meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Nicola Turner & Alex Ley: Scrub AI: Rethinking Build vs Buy in insurance (396)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Business, Investing

4.951 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Matthew Grant sits down with Nicola Turner and Alex Ley, co-founders of Scrub AI, to explore one of the most pressing strategic questions facing insurers today: Build vs Buy in the age of generative AI.  Five years into building an AI-driven data cleansing platform for carriers and brokers, Nicola and Alex have seen the market shift from scepticism to urgency. Boardrooms are now asking how AI is being embedded into underwriting workflows, and whether those capabilities should be developed internally or sourced from specialists.  Drawing on their experience building deterministic AI models for exposure data and catastrophe modelling, they offer a grounded perspective on what works, what breaks and where the real risks sit.  At the heart of the discussion is a simple truth: getting to 80% is easy. Getting the final 20% right is where strategy, domain expertise and long-term thinking matter most.  In this conversation, Nicola and Alex share:  Why Build vs Buy has intensified as generative AI moves from experimentation to executive priority  How investor pressure and board-level scrutiny are shaping AI strategy inside large carriers  Why generative AI can accelerate development but does not remove the complexity of insurance data  The danger of plausible but wrong outputs in exposure management and catastrophe modelling  Why deterministic AI still plays a critical role in delivering consistent, renewal-ready data  How inconsistent data cleaning can distort underwriting decisions and renewal pricing  The hidden cost of technical debt when insurers attempt to build internally  Why maintaining and iterating ai tools is often harder than building the first version  If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn.  Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello there. Welcome or welcome back to the INSTECH podcast. Zoya here and this week Matthew Grant is joined by Nicola Turner and Alex Lay, co-founders of Scrub AI. It's been 18 months since we last caught up

0:23.9

with Nicola to talk about cleaning up dirty data. But a lot has changed, not least it's the rise

0:29.5

of Genital AI and a growing database across insurance. So the real question is, should you buy it

0:34.9

yourself or buy into it? Nicol and Alex are right at the

0:38.6

centre of that conversation. As founders of Scrub, they've spent the last five years helping carriers

0:44.0

and brokers turn messy exposure data into something models and underwriters can actually trust.

0:50.5

But now with Gen AI tools promising 80% solutions at lightning speed, clients are asking tougher questions.

0:56.9

So what really happens in that final 10%?

0:59.4

Where does deterministic AI beat generative AI?

1:02.8

Why is consistency in data cleaning so critical at renewal?

1:06.5

And what does Formula One have to do with all of this?

1:08.9

If you're wrestling with build versus buy, technical debt, or how to use AI without introducing

1:14.1

hidden risk, this one's for you.

1:16.3

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

1:25.8

Alex, Nicola, great of you to join us. Alex, first time we had it on the podcast, Nicola, great of you to join us.

1:28.3

Alex, first time we had you on the podcast.

1:30.3

Nicola, we had you on before. We'll talk a bit about that.

1:33.3

But always great to have two founders and you started scrub AI, I think five years ago.

1:39.3

So welcome.

1:40.3

Thanks for having us.

1:41.3

Thank you for having us. Thank you.

1:43.3

So, Nicholas, about a year and a half since we recorded the last session, September 24, and we talked about cleaning up your dirty data. Great name actually for a podcast as I reflect on it. How things have been going since then? What's the latest happen with Scrub? What has been going on since then? Lots. started working with a lot more partners in the market,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from InsTech, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of InsTech and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.