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The insurance industry is full of ‘accidental experts’ namely people who spring from entirely diverse backgrounds and careers, and who somehow end up in the space, usually driving brilliant initiatives.

Forbes McKenzie is one such ‘unlikely lad,’ who has led pioneering innovations in natural catastrophe technology, and even became inadvertently famous for revealing his childhood stammer during an analysis on a Sky News segment. The event saw him go viral on TikTok – but he managed to use the event to raise money for two of his favourite charities – STAMMA (speech disfluency) and veterans and military charities. Talk about a lesson in disaster recovery!

With a robust former career in the British Army, and over 22 years experience in delivering cutting-edge solutions for geopolitical, NatCat risk analysis and mitigation, he has been instrumental in advancing geopolitical and natural catastrophe risk analysis and his work has seen him gain recognition from the European Space Agency, the Ministry of Defence and the British Claims Awards.

As the Founder and CEO of McKenzie Intelligence Services, (MIS), Forbes also oversees the development of the Global Events Observer (GEO) platform, a cutting-edge system that uses satellite imagery and aerial data to provide precise intelligence for the global insurance sector. 

We were itching to find out more.

What inspired you to establish McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS), and how did your previous experiences shape your vision for the company?

Being from a family with a rich military heritage, it was simply a case of natural evolution that saw me join the British Army and subsequently the Intelligence Corps, following in my dad’s footsteps and establishing the foundations that would later result in the formation of MIS.

It was during this time in the military, utilising the latest geospatial technology as part of my work with global governments, that I first saw a sizeable opportunity to bring this approach to the insurance industry to help the market respond to major events.

After my time in the military concluded, having been enriched with expert knowledge and years of experience in the field of intelligence, I took the leap in 2011 and started MIS, named after my dad, with a primary focus on consultancy work to help build up the business.

Can you tell us about the journey from founding MIS to becoming a leader in space and intelligence tech for the financial services sector?

Much of the early work at MIS involved travelling around the world on behalf of various governmental organisations, large corporations, and insurance firms, where I and our specialist team quickly developed a reputation for getting things done, no matter the location.

We then became the first company to buy small satellite data sets, selling this data to large corporations with value-added intelligence, which created a consistent revenue stream. This was where the opportunities began to grow, as the intelligence aspect was wholly unique and enabled clients to realise additional value through the provision of actionable insights, rather than just raw data. 

This work later landed MIS a two-and-a-half-year consultancy opportunity with Google, sending me to California where I could quantify the market potential for MIS and establish deep market knowledge.

Having garnered attention for our work in the London insurance market, MIS was awarded a grant to cover natural perils, which was highly successful. This led me to Lloyd’s of London, where alongside key heads of departments, I helped set up the Lloyd’s Strategic Claims working group.

Undoubtedly this was a major moment for MIS, as it was instrumental in developing our flagship product GEO (Global Events Observer), along with creating the necessary legislation and governance around how Lloyd’s and MIS do business. The working group, which later became the Lloyd’s Lab, created a direct feedback loop for GEO’s development from the market it was serving, whilst benefitting from the support of internal champions at Lloyd’s.

Working in this way, we could effectively create a new marketplace for delivering this type of value-added intelligence to insurance providers. By agreeing upon a centralised contract with Lloyd’s, their managing agents became the initial market for GEO, where they would become the platform’s first major users and show that our unique offering had the support of a major market player upon GEO’s release.

Then, in August 2021, GEO was officially launched as the central catastrophe intelligence platform for Lloyd’s, having recently added drone, SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), satellite, and aerial imagery capabilities, which was an incredible achievement for everyone involved with MIS. That year, GEO enabled comprehensive coverage of 34 global peril events for the London insurance market, with a key highlight being a large-scale response to Hurricane Ida.  

Having the support of Lloyd’s from the outset was vital, as it enabled us to demonstrate our capabilities by actually serving the market. This caught the attention of the European Space Agency, who saw that we were delivering results and wanted to help us take the next step in GEO’s development. They awarded MIS with a seven-figure co-investment, which really demonstrated their firm support for what we were building. 

In the nearly three years since its launch, I’m so proud of how the scope of GEO has grown, now providing services to over 1,200 users across more than 70 clients, with over 80 million lines of client property risk and covering nearly 200 global catastrophic events, including hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and war, amongst many others.

Off the back of GEO’s success and the team’s tireless work, MIS has received numerous awards from prestigious organisations over the last few years, where we are always proud to be included amongst some brilliant nominees and be recognised by our peers in the industry.

So far, GEO has had a major impact on MIS. Since GEO launched in 2021, MIS has scaled from 7 full-time employees to 33 whilst hosting 52 risk portfolios, with the number of GEO users and events responded to consistently increasing year-on-year.

How does the Global Events Observer (GEO) platform leverage satellite imagery and aerial data to enhance risk analysis and mitigation?

This is the aspect of MIS that often goes unseen, even though it is undoubtedly at the core of our offering, which is the MIS Intelligence Layer.

By having a team of military/NATO trained analysts with decades of intelligence experience, we can ascertain critical information from satellite imagery and aerial data about affected areas following a major catastrophic event. 

Comprehensively assessing this imagery and data, they will identify where, how, and what may be damaged, the likely extent of the damage, and the proximate cause of it. Once they have completed these assessments, they compile their findings and create a product to be published on GEO.

Taking this actionable intelligence and applying it to geospatial and client datasets in GEO then paints a picture of what is happening on the ground in the immediate aftermath of an event, where relevant locations, portfolios, and properties that may have been impacted are highlighted so that clients can assess their risk levels and make accurate reserves, whilst getting ahead of potential claims. 

Equally, these products are archived, so users can draw from previous events to inform their risk analysis and mitigation plans around potential future catastrophic events in those locations.

With ongoing events like hurricanes, wildfires, or war, the MIS team will regularly update GEO with the latest intelligence from our analysts, so clients can monitor how their risk levels are evolving as an event goes on.

What have been some of the most rewarding moments in your career, particularly regarding the recognition from the British Claims Awards, the European Space Agency, and the Ministry of Defence?

A highlight was being taken seriously very early on by Google in California, which was a major show of confidence in what we were doing at MIS and recognition of our ability to consistently deliver results. Equally, discovering how to effectively manage cash flow, whilst growing a business from the ground up, was vital in allowing us to scale in a way that was sustainable as we developed GEO. 

Another especially memorable moment was winning the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Claims Awards in 2018, as I was able to share the moment with my dad, who was very proud.  

When the European Space Agency committed to our vision, awarding MIS with a 7-figure co-investment to develop GEO’s capabilities, this was another major milestone and really enabled us to push on with evolving the business.   

Finally, being awarded a Mention in Dispatches for Gallantry & Leadership in the face of the Enemy was a true honour and something I will always cherish.

MIS prides itself on reducing costs and improving efficiency for its clients. Can you provide specific examples of how your platform has delivered these benefits?

Following the devastating August 2023 Hawaii wildfires, an initial report along with high-resolution imagery was released on GEO within 48 hours of the event occurring. A detailed building-level damage assessment became available shortly after, covering nearly 3,000 properties. This helped insurance clients accelerate their claims processes, and often without the need for resource-intensive adjusters, which was an issue at the time. We provided timely economic relief for those in need following Hawaii’s second-costliest natural disaster on record.

Further, within 12 hours of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake striking Turkey and Syria in February 2023, GEO provided clients with a detailed heatmap of affected areas which pinpointed insured buildings, determining which of their customers had been affected and the likely extent of the damage to insured property. 

Using GEO enabled these insurers to quickly secure local resources, prepare their local claims team to respond to the event, and make payments to affected policyholders on the same day. I am very proud of that, as it was a particularly difficult situation on the ground.

Your reputation for standing up against “bullies” is notable. Can you share a story where you successfully took on an unscrupulous entity or individual?

For those who are unaware, following my time in the military, I struggled with anxiety, which manifested itself in the form of a stammer.

As someone who is asked to regularly make public appearances, particularly on major news broadcasts, this can of course be a significant challenge, and whilst I’ve been able to navigate this obstacle on many occasions, it doesn’t always go so smoothly.

In fact, in October 2022, I appeared on Sky News to provide six intelligence updates concerning the Ukraine war. Five of those times on air went successfully, but unfortunately one of them didn’t, which subsequently led to a video of me struggling with my stammer live on TV doing the rounds on TikTok.

Despite many positive responses from people offering their support and sharing that they felt represented, there were still some nasty, negative comments mocking me for something that I and many others find themselves affected by daily. 

Rather than allow these bullies to succeed with their attempts to belittle me and the community of people who have a stammer, I chose to reframe their negativity, own my stammer, and use this incident as a catalyst to do something good.

I challenged my LinkedIn followers to share a post I’d written which addressed the incident, declaring that should the post gain more online traction than the original TikTok video, I would donate £5,000 each to the military veteran’s charity Combat Stress and the British Stammering Association, STAMMA.

Being able to take ownership of this potentially difficult moment and turn it into something that would bring so much positivity to some very deserving people is emblematic of my approach to bullies. I was able to show them that no matter what they threw at me, I could rise above it and show them that they were in the minority, and that there are always people willing to fight for the right causes and stand up to those trying to prey on what they perceive as weakness.

I was immensely touched by the support from friends, colleagues, and many kind people on social media who were able to help me achieve this target and demonstrate that kindness always wins.

Supporting veterans and advocating for those with speech disfluency are causes close to your heart. How have you integrated these passions into your professional life?

For our veteran staff, it is about being sympathetic to the challenges they and their families face as they transition into a new world. MIS provides stability, academic courses, and a progressive environment for the veteran to continue their journey – not just a place in which to ‘stop’.  

Veterans are used to always being on career courses and being on an upwards trajectory is hard wired into them. MIS, as a global, fast-paced tech scale-up, provides those opportunities.

As a person who has had a crippling stammer and now has a slight stammer – I can be an ally and continue to normalise (it’s how we speak) to those who work with disfluency and of course I can fundraise, which I do.  

What future developments or innovations can we expect from MIS, especially in the areas of geopolitical and natural catastrophe risk analysis?

We are incredibly lucky to work so closely with both the Lloyd’s market and our other clients, who provide us with invaluable feedback about GEO, which enables us to focus our efforts on evolving the platform in line with their needs.

We are currently releasing a new feature that uses a secure API to provide clients with more in-depth assessments of their portfolio and policy data to deliver increased actionable intelligence and further reduce the time and costs involved with their response processes.

Recently, we released our AI building damage assessment feature, which was trained on a huge amount of examples of human-led assessments so that it could reflect their accuracy whilst having the speed to cover a much larger area in a significantly shorter amount of time. This model is constantly improving by being trained on new data that follows each event we respond to and where our intelligence experts are always on-hand to ensure that it is meeting the expected standards.

We are also continually looking to evolve GEO’s capabilities to help support other business functions within the insurance market.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators looking to make a significant impact in the tech and insurance industries?

Learn how to run the book of a business and how to estimate, execute, and manage cash flow.  

Look at the problem from the customer/user-side and work backwards. Having a shiny cool box is not a product and will almost certainly not have a market fit if it doesn’t solve problems.  

Take and seek investment to build a capability or a marketplace, not to pay a mortgage. If it ever becomes the latter, change jobs. 

Find and court evangelists inside the target market. The right evangelist (for free) is worth £1M in marketing budget.  

Lastly, avoid the trade shows that are glitzy and full of your competitors and investors. Go to the shows that have your customers in them – possibly on the driest of subjects!

Interview by Joanna England