Converge Insurance CEO Talks Focus, Innovation and Perseverance

Converge Insurance CEO Tom Kang said one of his most important pieces of advice for other InsurTechs is a seemingly obvious but often overlooked point, and that is to remember the insurance part of InsurTech.

“Maybe this is an obvious point, but I think it’s important to know that you are still in insurance — that you’re serving insurance carriers, insurance brokers and insurance customers,” he said. “You might be able to move at the light speed of cyber at a small startup, but at times, you still have to move at the pace of insurance.”

He said this means it’s important for InsurTechs to strike a balance of moving at the speed of cyber while also accommodating the sometimes slower and steadier pace of the insurance market. It’s also important to avoid innovating just for the sake of innovation, he said.

“It is absolutely critical that we don’t forget our customers, our partners and their critical business needs in the midst of the innovation,” he said. “As we innovate, we’re laser focused on the solutions that we can bring.”

Converge Insurance is a cyber InsurTech newly launched in August 2023 with backing from QBE North America and funding by Forgepoint Capital. At the helm, Kang brings leadership experience from Willis Towers Watson, Allianz and The Hartford, particularly in the cyber insurance space, which he said has given him a unique look into the InsurTech sector’s beginnings.

“During some of my executive roles, I had a chance to review and vet most of the first wave of InsurTech offerings into the cyber insurance market at that point, probably 10 plus years ago,” he said. “When they were first coming into the market, I was very excited about the new data, the new efficiencies, that they were introducing into the market.”

It was during this time that Kang realized there was an opportunity to bring technology and data into the insurance value chain in a more cohesive way, he said.

“To me, that integration across data, technology and insurance is extremely critical, especially in – as everyone says – this increasingly connected world with threat actors getting smarter and more powerful tools,” he said.

As Converge continues to focus on growth, Kang said his goal for the company is to make cyber insurance as dynamic as possible as the threat landscape continues to be volatile and ever evolving.

“I think that means that we have to be able to move as quickly as the bad actors find and exploit new vulnerabilities in the wild so that insurance really can and should respond in real time with solutions for the businesses while maintaining the underwriting rigor and the underwriting discipline necessary to find success,” he said.

While doing this, Kang said it’s important for InsurTechs not to lose sight of what he calls their “north star”: customers and business partners.

“It’s not necessarily about you or the company even, it’s really about your customers and your partners and how you’re solving their business problems,” he said. “I think that becomes a really important part in helping you to persevere and ultimately find success. You can’t lose sight of your customers, and I think as InsurTechs, oftentimes, we push forward so quickly to innovate that we leave some of our customers and partners behind. And to me, that’s not a long-term solution for success.”

He said other InsurTech leaders embarking on a similar journey will need to have a well-formed vision and, most importantly, know how to persevere.

“You need great technology, you need great people, you need great solutions and a value proposition, but I think if you’re going to succeed over the long period, leaders and companies that persevere through difficult challenges will be ultimately the ones that leave an impact,” he said. “It’s not easy to build something from the ground. It’s not easy to change existing business processes, especially in a market like insurance. So I think you have to expect it to be difficult. You have to keep working and persevere. And I think in order to do that, you really need a great team around you, but also a strong conviction about your vision and the solutions that you’re bringing to the market.”

Topics InsurTech