Podcast episodes
Every conversation from the Advocate Insurance Desk, backed by our market data.
Showing 9 of 27 episodes
Aug 20, 2026 · Episode 27 · 14 min
What California's Last Resort Actually Costs: Multifamily Property
Katie Dowson and Grace Schmidt go carrier by carrier through California multifamily property: who is writing the volume, why the gap between the residual market and the surplus lines market is not a like-for-like comparison, what the 2024 to 2026 trend actually shows, and why the Farmers filing reported by Insurance Journal on August 3rd looks more like a pilot than a re-entry.
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Aug 12, 2026 · Episode 26 · 44 min
AI Adoption at a 1,500 Person Agency with Ryan Deeds
Ryan Deeds runs AI across a 1,500 person agency. His read: stalled rollouts are almost never a technology problem. Sally asks you to build for her workflow, Mark does the same job differently, and now you're deciding who has the standing to say which one is right. That's the actual work.
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Aug 5, 2026 · Episode 25 · 30 min
Building AI Software You Can Benchmark with David Haddad
AI did not just speed engineering up, it moved the work. David Haddad on writing far less code, evals replacing unit tests, why picking a model is the easy part, and what building an AI product actually consists of: specs, pipelines, and deciding what a model is allowed to do.
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Jul 29, 2026 · Episode 24 · 18 min
Inside an MGA Program: The Carrier Isn't Who You Think
The carrier name on your policy may not be who is actually holding your risk. Katie Dowson and Grace Schmidt unpack MGAs, fronting carriers, and the reinsurers behind program business, plus the three questions every buyer should ask before renewal: whose name, whose rating, who holds the capacity.
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Jul 22, 2026 · Episode 23 · 12 min
How the Small Shop Finally Sees the Whole Market
The property market is softening, and clients suddenly have options. So how does a small shop compete with a national brokerage? Katie and Grace break down five data driven moves an independent broker can run in the Advocate app: read carrier appetite, shop smart, negotiate beyond price, protect revenue, and use tech to sharpen judgment.
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Jul 15, 2026 · Episode 22 · 11 min
The Hard Market Ended. Liability Never Got the Memo.
Three headlines that moved commercial insurance: the hard market ended for property but never left liability, data centers are outgrowing insurable capacity, and the industry bought AI only to find the real problem was always the data underneath.
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Jul 8, 2026 · Episode 21 · 24 min
The Engine Behind the Platform: Inside the World Insurance Model
What if the most accurate way to run an insurance compliance check is to stop the AI from thinking? Katie sits down with David, who built Advocate's World Insurance Model (WIM): a deterministic engine that roughly doubles coverage-gap accuracy while token cost stays flat.
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Jun 24, 2026 · Episode 20 · 21 min
New York Wants Florida's Results. Can Prior Approval Deliver Them?
Florida mailed $1 billion back to 830,000 policyholders. New York's new bill (A11298) bets law can force the same. But live terminal data shows property is already correcting on its own, while liability runs a 6.9x spread the bill never reaches. Katie and Grace on the line the bill missed
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Jun 18, 2026 · Episode 19 · 39 min
Insuring the Data Center Boom with Rachel Nixon
Property and liability are moving in opposite directions. So how do you insure the asset class that everyone is suddenly chasing? Ashwin Agarwal joins co-host Katie Dowson for a conversation with Rachel Nixon of IMA, who has been placing data center coverage for more than 20 years, long before it became the story everyone is chasing, and who recently helped structure a $4 billion placement.
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