Rising Star Ali Inan on the world of FinTech, what customers want and how he masters brokerage in this area: Risk and insurance

Come see the stars! As part of our ongoing coverage of the best brokers in commercial insurance, Risk & Insurance®with sponsorship by Philadelphia Insurance, expands coverage of Rising Stars – those brokers who represent the next wave of insurance brokerage talent.

Look for these extended profiles at Risk and insurance website and in your social media feeds now and continuing into 2023.

Here’s a look at Ali Inan, US FinTech industry leader at Marsh, and a 2022 Finance Power Broker and Rising Star.

Risk and insurance: How did you experience working as a financial insurance broker? What led you to where you are today?

Ali Inan: West Coast, born and raised, I have always liked and had an affinity for finance. I studied finance in undergrad and actually worked in the asset management sector.

I graduated in 2006. A few years into my professional career we had the greatest financial crisis known to mankind. I was working in a large asset management firm at the time. They laid off about half of the company’s employees. I stayed, but things didn’t really go that well.

I was looking for something more stable. I didn’t want to go through that again, especially in the asset management sector. You can imagine some of the conversations that happened with clients and it was just emotionally distressing, to say the least.

I started looking around. Where can my financial knowledge help me more broadly in the professional services arena? I found insurance and was very interested because I didn’t really know anything about insurance at the time.

It was a small, regional insurance company called McCorkle Insurance that was looking for someone to come in and help them build a financial institution portfolio for their commercial business.

Get the less broker experience [at McCorkle] across a variety of coverage lines was incredibly influential to my career. But after five years at McCorkle, someone from Aon, who was a manager in their western zone, said they needed a senior financial institution person. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. [I spent] six years at Aon and ran a bank for financial institutions on the west coast.

Finance in the West Coast has always been an interesting thing. There has always been, before FinTech, pressure to go to New York.

In 2015, FinTech really started to gain traction. And by virtue of being on the West Coast and being where I was, I was very fortunate and positioned myself to start working with early FinTech clients. The financial institution manager job at Aon very quickly became a financial institution and FinTech manager.

After six years at Aon, I was approached by Marsh with this amazing opportunity to lead our FinTech practice in the US and also help lead the mantle in the Western Zone for Financial Institutions. It has been really exciting to engage with FinTech customers, both through the boom of what happened through 2020 and all the capital and liquidity that went into both private and public markets, and now today where some business models are changing.

RIDE: What are some of the exciting things happening in the world of FinTech? How do you stay on top of these changes for your customers?

AI: FinTech is very similar to other growth-oriented technology organizations. Everyone is aware of the challenges happening in this space as the macro economy has changed. Many growth-oriented stocks have taken quite a hit in the public markets.

The big thing for us is how do we ensure that insurance and risk is a business enabler? How do we help our customers think through risk, whether they transfer it or not? I think transferring it and buying insurance is great, but it doesn’t always make sense.

The way I keep up with the best trends in the space is by reading and listening and doing as much research as I can, and then talking to clients. I spoke with a client recently, for example, who had to change their fundraising strategy because the private markets weren’t necessarily giving them the valuation they were looking for. They had to move to more of an M&A financing strategy, which was very interesting. Then it came up in a conversation with another client, for example.

Talking to clients, making sure I listen to the CNBC Morning Show in the morning when I work out, and then reading every little bit of information I can to stay informed.

RIDE: How would you describe your brokerage philosophy?

AI: Setting expectations and being responsive is primarily the most important thing for customers, colleagues and insurance companies.

Setting expectations for insurance companies is differentiating the customer, and making sure the insurance company understands the risks it takes and understands the risks it doesn’t take. Sometimes there is a perception of risk that is not real, and sometimes there is a misunderstanding of risk that is actually being taken.

If you have clarity of thought and purpose, responsiveness, and you set and meet expectations across the entire value proposition, then everything works well, even if you have a tough situation.

Insurance is interesting – and I think so [it’s] unique this way – that way and you generally hope you never use it. And when you use it, you’re usually in a situation where there are emotions involved and something has happened. And as such, we have to be incredibly responsive and on the ball.

RIDE: When your customers come to you, what are some of the biggest risks they ask you for help with?

AI: The first is the stakeholder’s expectations, whether it’s a board member, it’s a customer, it’s a supplier, it’s a third party, and it [are] expectations of the organization for insurance. Whether it may be contractual provisions or regulatory needs, they will ensure that they meet these expectations.

FinTech is interesting, because you have that sliding scale where there are some customers who are more Tech than Fin, meaning they’re doing something that’s internal process and efficiency related, and they’re really more of a B2B SaaS organization that might not takes consumer credit capital or regulatory risk.

Other FinTech customers are largely financial institutions, more Fin than Tech, and therefore largely take regulatory capital and credit risk.

I think of the ‘buy now, pay later’ segment as an interesting example, where you use capital. You essentially take credit risk in a new and interesting way. It comes with regulatory risk and it comes with the potential risk of class action lawsuits from consumers. I think these are the biggest concerns for FinTech clients along with what other organizations face such as Cyber ​​or shareholder lawsuits.

RIDE: What is your favorite part of what you do?

AI: I love talking to clients and hearing about what they do and how they do it and just being part of the strategic discussion.

Risk is inherently part of the strategic conversation that happens at the board level, that happens at the C-suite level. I love being in the room, or on Zoom, with my clients. Whether it’s a GC or a CFO or whoever, I often find myself having a strategic discussion about a new product or a new vertical they’re moving into.

Our seat at the table really helps them think through the potential areas they are exposing themselves to while doing these things.

I love that about my FinTech clients – they are constantly disrupting and moving into new areas. For me, it’s where I get to continue learning about myself. &