Breaking the ICE

ICE Tech

Demystifying the Insurance World Breaking the ICE is a podcast for everyone who works in the space where insurance meets technology - whether you're steeped in underwriting and claims, building the platforms that support them, or simply curious about how one of the world's oldest industries is being reshaped by the rise of Artificial Intelligence and other complementary technologies. Hosted by Elliott Draga, Head of Growth at ICE Tech, alongside co-hosts Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese (and the occasional guest), the show draws on decades of combined practical experience in the global insurance sector. Together, the three of them unpack the ideas, technologies and trends shaping the industry today - and try to make sense of them without the baffling jargon that so often gets in the way. Insurance has a reputation for being somewhat archaic and slow to change. Breaking the ICE sets out to challenge that assumption. Each episode looks at how technology - from data analytics to customer relationship management - is streamlining operations, improving customer experience and opening up new avenues for growth. Rather than abstract theory, the hosts share first-hand experience from the front line of the industry, offering practical, actionable insights and the occasional off-topic side-quest.  Expect conversations that go beyond the obvious headlines. Alongside deep dives into specific technologies, regulatory challenges and emerging innovations, the podcast isn't afraid to draw on what's happening in the wider world - from the weather to major sporting events - and find the parallels with how businesses innovate, prepare and compete.  Get ready to start Breaking the ICE -  a grounded, conversational approach that treats big industry questions with a light touch, making complex ideas accessible without oversimplifying them.

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 17 - Inside Aero-plan, the Marketplace Moving Patients by Air

    In episode seventeen, Elliott Draga hosts solo - but far from alone - joined by Ilan Dorot of Aero-plan, recorded on location at the International Assistance Group (IAG) Global Forum in Istanbul. Aero-plan is a B2B marketplace and network for medical repatriation, moving patients by air ambulance and commercial medical escort - think Uber or Expedia for air medical transport. Ilan explains how Aero-plan connects assistance companies with a vetted network of providers, and how he solved the classic two-sided marketplace “empty disco” problem - starting geographically around the snowbird market some 13 years ago with a single brave first client. A central theme is quality over cost: a deliberate choice to work only with direct, accredited providers rather than brokers, backed by EURAMI-grade protocols, a medically qualified team running continuous monitoring, random audits and surprise hangar visits. As Ilan puts it, don’t buy the cheapest - and when quality and efficiency come first, price follows. The conversation turns to industry M&A and the real difficulty of merging workflows across geographies, then to back-office data quality and connectivity as both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. On AI, Elliott’s refrain that “context is king” meets Aero-plan’s unique two-sided data position, the risks of training only on your own biased data, and cross-regional learning. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  2. Oct 29

    Episode 16 - What Our Customers Taught Us About Getting Started With AI

    In episode sixteen, Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese hold the fort while Elliott is away, for a conversational episode built around ICE-Tech’s recent client day and the question on every customer’s mind: how to actually get started with AI rather than just talking about it. Mark reports back from a client day attended by around 40 customers, where interest in AI ran high but many insurers remain hesitant in a risk-averse industry. The pair explain how ICE-Tech is “drinking their own champagne” - using its own tools, including Alice Orchestrator, to run the development lifecycle. Their central advice is to resist chasing the biggest use case and instead find a point of friction - They dig into the importance of getting processes deterministic first and only then layering AI, keeping humans in the loop where empathy matters, and proving each win before moving to the next. The conversation widens into an agentic AI workforce working alongside human teams, and how AI could reshape insurance buying - from walking round your home on video for a home quote to countering the aggregator “race to the bottom” with conversational, modular upsell through Alice Sales.  Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  3. Oct 22

    Episode 15 - Demystifying Enterprise Insurance Technology and how AI Shapes the Future

    In episode fifteen, Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton look at some of the conversations they’re having out in the market every week and set out to demystify some of the enduring misconceptions about enterprise insurance technology - and where AI really fits. They tackle the big one first: the assumption that enterprise tech means forbidding cost, complexity and timescales. Lloyd makes the case that proof is what shifts it - the credibility that came from landing tier-one brands - while Elliott explains how a mature, feature-rich, configuration-not-code platform takes huge risk, cost and time out of a project. They unpack the shift from big-bang to phased, agile delivery, demystify migration, and explore how cloud infrastructure, data lakes and AI-assisted data transformation have made it all simpler in the insurance world.  The second half turns to AI maturing across the industries they serve. Elliott’s throughline: context is king - off-the-shelf generative AI is hyper-generalised, so the real work is contextualising models and building guardrails, with humans kept firmly in the loop. They draw an education analogy from their own kids’ homework, look ahead to corporate training agents and internal copilots on the roadmap, and close on a lighthearted debate about who on earth would insure Elon Musk’s 180 degree-flipping, lorry-jumping flying roadster. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  4. Oct 8

    Episode 14 - Why Nobody Loves Motor Insurance (and How to Fix It)

    In episode fourteen, Lloyd Overton is flying solo in the host seat, and is joined by special guest Steven Loudwill - a 30-year insurance and reinsurance veteran and former motor insurer CEO - to talk about his new venture, the Icoco Club, and why motor insurance is so overdue a makeover. Steve is refreshingly honest about the problem: motor insurance is an intangible product - you are buying a promise - that customers rarely value and insurers often lose money on, inside a fragmented, structurally challenged market. He shares the catalyst for change, including a shocking motorway accident with his partner where their own insurer's response was dismal, all while he was serving as a motor insurer CEO himself. Out of that frustration came Icoco: a free-to-join community club built around real local connections between individuals, businesses, charities and schools, with five promises at its heart - safer roads, support for good causes, everyday savings, rewards, and a genuine free share in the business for members. The conversation widens into trust and conduct as the root of many of the market's problems, the squeeze on the charities and schools Steve wants Icoco to help, and the role of technology - where ageing insurer systems meet new AI capabilities, and where ICE-Tech comes in. Freshly launched on 11 September and still in build mode, Icoco has passed its first 100 individual members, and Steve sets out what success looks like: a better deal for motorists, real money for good causes, and a measurable drop in accidents. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more and join the club at https://icococlub.co.uk/ Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  5. Oct 1

    Episode 13 - The Operational Backbone: How Helm Connects Vets, Claims and AI

    In episode thirteen, hosts Elliott Draga and Mark Colonnese are joined by Mike Jackson, co-founder of Helm and a vet of more than 20 years. Mike built and later sold a multi-site veterinary practice in Scotland before moving into technology, and the conversation tackles one of the thorniest gaps in pet care: the disconnect between the vet's consult room and the insurer. Mike explains what Helm is building - a system that sits alongside the practice management system as a practice's operational backbone, handling communication, workflows and protocols with AI underneath. Much of the discussion centres on "contextualized care": getting the right information to the right person at the right moment, and why today almost nobody in the consult room knows a pet's true financial and insurance position. Through a vivid example, Mike shows how treatment choices and their costs hinge on that missing context, and the trio dig into the pain points around claims, multiple portals, and the risk vets carry when they treat on good faith. They look ahead to a "Nirvana state" of shared medical records, proactive record-sharing at policy inception and even predictive cover that rewards good preventative care - alongside the data-protection wrinkles, the geriatric-pet drop-off, and the big, controversial question of whether pet insurance has pushed up the cost of veterinary care. Mike's parting message is optimistic: this is a tech problem, and it can be solved by joining up the vet and insurer worlds. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  6. Sep 24

    Episode 12 - The Ladder of Partnership: Customer Success and Responsible AI at ICE-Tech

    In episode twelve, hosts Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton are joined by Joe Wood, a new member of the ICE-Tech team, recently arrived in an account management role focused on supporting existing clients. Joe shares his route into insurtech and his early impressions from behind the curtain at ICE-Tech. Joe traces a path from a law degree into insurance broking and then insurtech, where client management has been the constant thread. He and the hosts explore what has stood out since he joined - the breadth of the ICE platform across policy and claims, its configurability from motor and home to commercial, pet, travel and IPMI, and the deep insurance domain expertise that sits alongside the engineering. Joe sets out his "ladder of partnership" approach to customer success, from getting the basics right through to true partnership, while the trio discuss ICE-Tech's responsible, guardrailed approach to AI - combining large language models with deterministic processes rather than using AI for its own sake. The conversation broadens into growth opportunities - geographic expansion across English-speaking markets, product-line diversification, and reputation built on proven deployments - before a lively tangent on cyber as an emerging risk, from pricing the near-unquantifiable to whether any of them would buy personal cyber cover. Joe closes on what excites him ahead: meeting more customers, an upcoming client day, and helping clients get the most from what ICE-Tech offers. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  7. Sep 17

    Episode 11 - Conferences, Climate Claims and the Alice AI Suite

    Episode eleven is a business update from Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton, running through what's coming up this autumn - the Insurance Innovators conference in London on 3-4 November, and the upcoming Alice Claims webinar on 7 October, introducing ICE-Tech's Alice AI suite covering sales, policy servicing and first notification of loss across both the Nordic and ICE platforms. The conversation then turns to a comparison of trends either side of the Atlantic. Elliott shares striking Canadian data on catastrophic climate claims - 2025 was the tenth-costliest year on record, with the past decade's payouts more than double the one before, driven by wildfires and urban flooding - while Lloyd reflects on the UK's own shifting weather-related claims, from subsidence to escape-of-water and heat-related school closures. They also cover diverging trends in commercial insurance, where falling rates and rising MGA activity contrast with Canada's tariff-driven pricing uncertainty, and fraud, which is becoming more organised on both sides, with Canada projecting $5 billion in losses for 2025 and the UK grappling with its own long-standing challenges. The episode closes on a lighter note about AI cutting both ways - with consumers increasingly using it to challenge claims decisions - before Elliott and Lloyd sign off for the week. Alice Claims Webinar: https://ice-tech.com/alice-claims-webinar-page/ Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  8. Sep 10

    Episode 10 - The Future of Pet Claims and Underwriting

    Episode ten picks up where the previous episode left off, with Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton joined again by Mark Colonnese for part two of their pet insurance conversation, recorded around the time of the NAFIA pet round table event. The discussion covers the history and future of vet-insurer data integration, from the legacy Vet Envoy platform to newer entrants and ICE-Tech's own direct integrations. Mark sets out the shift from a reimbursement model towards a "pay at point of care" approach, and the industry's ongoing struggle with underwriting at time of sale - where pre-existing conditions often only surface after a claim is made, and how better data sharing and automation could fix that.  The conversation then broadens into distribution: retail and pet food channels, kennels and shelters as a trusted first touchpoint, the UK's aggregator-driven market, and the growing use of wearable pet health devices. The episode wraps with a lighter note on some of the wilder claims Mark has seen... Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

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About

Demystifying the Insurance World Breaking the ICE is a podcast for everyone who works in the space where insurance meets technology - whether you're steeped in underwriting and claims, building the platforms that support them, or simply curious about how one of the world's oldest industries is being reshaped by the rise of Artificial Intelligence and other complementary technologies. Hosted by Elliott Draga, Head of Growth at ICE Tech, alongside co-hosts Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese (and the occasional guest), the show draws on decades of combined practical experience in the global insurance sector. Together, the three of them unpack the ideas, technologies and trends shaping the industry today - and try to make sense of them without the baffling jargon that so often gets in the way. Insurance has a reputation for being somewhat archaic and slow to change. Breaking the ICE sets out to challenge that assumption. Each episode looks at how technology - from data analytics to customer relationship management - is streamlining operations, improving customer experience and opening up new avenues for growth. Rather than abstract theory, the hosts share first-hand experience from the front line of the industry, offering practical, actionable insights and the occasional off-topic side-quest.  Expect conversations that go beyond the obvious headlines. Alongside deep dives into specific technologies, regulatory challenges and emerging innovations, the podcast isn't afraid to draw on what's happening in the wider world - from the weather to major sporting events - and find the parallels with how businesses innovate, prepare and compete.  Get ready to start Breaking the ICE -  a grounded, conversational approach that treats big industry questions with a light touch, making complex ideas accessible without oversimplifying them.

Information

  • Creator
    ICE Tech
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Breaking the ICE by ICE Tech
  • Show Website
    Breaking the ICE