Tag Archives: AAPI Heritage Month

Business Insurance, Business Risk

Spotlight on Joann Wang, Co-Founder and Director of Operations of East Side Stories

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By Marielle Rodriguez, Social Media and Brand Design Coordinator, Triple-I

To celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we spoke with Joann Wang, Co-Founder and Director of Operations of East Side Stories (ESS), a NYC-based non-profit organization dedicated to sharing the AAPI experience through film, media, and education. ESS brings together local talent, AAPI creatives and filmmakers, AAPI-owned businesses, and other community organizations to create meaningful storytelling and conversations around the AAPI experience.

We spoke to Wang on what inspired her to found ESS, how her crew prepares for pandemic-related liabilities on a film set, and the dogged resilience and solidarity of AAPI small businesses and their supporting communities.

Joann Wang

Let’s talk about your background. What inspired you to found East Side Stories (ESS)?

I’m Taiwanese-Mongolian, and I’m a full-time school counselor and a part-time vocational counselor. Shane, our freelance filmmaker, and I started ESS as a passion project. We started doing our “Stories From the Heart” series and interviewing more than 50 Asian Americans on love and what it means to them. We met tons of great people during that project which was back in February 2020. Shortly after, a lot of the hate crimes against Asian Americans really sparked. We saw so many people who were really upset wanting to do something about it. During that time, because of COVID, we had not done anything with ESS. It was still just a YouTube channel.

We had decided to make ESS into a nonprofit organization because we felt that it would be a great way for people to channel their energies and what they want to do to tell Asian American and Pacific Islander stories. You can’t always rally or protest, but you can channel your feelings into a creative project and create something more meaningful, and we figured a nonprofit would be the best way for people to do this.

What is the mission of East Side Stories? What do you hope to achieve and inspire in others through your organization’s work?

ESS’ mission is to serve our creatives and to serve our community through education and storytelling. We hope that ESS is not only going to be a platform where we can spread education and information about being Asian American and Pacific Islander, but that it could be a meeting point for creatives to learn and share information and resources, and to connect with the community. A lot of businesses we see are not able to market themselves, so that’s where ESS would love to step in — “Let’s help you create a fun video to market your business. Let’s tell your story because you’re someone that’s doing amazing work for the community.”

What are some liabilities to think about when working on a film set and working in media production? How do you prepare for these liabilities for your crew and your organization?

We must make sure that our crew members are safe especially because of COVID liabilities, health liabilities, and any type of commercial liabilities. ESS currently operates as a volunteer-based organization so we’re all very bare bones right now. We’ve been using a lot of liability waivers to cover for ESS, but we hope to have more substantial compliance documents in place in the future.

Our Health and Safety Compliance Officer, Tori Wong, is a nurse foremost, and she’s an actress who works in media a lot and is a COVID compliance officer for other big sets. We worked together and created the health and safety protocols, so we follow a lot of what is recommended for standard businesses. For every single shoot that we have, crew members must check in with somebody on set that does COVID compliance. We have COVID compliance officers that go through training. Everyone must wear masks and do temperature checks, and there are particular zones that both talent and crew must stay in.

I know nonprofit insurance and liability is big, but because our organization is so young, and this is all our first time making a nonprofit, it’s been a lot of reading and learning. Taking a stab at the insurance part hasn’t come up yet, but I know it’s coming. We’re still in the process of getting our foundation set up, and then slowly rolling all the compliance into place.

2020 has been a rough year for small business owners, especially those in the Asian American community. Through your encounters and conversations with small business owners and other non-profits, in what ways have AAPI small businesses and the AAPI community demonstrated resilience and solidarity during the pandemic?

We’ve already collaborated with so many organizations and met so many people, and they’re all doing amazing work and bringing together businesses, for example, Welcome to Chinatown, Soar Over Hate, and Asians Fighting Injustice.

AAPI businesses have a fight in them and a huge will to live. That is why we’ve survived for so long, and ESS just wants to capture that. If we don’t amplify what everyone has been doing, people aren’t going to be able to see all the amazing work being done. It will inspire even more organizations to pop up.

Also, no one is afraid to share resources. I can message one organization and say, “Hey, I am trying to connect with someone with an organization who can do XYZ” and they will automatically help me get in touch with them. No one is gatekeeping, and that’s beautiful. That’s what community is about.

Let’s talk about ESS’ upcoming short film “An Essential Delivery”. How does this film capture the challenges and resilience of those working in AAPI small businesses and the gig economy?

This story is about a young woman who lost her marketing job and has to pick up a job as a food delivery worker, and she hides it from her mom, which is not the typical “model minority” story. The film is about essential workers. Shane was the one who came up with the idea after seeing videos of food delivery workers and their hardships. We put together a crew, and for a lot of them it was their first time working on a short. I saw people coming together, and I was blown away by the patience they had and in teaching the newer work crew members. We did it on a very small budget because all the people donated their time. We had around five restaurants that donated their space for us to shoot “An Essential Delivery,” so that was amazing because they didn’t even ask anything back from us.

Let’s talk about your TogethernESS program and your AAPI Community digital series. These provide an opportunity to engage and collaborate with AAPI businesses, organizations, and figures to share their stories. Can you give us insight on the work you do for these?

The TogethernESS program is something that we’re doing for the community. Organizations reach out to us when they want to create something, like a video or graphics, or attain any type of creative service. We can provide them with our nonprofit rate, or we work on a sliding scale with them. We’re still trying to build in a model where we can perhaps provide pro bono. We also want to be able to pay our creatives for their hard work. The TogethernESS program also includes work that we do with Soar Over Hate for their Care Fair event and Asians Fighting Injustice and their rallies. It’s been great so far.

The AAPI Community digital series lives on our YouTube channel. That series is focused on profiles of community members and organizations. When someone on our team has a particular person that they want to do a profile on and it aligns with our mission, we go and cover their story.

What are your goals for ESS in 2021 and beyond? What projects do you have in the works and is there anything you’re particularly excited to share with your audiences?

This year, we’re doing a feature length film documentary on Ace Watanasuparp, the owner of Spot Dessert Bar. Typically, our schedule is three short films a year, and we’re also launching our mentorship program. These are things I’m really excited about for 2022. This year we’ve been shooting a lot of the feature length film, and it’s been really cool to see and connect with all these awesome people. Other than that, just watching the organization grow and seeing and meeting people has been nice and heartwarming.

Careers and Employment, Insurance Industry

Spotlight on Jessica Leong, President of the Casualty Actuarial Society

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By Chi Wai Lima, Creative Director, Triple-I

As part of celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we have interviewed Jessica Leong, FCAS, lead data scientist at Zurich North America and president of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS).

Jessica Leong

Currently residing in Chicago, Leong shares her insights on how technology and big data are changing the actuarial career path and insurance landscape. She speaks about her team’s work at Zurich and how data science and analysis have helped to improve claims models. In addition, Leong shares the CAS’s initiatives to actively support diversity, equity and inclusion in the insurance industry.

Triple-I CEO Sean Kevelighan currently serves on the CAS board of directors.

You’ve been able to live around the world: Australia, the UK and now the US. What moves in your career did you make for that to happen? What piqued your interest in actuarial studies and the path that led you to data science lead at Zurich?

I decided to become an actuary very early on in my career. I grew up in Australia, and when I was in high school, I knew I was good at math and I was looking at what professions that would lead to. Actuarial naturally sprung up as it does for a lot of people who are good at math, but it looked like a really rewarding career and a rewarding profession.

A lot of Australians like to take a year off university and do backpacking around the world. I took a year off, went to London and got my first actuarial job, working six months at St. Paul. With that money I backpacked around Europe for a year. Then I went back to Australia, finished my degree, and my first job out of school was in London. I just had the itch to go back, and the actuarial profession is a good one if you enjoy traveling.

Then my boyfriend-now-husband got a job in New York, so that’s why I moved to the States. I never actually thought I would live in America, and it’s been more than a decade.

Would you be able to share a project that you’re currently working on at Zurich?

I have a team of data scientists at Zurich, and we build models for three different groups: For underwriting, to help us with risk selection and pricing; for claims, to work on better claims triage and finding claims fraud; and then lastly for our customers to help them better manage and understand their risks.

We have done a lot of work in claims. For example, we have built a claims model that alerts us if a workers’ comp claim is going to become complex, and if it would benefit from having a nurse to review that case and manage it much more proactively. That has really benefited Zurich in terms of outcomes. It has also benefitted our customers and their employees in terms of getting back to work and regaining their health. It’s been a win-win all around.

What are some challenges you’ve experienced in using data in relation to privacy, regulations or bias?

This is a very big topic for not just the insurance industry, but also more broadly, as big data gets bigger and artificial intelligence continues to advance. Something that we do for all of our models is talk to legal, compliance and privacy. They do a thorough review of the models before we actually put them into production, to make sure that from the data and the algorithm viewpoints, we stay true to our principles within Zurich. A few years ago, Zurich released a data commitment to the general public and to our customers about the kind of data we will and will not use so we take that seriously.

Are there any implications that you’re seeing that the pandemic has had on data analysis?

Yes, definitely. A lot of the analysis that’s done in insurance relies on the history being somewhat predictive of the future, and frankly, all data analysis relies on that because data is by definition, historical. So anytime you try to make a prediction from data it is relying on historical fact, and obviously the pandemic really upended that. How do I look at this data and use it to make predictions of the future? It is less clear, and we’ve had to rely much more on judgment, and we’ve had to really think outside the box about the different types of data we should use now to try to make predictions of the future.

Congratulations on your presidency of the CAS. Why did you join CAS and what led you to being elected as president?

When I initially joined the CAS in 2005/2006, I volunteered for the organization. About a third of our members volunteer in some capacity, which is tremendous for any society – that’s a very high rate. I find that the actuarial community is just a great community.

One of the benefits of volunteering for the CAS is having the chance to grow your leadership skills. Before long, I was chair of one of the seminar-organizing committees. That was a really good experience in terms of leadership for me, early in my career.

I was given the suggestion by my boss, about seven/eight years ago now, that I should be on the board of the CAS. It had never crossed my mind, honestly, that I would be even eligible for a job like that. The CAS has a nominating committee, who called me and asked me to run. Then I got a call, maybe two/three years later, asking if I would consider running for president. I’m so honored to have this role.

There’s a three-year plan to create unicorns. Are you seeing any impact so far? Is this resonating a lot within CAS and the industry?

Last November at our annual meeting, we released a new Envisioned Future and a three-year plan. Our new Envisioned Future says “CAS members are sought after globally for their insights and ability to apply analytics to solve insurance and risk management problems.”

Now that might not sound like much, but if you think about what it used to say, something like “the CAS advances the practice and application of actuarial science,” we made the change to be more evergreen and more actionable. We will do whatever analytics needs to be done, and we will do it to solve business problems in insurance, and this will evolve over time.

What this means is that the actuary of the future needs to have three key skill sets. First, they need to be great at analytics, the kind of analytics you need to solve the important insurance problems of today. Second, they need to be great at problem-solving. Actuaries are good at solving the core problems in insurance, pricing, reserving, capital modeling. But more and more with big data, there are new problems you can solve. The example I gave before – is this claim going to become complex, would it benefit from having a nurse? Those are new problems you can now solve with data and analytics that you probably couldn’t have done before. The third area is the domain knowledge in terms of P&C insurance.

That is the unicorn. That is the actuary of the future, having all three key skill sets.

How are you attracting a more diverse body of students to pursue actuarial or related studies? How are you trying to attract different types of people and different ways of thinking to the CAS and to the insurance industry in general?

One of the pillars in our strategy that we released with our Envisioned Future is to diversify our pipeline. We have various initiatives to look to do that. One thing is we are pushing forward in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, and we recently put out some metrics on our website. Right now, for example, 23% of our members are Asian, under 2% are Black and under 2% are Hispanic. The diversity from the Black and Hispanic point of view is not where we want it to be, and we have a goal of increasing that to about 5% to 8% of our new members in the next five to 10 years. We put a stake in the sand in terms of how we want our racial diversity to improve.

A few years ago, we engaged a consulting firm to figure out what is holding us back in terms of having more diversity. One of the things they identified is just finding out about the profession early in your life is going to be key, because a lot of people in various racial and ethnic groups are not really finding out about the actuarial profession when they need to. So we’ve been doing actuarial high school days, visiting diverse high schools to talk to them about the actuarial profession.

We also have a scholarship program for these underrepresented groups, where we will pay for exams given a few qualifying criteria, because we know that the cost of the exams can also be a hindrance, especially when you’re still in school and you’re not earning any money. To get an internship, you need to have three exams under your belt, but they cost money. It can be tough, so we’re seeing what we can do to help.

What challenges have you had to overcome, as a woman and a person of color in the insurance industry?

I’m very big on self-improvement, and I have tried to develop myself in a way to be successful in this environment.

If I think about my upbringing, it was different as an Asian person growing up in Australia. When I was in high school, I was on the track team and I had wanted to be in the relay. There were only four people in the relay, and I wasn’t picked as one of the four, even though I was probably the third fastest person in the school. I thought that this was just unfair and favoritism. I told my mom, “This is really unfair; you’ve got to do something about this,” and she told me, “Don’t complain; just do what you’re told. Don’t stick out.”

That really jarred with me then and still now, thinking back on it. That highlighted the difference in culture. As I’ve been navigating my way through predominantly Western work culture, I have worked pretty deliberately to think differently and to acquire skills that would help me in this kind of work environment.

Careers and Employment, Insurance Industry, Technology

Insurance Careers Corner: Q&A With Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, CEO, Tapoly

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By Marielle Rodriguez, Social Media and Brand Design Coordinator

Janthana Kaenprakhamroy

Triple-I’s “Insurance Careers Corner” series was created to highlight trailblazers in insurance and to spread awareness of the career opportunities within the industry.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and this month we interviewed Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, CEO of London-based insurtech, Tapoly. Although Janthana lives in the UK, we believe that Asian heritage should be celebrated no matter where you live. 

Founded in 2016, and backed by Lloyd’s of London, Tapoly is Europe’s first and fastest growing insurtech, providing on-demand flexible commercial insurance products for SMEs, freelancers, the self-employed and the gig economy. Recognized as Insurance Provider of the Year at the British Small Business Awards in 2018, Tapoly’s mission is to make insurance simple, accessible, and flexible.

We spoke with Kaenprakhamroy to discuss the role of AI and technology in her business, the boom of the sharing economy, and what the traditional insurance industry can learn from insurtech.

Tell us about your background and your interest in building a business. What led you to your current position and what inspired you to found your company, Tapoly?

I was born in and come from a small part of Thailand, grew up in Sweden, and have lived in London for the last 20 years. I have roots in different parts of the world, which has shaped my international way of thinking. I feel like I don’t fit a specific stereotype and can blend into different cultures.

I’m an accountant by trade and have worked in investment banking for almost my entire career. In late 2016, I decided to quit my job and build Tapoly. We provide technology solutions and insurance products locally in the UK as well as in Asia. 

I was never sure what I wanted to do until I came across a problem in 2016 when I was trying to buy insurance for my short letting over the summer, which you can only do for about 90 days a year. In 2016, no insurance companies were serving the types of products for the short letting space. Ever since then, we’ve been developing technology solutions and products to cover this massively underserved market within the micro, SME, and freelancing space. 

What is your organization’s mission? What role does tech and AI play in your platform? 

Our mission is very simple – we want to able to provide an insurance solution online that is quick and easy for people, in the most convenient way, which is one thing in the commercial lines space that’s not very well-developed. Most companies are buying insurance through their brokers, rather than online directly. We wanted to make commercial lines products easier and less time-consuming for customers to access, without making them answer several questions that they may or may not know how to answer. 

If you offer insurance online directly, then the underwriting decision must be prompt and that can only be achieved when you have data on your customers. There is data that traditional insurance companies aren’t using, for example, social media data, which can be cross-referenced with [the customer’s] profile. It’s all about augmenting data to amplify or make customers profiles more prominent for underwriting decisions – it’s something insurtech is doing well. Insurtech would allow data to flow from the point of the customer buying insurance to the point of the underwriter making the decision – this makes the process more seamless and transparent.

A lot of what we do at Tapoly is data analytics. It’s not only for risk selection and underwriting alone – it’s also for customer acquisition and marketing. Customer segmentation is very important, and you can only do it with a certain level of good-quality data on your customers.

What do you see as the biggest pain points for customers within traditional insurance that insurtech can better solve?

Customers in the market segment that we serve, which is microbusinesses and freelancers, have three main pain points. One is the price, especially for customers who do ad-hoc jobs which are not part of their core competency or core activity. Second is the convenience – the ability to fill in a simple questionnaire and get insurance quickly. Third is the availability – some products are not available for some freelancers.  For example, a group of freelancers doing construction work in a certain environment are less likely to get certain insurance products due to their high risk profile.

Within the gig economy, there are job titles that are outside the norm and that don’t fall inside traditional insurance categories. We need to revamp the list of professions. In insurtech, we see gaps in coverage [in certain industries]. For example, marketplaces where the underlying risks may be different depending on what level of services and products the platform is providing. Another example may be the evolution of some professions, e.g. “virtual assistants”, where they may in some cases provide basic accounting services, which would previously be performed by certified professionals, because accounting is also moving online. There’s a lot of mismatch between the way insurers categorize their customers and the profession that customers recognize themselves as, and the ability to buy insurance automatically in the most convenient way.

Do you see innovation and transformation happening in the traditional insurance space?

I think the insurance industry is well-aware of the need for innovation and many companies are at the beginning of innovating, but innovation takes time. While we recognize the need, it will take time to implement. As a startup, we don’t have a hierarchical structure or have as many constraints. We can build anything we want without waiting for the approval of senior management. What insurtech can bring is the speed to market, the ability to adapt, and to implement changes and help insurers prove the concept in the most cost-effective way. 

In what ways has COVID-19 impacted the sharing economy and your business? What are your predictions for the growth and trajectory of the sharing economy?

A 2015 PWC report showed that revenue from the sharing economy was $15 billion in 2013 and would reach $335 billion in 2025. That’s a phenomenal increase in the market within 12 years. I think the COVID-19 pandemic really accelerated the sharing economy. There are so many businesses that did fantastically well during the pandemic, including businesses in logistics and delivery, and the insurtechs that are operating in that space. From the product delivery, customer-facing side, we didn’t have a problem because we were already set up to operate online. However, it did impact our customers and some of them didn’t renew their insurance or either postponed or changed their policy.

In terms of opportunities, there are many insurance companies or intermediaries that have started to think about innovation. COVID-19 has really accelerated that thinking because tech has become a big hurdle. There are a lot of operational challenges among larger insurance companies that are not set up to sell insurance digitally. That is something insurtech can take advantage of because we are already set up to do this.

Let’s talk about diversity in VC funding and entrepreneurship. A 2019 Diversity VC report showed that ethnic minorities are under-represented in venture capital and women are under-represented in senior roles. Another 2020 Extend Ventures report shows that female entrepreneurs receive just a fraction of available funding that male founders do. Were there any initial challenges in founding your company and attaining funding, and how did you overcome these obstacles? Are there any present challenges of being an Asian- and woman-owned business and founder?

In the beginning, not raising enough funding can cause a slowdown in your growth. Even with the best ideas, it’s hard to scale your business without capital. I certainly think that the confidence in a woman in running a business could be improved in the VC space. There are a lot of stereotypes and unconscious biases that people apply to their decisions. The VC space needs to work on being self-aware and educate themselves around these issues especially when judging a first-time entrepreneur. There is also uncertainty and a lack of data on startups that make it difficult for VCs to validate and invest in, on top of gender stereotypes.

My biggest daily challenge is finding enough capital to be able to grow my business. The difficulty for early-stage founders is balancing your own interests with the investor’s interests and figuring out how much you want to raise versus how much you can raise. To overcome this problem, we usually find strategic investors that can add a lot of value.


What are your goals for 2021 and beyond? Where do you see the traditional industry heading in the next few years given the pandemic?

We’re preparing for hockey stick growth in 2021 and want to exponentially grow our company in 2022. My aim is to raise enough money to be a larger team and to have the capacity to manage that level of volume and growth.

I think the traditional insurance industry will evolve slowly in the next couple of years. A lot of insurers have been badly hit due to COVID-19 because of claim costs and loss of investments. It would take a couple of years before we recover fully, and hopefully insurtech will still be relevant within this space. At least if anything, insurance companies will be spending more on innovation to reduce their claims and operating costs.