Genasys, the insurance software solutions provider that is taking the UK market by storm, has received several resounding votes of confidence over the last year or so – including sealing a multi-million-pound investment from Frog Capital and bagging technology insurance veteran Bart Patrick as its first-ever chief revenue officer. Digging into his decision to join the firm, Patrick highlighted that it was made easy by the ethos and ambition of the business, and the commitment of its team.
Read more: Genasys seals multi-million funding
Now some six months into the role that sees him lead Genasys’s go-to-market strategy in key target markets, these remain the factors that stand out to him. When the opportunity first came about, he said, it was a case of stars aligning as he already knew Andre Symes and Craig Olivier [co-CEOs] and was looking for an opportunity to do something meaningful and different in the market.
“That’s the reason I was so interested in joining them,” he said. “[Genasys] offers the sweet spot I’ve been looking for for years, a company that has tier one functionality. There are lots of inch-deep, inch-wide technology companies out there at the moment and some of them are beginning to stumble with their customers in terms of functionality.”
At the heart of Genasys’s proposition is the ambition to give its insurance partners access to technology that’s going to take them beyond years one and two of their growth, without breaking the bank, he said. And during his decades spent serving the insurance ecosystem, Patrick has seen and been somewhat frustrated by the fact that so much of the market is focused on serving tier-one insurers, sometimes dipping into tier two.
“But where is the quality technology in the active part of the market, which is further down the food chain?” he asked.
‘Start low and grow’ is the model that has proven to work best across the market, particularly among those forward-thinking MGAs and other intermediaries seeking out more innovative solutions to reflect changing customer behaviours and expectations.
“There has been some frustration from customers when they’re presented with a glossy front end, and it doesn’t go down to the next level,” he said. “[That next level] is the depth of functionality we provide. And I think that making sure that this type of tier one functionality is available to companies large and small, is really important.
“Something I often talk about quite a lot is that the skill is not in scaling up. We run instances of a million policies, that’s not the skill. The skill is in scaling down and making that functionality affordable and available to smaller mid-tier entities as well. So, the skill really is in scaling down.”
As chief revenue officer, Patrick’s key responsibility lies in directing the future growth of the business by finding the right markets and partners to facilitate that growth, while also ensuring Genasys maintains the right value proposition. Though it’s relatively early days for him as part of the executive team, the business has shifted quite rapidly, he said, with a new VP of marketing and a new CFO among the key appointments made. And it hasn’t taken long for him to notice and be delighted by the response of the wider market to Genasys’s proposition.
“I’ve spent a lot of my career pushing at doors that are either closed or half open,” he said. “It has not been like that here, it has been like one of those saloon doors that flaps open. Mainly because we’re not scary and you don’t feel like you’re selling your soul when talking to Genasys. There’s trust that you’re talking to people who actually want to do the right thing.
“There’s real appropriateness around everything we do that matches the need of many senior people in the market. And it makes it really easy to deal with us, we’re not a bunch of shiny suits. I think it’s so important that we match that need in the market with our directness around what we stand for, what we do and the way we go about it.”
For Patrick joining the Genasys team has been a meeting-of-minds scenario and he is relishing his new role. Looking back over his career, he said, he feels very lucky to have enjoyed just about every single step along the way and to have worked with such a variety of fantastic people.
“There are some wonderful, energetic people throughout the market and I feel quite blessed,” he added. “Now I’ve got to the point where all the really great things I’ve experienced… I can bring to bear here, and I’ve got a company that is open to new ideas, open to new ways of operating. I think we’re going to see the benefits of everybody coming together with this and already the partnership with Frog Capital has freed us up to do a lot of great things, so this is a really exciting time.”
