"I've hated them for 20 years"

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[00:13] Paul Lucas: Hello everybody. Welcome to Insurance Business TV. We are here of course at InsureFest 2026 for our peer-to-peer interviews and now I'm catching up with Garrett Droege. He is the Fintech and Digital Asset Leader at WTW.

[00:25] Garrett Droege: Great to be with you.

[00:26] Paul Lucas: So Garrett, let's talk a little bit about innovation if we can.

[00:30] Garrett Droege: Yeah.

[00:30] Paul Lucas: What does it actually mean inside a large carrier or in your case a large brokerage of course compared to what's often talked about publicly?

[00:38] Garrett Droege: Yeah, I mean you're used to the press releases where we're doing all kinds of innovative things, but from our perspective we really are focused on not just today what's possible, but what the world's going to look like in 5 years. And so I think when innovation's done well, it's a top-down approach where the belief is there, the support is there because it's hard. Innovating inevitably involves change and change is hard for everyone.

[01:08] Paul Lucas: Well, talk to me about how hard it is. So have there been any transformation initiatives that perhaps you've pushed for internally that have perhaps met some resistance along the way?

[01:17] Garrett Droege: I look, I pitch all kinds of crazy initiatives because my world is Fintech, digital assets, blockchains, and I want to bring that into the insurance ecosystem. And so a lot of my pitches over the years, not just with WTW and in other lives, have involved why don't we use stable coins to transact? Why don't we use NFTs to solve the problem of certificates of insurance? Things like that. So I'm used to rocking the boat a little bit.

[01:51] Paul Lucas: Okay. And how are you seeing it all play out in terms of those Fintech and digital assets sort of intertwining with traditional insurance products?

[02:00] Garrett Droege: If you pay attention to what's happening with the world of finance right now, everything traditional banks, asset managers, everyone is moving assets onto blockchain rails using stablecoins, using tokenized deposits. So it's actually a really exciting point in time that we're living through because we're rebuilding the entire financial ecosystem. The foundation is changing.

[02:23] I think one, there's insurance for that, so you can protect that transformation, but also there are unique products that are necessary there. And eventually, I believe we'll be using things like stablecoins for claims payments. It's just a faster way to move money, which creates a better client experience.

[02:45] Paul Lucas: And while we're talking about that process of change, if you could wave a magic wand and get rid of one legacy system or legacy process right now, what would that be?

[02:54] Garrett Droege: Certificates of insurance. I've hated them for 20 years because I think, one, they're easily manufactured, so you can fake them quite easily. They're out of date the second that you print them. It's still a very antiquated process that I think we'll solve with some of this new technology, AI, blockchain, real-time data and analytics about what coverage you have today rather than what you had when a piece of paper was printed and mailed to you.

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