Claims Transformation and Operational Excellence with David Fernandez from Kingstone Insurance
David Fernandez, Chief Claims Officer at Kingstone Insurance, joins host James Benham to explore claims transformation, operational excellence, and why the team comes before the technology.
David fell into claims almost by accident: a broken-down car and a newspaper ad for a claims rep trainee job at Progressive, one that came with a company car, started an 18-year run there.
A decade at Liberty Mutual followed, then stops at Unum and Point32Health, and now three years as Chief Claims Officer at Kingstone Insurance, where he has helped lead the company's turnaround.
In this episode:
• Claims quality is a grind, not a project. It is won file by file, day after day, until it becomes how the team works, not something you launch and move past.
• Why "until you have a team that you believe in, you're swimming up river" is the foundation every other fix in a claims org sits on top of.
• How a small, empowered team rebuilt Kingstone's claims platform in four months, with clear ownership and not a single slide deck.
• Why making no decision is worse than making a suboptimal one, and how giving people room to admit mistakes keeps a transformation moving.
• Inside Kingstone's catastrophe playbook, built for a Northeast climate that delivered 11 declared catastrophes in the first quarter alone.
Key Quotes:
"We sell a piece of paper and a promise. Sometimes it's a PDF."
"Making no decision is worse than making a suboptimal decision."
"Until you have a team that you believe in, you are swimming up river."
"There was not a single slide for that whole thing."
🔗 Connect: David Fernandez, Kingstone Insurance links
👤 Host: James Benham
🎙️ Terra sponsor block + InsurTech Geek socials + standard sign-off (unchanged, copied from the standing footer)
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