Breaking the ICE

ICE Tech
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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.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. Sep 3

    Episode 9 - The Vet in the Middle: What Makes Pet Insurance Unlike Any Other Line?

    In episode nine, hosts Elliott Draga, Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese turn the spotlight on Mark, the show's resident pet insurance expert, for the podcast's first deep dive into the pet market. Mark explains what makes pet insurance so distinct from other personal lines - and why, in his words, it's really all about claims. Drawing on a career spent building pet insurance and claims technology, Mark traces the UK and US markets from niche beginnings to today's fast-growing, increasingly crowded landscape. The trio dig into the numbers behind pet claims - where 100,000 policies can generate 70,000-plus a year - and the automation challenge that follows, from rules-based processing to machine learning. They explore what makes pet unique on the policy side, from breed-based pricing across hundreds of species to a shift towards modular, build-your-own cover with wellness add-ons. Much of the conversation centres on the vet channel, where the vet is both the source of claims and a key sales channel, and on the tensions created by private equity consolidation and retailer-owned practices like Pets at Home. They close on the pressures ahead - rising indemnity spend and premiums, the affordability of cover for ageing pets, the ethical questions that raises, and the lingering effects of the COVID pet boom - before running out of time. Elliott and Mark tee up a follow-up episode, with vet-to-insurer connectivity flagged as the next big shift to watch. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  5. Aug 27

    Episode 8 - Lost in Translation? Medical Assistance, Language, and AI with Lexxika

    In episode eight, host Elliott Draga is joined by podcast veterans Tom Bool and James Austin of Lexxika, a language services provider specialising in the travel insurance and medical assistance industry. The conversation digs into a corner of the industry few people see: the high-quality, high-stakes medical translation that sits behind live assistance cases. Tom and James explain what makes assistance translation so demanding - documents that are short, urgent and highly complex all at once, unpredictable demand across 90-plus languages, ugly source scans, and strict data security. They cover the human element that keeps skilled translators in the field, and how Lexxika has become a technology company with its own portal and development team. On AI, they're candid: medical data can't simply be fed into open-source models, and only four core languages - French, Italian, German and Spanish - produce output good enough to edit. They describe their ethical approach, bringing translators in-house rather than squeezing freelancers, and why editing AI output is a wholly different skill from translating. The episode closes on the years ahead - climate change reshaping where people travel, the ever-growing desire to explore, and a shared conviction that humans must stay at the heart of assistance. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  6. Aug 20

    Episode 7 - Demystifying AI in Enterprise Software with CTO Al Robertson

    In episode seven, host Elliott Draga is joined by two of ICE-Tech's senior leaders - Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Passfield, back for a second appearance, and Chief Technology Officer Al Robertson. Together they set out to demystify Artifical Intelligence in enterprise software and how the engineering team uses it to augment its own software development lifecycle. Our resident CTO discusses the move towards "shifting left" - engineers now spend far more time on requirements, specification and architecture, while Artificial Intelligence based agents handle much of the build. He also discusses the investment behind it: an "AI champions" community spreading best practice across teams, an internal "agentic layer" of around 300 skills that teach the models ICE-Tech's private codebase and standards, and how tools like Claude Code and Codex used together for building and review. Andrew and Elliott press on the realities lost in the hype - that tokens, training, and heavier upfront specification all carry real cost, and that humans remain essential for judgement, architecture, and quality assurance. The guys also weigh in on where artificial intelligence does and doesn't belong - where plain code is more efficient, or where its non-determinism clashes with a process that must be reliable - alongside standout wins like an AI-built migration framework that would once have taken many man-years.   Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  7. Aug 13

    Episode 6 - Reliability plus Availability equals Reliavability, and Jane Hegeler talks travel assistance in the AI Era

    In episode six, host Elliott Draga is joined by ICE-Tech colleague Jane Hegeler, who brings 25 years in travel insurance and medical assistance from the Nordic Insurance Software side of the business. Together they explore how the travel market is changing, and where technology and AI genuinely help in assistance - and where the human touch still matters most. Jane traces her path from the British Embassy in Thailand into medical assistance across the APAC region and, four years ago, to Nordic Insurance Software. She and Elliott discuss the wave of M&A in travel, and why the market isn't shrinking but drawing in new entrants through globalisation, embedded cover and B2B partnerships. They cover the evolution of assistance technology, the balance between automating routine cases and keeping people front and centre in a crisis, the EU's new AI regulatory framework, and the value of tools like ICE-Tech's Orchestrator for surfacing a patient's medical history and location at the point of need. The episode closes on a competitive but optimistic market, where cheaper technology is lowering barriers to entry and, ultimately, making travel safer for everyone. Elliott also teases an upcoming episode focused on reliability, availability and scalability. Listen to Breaking the ICE wherever you get your podcasts. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  8. Aug 6

    Episode 5 - Andrew Passfield and the Story Behind the ICE-Tech Merger

    Episode five opens with a quick news roundup from Elliott Draga - Alphabet's cloud growth and first-ever negative cash flow, OpenAI's move into enterprise video chat with Presence, and Google's rollout of selfie-video authentication - before welcoming the show's third guest, Andrew Passfield, co-founder of ICE InsureTech - and now Chief Commercial Officer at ICE-Tech following its merger with Nordic Insurance Software. Andrew traces his career from the mid-1980s UK direct insurance boom through to founding ICE InsureTech in 2002/2003, building it first around claims and later policy, and the milestones along the way - early motor and household implementations, the company's first insurer client in 2008, and its acquisition by Acturis in 2012. The conversation then turns to the January merger of Nordic Insurance Software and ICE InsureTech to form the newly combined ICE-Tech, the logic behind bringing together NIS's global travel and IPMI strength with ICE InsureTech's UK personal lines base, and how the now-merged teams across the UK, Copenhagen, Poland, Malaysia and Toronto are settling in. The episode closes on AI: separating genuine capability from hype, ICE-Tech's orchestration and agentic work with early customers, and Andrew and Elliott's shared view that legacy transformation needs more than AI as a "silver bullet." Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  9. Jul 30

    Episode 4 - Lloyd's Story - 20 Years in Insurance

    In this episode, Elliott Draga turns the microphone on his co-host, tracing Lloyd Overton's career from his first steps in insurance through to where he sits today at Ice-Tech. It's a change of pace from previous episodes - less market analysis, more origin story. Lloyd walks through his path: starting out at the Insurance Advisory Service (later RIAS) selling cover to the over-50s market, moving into underwriting, then into commercial management liaising across a panel of insurers. From there he helped launch an over-50s direct proposition, before moving into insurtech sales - a route that eventually led him to Ice-Tech eight and a half years ago, when the business had around 45 people and roughly £4 million in turnover. He and Elliott cover the growth since: securing backing from Acturis, winning tier-one insurers, and expanding into New Zealand and Ireland. The conversation closes on the business's recent merger and what the next three to five years might hold, before wrapping up with Lloyd heading off on a well-earned two-week holiday. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  10. Jul 23

    Episode 3 - From Travel Insurance to IPMI - A Platform's Origin Story

    Episode three brings the show's first guest: Casper Søgaard-Petersen, Chief Product Officer at Ice-Tech, joining Elliott Draga and Lloyd Overton (plus the obligatory World Cup catch-up) to talk through the history of the ICE platform. Casper and Elliott worked together for 15 years at Nordic Insurance Software, and they trace its journey from a single-customer claims and assistance platform in the 1990s through to the multi-line, multi-currency system it is today. The core of the conversation is the pivot from travel insurance into international private medical insurance (IPMI), triggered by COVID wiping out the travel market almost overnight. Casper and Elliott walk through how the business used that disruption to rebuild its platform foundations, what carried over cleanly from travel into IPMI, and what needed extending - while Lloyd brings a personal lines perspective, drawing parallels with his own experience of the market's uneven pace of digital transformation. The episode closes by looking ahead: an open API strategy, third-party integrations, and what Casper calls the "orchestrator" - a governance layer for AI-driven workflows and agent-to-agent connections. Both guests are candid about the risks of over-building features without market validation, landing on a shared view that focus and stability matter more than chasing every new AI capability. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  11. Jul 21

    Episode 2 - Market Stats, Emerging Risk and AI's Boomerang Effect

    Episode two of Breaking the ICE sees Elliott Draga, Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese catch up amid World Cup fever and a transatlantic heatwave, before digging into recent global insurance market data - premium growth across life, P&C and health, and why rising numbers don't necessarily mean a booming industry once claims inflation, reinsurance costs and vet fee increases are factored in. The conversation moves into emerging risk, covering climate's growing impact on insurability, parametric travel insurance and the geopolitical and cost pressures reshaping that market, plus a look at Ontario's move to make previously mandatory auto insurance coverages optional. The bulk of the episode is then given over to AI: its use as an emerging product line in its own right, the so-called "boomerang effect" of AI-driven layoffs being reversed, concerns around AI in education and misinformation, and a real example of AI being deployed on a live customer web journey. It's a wider-ranging episode than the first, moving from hard market stats to practical AI use cases, with the hosts pushing back on both AI hype and AI panic in favour of a more grounded view of where it's actually being used today. Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  12. Jul 14

    Episode 1 - Conference Season Survival Guide

    In this first episode of Breaking the ICE, hosts Elliott Draga, Lloyd Overton and Mark Colonnese introduce themselves and explain why they started the podcast: sitting at the intersection of insurance and technology, they want to share what they're seeing from both sides with listeners on either side of that divide. Recorded during a UK heatwave and mid-World Cup, the trio start with some light banter on the weather and the tournament's expanded format, before getting into the episode's main topic - surviving conference season. Drawing on recent trips to BIBA, Charleston and Copenhagen, they compare notes on what makes a conference worth attending versus a waste of time, from the value of face-to-face relationships and market insight over lead counts, to the practicalities of hotel gyms, travel adapters and comfortable shoes. It's an easy-going first episode that sets the tone for what's ahead - real conversations from three people who've spent 20-plus years around insurance and tech, with more guests and topics to come in future episodes.   Breaking the ICE - Demystifying the Insurance World one episode at a time Follow ICE-Tech online: Web // LinkedIn // YouTube

  • 12 Episodes

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
    12
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Breaking the ICE by ICE Tech
  • Show Website
    Breaking the ICE