In a recent interview with Sabine VanderLinden at the Scouting for Growth Podcast, Voltaire Founder and CEO Yo Sub Kwon discussed the latest from Voltaire and its impacts on carrier operations.
A full recording of podcast can be accessed here.
Read below for a summary of the key themes and a full transcript.
1. The Claims Letter Crisis: Manual Processes, Errors, and Rising Litigation Costs
Insurance adjusters face constant pressure to close claims quickly. They often copy and paste from old letters or rely on outdated templates. As Yo Sub Kwon explains, adjusters “face an impossible choice. They either use the official system or they misquote and go home late.” When you measure productivity by volume, people choose speed over accuracy.
The financial impact is significant. Litigation adds $10,718 per claim in loss adjustment expenses (LAE). Communication errors cause claims leakage that costs mid-sized carriers over $6.4 million each year. The root problem is complexity. Insurance policies have countless combinations of state provisions, endorsements, and amendments.
Plaintiff attorneys now use artificial intelligence (AI) to find errors in claims letters. Tools like EvenUp help law firms build courtroom-ready cases at scale. Kwon notes that “AI generated demand packages arrive courtroom ready with polished arguments.” Carriers must respond with equal precision or face mounting legal costs.
2. AI-Driven Transformation: Improving Accuracy, Efficiency, and Adjuster Satisfaction
Voltaire’s AI writes each letter from scratch instead of using templates. The system blocks wrongful denials before they happen. If you request a denial without valid policy exclusion, it returns “no relevant policy language was found.” Every letter includes an audit trail. Claims managers report that “the AI has been teaching them things about policies they’ve never known before.”
Adjuster satisfaction jumped from 6.5 to 9.25 out of 10. That’s a 42% increase. Kwon calls the old approach “the copy paste crisis.” One senior adjuster saved two hours daily and closed one more claim per day. During catastrophes, temporary adjusters wrote accurate letters immediately. They didn’t need weeks to learn carrier-specific policies.
The numbers tell the story. Carriers processing 10,000 property claims see 378% first-year return on investment (ROI). That equals $670,000 in annual savings. Voltaire charges $15 per claim for unlimited letters. Factor in reduced litigation and leakage, and ROI exceeds 500%.
3. The Competitive Future: AI as Table Stakes in Insurance Claims Management
Within five years, AI correspondence will become standard practice. Kwon predicts it will shift “from innovative to just being like the expected minimum.” Plaintiff attorneys already use billion-dollar AI platforms. Manual processes can’t compete.
Voltaire is expanding from homeowner’s property into auto and commercial lines. The company achieves 85% adjuster adoption by integrating into existing claim systems like Guidewire. You don’t switch between screens or re-enter data. This contrasts sharply with the 88% AI failure rate reported by MIT, mostly due to poor adoption.
The competitive edge will shift to execution quality. Kwon believes boards and regulators will soon ask carriers why they haven’t adopted AI correspondence. “The question won’t be should we adopt, but how fast can we catch up.” The winners will deploy AI that truly improves outcomes. The losers will frustrate adjusters with shallow implementations that promise more than they deliver.
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For a demo to see Voltaire generate an accurate claim letter in as little as 30 seconds or even on one of your carrier’s templates, schedule time with a click.
Full Transcript
00:00:04 Sabine VanderLinden:
Hi Yo, so grateful to have you on the Scouting for Growth podcast today.
00:00:09 Sabine VanderLinden:
Welcome and thank you for joining me.
00:00:12 Yo Sub Kown:
Thank you for having me.
00:00:13 Yo Sub Kown:
Excited to be here.
00:00:15 Sabine VanderLinden:
Yeah, great pleasure to have you.
00:00:17 Sabine VanderLinden:
And my first question has to be Yo, who are you and what got you into insurance?
00:00:26 Yo Sub Kown:
Well,
00:00:27 Yo Sub Kown:
I’m a serial entrepreneur.
00:00:29 Yo Sub Kown:
I’ve built mostly deep technology type of companies, cybersecurity, blockchain, and I guess more cybersecurity.
00:00:41 Yo Sub Kown:
And so what got me into the
00:00:46 Yo Sub Kown:
into the insurance space is I was working with my co-founder on AI technology, and we were trying to figure out different use cases that would be applicable and good for a wide berth of businesses.
00:01:03 Yo Sub Kown:
And while we were kind of testing different ideas, there was someone that was trying to use one of the products that we had built to write claims letters.
00:01:14 Yo Sub Kown:
And we
00:01:15 Yo Sub Kown:
We’re like, what is this user doing?
00:01:18 Yo Sub Kown:
Like, why are they using our tool this way?
00:01:21 Yo Sub Kown:
So we ended up interviewing them and they explained to us like what claims letters are and what their job is.
00:01:28 Yo Sub Kown:
And we found it pretty interesting.
00:01:31 Yo Sub Kown:
So he introduced us to his boss.
00:01:34 Yo Sub Kown:
We talked to them.
00:01:35 Yo Sub Kown:
They introduced us to their boss.
00:01:37 Yo Sub Kown:
We talked to them.
00:01:38 Yo Sub Kown:
And ultimately we ended up working with them to understand
00:01:44 Yo Sub Kown:
kind of the claims insurance industry, kind of how big the problem was, ended up building a prototype, going to an insurance conference and showing kind of the prototype that we had built.
00:01:56 Yo Sub Kown:
And people got really excited.
00:01:57 Yo Sub Kown:
They got really excited by what we were showing them.
00:02:00 Yo Sub Kown:
They were like, hey, can we use this right now?
00:02:03 Yo Sub Kown:
And that’s when we were like, okay, maybe there’s something here.
00:02:06 Yo Sub Kown:
We should dive further in.
00:02:10 Yo Sub Kown:
And here we are a couple of years later.
00:02:13 Sabine VanderLinden:
It is a fascinating story because sometimes the smallest, I would say smallest problem because they are very clean, centered, but actually a complex problem for those who are actually working in the job every single day.
00:02:28 Sabine VanderLinden:
And so it’s fascinating to hear that you actually find a niche
00:02:32 Sabine VanderLinden:
a problem that a lot of adjusters, claims managers were experiencing and was able to actually find a way to solve that problem.
00:02:40 Sabine VanderLinden:
So let’s go into a little bit of a scenario.
00:02:44 Sabine VanderLinden:
So let’s think about, you know, maybe David, right?
00:02:51 Sabine VanderLinden:
The claim adjuster.
00:02:53 Sabine VanderLinden:
And that person, on average, right, has a lot of claims that he has to handle every day.
00:03:03 Sabine VanderLinden:
And it is, I guess, Friday.
00:03:06 Sabine VanderLinden:
We love Fridays.
00:03:07 Sabine VanderLinden:
I know it’s not Friday right now, but Friday for 59.
00:03:12 Sabine VanderLinden:
And he has to actually start dealing with claims denial.
00:03:18 Sabine VanderLinden:
So what would you expect to find inside and how would Volter start rewriting a story when you start looking at this claim adjuster David, who has to actually deal with all those clients being upset at 5 o’clock on Friday with all those letters that was not expected to come back on his desk?
00:03:43 Yo Sub Kown:
I think that you paint a pretty realistic scenario here.
00:03:47 Yo Sub Kown:
I think what you would find is kind of the usual rushed claims letter.
00:03:53 Yo Sub Kown:
If adjusters, they don’t enjoy writing these, especially denials.
00:03:57 Yo Sub Kown:
So David, in this situation, like they would, they often, they hurry, they procrastinate, they copy and paste from
00:04:05 Yo Sub Kown:
whatever letter is most similar.
00:04:08 Yo Sub Kown:
And they lean heavily on templates, on cheat sheets to figure out like which clauses to cite in this denial letter.
00:04:16 Yo Sub Kown:
And no one reads these policies in detail.
00:04:19 Yo Sub Kown:
So small mistakes and often big ones, they slip through.
00:04:25 Yo Sub Kown:
So Voltaire, we flip that.
00:04:27 Yo Sub Kown:
It generates each letter from scratch.
00:04:30 Yo Sub Kown:
So it doesn’t take shortcuts and it removes that room for error.
00:04:34 Yo Sub Kown:
the adjuster spends far less time on the thing that they hate and more time on the claim itself.
00:04:42 Sabine VanderLinden:
So when we think about the ARS, right, and we often think about our industry now trying to embed artificial intelligence in everything they do.
00:04:51 Sabine VanderLinden:
But at the same time, we need to actually think about claims, human errors, and litigation.
00:04:57 Sabine VanderLinden:
You won’t believe you.
00:04:57 Sabine VanderLinden:
I was having a conversation just yesterday around claims litigation and social inflation, which is currently happening in the United States.
00:05:06 Sabine VanderLinden:
And I have to say that some small insurers have to look at different options for themselves when they start looking at these nuclear claims settlement requests because of
00:05:20 Sabine VanderLinden:
all the changes happening in the US.
00:05:22 Sabine VanderLinden:
So when we start looking at insurance, maybe health insurance, and I know when we chatted, you shared a little bit of example with me.
00:05:32 Sabine VanderLinden:
How do we start, you know, really understand the customer and how customer is fighting back for better service and potentially better technology as well?
00:05:43 Sabine VanderLinden:
You know, can you share with us some parallels of your experience at Voltaire
00:05:49 Sabine VanderLinden:
when you look at what is happening currently in claims today.
00:05:54 Yo Sub Kown:
Sure.
00:05:54 Yo Sub Kown:
I think, yeah, like what we’ve seen in health insurance is kind of this AI arms race where the companies like EvenUp and Counterforce Health, they are, and these are becoming pretty large platforms.
00:06:11 Yo Sub Kown:
They’re allowing these individuals or law firms to
00:06:18 Yo Sub Kown:
create healthcare appeals really easily.
00:06:21 Yo Sub Kown:
And we’re now starting to see that in, like homeowner’s insurance and other areas where these, the more resourceful plaintiff attorneys have already figured out how to use AI to scale the rate and the depth at which they can review carrier correspondence for errors, inconsistencies and policy misquotes, anything that they, can snag to create a, legitimate,
00:06:47 Yo Sub Kown:
the counterclaim, right?
00:06:48 Yo Sub Kown:
And it’s starting to catch steam.
00:06:52 Yo Sub Kown:
And I think it will just become increasingly widespread as knowledge of the existence of these tools proliferates.
00:07:00 Yo Sub Kown:
I think what it really means now is that every claim letter is becoming like a defensibility test from day one, right?
00:07:08 Yo Sub Kown:
Like we’re seeing these AI generated demand packages that arrive
00:07:13 Yo Sub Kown:
courtroom ready with polished arguments and cross-reference evidence that forces carriers to respond at a similar level of precision.
00:07:23 Yo Sub Kown:
And I think it’s going to become increasingly difficult for them to do so without also scaling up their AI tools if on the plaintiff side or on the individual side, they’re using AI to create these professional packages.
00:07:40 Yo Sub Kown:
I think defense attorneys are getting an uptick in volume that requires intervention, and we’ll just continue to expect to see that growing.
00:07:51 Yo Sub Kown:
The plaintiff AI tools can just produce hundreds of sophisticated documents at scale, turning like these minor slip ups in claims letters into potent lawsuit exhibits.
00:08:04 Sabine VanderLinden:
Fascinating, right?
00:08:05 Sabine VanderLinden:
How high I can be used within our industry, but also actually is being used by the defendant, right, to actually create cases which are very detailed around things which have happened in the past to justify why things should happen toward their case.
00:08:25 Sabine VanderLinden:
So from a technological viewpoint, because you are a technology,
00:08:30 Sabine VanderLinden:
technologists at heart, right?
00:08:33 Sabine VanderLinden:
Why do copy-paste, right, errors and templates, fatigue, still plague our industry in 2025?
00:08:41 Sabine VanderLinden:
You won’t believe that I was, I’m working with one of the big tech companies right now around the trust dilemma.
00:08:48 Sabine VanderLinden:
And one key thing which came out of their study is that, you know, we are all using artificial intelligence and a lot of insurers are starting using generative AI, but do not do that with the right governance.
00:09:00 Sabine VanderLinden:
the right processes, the right, human in the loop.
00:09:04 Sabine VanderLinden:
So how do we actually start leveraging Voltaire or the techniques you are actually embedding within the claims office to ensure that we just avoid the errors and actually use the right templates in 2025, 2026?
00:09:24 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, I mean, before I started this company, I would have not, I did not think that this would have been a problem in kind of this day and age.
00:09:35 Yo Sub Kown:
And I think the biggest reason why it even is a problem is because of the immense amount of dynamic complexity in these policies and in claims.
00:09:51 Yo Sub Kown:
You know, an insurance carrier, they may offer
00:09:53 Yo Sub Kown:
a number of different base policies, and then there may be state specific special provisions that modify that base policy.
00:10:01 Yo Sub Kown:
And then there are endorsements or unique amendments on top of that.
00:10:05 Yo Sub Kown:
So the, like the number of combinations of all the, of like a unique policy is immense, immense.
00:10:11 Yo Sub Kown:
It could be in the quadrillions, right?
00:10:13 Yo Sub Kown:
And so there are all these different, then there’s all the different possible things that can happen in the claim itself, like what the person’s claiming or like the thing that happened.
00:10:22 Yo Sub Kown:
So I think like all these legacy tools that exist, they tried to increase efficiency through these template based systems by covering like the most common cases.
00:10:35 Yo Sub Kown:
But what that results in is like endless template configuration, keeping them updated because real rules in jurisdictions are continuously changing.
00:10:45 Yo Sub Kown:
And then there’s these, you know, these rigid rule sets that don’t cover the edge cases.
00:10:50 Yo Sub Kown:
cumbersome formatting that adjusters often find slower than just doing it manually.
00:10:56 Yo Sub Kown:
So I think what happens is adjusters face an impossible choice.
00:11:02 Yo Sub Kown:
They either use the official system that they’re supposed to be doing, or they misquota go home late.
00:11:10 Yo Sub Kown:
So they copy paste from old letters to meet their targets, and then they leave on time.
00:11:15 Yo Sub Kown:
So whenever you have productivity measured, people are going to choose speed over compliance.
00:11:21 Yo Sub Kown:
And in fact, I would go so far as to say that most adjusters, they never actually learn the complete, correct way to write a claims letter.
00:11:31 Yo Sub Kown:
They just kind of have the standard that’s taught internally to meet whatever the minimum thresholds are within their kind of organization.
00:11:42 Sabine VanderLinden:
Yeah, no, it’s answered the question, but at the same time, I think, let’s go into understanding the size of the park, right?
00:11:49 Sabine VanderLinden:
when you actually build Voltaire, I’m sure when you met the investors, you had to have the time Samsung, right?
00:11:55 Sabine VanderLinden:
You had to identify the size of the problem.
00:11:57 Sabine VanderLinden:
So can you share, right, what the financial stakes are?
00:12:01 Sabine VanderLinden:
Because I think our listeners would really want to understand how big that is.
00:12:07 Sabine VanderLinden:
And what does a poorly written claim letter really cost?
00:12:11 Sabine VanderLinden:
Because we talked about social inflation.
00:12:14 Sabine VanderLinden:
We talked about big litigation.
00:12:16 Sabine VanderLinden:
This morning, as I said, I was on a few calls.
00:12:19 Sabine VanderLinden:
I heard about $25,000 claims becoming 20 to 30 million claims.
00:12:26 Sabine VanderLinden:
So tell us what is really the size of the pie from a litigation leakage LEA viewpoint, yo.
00:12:35 Yo Sub Kown:
Sure.
00:12:35 Yo Sub Kown:
actually, I have some numbers.
00:12:38 Yo Sub Kown:
Litigation alone adds an average of $10,718 per claim in loss adjustment expense.
00:12:45 Yo Sub Kown:
And so we project that Voltaire can reduce litigated claims by 10% or more through more defensible correspondence.
00:12:54 Yo Sub Kown:
Claims leakage from communication error, it represents like somewhere between like 1 to 3% of total claims costs.
00:13:01 Yo Sub Kown:
But that’s over $6.4 million annually for like a mid-sized carrier.
00:13:06 Yo Sub Kown:
So even a conservative 5% improvement in leakage from clearer letters, that translates to $320,000 in recovered value.
00:13:18 Yo Sub Kown:
And the hidden costs, they cascade across like many categories.
00:13:23 Yo Sub Kown:
There’s inflated labor costs from
00:13:26 Yo Sub Kown:
the manual rework, there’s regulatory fines if things are late or other problems, customer churn, adjuster burnout and turnover, the replacement costs on replacing an adjuster are often, 100 to 200% of that person’s salary.
00:13:42 Yo Sub Kown:
And then there’s the domino effect where one letter error triggers claim reopening, payment delays, and then, you know, escalated reviews.
00:13:53 Sabine VanderLinden:
That is actually considerable when you think about it, right?
00:13:56 Sabine VanderLinden:
Because you have the costs you mentioned, but also you have those massive hidden costs, which probably goes into the million.
00:14:03 Sabine VanderLinden:
You mentioned the regulator.
00:14:05 Sabine VanderLinden:
So I would like to hear from you, know, how do you interact with the regulator and how are regulators paying closer attention to how AI is using claims?
00:14:15 Sabine VanderLinden:
And we heard, you know, in the past, you know, some issues around claims denial.
00:14:19 Sabine VanderLinden:
So I would love to go into that with you.
00:14:21 Sabine VanderLinden:
But when we think about Voltaire, how do you ensure explainability, transparency, compliance when you actually use artificial intelligence within your AI and the correspondence you are producing for your clients?
00:14:38 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, that’s a big question.
00:14:39 Yo Sub Kown:
And a lot of states, I think like something like 27 states, like we’re keeping track of, have, you know, proposed some kind of AI type of
00:14:51 Yo Sub Kown:
law or requirements or regulations.
00:14:54 Yo Sub Kown:
So Voltaire, you know, we include critical guardrails.
00:14:59 Yo Sub Kown:
So for one, like if an adjuster requests a denial letter, but there’s no valid policy exclusion that exists to support the denial, the system returns no relevant policy language was found.
00:15:11 Yo Sub Kown:
So this prevents a wrongful denial or, you know, kind of like prevents a compliance violation before it happens.
00:15:19 Yo Sub Kown:
Additionally, we provide an audit trail showing which policy sections, endorsements, or regulatory rules informed each part of the letter that’s generated.
00:15:28 Yo Sub Kown:
So it makes it very straightforward to a supervisor or a regulator to understand the AI’s reasoning.
00:15:37 Yo Sub Kown:
The AI also explicitly provides a paragraph narrative explaining its reasoning.
00:15:42 Yo Sub Kown:
So we’ve been told by claims managers and adjusters that
00:15:47 Yo Sub Kown:
the AI has been teaching them things about policies that they’ve never known before.
00:15:51 Yo Sub Kown:
So I think the big difference is that our approach treats compliance as a product feature, not like an afterthought.
00:16:00 Yo Sub Kown:
Every letter cites exact policy language where it’s needed, and we can explain how amendments or exclusions modify the base coverage.
00:16:10 Yo Sub Kown:
So that ensures the transparency and reduces E&O exposure.
00:16:17 Sabine VanderLinden:
So one thing which come to mind is for me, when I think about Voltaire, right, it’s about how we start embedding better approaches within claims team, right?
00:16:27 Sabine VanderLinden:
How do we train people better?
00:16:29 Sabine VanderLinden:
You know, we talk about digital transformation, but what is transformation today?
00:16:33 Sabine VanderLinden:
It’s about people transformation and culture transformation, I think, yo.
00:16:37 Sabine VanderLinden:
And so how do we start also adjusting the fact that our industry is transforming, is changing,
00:16:43 Sabine VanderLinden:
Just last week, a number that came during one of the conversations I was having through a webinar is 40% of our more mature experts within the insurance companies are going to retire.
00:16:57 Sabine VanderLinden:
So we need to find the right talent.
00:17:01 Sabine VanderLinden:
So when you actually start looking at stories within the careers you are working with,
00:17:08 Sabine VanderLinden:
You know, what is the best approach, do you think, today to train adjusters and help them become better at their job?
00:17:17 Sabine VanderLinden:
You know, when you start looking at how we can support the younger people, maybe by learning from the older ones, what would be your approach?
00:17:26 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, I mean, anecdotally, I’ve heard the same thing from carriers that the
00:17:32 Yo Sub Kown:
A lot of their more senior adjusters are retiring, and they’re having difficulties with replacing them with kind of, you know, younger or new talent.
00:17:42 Yo Sub Kown:
So what we’ve we’ve seen as much as 50% of new adjusters being hired with zero prior insurance experience.
00:17:52 Yo Sub Kown:
So by combining simulation based training with Voltaire access.
00:17:57 Yo Sub Kown:
So for for one carrier, they use Voltaire to help
00:18:01 Yo Sub Kown:
trainees work through dozens of complete simulated claim life cycles before they ever touch a live claim.
00:18:08 Yo Sub Kown:
And the managers, they gain that visibility into the adjuster’s capability before day one on production.
00:18:16 Yo Sub Kown:
So as one chief claims officer, they told us,
00:18:22 Yo Sub Kown:
I can see work product from new hires before approving them for live claims.
00:18:26 Yo Sub Kown:
It’s amazing.
00:18:27 Yo Sub Kown:
We have people that are new to us that can now write letters that pass QA on day one.
00:18:32 Yo Sub Kown:
So I think that, you know, if the program eliminates, you know, weeks of policy language familiarization, which is
00:18:43 Yo Sub Kown:
probably the part that takes the longest for a new adjuster to get up to speed on, like that becoming familiar, well acquainted with the carrier’s specific policies, and even more so if they haven’t touched insurance ever before, those new hires now arrive for ready, right?
00:19:02 Yo Sub Kown:
Like they can have confidence in their first customer interaction because Voltaire is going to automatically cite the correct, accurate policy language
00:19:12 Yo Sub Kown:
regardless of complexity.
00:19:14 Yo Sub Kown:
In fact, the more complex or nuanced the scenario, the better it is to have AI writing that letter.
00:19:21 Sabine VanderLinden:
Which is important, right?
00:19:22 Sabine VanderLinden:
And so now I want to go into much more complex claims, because as you know, we are living in the world where actually catastrophic losses are something which happened most months.
00:19:34 Sabine VanderLinden:
Let’s say most months around every day, because that sounds very, really bad if we actually say that it happened every day.
00:19:40 Sabine VanderLinden:
But
00:19:42 Sabine VanderLinden:
they happen on a regular basis.
00:19:44 Sabine VanderLinden:
I was in, during the summer, I was in Italy, and I was reading about France, flash floods, and then it happened in New York.
00:19:52 Sabine VanderLinden:
So those type of things are current, and they happen all the time.
00:19:57 Sabine VanderLinden:
But what I learned when we catch up, actually, a few weeks ago, is actually carriers are very much dependent on independent adjusters.
00:20:06 Sabine VanderLinden:
So when you think about the independent adjusters, right, often coming from cold and familiar point when they actually start interacting with a higher policy language, how do you and your team at Volta change the day one situation, productivity story for those adjusters?
00:20:29 Yo Sub Kown:
This is where Voltaire really got its start, actually, handling a large amount of catastrophe claims for our customers that were operating in the southeast after hurricanes. So, yeah, temporary adjusters, they create this concentrated E&O risk at the exact moment of the greatest exposure for the carriers during these catastrophes. They’re often, you know,
00:20:56 Yo Sub Kown:
either they’re newer adjusters or they’re unfamiliar with the carrier’s policies. And it’s difficult for managers to review every single letter with their tight time constraints. And we’ve been told by managers too that like 100% of the initial letters that the adjusters write are rejected for one reason or another in those first like couple of weeks while those adjusters are getting used to the policies for that carrier.
00:21:22 Yo Sub Kown:
We were able to onboard all of the IA firms for our customers during the catastrophe surges last year and eliminate that day one learning curve. So adjusters, the CAT adjusters, were able to draft accurate letters citing correct policy language immediately. So they didn’t require those weeks of becoming familiar with the carrier’s specific forms, endorsements, and coverage nuances.
00:21:51 Yo Sub Kown:
And there were times like when they were trying to cite certain things and our system didn’t let them. So this all translates to a massive cost avoidance during peak demand. Like you’re paying overtime, bringing in these independent firms at these premium rates. And having those resources productive from hour one rather than day 14 or day 30,
00:22:16 Yo Sub Kown:
directly impacts the LAE and settlement quality during that, critical claim window.
00:22:24 Sabine VanderLinden:
Yeah, so let’s actually share what does it mean from a customer, or let’s say an adjuster satisfaction.
00:22:30 Sabine VanderLinden:
point, right? I think some of the number I heard, 6 out of 10 to 9 out of 10. This is an incredible jump, right, for any survey. So what is the hidden moral boost when actually artificial intelligence is used in the right way within a crisis situation like we talked about, Nutcat? And so tell us, what is 9 out of 10 means for Voltaire?
00:22:59 Yo Sub Kown:
Sure we did. We did find this this quite interesting. So the the numbers are adjuster satisfaction in our survey jumped from a 6.5 to a 9.2 5, which is a 42% increase. And when we dug into the why, it was because we removed the I guess what we call like the copy paste crisis, which is the daily grind of
00:23:27 Yo Sub Kown:
hunting through old files, finding one to copy from, the reformatting templates, or just worrying that every word that they’re writing might become exhibit A in litigation, right? So I think adjusters, well, they described feeling liberated to focus on like what they were trained for, right? Like investigating losses, evaluating risk, and serving the policyholders.
00:23:55 Yo Sub Kown:
So instead of like wordsmithing compliance documents, they will. All right. So one senior adjuster, they said, I save about two hours daily. I’d say we can all do at least one more claim per day now. So I think just the fact that like most adjusters hate writing letters and we’re just reducing the amount of time that they spend doing that in their job, which, you know, accounted for quite a chunk of their of their their day to day. So the
00:24:24 Yo Sub Kown:
The ripple effect on retention is significant. We’ve seen numbers that replacing an adjuster costs 100 to 200% of their salary in recruitment, onboarding, and lost institutional knowledge. So improving their daily work experience directly protects against that, you know, or that protects that investment, I guess, into hiring and training those adjusters.
00:24:49 Sabine VanderLinden:
Absolutely. I mean, you said 200%. It’s not as small.
00:24:52 Sabine VanderLinden:
amount, knowing that our industry is suffering with those 40% of talent going out of the industry and having to identify the right talent to enter the sector as well, and make sure that they enjoy what they are doing. So it’s a good use of artificial intelligence who are hearing here. So
00:25:13 Sabine VanderLinden:
I know that you are building integration with some great, top-tier companies out there. I don’t know whether you can share any more with us. But I would like people to hear the great solution and the great capabilities which are coming to market when they think Voltaire. And I would love for you to also share how critical it is, or is it that Voltaire lives inside the system of adjusters?
00:25:40 Sabine VanderLinden:
already ready to be used when the adjuster is ready to go?
00:25:46 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, absolutely. So we can get a carrier up and running almost immediately with our standalone tool. And the metric that matters the most, though, at the end of the day is adoption. So we currently have an 85% plus adoption rate among adjusters with our customers now.
00:26:09 Yo Sub Kown:
And by connecting directly to claim systems like Guidewire, adjusters don’t need to context switch, re-enter data, or learn a separate interface. It requires little effort, which means that they actually use it. And so we have a Guidewire integration that will be published later this year. So that low effort is, I think, the difference between
00:26:37 Yo Sub Kown:
85% adoption and the 88% failure that, so, sorry, there was an MIT report that came out a little recently that showed that there’s an 88% failure rate of AI initiatives due to poor adoption. And I think that when a tool feels like extra work, even if it’s like better, adjusters will still bypass it
00:27:04 Yo Sub Kown:
under deadline pressure or, you know, just inconvenience. So it has to be easier than like what they’re currently doing. And, you know, we don’t want to ask carriers to like rip and replace their tech stack. So, you know, whether it’s integrated or you standalone, like our promise to, you know, the carriers is to deliver this next generation, next gen claims quality, without, you know, that make that kind of painful,
00:27:33 Yo Sub Kown:
potentially multi-year transformation project that would typically kill momentum and ROI, we do it really quickly. We either you can use our standalone tool or you can integrate into whatever you currently use.
00:27:46 Sabine VanderLinden:
Fascinating, because a lot of the conversation I’m having right now is about legacy modernization. And the conclusion actually in October, we are talking in October, right, of this year, 2025,
00:28:00 Sabine VanderLinden:
The main statement I receive is no rip and replace. But the other statement I hear is about orchestration and leveraging the right technology, which are enabled to actually pull information from wherever it needs to be used to actually enable the user, whether it’s finance, claims, underwriting, to do their job better, but having a full 360 view of the organization.
00:28:26 Sabine VanderLinden:
So, Yo, I need to ask you about the future and how we drive competitive advantage, right? Because we can’t do it alone. Carriers need partners like yourself to actually get the job done and actually find new sources of revenue in new markets, whether locally or internationally. So
00:28:47 Sabine VanderLinden:
You have been building metrics, right? Metrics around ROI to actually justify your case. And you’ve shared so many numbers with us, which is often what a lot of carriers are asking for, you know, the proof points, right? And
00:29:03 Sabine VanderLinden:
When I think about your numbers, I think about potential opportunities going into the years to come, but delivering 200, 300, 400% value returns for our insurance carriers. So let’s think about two times executive. And I call him David Chen.
00:29:26 Sabine VanderLinden:
right? He’s responsible for operation in ABC insurance company or insurance mutual in the United States. So if David had to justify why he should invest in Voltaire to his CFO, because now they check everything, right? What is a killer number he should quote to actually justify his investment?
00:29:52 Yo Sub Kown:
Let’s see, to the CFO,
00:29:55 Yo Sub Kown:
I would tell him 378% first year ROI. So, and I’ll break that down. A carrier processing approximately 10,000 property claims, they would save about $670,000 annually. That’s a net gain of over half a million dollars after covering all the costs associated with
00:30:20 Yo Sub Kown:
Voltaire’s implementation costs. And we have a, you know, a 35 metric ROI case that we can share with any carrier to kind of show them the specific numbers as it, you know, pertains to them. But the the adjuster, if we break it down to like on a per letter basis, the adjuster spends, you know, 30 minutes to
00:30:44 Yo Sub Kown:
let’s say two hours working on a claim or maybe even just like one specific letter. And then there’s senior personnel, attorney review time. And those manual processes, you know, they consume time, cost, and we charge $15 per claim. So as many letters as the carrier needs over the life of that claim, it’s covered in that $15. So the math very quickly becomes undeniable. Like it’s,
00:31:14 Yo Sub Kown:
it’s unequivocally beneficial for the carrier in time, compliance, happiness, and of course, cost. And this is all actually before counting the avoided litigation and recovered leakage. If you factor in even like a modest 5% improvement on that front in claims leakage, the ROI doubles to
00:31:37 Yo Sub Kown:
over 500%. It makes it like one of the fastest payback investments in claims operations that a CFO could have available.
00:31:46 Sabine VanderLinden:
Yeah, I’ve disposed for a moment. I mean, those numbers are important numbers because every organization is going for transformation, a lot of efficiency
00:31:58 Sabine VanderLinden:
innovation happening right now, even though we need to start looking at the top line and seeing how we’re actually earning new customer trust rather than just new customer segment. So
00:32:10 Sabine VanderLinden:
You already mentioned the magic number, which I’ve been talking about the whole month of September and October, actually, which is this 95% of AI pilot fail. But I found another piece of study, which was, I believe, a McKinsey study, which was around 88%. And there’s a new BCG study, which is around 83%. Anyway, it’s above.
00:32:32 Sabine VanderLinden:
75%, right? So AI adoption fails in general, but what makes the adoption of what you have to offer different?
00:32:44 Yo Sub Kown:
So one thing I’d say is that our use case is pretty specific. You know, it’s like we’re working on making these claims letters better. We’re not trying to do like, you know, 10 different things. I’d say that
00:33:02 Yo Sub Kown:
we treat carriers as partners. We have direct feedback loops with them. So adjusters, their input, it goes to us, it goes to their training leaders and managers who will convey it to us. And then we can make changes for their benefit and implement those within days, not months. And so I think that builds trust among what would otherwise be initially skeptical staff. And
00:33:29 Yo Sub Kown:
we have, you know, bottom up value demonstration that which drives like the organic adoption within these organizations. So when like the early adopters, the first adjusters within a carrier that start using it, they start saving, you know, two plus hours daily, their colleagues are going to see that that that time savings firsthand and peer success.
00:33:55 Yo Sub Kown:
the, those stories, those become like the most powerful change management tool. I’d say that our tool, our approach is, it’s very user centric by design. Every decision, like it starts with what the adjuster needs and what, you know, like what the organization needs for their, you know, the, the letters that they’re trying to produce. And
00:34:20 Yo Sub Kown:
We didn’t mandate adoption. We just made the tool so useful that the adjusters chose to use it because it makes their day better. And it wasn’t that leadership forced adherence. But at the end of the day, we make everyone in the stack happier. We make the adjuster happier, their manager, because the letters are higher quality. There’s fewer things that they need to edit or kick back.
00:34:46 Yo Sub Kown:
Their supervisors are happier, their directors are happier, the legal team is happier, and the CFO.
00:34:53 Sabine VanderLinden:
And that is important, right? You are building happiness within the claims team, which we don’t often hear about. So that is very important.
00:35:01 Sabine VanderLinden:
part, whether we have a carrier, an investor, if we have actually a claimant as well, that actually some carriers are really aiming to build happy cleans team to process the cleans super fast. So that is why we start looking at technology that like correspondence to start interacting and communicating with the customer much faster.
00:35:24 Sabine VanderLinden:
But we have talked about health, right, earlier. And I think it’s very important for the carriers out there to understand which type of lines of business you’re after. Yeah, right. We talk about health, but you are probably expanding across a number of lines of business. And what challenges do you see can be tackled or things you need to think about?
00:35:47 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, we are currently, we currently offer our product in home property and we are expanding to auto and then commercial after that. We’re working with several carrier partners now to configure our auto solution with our intent to bring that about general availability in Q1 of next year. So, and we can offer customized demos for auto now for anyone that asks us. The auto claims
00:36:17 Yo Sub Kown:
It represents the volume play for us, like higher claims counts, faster cycle time requirements, and a regulatory landscape that varies dramatically by state. But fundamentally, the problem that we’re tackling, it’s the same. The adjusters need defensible, accurate correspondence. They hate writing letters. And our solution architecture scales pretty naturally to
00:36:45 Yo Sub Kown:
each other line of insurance. I think we just need to start with, a small number of carriers, make sure that we understand any nuances that exist between, the different lines of insurance. And then once we feel comfortable, we, can roll it out at a wide scale.
00:37:03 Sabine VanderLinden:
Yeah, it’s very important to understand the wider scale you may want to touch. I may tease you just a little. I know you’re already monitoring 27 states, Yo, and the goal would be to expand across the United States. Any way I can convince you to come to London in Europe?
00:37:22 Yo Sub Kown:
Perhaps, yeah. I mean, we’re looking into Canada now, expanding there. And I mean, I think at some point, yeah, we’ll try to expand beyond it.
00:37:33 Sabine VanderLinden:
And as when you start looking at commercial, I think the Lloyds market would love to actually find things which serve their customer much better. So looking five years out now, Yo, do you see artificial intelligence correspondence becoming standard across the insurance sector? We talk about commercial, auto, right? You’re expanding new lines, but we use an example as well in healthcare when we actually try to get people to understand what we are dealing with.
00:38:02 Sabine VanderLinden:
Or will do you think what we do in our industry stay as a competitive differentiator if they do correspondence with AI the way you do it? And so the early adopters are going to win and the laggards are going to lose.
00:38:21 Yo Sub Kown:
The way I see it five years out is that AI correspondence will just become table stakes. I don’t think it’ll even be a differentiator at that point.
00:38:34 Yo Sub Kown:
much like how online claims filings or like mobile apps have evolved from like being innovative to just being like the expected minimum. I think that, you know, like we we see plaintiff attorneys that are already at 1 billion plus valuations because they use AI to review, you know, every carrier letter carriers just
00:38:56 Yo Sub Kown:
can’t afford to stay manual, they’ll just be an increasingly mounting financial pressure for them to shift. So even for how slowly things tend to move within the insurance industry, it’s pretty difficult to imagine that the vast majority of carriers haven’t switched over to AI written correspondence within five years. The competitive edge will shift to
00:39:22 Yo Sub Kown:
execution quality, right? Like, so like which carriers deploy AI that truly improves outcomes versus though that those that like implement like a shallow AI washing that, you know, frustrates adjusters or like fails to kind of deliver the full package. And, you know, the gap between the leaders and laggards, I think will widen more dramatically there. But five years from now, I expect that like boards and regulators, they’ll actually be asking carriers like,
00:39:53 Yo Sub Kown:
why aren’t they using AI for correspondence if they haven’t yet switched? Like the same way that you’d question, like, why aren’t you using data analytics for fraud detection? The question won’t be like, should we adopt? But like, how fast can we catch up to those who already did?
00:40:13 Sabine VanderLinden:
Those who already did often, I think,
00:40:18 Sabine VanderLinden:
And I’m going to be potentially bold when I say what I say is, it’s not just about the technology and the artificial intelligence, as you said.
00:40:24 Sabine VanderLinden:
It’s about how you differentiate.
00:40:27 Sabine VanderLinden:
And differentiation will probably come from creativity.
00:40:30 Sabine VanderLinden:
You know, how more maybe human and empathetic you can actually…
00:40:35 Sabine VanderLinden:
use technology to enable you to do that.
00:40:38 Sabine VanderLinden:
And where do you actually have that human in that loop at the moment of truth?
00:40:44 Sabine VanderLinden:
So what is going to be the moment of truth tomorrow for me is fascinating.
00:40:48 Sabine VanderLinden:
Because for me, it’s a much more human part rather than a technology part, like when we started using, I guess, calculators to count or the computer to do our work or the iPhone to speak and do many other things.
00:41:04 Sabine VanderLinden:
So it will become, as you said, utility.
00:41:08 Sabine VanderLinden:
But the differentiator, again, will be how human can you make it potentially?
00:41:14 Sabine VanderLinden:
So my next question to you is more around concluding and actually seeing your perspective in how things are going to go long term.
00:41:26 Sabine VanderLinden:
So if today,
00:41:29 Sabine VanderLinden:
Let’s say now in two months’ time, well, let’s say if we at Reuters connected claims, for instance, gathered claims leaders, regulators, and adjusters in one single room, like we often do during the conference, what is the one message each of them should know about Voltaire, and you would want to tell them about artificial intelligence and the role it has within the claims
00:41:58 Sabine VanderLinden:
management sphere and in enabling writing and producing correspondence.
00:42:07 Yo Sub Kown:
That’s a good question.
00:42:09 Yo Sub Kown:
I suppose the message I’d want to convey would address what I think a lot of people’s concern with AI is writing letters.
00:42:22 Yo Sub Kown:
So AI written policy cited correspondence
00:42:27 Yo Sub Kown:
It already outperforms any previous method of producing letters on speed, accuracy, and compliance.
00:42:36 Yo Sub Kown:
Carriers that use it will see fewer disputes, faster cycle times, and happier adjusters.
00:42:43 Yo Sub Kown:
I think that it’s just there’s a lot of skepticism or a lot of unknowns around AI.
00:42:51 Yo Sub Kown:
And sometimes it’s just difficult for people to believe it.
00:42:56 Yo Sub Kown:
Even like at the conferences we attend and at Connected Claims, we’ll show people live demos and we can do demos with their policies on their letterhead and show them letters being generated.
00:43:11 Yo Sub Kown:
And even then still, sometimes people have a difficult time believing that it’s going to
00:43:17 Yo Sub Kown:
fully work.
00:43:18 Yo Sub Kown:
And I think that’s the message that I’d like to try to instill in people is that like, this is real and we have it available today.
00:43:30 Sabine VanderLinden:
And that is important.
00:43:31 Sabine VanderLinden:
We already have it available today and we can actually do so much more.
00:43:35 Sabine VanderLinden:
But the technology is an enabler.
00:43:37 Sabine VanderLinden:
And when we start looking at our industry, we have so much we can do actually for our customers.
00:43:42 Sabine VanderLinden:
and make them happier, probably in times where the reputation of the industry is not the greatest, but actually customer need insurance.
00:43:49 Sabine VanderLinden:
So they need, they are looking for those carriers who actually care about customer experience, customer engagement, and actually solving the problem, the claims, the fastest as possible.
00:44:02 Sabine VanderLinden:
So I look forward to seeing you at Connected Claims Reuters this year, Yo.
00:44:07 Sabine VanderLinden:
And I would love for everybody to know if they want to see you, meet you, talk to you about this.
00:44:13 Sabine VanderLinden:
What should they do?
00:44:16 Yo Sub Kown:
So we’ll have a booth there at Connected Claims.
00:44:19 Yo Sub Kown:
So please come and find us.
00:44:21 Yo Sub Kown:
I’ll be spending a good amount of time there.
00:44:24 Yo Sub Kown:
So you can come up to me and ask me all your questions.
00:44:28 Sabine VanderLinden:
And I know for me to find you is voter.claim, if people want to talk to you, LinkedIn, e-mail, what is your preferred mechanism of communication?
00:44:38 Sabine VanderLinden:
Where should they reach out?
00:44:40 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah, go to our website.
00:44:42 Yo Sub Kown:
You can book a demo with us there.
00:44:44 Yo Sub Kown:
Come find me at the conference.
00:44:46 Yo Sub Kown:
e-mail us.
00:44:48 Yo Sub Kown:
Yeah.
00:44:49 Yo Sub Kown:
Connect to me on LinkedIn.
00:44:50 Yo Sub Kown:
Absolutely.
00:44:52 Sabine VanderLinden:
Well, Yo, thank you so much for joining me on the Scouting for Growth podcast.
00:44:58 Yo Sub Kown:
Thank you for having me.
