Todd Rissel, CEO: e2Value: Understanding insurance to its core (359)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

At its best, insurance is about clarity in uncertain times. Pricing that reflects reality. Promises that hold up when things go wrong.

In this episode, I speak with Todd Rissel, CEO and co-founder of e2Value, an independent company that has spent the last 25 years helping insurers and homeowners understand the real cost of rebuilding property, and the wider economic forces shaping those numbers.

Todd brings both practical insight and long-term perspective. Our conversation begins with a simple observation: 2024 was a rare profitable year for home insurance in Florida. But Todd quickly places that in context, explaining why a single good year doesn’t undo a decade of structural challenges and why insurers need to think in five-year cycles, not one.

In this conversation Todd touches on:

• Why rising tariffs and global uncertainty haven’t yet impacted replacement costs but might soon
• What the “small losses” teach us about insurer performance, far more than catastrophic ones
• The challenges of modeling severe convective storms, and why not everything can, or should, be reduced to a model
• The limits of funding-driven innovation in InsurTech, and the long-term discipline it takes to survive without external capital
• The launch of e2Value’s new Structure Insurance Score, developed in partnership with WTW, and what it tells us about using AI responsibly in underwriting
  

Along the way, we talk about barnominiums, regulatory experiments in Louisiana and the difference between forward-looking valuation and backward-looking pricing.

Todd’s perspective is shaped not just by data, but by experience. He’s someone who believes in the purpose of insurance, but also understands the commercial pressures it faces. And he makes a compelling case that good data, applied thoughtfully, is still the foundation for everything this industry does well.

If you’re interested in where insurance pricing, risk and property data are heading next - or just want to hear from someone who’s spent decades building quietly essential infrastructure, this is a conversation worth your time.

If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. You can also contact Will Bonner on LinkedIn to start a conversation!

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Continuing Professional Development

This InsTech Podcast Episode is accredited by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). By listening, you can claim up to 0.5 hours towards your CPD scheme.

By the end of this podcast, you should be able to meet the following Learning Objectives:

• Explain how the Structure Insurance Score, developed by e2Value and WTW, contributes to more granular underwriting of structural risk.
  
• Identify the regulatory challenges arising from policyholder-directed valuations in certain U.S. states, such as Louisiana.
  
• Specify the data considerations required to apply AI effectively in insurance valuation and pricing.

If your organisation is a member of InsTech and you would like to receive a quarterly summary of the CPD hours you have earned, visit the Episode 359 page of the InsTech website or email [email protected] to let us know you have listened to this podcast.

To help us measure the impact of the learning, we would be grateful if you would take a minute to complete a quick feedback survey.