SIR Podcast
SIR Podcast
Episode 9: Justin Suter, Corporate Insight
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SIR Podcast host Tony Cañas (Insurance Nerds) talks with Justin Suter (Corporate Insight) about research, competitive intelligence, and involvement with SIR.
Welcome to the entire podcast. Today I have with me just this is Tony, uh Tony Kynus of Insurance Nerds, uh host of the podcast. And uh today I have with me Justin Suter. Suter, right? Suter?
SPEAKER_01Suder, yes.
SPEAKER_00Director of Market and Thought Leadership at Corporate Insights. Um so Justin, uh, we always give the guests the chance to give the elevator page. What is corporate insights?
SPEAKER_01Corporate insight is a consulting company that specializes in competitive intelligence on the digital customer experience. So we work with a research panel of users who share their account access with us through screen shares and screenshots. And that's allowing us to provide insights, hence corporate insight, from behind the login, that authenticated experience. What is it like to be a policy holder at Allstate or State Farm and Liberty Mutual? So, of course, that allows us to perform lots of what we feel is really valuable content around how these sites are evolving over time, different customer journey mapping on those sites, and benchmarking the different capabilities provided by different carriers as well. And we are bigger than just insurance. Of course, we're going to be talking about insurance today, but we take that same research methodology and apply it to pretty much every vertical within the financial services space. So we also have similar products in credit card, banking, retirement, healthcare, asset management, brokerage. And that also does allow us some valuable out-of-industry insights as well, because as we know, insurance is not necessarily the fastest moving industry at all times and in all spaces. So sometimes it can be great to say, hey, here are some, here's how some other firms are approaching digital and gain some best practices from out of the industry as well.
SPEAKER_00That was a very nice way to say what we all know, what every listener of this podcast knows, uh, which is that we are one of the slowest industries ever, usually five years behind banking, which itself is not Amazon or Google. Um now we have been forced into the digital age because of the inserted revolution of the last 10 years. Uh and it's been awesome to watch, right? And the industry has invested billions and billions and billions of dollars into modernizing uh our uh operations, both back end and front end, etc. Uh it's still not great. It is definitely still not great. I'll I'll tell I'll tell I'm not gonna be.
SPEAKER_01I'm not worried about my job at all. Let's say that.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, no, you no, like like we definitely need this. Okay, what does it look like? So so if I'm an insurance carrier or a large brokerage, and and and and I I I'm concerned that that my digital customer experience is not as as good as as it really should be. And maybe one thing is happening right now, maybe I've brought in three or four different insurrect solutions, and now I have a bunch of modern systems that might or might not be super well integrated with each other.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00So so what does it look like when when when we want to engage you guys? What does that process look like?
SPEAKER_01So we have a couple of different you know ways that people that our clients work with us. Uh we always love when our clients just subscribe. It's a syndicated research subscription and it comes with a lot of different components to it. But for the the bedrock of all of our research on the monitor side, because we will call we call it P and C personalised monitor, is the bi-weekly update. So this is, I mentioned those panelists we have, and we have uh, as you can imagine, because these people are you know competent screen shares, we're looking at what their insurance policies look like. It's a pretty intimate relationship because we're touching base with them on a bi-weekly basis to say, you know, hey, let's run through the website, let's see what's changed. So every other week we're going to publish here are the new tools, yeah, or someone just redid their navigation menu, or they released a mobile app update. And here are the new capabilities on their mobile app after this mobile app update. And we're going to be looking at both the public site, you know, we'll run through the quote tools every other week. Hey, there's a new option within this online quote tool. Uh, all of that gets published, like I mentioned, a bi-weekly update. Here's what's changed. Uh, once a month, we'll pick a topic and do a deep dive on that topic. We have 20 carriers in what we would call our active coverage set. So this past month, we had a on a mobile web home screen. So we look at every single home screen on the mobile web for the 20 carriers in our coverage set, write them up, write up some best practices, talk about where the industry is. And at this point, you know, we've had this product in the field close to 15 years. We have pretty historical reports on most of the topics that we're writing about. So we're able to say, hey, look, we wrote we last wrote about this three years ago, and here's what's changed in those three years. On top of that, we'll we have big capabilities matrices that we refresh on a quarterly basis. So that's just going to let our subscribers know here are all these different capabilities. You can see what the industry adoption rate is within the coverage set, and you can see which carriers offer which types of features and functionalities. Uh, we also ask our panelists to do short little films where then we strip out any PII. So you can really get a sense of what it looks and feels like to click around some of these sites, but you go on our site and you watch these little screen recordings of our panelists clicking around. And then, of course, there's uh access to our subject matter experts who are living and breathing all of this. So it can be monthly readout calls or hey, you just wrote this report. We have some follow-up questions, like lots of engagement from our clients on that front. So that's all included in that subscription base. We don't do seat licenses. So once an organization subscribes, everyone can access and share and hopefully benefit from the research. And that's our bread and butter is that monitor. We have some other custom studies we do. We have an in-house UX team. So we're often testing uh different wireframes or different models. We do lots of evaluations of digital quote tools in our UX lab as well. So some of those studies are available as well. We do a separate annual study that we call our benchmark study. So that's where we're actually gonna rank all the carriers across all these different. We have a ranking system where we set it up with uh categories, subcategory, and attributes, and every attribute has predefined best practices criteria. We're gonna go in, rate those criteria, those rankings get rolled up so we can see where the competitive uh gaps are within the chosen coverage set, within the different types of carriers, whether they're uh direct or they're going through independent agents, or maybe they're an insure tech versus an incumbent. Uh the possibilities are really quite wide with the level of access that we have.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Is it the CIO, CTO, uh is it the COO's office? Like who's generally the one that the the the the the part of the organization that that uh that creates this relationship and really uses it?
SPEAKER_01So we love when an organization has a designated competitive intelligence team.
SPEAKER_00Uh most carriers bear.
SPEAKER_01Not every carrier does. But then our pitch our pitch shifts a little bit because a lot of carriers will have like it's not a team, it's like one or two people who are like responsible for all the competitive intelligence in the organization. So that's when we can become an extension of their team and really assist them as well. But that competitive intelligence function is probably the most direct uh uh slice of a carrier organizational chart that we deal with, but also marketing teams, sometimes product teams, overarching technology teams, and the fact that it's enterprise-wide, sometimes different teams are going to use us for different reasons within a carrier.
SPEAKER_00So Justin, uh how did you slash corporate insights get involved with it with SIR?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So I think our SIR engagement story is similar to many people in the many people in the organization at the moment, in that we were forcibly dragged in by the by the will of Mike Myers, uh former president of SIR.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_01He uh single-handedly uh probably tripled the membership of SIR. But this was uh But we've been involved for a while now. My first conference was uh when we were in New Orleans, which was a great time. I think that was 2018. Uh but corporate insight had definitely gone. Our president Mike Ellison, I think was in 2017, which might have been Milwaukee, maybe uh a couple years before that. So, you know, we're uh closing in on 10 years of uh corporate insight involvement in SIR and uh at the you know most recent conference for our platinum sponsor. Um I'm now serving uh my third, I'm into my third year as our VP of research on the board, which I get so much value from and enjoy contributing to. Uh, but it's perfect for us because we have products in PC personal lines, commercial lines, life insurance, annuities. We have four products in the healthcare space. So all the lines of business from SIR, corporate insight has a direct product in, which is why we're so heavily involved.
SPEAKER_00And and your products are quite literally competitive research. Yes. Right. So so now these like customer competitive research, but quite literally what SIR is about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's also why we love to go because you know, when you're producing as much research as we produce, sometimes it can feel like we're just sending all this content out into the void and like who's actually reading it? And then I come to SIR and I talk to people and they're like, oh, your report from three months ago. I was like, yes, you're speaking, you're speaking my language, you're reading uh the pages and pages of content that we write about insurance websites. Like these are these are my people for sure.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. So uh basically, you guys pay a subscription. We put so much effort in into building this, and we have no idea if anybody reads it. You guys just keep paying the subscription, and then I go to SIR and I and I meet the people that actually like the few people that actually like in-depth like read and what I what I what we what we do.
SPEAKER_01You know, it gets trickled down and it gets disseminated, but some I know our editing team likes to joke that they're the only people that read will read all 100 pages of a report that we put out. Like everyone else is slicing it and dicing it for sure. So they're the true heroes on the editing side for for grinding through all it all. But yes, the SIR people are definitely the top when it comes to corporate insight report consumption.
SPEAKER_00All right. So so so uh BP of research. Uh three years in a row at an organization, uh, an association that is dedicated to research. What has that role been like?
SPEAKER_01So the primary remit in my role is leading SIR's research committee. Uh so that's a you know, and SIR, of course, everyone knows all volunteer organization. We have an all-volunteer board, and uh all the committees are volunteers as well. And the committee is just composed of individuals who, as you can imagine, are passionate about research in in this space across the different spectrum of lines that, as we already mentioned, SIR covers. And we strive to compile content that's going to accomplish two things. First and foremost, bring value to the membership. So people feel that they're getting the bang for their bug of being an SIR member. So exclusive research that you only can access as an SIR member, that's produced by the research committee. So we often are trying to come up with content that cuts across the different lines of business and not get too specialized. So it's as relevant for as many individuals as possible. And then the other piece of what we try to do is produce content that's going to raise the profile of SIR in the larger insurance ecosystem and help us continue to make a name for ourselves. And now that we don't have Mike out there, I guess forcibly dragging people in, we got we all got to drag people in uh through our own force of nature, and and hopefully we're producing some content that will help do that.
SPEAKER_00Perfect, perfect. Right. So so for you yourself. So so you we talked about about corporate corporate insights and and how the organization is such a great fit. So you've been at Corporate Insights for 11 years. And you've gone from research associate to senior research associate to analyst to senior analyst to research manager to now the director of market engagement and foundation. So that that is a long time. I'm guessing you're about my age. I'm 43, maybe a little bit younger than me. Uh millennial. Uh that is a long time. Uh actually you're a 15-year-old younger than me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm 33.
SPEAKER_00All right, you're you're you're a young millennial. I'm guessing you did not plan on doing insurance research as as you were going to school. No, I didn't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I know. Insurance was always the plan, obviously.
SPEAKER_00You know what we call English majors in insurance? History majors in insurance?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, no, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_00Um free insurance.
SPEAKER_01Free insurance.
SPEAKER_00So so so I'm guessing you fall into corporate insights because you've got research experience from your history.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. So corporate and we have a you know, first and foremost, uh, we're all quite nerdy and uh fit in very well with insurance people as well, of course. And the yeah, the the what corporate insight is looking for when it hires people like me is uh a research background. So we do have a number of history majors working here. Uh journalism, uh, we have some people who were uh you know psychology backgrounds and then decided they didn't want to go into that field, even some pre-med people who like were doing that type of research and are like, no, maybe I don't want to be a doctor, lots of English majors, of course, because we're doing tons of writing. I mentioned how long some of our reports are. So writing is that skill that we are looking for first and foremost. And I when I came out of school with that, with that history degree, I was looking to you know perform research and you know for some a consulting company of some sort. Uh and it was I had an interesting journey because I'm the uh oldest. I have two younger brothers. I'm also the oldest of all my first cousins who grew up on Long Island. So when I was when I was you know going through school and everything, there was a there was a lot of external interest in you know, what's Justin going to do? And then of course I'm a history major and people are like, oh, what are you gonna do with that? Um but I participated in a fantastic, I went to NYU. I had a fantastic opportunity to study away, not study abroad, but I was in uh Washington, D.C. for a special January semester because NYU has a longer break between their spring and their fall. So they crammed like a full credit course into three and a half weeks in in a January semester. And I went down to DC, and uh my professor, uh Paul Light, had worked on the staff of a senator down there, so he had lots of connections, and it was two hours in the classroom in the morning, and then we were going all over DC in the in most afternoons meeting different people. And I met a lot of people with history background, and they were really talking about being able, hey, if you can do research and you can write and you can take complicated things and make them concise and but also be able to speak that language, like you can go do whatever you want, really was the message that I got. And it was like, you know what, I don't have to be a uh teacher or lawyer with a history degree, which is what a lot of people were like, oh, what are you gonna do? And so that's those are the types of jobs I started searching for, and I found my way to corporate insight, and I've been here my whole career, as you noted, with all this and worked my way up.
SPEAKER_00So so uh corporate insight was involved with SIR for a good while, it sounds like so. At what point do they say, hey, Justin, uh you should be active at SI at SIR?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question. I uh you know what one of the reasons why I love Corporate Insight is that they encourage their researchers to go to industry conferences, along with, of course, you know, we're all making money at the end of the day, right? So we're sending our account executives, the salespeople as well. But uh because we're hiring people to work, you know, I started working in the insurance space pr right away, having no knowledge of insurance when I started there, right? But in building up my subject matter expertise as I go, that I want their researchers to attend conferences because it's a great place to learn, right? Like uh so you're making connections, you're learning. Uh so I when I became, I started going, I think, as when I reached that analyst level, as you mentioned, and it was just because it's like incredibly valuable, A, like I mentioned, to meet the people who are reading your research, how can we better you know create this research for your needs because you're the ones paying for it, and B, educate myself on industry trends and challenges that that uh our clients are facing, our potential prospects are facing. How can we make our research more compelling? Um, and after I'd been in SIR for a couple of years, uh, at the time Brian Kiley, who's still at West Bend Mutual, was leading the research committee. And you know, we he and I got talking about some of what we were performing. He's like, you should join the research committee. And I was like, you know, that makes sense. And also, this will look good on my uh performance reviews as well, that I'm going out there and uh promoting corporate insight in this way. And then I was on the research committee for a couple years, and when Brian was stepping down from the board, he really pushed me to put my name forward and uh nominate myself as a potential board member, and I was accepted, and now I'm really enjoying the time uh with my fellow board members trying to push SIR to greater heights and just interacting with the different researchers and just learning so much from different ways to solve problems and tackle. And now, of course, we've actually made it a really long time without saying the words AI, but uh it's unavoidable. Yeah, how are different organizations implementing it and how is it how does it impact us as researchers and dealing with all those challenges? It's been a fantastic sounding board, the research committee, and and that was all of that discussion was what led to uh what we presented at the recent annual conference, which was a researcher's guide to AI, talking about how researchers can use it, how researchers on the research committee are using it, where we found success, where we've like, hey, listen, these are some things you really need to avoid with it. These are ways to use it well. Here are some vendors of SIR that have really cool AI tools that you might want to engage with. So all those conversations, and that that's all they were. They turned into this fantastic deliverable that was uh spotlighted at the conference most recently.
SPEAKER_00That session, the research's guide to AR, that sounds fant to AI. That sounds fantastic. Any chance is that recorded? Like is that is that available to the membership somewhere? No idea.
SPEAKER_01So like yeah, I don't think it was recorded, but the slides are definitely available to the membership. That it certainly falls into that what I mentioned earlier, where hey, we want to create content that provides value to members. So if they're not already on the site, they will be very, very soon. Uh and we'd love for it to, I mean, trying to make it a living document, I think, might be a bit of a gargantuan task just because of how the the pace of change it's coming when it comes to AI is so fast. So I'm kind of worried it's gonna be out of date in like two months. But uh I put June 2020 or May 2026 all over the all over that deck just so people don't start saying like, hey, you forgot about this, you forgot about that. But uh we definitely want to continue to update it uh with more vendor tools. Uh in there's an appendix at the end of it with different uh SIR solution providers. So as we can as they continue to develop more capabilities, we'll certainly update the deck with their slides at the end of it. And maybe we'll we'll even revisit it next year. I actually have a committee meeting this afternoon where we have to talk about what's next for the research committee and like how are we going to continue to build off of uh what a number of members have told us was a valuable deliverable.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic, fantastic. Uh what what now that that mic is not the main driving force in getting people into our what what is your pitch? So so 33 years old, uh 10 years, eleven years in research and insurance. What is your pitch for your fellow uh younger millennials and Gen Seers? Uh Why should they join SIR?
SPEAKER_01I think first and foremost, the the community and the people in SIR seem to just the warmth and the reception I remember feeling as a first-time attendee. And I I've gone to a you go to more conferences than me, but I've been to a number of conferences. And I don't feel I have not been to another conference that adds even something as simple as that. You know, you get that little first-time attendee ribbon on your badge at the conference, and so many people go out of their way to say, oh, this is your first time here. Like what made you join? You're gonna love it. Like this is how this is what I got out of it. And like I mentioned, my first conference was in New Orleans. I and I was just shocked by how many. Of course, the board members usually make a little bit of a bigger effort, but it was really across the board, pun attendant, I guess, of people coming up to me and welcoming me, talking to me about it. And at that time, I was only the second time I'd ever been to a conference. And the first one I went to, I was definitely like, man, it felt a little clicky. And it was nothing like that at SIR where it and like people are generally interested in hey, where where are you struggling? Uh I can help oh, I would I've had a similar problem. This is how I fixed it. And that's just the the amount of problem solving that happens in just the networking conversations to me is is unmatched in in the other organization that I've uh attended or been a part of.
SPEAKER_00So to me, it is very almost funny that an organization dedicated entirely to research has a committee within it that is further dedicated to research, right? So so why should they why should they consider joining the research committee?
SPEAKER_01So I mean, I say R like I think almost anything else in life, right? It's definitely a you get out what you put in. And the more you put in, the more you get out. So if you're a researcher, which you likely are, if you're a member of, as you know, to the Society of Insurance Research, you should be all about doing research and learning about your craft and where better to hone your skills and open yourself up to different different mindsets than on a research committee of people who are just as dedicated as you.
SPEAKER_00All right. What about the board? Why why should I join the board? That sounds like a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01You should join the board because it's uh it's a group of individuals who are collectively incredibly invested in raising SIR's profile within the ecosystem and are also true experts in their field. I'm always I'm always astounded at you know when you think about the the different roles and the different successes that the board members have had in their career, and that you become part of this uh near family of people who are really willing to go to bat for each other and to help each other uh in you know, not just professional, but also just in life advice as well. It's a it's a great group and it has uh only noble goals at heart.
SPEAKER_00Uh anything else about SIR that that uh you want to make sure that that that we touch on?
SPEAKER_01No, I think we covered it mostly. It's uh we can plug next year annual conference in Nashville, going to be lots of fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, annual conference uh in Chicago last year. Uh I do so many conferences, and there was something special. And this year I wasn't able to make KC because I had a conference. Uh but uh do we already have the dates for Nashville? We didn't have the memories.
SPEAKER_01May 23rd, 24th, 25th, Nashville.
SPEAKER_00Perfect, people. May 23rd, 24th, 25th. Uh, Nashville. Nashville is a really fun conference city. Uh, is it uh is is is the venue downtown or is the venue like the Gaylord?
SPEAKER_01It is the Western Nashville.
SPEAKER_00So I believe that it should be downtown if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, fantastic.
SPEAKER_01I believe so.
SPEAKER_00Perfect, perfect, perfect. So Nashville is a really, really fun conference city. And I learned recently at Insurance Innovators Nashville that Nashville has more than country music. Because historically I would go to I I I live only four hours away in Atlanta. Historically, I would go to conference in Nashville and like maybe go out and like sniff around the main uh street and then go like I don't like country music, and I just go back to my hotel. Uh and and uh turns out there's some really good like non-country bars. Uh and really, what could be more fun that the the than going with a bunch of nerds who are very, very friendly to party and that uh and the the the I truly I truly cannot say enough about the quality of the SIR conference. The speakers are fantastic, uh, and the people are so friendly. If you're an SIR member and you have not been making it to the conferences, it is definitely uh and it it's very reasonably priced.
SPEAKER_01Um there's no reason not to come, right?
SPEAKER_00There's no reason not to come. Nash Nashville is not a hard city to get to, unless you live in the West Coast, maybe, but but uh and it's not an expensive city. Um so so so yeah, awesome. Justin, uh, thank you so much for your time today. Um and uh always a pleasure to to chat about SIR. Uh when I remember to chat about SIR. Real pleasure to to meet you. Uh thank you so much for your time. And uh best of luck to the Knicks. Uh hope that that that they not only win it, but that they win it at home on game six. Yes, that's would be epic. Uh very much so. Absolutely epic. So thank you so much for your time today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Tony.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, have a great one.