They’re going to allow them to meet their customers when and how they want to engage. And by using a technology like InvoiceCloud, that’s sitting on top of Sapiens, not only can they do that, but they can all, they can also leverage that moment when their customers are fully engaged to drive real business values through behavioral change. And so, we’re excited about, what our peers on the retail side are doing, because it puts more and more good pressure on all of us to build better solutions, that have real-time integrations that are intuitive to use, and really allow our customers’ customers to interact with us in a way that they choose. And so, I think about our partnership and where we come from. I’m really excited about our history together, but I’m even more excited about kind of where we’re going at this really important inflection point for, for our customers.

Larry Stern: Well, talk about stealing, Paul. I’m definitely going to steal that, slowest, slowest ever part of transformation from you. I think that’s a great quote. I think it’s a good point to just say thanks for coming on the show today to speak at length about the value of partnerships and how our collaboration can really power successful core transformations. Of course, I’d like to drill down a little bit more into the Sapiens and InvoiceCloud partnership and what that’s meant to our clients. I’m sure we could have another whole conversation about that, given our ongoing and expanding relationship. So definitely something to consider. Maybe we’ll do that, six months from now.

Paul Applegate: Oh, I’d love to do that, Larry. And I’m really looking forward to seeing you and your team here in a couple of months.

Larry Stern: Yeah. We’ll be together at the Biltmore, in Arizona for Sapiens’ client conference. It’s going to be a great event. And I thank you for doing this, Paul. And I’ll buy you a drink when we get there!

Paul Applegate: That’d be outstanding. Thanks, Larry!

Larry Stern: All right. To our listeners, if you’d like to learn more about [the] Sapiens/InvoiceCloud partnership and the value that each organization brings to the relationship, check out the links in the episode description. And as always, connect with us on social media, share your feedback, and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another insightful episode. This is Sapiens Insurance 360. Until next time, stay curious and thanks for listening.