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Amin Abdullah on Outstanding Claims with the Price Writer Ep 12
30 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of Outstanding Claims, we hear from down with Amin Abdullah, a pricing leader with a rich career journey spanning various roles in the insurance industry. From his early interests in business and math to leading pricing teams and tackling challenges in new markets, Amin shares his comprehensive insights and experiences.
🔹 Key Highlights:
-Career Path and Big Breaks: Discover how Amin's passion for business and math led him to a successful career in insurance pricing.
-Innovative Strategies: Learn about Amin's approach to building a pricing team from scratch and the challenges he faced in creating effective insurance pricing strategies.
-Saudi Arabia's Insurance Market: Gain unique insights into the rapidly growing insurance market in Saudi Arabia and the unique challenges and opportunities it presents.
-Data and Technology in Insurance: Understand the critical role of data in shaping insurance policies and the cautious approach needed when integrating machine learning and AI.
-Future of Insurance Pricing: Hear Amin's vision for the future of general insurance pricing and how understanding customer behaviour and market dynamics plays a crucial role.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
a little bit and then obviously it kind of helped me grow, create a team, found out what to do, what not to do.
Amin Abdullah: From Math Graduate to Insurance Pricing
00:00:08
Speaker
My guest for this episode of Outstanding Claims is Amin Abdullah. He studied maths at Birmingham University and has held several roles in insurance pricing. Working his way up, he is now the pricing director for Tijuana in Saudi Arabia. So, let's hear from Amin. Hello, Amin. Welcome to the show. Hey, Jeremy. You okay?
00:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's good. It's great to have you on. So the first thing I'd like to ask you is, how did you get where you are today?
00:00:44
Speaker
Sure, so I think, long story short, I had an interest in the career of Korea when I was about 17 years old, so I was in sixth form. Literally someone just came to me and said, oh, did you like business? I said yes, do you like math? I said yes, and they go, oh, become an actuary. So I didn't become an actuary straight away. I decided to go and do a master grade just in chase. Things didn't work and I decided I don't want to be an actuary.
00:01:07
Speaker
end of a credit risk initiative in the energy sector. And then about two years ago, you know what, maybe I should go become a Nigerian. Given that I was so looking forward to the career.
Building a Pricing Team from Scratch
00:01:20
Speaker
So I signed my career initiative, EGL group, then moved on to the AA. And I really got my big break in payment shield, or Talavit, Adana Group as it is now called. And they gave me an opportunity where they said to me, look, you can join, start to get a brand new pricing team.
00:01:37
Speaker
So there was no one in the team there. I was joining in London for a company that was facing software, which is also Liverpool. And I said, I didn't realise at the time it was Liverpool, but whatever, fine, just go with it. Came in and literally had to start from scratch with data, with modelling, optimisation, everything from scratch.
00:01:55
Speaker
And so initially I was using urnix and then from there had to move onto the emblem and radar. So it kind of really gave me the full experience of the end-to-end from starting a brand new project with brand new data and moving to optimization software. I mean, you've moved from one optimization software to another, you really get understanding of like an appreciation of how do they differ, what else matters between them, what's the advantage of the software.
00:02:21
Speaker
a little bit and then obviously it kind of helped me grow, create a team, found out what to do, what not to do. As you do, I think one of the reasons I was testing and how important testing is. Then from there moved on to community insurance where I would do personalized insurance and commercial lines.
00:02:41
Speaker
And I've looked with how I was approached by an opportunity in Saudi Arabia,
Opportunities and Challenges in Saudi Arabia's Insurance Market
00:02:45
Speaker
in Riyadh. Arabia is a growing market. It's, at the morning, paid 51% of the motor insurance market at the moment now. Like literally, I mean, 51% of people have got motor insurance. And there's a drive by the government to get more and more people on board. So obviously, that in itself is citing the amount of growth that people are experiencing. And on top of that, I just thought, look, there's a new market, new regulation, brand new challenge.
00:03:09
Speaker
There'll be a lot that I can learn and there'll be a lot of ways that I can sort of. Why not? What's the biggest challenge about being in a country where things are developing? I think the biggest challenge has been understanding the customers and the sentiment. It's very different to the UK. The regulators are a bit different. So someone might go like 10 miles in a whole year.
00:03:34
Speaker
just to get the cheapest price. So yeah, everyone's trying to get the cheapest price. So it's been a bit of a struggle and the regulation changes very frequently. Because it's so young, the market, we're constantly getting new regulations coming in, which completely throw a curveball away. Yeah, that's really, it sounds really interesting place to be. What would you say is your mission for insurance pricing?
Proactive Planning in Insurance Pricing
00:03:59
Speaker
So I think, generally, my vision for traditional pricing is getting it right. I think, especially with the UK market, we've seen a lot of blunders as of late. We've seen a lot of closures by, you know, a few MDAs closing down and whatnot.
00:04:13
Speaker
And I think a lot of that is because we are trying to be very reactive. We were in a hard market for a while, making good amounts of money in the world right now. And slowly, we went into a soft market here with COVID. And now, we're in situation where inflation are scarified. Everyone's trying to catch up. No one knows the right amount of inflation to put through. We've gone to the point where we're seeing price increase about 1%. We have more insurance. Now, we knew about the increased inflation.
00:04:42
Speaker
Literally, I did a corporate right so it's not something that's coming. We knew our Brexit, we knew that something was going to happen. If we have preemptively planned for this and we knew, okay, this is what's going to happen, let's kind of plan for it. Rather than trying to just increase our customer base, let's plan for it. I feel like a lot of insurance companies would have been in a much better place than I am today.
00:05:04
Speaker
Plus, for customers, it feels unfair for them to suddenly get almost 100% increase in their price. I think it's called lot confusion in the market as well. So yeah, I mean, that's why I'm like, if we got it right, customers would be happy, companies would be happy, and these difficult decisions would have been made a lot sooner, a lot quicker. And I imagine you don't have very much data yet. So what are your biggest challenges around that for setting your prices?
00:05:31
Speaker
So actually, we actually have a lot of data, believe it or not. So Taiwan, yeah, are the biggest insurance market. We are the number one private insurance market in the Middle East region. So even though we only operate in Saudi Arabia, we are number one in the Middle East region. So they, I mean, no matter where you go, data is always going to be an issue. You're going to have
00:05:53
Speaker
data error, data quality issues, data whatnot. So data has been abundant. What would you say is your vision for the future of German insurance pricing?
The Role of Customer Behavior in Pricing Strategies
00:06:05
Speaker
I think for me, it's more about understanding pricing. Well, when we look at pricing, we need to realize that there's so many elements that go into it, right? So you buy the underwriter views, we've got all the data. But then right now I'm like, wait a minute, there's something else going on in the market, yeah, that we need to kind of factor in. And then once you factor in the risk pricing, there are a few that you've just got the element of customer behavior, how customers behaving, are they worked about policy events and features, CSN benefits and so forth. And I think I've said this before, like,
00:06:34
Speaker
Price isn't always the central focus. It is the person that you see there are other things that you can do to attract customers. And if people have a good understanding of pricing, then after that it's all about why does the product offer me in addition to this. I think Vitality have done a great job with the health difference type of things.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, especially using the Apple Watch for signing up to the Health Show as well, but it allows them to want you to become an inferior healthier. It encourages you to become a healthier and inferior. You know you'll get some reward on the back of it and some reduction in premium.
00:07:09
Speaker
This is the kind of thing that we should be doing more so from the most market. Maybe even considering something similar to a dashcam, people who care about the colors will be more inclined to get these kind of products to minimize their risk. And it'll be easier. That is brilliant. I mean, that sounds really
Machine Learning in Insurance: Risks and Recommendations
00:07:25
Speaker
interesting. It's great that you've got so much going on as well. Is there anything you would like to add?
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think one thing I've noticed, especially over the last few years, is everyone rushing to the machine learning and data science. And so I think it's great that we are going that way, in that direction. For me, though, it's a lot of these companies are doing it. They're not in the right state. The data is not in the correct state. The OCC will provide a publishing workshop. Yeah.
00:07:59
Speaker
And a lot of the time when we do the machine learning techniques, we don't understand it. We're effectively putting things into a machine without fully displaying exactly what the machine is doing, how it's treating certain customers. And so, well, then you're like, okay, we'll go with it. Because I mean, given the idea, I've seen a case where a customer increased their excess. We should be surprised that the machine learning algorithm increased their price on like, that's because that's what machine learning algorithms do.
00:08:29
Speaker
I'm just like, let's wait, let's take a time, get a thing data correct first, and then understand the machine learning tools that we're using, and then use it. And obviously, I'm figuring my own future AI machine, and I can see going that way. Let's get the basics right first before we start to rush into the shiny objects.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. That's always right. We need to make sure the prices work properly before we start trying too many new things. Brilliant. Well, it's been great talking this afternoon. Thanks. Thanks a lot for meeting up. You have a good rest of your day. You too, Jeremy. Thank you. Brilliant. Thanks. Bye-bye.