About Openly and what they do
So Openly, we're an insurer tech company. We're a tech-enabled premium insurance company. So today we sell homeowners policies and landlords policies. In the future, we might add more products to our repertoire. We're currently in 19 states, we continuously add a state or two, every month or two. So we continue to grow. We really pride ourselves on the state of the art technology that we have in our pricing engines and our underwriting guidelines. But we also believe that consumers really deserve to have a better policy, better protection at a fair price. So we've worked very hard to get there, and to provide that service and goods to our customers.
Gina's professional background
I'm Gina Reyes VP of claims here at Openly. I've been in the industry for over 25 years, I spent the first 25 years of my career at two of the largest carriers in the US managing throughout the entire country. But my last five years, before coming to Openly I spent managing claims in Europe and Latin America. So that ranged from bonds to marine to auto, home commercial claims. So I had a huge variety of work in multiple languages. And it was quite a thrill. But now I've been at Openly for a year and I'm having a great time.
Details on Openly's claims team
A year ago, at Openly, my team was five people. Today, my team is 34 people. And by the end of the year, I expect to be close to 50. And by the end of next year, I expect to double that number again. So we are growing rapidly, exponentially. And so my team right now is made up of myself. And I have three direct reports. And one report does process quality, vendor management and technologies. So she's kind of behind the scenes enabling she's the enabling team. And then I have two leaders that manage the adjusters and the processor. So, one team manage one team is a group of adjusters that have handled regular claims, like your day to day claims. And then I have another team that handles complex claims, primarily the very large losses, or liability claims. And so those are separated. So in within there, we have team managers managing the adjusters, and we try to keep the span of control between six and eight per team manager.
How their claims team differentiates from the industry norm
From claims perspective, our mission is to really provide fast, seamless and best-in-class service. So we try to really leverage technology and our innovative partners to do that. We're very much about curating the claims experience for the customer and the agents. So our model is we sell claim sell policies through the independent agent channel. So it's very important that the claims team provides experiences for our customers and our agents because the agents choose to sell us. So if we don't differentiate ourselves, and we don't provide that really tailored service to the customer, they're not going to choose us as often as they are right now.
What a typical work week looks like
From an adjuster standpoint, as that's the majority of my staff is there adjusters everyone works from home. So they each have their own way of managing their day managing their time scheduling. But in general, a typical day consists of returning messages, emails, etc. Calling on new claims, setting up mitigation and methods and choosing the method of inspection for the claim and then writing estimates and settling claims. But in addition to the claims adjuster work, we also have a lot of team activities, so they attend huddle meetings every day with their team to set the day up. We also have a couple times a month we have different skip level meetings, whether it's with myself or the CEO of the company. We also have a couple times a month we have company wide meetings that from the CEO or the co host and to keep the company informed of what's going on How's growing what's new and sharing big projects that are going on across the company.
What to expect during the interview process
The typical process on our team for interviewing is, first to screen with the HR easy, then you have typically had two interviews with claims managers. And then every candidate will meet with two leaders from my team, the claims group, and then also a leader from another function. And we really, we really tried to do this cross-functional interview, because we want the potential employee to really understand what Openly is about and understand that we are very transparent. We're very collaborative. And we all work together. And so you may report to the claims team, but you will be working with the other groups as well. And so this gives them an opportunity, the candidate an opportunity to really determine if openly is the right fit for them. It's not just about are they the right fit for us, but we've got to be the right fit for them as well. So it's a partnership.
About Openly's culture
It's about being open. That includes transparency, collaboration, the people, just kindness of the people, intelligence of the people. And then also we'd like to have a little bit of fun. So from a transparency perspective, we have regular meetings, company wide meetings to really share what we're all doing in the health of the company, and what's new, what's coming, introduce the new employees, we're hiring employees every two weeks. So we have we're growing rapidly. From a collaboration standpoint, you know, we all have titles, that don't mean much. So it's very, there's not a lot of egos, there's not a lot of hierarchy in our company. Because we all know that we hired people that know what they're doing. And they're very intelligent. So we don't have all the answers. Nobody has an ego, to say, I know everything, we go to the people who know the answers, and who can help us solve the problem. So it's not atypical for a C suite, or an executive of our company, to reach out to a frontline employee to ask them questions, or help them solve a problem, because they're the experts. They're the ones talking to our customers, they're, they're out there. So that's a really great aspect. One thing that really stands out to the claims team, and especially to my team, the frontline people is they spend a lot of time working with other functions, in particular, our insurance product team and our underwriting team. So we are providing them at the frontline level, we get to meet with them and provide them feedback on our policy on our underwriting guidelines, what we're seeing out there, what we're seeing our customers needs, and what construction trends we're seeing, etc. And we're having an impact on how we price our policies, how we write our policies, where our target market is. So this is something that is very different than being in a large company. And I mean, I was in a large company in a great position, but I rarely talk to the other functions to really have an impact. So no matter where you are in the company, you will have an impact some way somehow you have a say, and we want to hear we want you to be part of the solution. So and then we just tried to have some fun. So we have like trivia nights and social hours and step challenges. And sometimes we'll do a paint and sip for a cooking class or that people can sign up for and try to just meet people meet their peers and other departments and have a good time every once in a while slow.
Why now is the ideal time to join
Now is the ideal time to join openly, because we're just growing, we are growing rapidly, we're growing at an exponential rate, we have so many opportunities, and we just want people that are going to come and just be a part of the success and the growth. But at this stage, it's really, really fun, because we have the autonomy to try anything, almost anything we want, within, you know, compliance guidelines and within legal guidelines. But you know, in the claims department, we're constantly trying new processes, new vendors and new technologies. If it works great. We adopt it, we continuously improve on the process, or on the usage. And if it doesn't work or we don't like it, then we just move on we can we're able to adapt, adopt and adapt quickly and fail fast if we need to. So, at the end of the day, we're a very stable company, that's a startup and insure tech looking for bright ideas, where the opportunities and the possibilities truly are endless at this point
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
