Sureti, a third-party fund control service that accelerates claim proceeds for Insurance Carriers, today announced the newest addition to the executive leadership team, Andy Palan, who will serve as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In his role, Palan will provide technical direction to the development team in improving Sureti’s fund control platform to onboard and service insurance carriers, restoration contractors and lenders.
Palan brings over 20 years of technical leadership and expertise to his role at Sureti. He previously served in CIO, CTO and software engineering roles across various Fortune 50 companies (CVS Health, Accenture, Liberty Mutual) and consumer health technology and biotechnology companies (Twill, AdaptHealth, Accolade, Intarcia Therapeutics) where he was responsible for leveraging technology to enable business growth. As the chief infrastructure architect at Liberty Mutual, Palan helped design and implement the technical and operational transformation of the company’s infrastructure to enable growth through modernization. He then focused his work on personal markets, a $20B business unit of property and casualty insurance, where he helped shape the business unit’s tech strategy and architecture.
He is currently a partner of The Marigold Group, a health and insurtech advisory and investment firm, where he oversees the sourcing and growth of the firm’s portfolio companies.
“Sureti is growing, and so too will our technical requirements and capabilities as we shape the way that property insurance proceeds flow,” said Mark Whatley, President and Founder of Sureti. “Palan’s technical leadership background within the insurance ecosystem makes him an excellent fit for this role. We are thrilled to have him leading our engineering efforts to ensure that our platform can continue to push the insurance industry into unprecedented and exciting territory.”
For over a century, the insurance and banking industries have employed an inefficient model to reconcile a property claim payment with a lienholder's rights. This inefficiency has silently wreaked havoc on materially-interested parties in the claim proceeds pipeline, says Whatley, and exposed a need to evolve Sureti as a fund control service with robust technical capabilities and a unique approach to risk transfer.
“Insurance Carriers have realized that claim checks that include a Lender lead to bad outcomes: increased additional living expenses (ALE) and business interruption (BI) costs, more misplaced claim documents and lower policyholder satisfaction — just to name a few. Our goal at Sureti is to remove the Lender from the check altogether to accelerate the flow of claim proceeds to Restorers, providing space to reduce cost and manage risk.”
Aside from guiding Sureti’s business strategy and operational maturation, Andy will be focused on product engineering and information security, all while developing an API-first architecture for seamless integrations.
“Sureti has catalyzed an industry-wide trend that bends toward removing Lenders from claim checks,” said Palan. “Moreover, leveraging geospatial data to substantiate the release of claim proceeds represents tremendous efficiencies when compared to the legacy cost associated with deploying on-site inspectors. This unique approach creates value in many directions in consideration of the Policyholder experience. Insurance Carriers benefit, too, as sureti undoubtedly reduces ALE/BI costs, in addition to creating space for better renewal outcomes.
Lastly, Restorers will tell you that cash flow is one of their primary challenges, and sureti takes pride in helping Restorers get paid faster and in full (to include deductibles). sureti remains equipped to be loved by all the materially interested parties, and that unique ability to add value without harming any particular party is what initially attracted me to the company. With further technical optimizations in place, I am confident that sureti will be uniquely positioned to give Carriers a competitive advantage across several value dimensions. The leadership team is also amazing, supportive and genuine — I’m very excited to be part of this team.”
