Scout InsurTech Interview with NayaOne

NayaOne helps insurance companies, banks and financial regulators find and assess new technology via their digital sandbox platform. Chris Luiz sat with Managing Director, Scott Sambucci, to learn more about how NayaOne is impacting the industry.

Who are NayaOne’s clients?

We sell into financial services institutions, predominantly insurance carriers, banks and financial regulators.

What does your product do?

We provide an air-gapped, external digital sandbox platform to our customers that they use to run rapid proof-of-concepts and test new technology providers. The challenge for regulated entities like insurance carriers is the need to innovate and iterate rapidly. Often this includes leveraging external technology vendors to fill key parts of their product offerings and value chain.

However, as a regulated entity, insurance carriers have stringent information security and third-party risk management (TPRM) processes – for good reason. This means that when a product team or business unit identifies a potential vendor, they have to wait 6-12 months (or more…) for approval before they can run a PoC to test the vendor’s capabilities.

Worst of all, after waiting that long to assess a vendor, they discover it’s not a fit and they're even further behind where they need to be.

As an air-gapped, external digital sandbox, our customers are able to pull vendors into their dedicated NayaOne environment and run a PoC in a matter of weeks.

In addition, our customers use their NayaOne instance to assess buy vs build decisions on products and point solutions, identifying best-of-breed solution providers for RFIs and RFPs.

Further our customers leverage NayaOne to improve their visibility on a vendor’s ability to integrate into an existing customer journey or internal workflow. Many technologies out there are great, but they don't integrate when without significant reconfigurations or retrofitting. This leads to time and cost before pushing a new solution to production.

How much capital have you raised?

Over the last five years, we’ve raised more than $6 million from a combination of institutional investors and industry partners.

Was your company born from within or outside of the insurance industry?

The company was born within the financial services industry. Our founder, Karan Jain, was previously a technology executive in both insurance and banking, where he observed firsthand the challenges enterprises face in buying and implementing technology to retain customers and grow portfolios.

What growth metrics have you accomplished over the last 12 months?

In the past 12 months, we’ve doubled the number of our clients and the revenue generated from those clients. We’ve also doubled the number of partners we work with, including insurtechs, and helped our clients save approximately 150 months of time in taking their products to market.

For our customers, we’ve helped them significantly increase the number of PoCs they run each year – some of our customers are now running dozens of PoCs each year compared to 1-2 PoCs per quarter at best.

Within your domain, what is the current challenge the industry is facing?

The industry is at an interesting crossroads. Customer expectations for convenience and ease continue to rise, and they remain price-sensitive. 

At the same time, advancements in technology and increasing regulations around AI create additional challenges. Enterprises struggle to adapt, failing to shift from traditional ways of working to more agile methods of partnering with technology providers, procuring technology and bringing products to market. Without this shift, it’s only a matter of time before these enterprises fall behind.

For example, a huge opportunity for insurance carriers lies in their Claims Journey – improving the policyholder experience through improved efficiency in every step of the process from an initial claim submission to FNOL to case review to settlement and payment.

Policyholders are consumers in every part of their life and have come to expect a top-tier customer experience in their daily interactions, especially when they are anxious and worried after a life event that leads them to file an insurance claim.

Many carriers openly share that they know they can and must do better as a service to their customers.

How does NayaOne take a unique approach to providing value?

Typically, enterprises spend significant time on third-party risk management, finding approved data sets and allocating tech resources, which delays product testing and rollout. By the time they move forward, the market has evolved or their competitors are even farther ahead.

NayaOne enables insurers to focus on quickly validating whether a technology is the right fit, both from a business outcome perspective and from a technical and operational standpoint. Insurers and enterprises can solve key business challenges—whether it’s growing market share, retaining customers or ensuring organizational and customer protection—much faster than traditional methods.

What inspired the team to start the company?

The idea for the company stemmed from problems we faced within our own organizations. As the head of technology for an international financial institution, Karan was constantly looking for technology providers that would enhance the customer experience, improve operational efficiency and grow revenue.

Every time he identifies a new potential partner, just like everyone else in his company, he has to wait in line for his TPRM (Third-Party Risk Management) process to complete. This was frustrating for his team and the business lines across the organization.

However, what truly drove us to leave our comfortable executive roles was the frustration of seeing great ideas fail to reach the market due to enterprise inefficiencies. While there’s a commercial aspect to our business, the bigger motivation is improving the ecosystem at large by helping enterprises and technology providers succeed.

Can you share any goals you have over the next 12 months?

In the next 12 months, our primary goals are to continue driving new technology solutions and responsible AI and Generative AI adoption across enterprises. 

We’re launching two new products this year: the first will focus on putting GenAI tools into the hands of executives, AI working groups and the broader organization to showcase their potential beyond basic tools like CoPilot or ChatGPT. 

The second will address compliance for AI and GenAI adoption, packaging our expertise into a standalone solution. These initiatives aim to make AI adoption accessible, risk-free and aligned with enterprise goals.

Scout InsurTech Thanks Its Presenting Partner

And Our Scout InsurTech Partners