Life Insurance That Helps You Live Longer

Paul Tyler (00:01) Hi, this is Paul Tyler and welcome to another episode of the LNA Hub. We have a great guest today, Mr. Darren Rowe, who is CEO and founder of Kadance. Darren, welcome. This is actually, I think, the second podcast we've actually been on together.

Darren Rowe (00:20) It is, yes, good to be here, good to see you again.

Paul Tyler (00:23) Yeah, good, good. It was funny, we've reconnected, I think now let's see Las Vegas and Hartford and Greenwich, Connecticut. We have, and listen, I love your mission of your company and what you're doing, but for people who may not know, maybe you can describe like who are you and what does your company do?

Darren Rowe (00:44) Okay, yeah, so well first of all, it's great to be here again. Thank you, Paul. Kadance is a precision health management company. We've developed a program. Our first program to help people understand their risk of cancer and then help them through a diagnosis of cancer. Additionally, we also looked at another big sort of driver of mortality and that was prescription medication related adverse drug events.

And so when you combine those two sort of settings, there's a foundation to build a really meaningful program. So Kadance has a health management program that sort of addresses some of those issues, and we distribute that program through life insurance companies. That's probably the key aspect of what differentiates us from anything that you've likely come across before.

Paul Tyler (01:39) Yeah, and this is interesting, connected to life insurance. So tell me, how would it work? If I go and normally buy life insurance contract, I'll do a quote, get a quote, identify my beneficiaries, and typically, unless it's a whole life or has cash value, the beneficiaries are somebody other than me. It's usually a gift to other people.

Darren Rowe (02:05) Yeah, that's right, that's right. So the idea of Kadance is that from a life insurance perspective or from a policyholder perspective, you can start to utilize the program or the benefits immediately. So to your point, Paul, you know, rather than having to pay for something that you as the policyholder, probably, you know, you're never going to see the benefit of it. You can start to enjoy the benefits of Kadance immediately.

And those benefits essentially come in three sort of forms. So there's three elements to our program. The first element is around understanding your risk of developing cancer and then helping you to manage and ultimately reduce that risk of cancer. The second element is understanding how your genes affect your ability to metabolize medication for a wide range of health issues. So not just for cancer, it could be for pain or mental health or maybe you're taking medication for diabetes or whatever it might be.

About 95% of people have some form of genetic barrier. That means there's a very likely scenario where one potential prescription medication may not work in the way it was intended. And that unfortunately drives a lot of adverse drug events that lead people to having to go into hospital and falling over and all kinds of things.

And so Kadance is all about — these programs are embedded in a life insurance policy. So how does it work? As you said, you'd buy your life insurance policy. Typically, you pay your premium, you put the certificate in the drawer and you sort of forget about it. With Kadance, you now have the opportunity to add this really interesting program as a rider. And it can come in different flavors. Some companies will have it as an embedded rider. So you buy the policy and Kadance comes with it. In other situations it's an additional add-on.

But it's really all about giving policyholders real living benefits that they can start to use while they're alive. And as I said, it allows you as an individual to sort of manage health in a proactive way. It will help you manage a diagnosis of cancer and it's also a component that's available when you're in recovery. So it's really one of the few sort of living benefits that you really can benefit from while you're alive. You don't have to wait for some sort of an event to trigger it, you know, being available to you.

Paul Tyler (04:39) So if I get a prescription from my doctor, do I share this information with the doctor or is this an app to find out like is this gonna, will this cause a problem with another set of drugs that I'm taking at this moment? Am I on Lipitor or something?

Darren Rowe (05:09) Right. Yeah, so maybe if I can just talk you through the user experience. So you would activate your membership once you've purchased this rider and this policy in our portal, you answer a few questions. You tell us what medication you're using and then we send you a genetic testing kit after about two weeks. It's a mouth swab, buccal swab. After about two weeks, you'll get a notification to say your results are ready and then you'll talk to a genetic counselor and a pharmacist.

Now these are PharmDs, PhD clinical pharmacists and they'll talk you through the results. Now most people will have, as I mentioned, some form of a genetic variant that means at least one medication may not work as well as it should. So in conjunction with that information, along with a list of the medications that you're taking that you tell us about, and then any other comorbidities, we can start to get a really good picture as to whether you're likely to have some form of adverse drug event.

That could mean something relatively benign, like, you know, maybe the drugs just don't work quite as effectively as they should, maybe have a bit of brain fog, right up to something more severe and life-threatening potentially. So that information is in our system.

Once it's in our system, we can share that with your provider. And the idea here is that your provider can now proactively have that information. So when they're thinking about a prescription, they can avoid prescribing things that could be problematic. So we sort of close the loop as it were so that we don't expect you to go and have that conversation with your own provider. We can do that for you.

But there is certainly as an individual policyholder, once you're empowered with that information, you can make better choices because this doesn't just affect prescription medication, it also affects over-the-counter medication and even supplements as well. So you can really start to personalize some of those things.

Paul Tyler (07:06) Yeah, interesting. And then if, hopefully it's not the case, I score I have cancer three years down the line. What does the cancer program look like?

Darren Rowe (07:19) So the cancer program is really designed to minimize the chance of you having a misdiagnosis or an underdiagnosis. And the likelihood of that happening is about 30%. So about 30% of cases we see either an underdiagnosis where there is other important diagnostic information that hasn't been surfaced that's relevant and could inform treatment, or in some cases the diagnosis is just inaccurate, it's just wrong.

So first of all, we want to ensure that you have the right diagnosis. Then we want to look at what type of very sophisticated genetic tests are available that your insurance company isn't likely to fund that can give us more information about how to treat your specific type of cancer because every cancer is different. Even if you took a subset of 100 people with lung cancer, then all of those lung cancers will be slightly different and they'll respond in different ways to different treatments and so on.

So we want to provide your doctors and the team that are treating you locally with information that will help them guide treatment and ultimately help them prescribe treatment that's likely to be more effective. So that's one aspect.

The other aspect is the recognition that you're likely to feel quite overwhelmed. You're going to have a lot of questions about your cancer, your treatment, what the likely outcome is and so on. You'll likely hit Google and you'll start, you know, you'll start to become an expert in your own right. But that can be very overwhelming for a lot of people.

So part of the program provides you with a nurse, an oncology nurse navigator. These are highly trained oncology specialists who work with you remotely to help you navigate through that process. And it could be asking your health insurance plan if certain things are covered, keeping you in network, just ensuring that you're prepared for consultations and you know what's going on and that you're engaged in the process. So that's one aspect of it. And then they also are there to provide emotional support. You can think about that. You know, I think we can all relate to that.

So they offer a very practical and sort of an emotional layer as well as connecting you and arranging for you all of those different testing services that ultimately help you access treatment that's likely to be more effective.

And then the third layer is the clinical trial enrollment sort of program. A lot of people unfortunately will never get into a clinical trial for cancer simply because A, it's very complicated. B, most people just don't have the information that they need, the genetic information they need that will tell them if they're eligible for trials and so most people unfortunately don't get into clinical trial. I think only about 8 to 10 percent of cancer patients in the US successfully enrolled in a clinical trial. That should be a lot higher so we can help navigate people and help enroll people into clinical trials as well.

So that's essentially what the program looks like for someone that's been diagnosed with cancer.

Paul Tyler (10:24) Real interesting and you know, I have seen a lot of companies, you know, take runs at doing something like what your company is doing. You've actually succeeded. I see, now I know that I'm fairly sure this is public that the product you've launched with Nationwide, correct? I think I saw a press release on this. Maybe talk to us about what you're doing with Nationwide, what this particular application product looks like.

Darren Rowe (10:55) So with Nationwide as a Nationwide policyholder, you have the opportunity now to purchase this program, the Kadance program. It would sit alongside your Nationwide policy and it gives you access to all of the things that we just talked about.

So from Nationwide's perspective, they think about it as a differentiator. They think about it as really adding additional value to the policyholder proposition and the policyholder experience. Ultimately, we're all very confident that we can start to show improved mortality rates as well.

So that's kind of how it's positioned. We've trained a lot of the people on the front line selling those policies as well. And I think they found it really interesting because they're accustomed to selling financial products that for the most part are somewhat commoditized. So I think this gives them an interest in and a more exciting reason to go back to existing clients and policyholders and re-engage and have new conversations that they've probably never had.

What was interesting for me is Nationwide did a lot of market research. They spoke to a lot of their policyholders about this and it was really overwhelmingly positive in terms of people's perception about the program. We've seen an increase in the sort of equity if you like, so people's perception of insurance companies as a result of offering this, there's this sense that my insurance company really does care about me and they are looking out for me.

Yeah, that's certainly how it works with Nationwide. We have other carriers as well, but that was the one example that you mentioned.

Paul Tyler (12:50) Okay, there's actually just a lot to unpack. Just in what you said there, because I've lived the dream with a prior company, a couple companies I've worked with when we've tried to do some of these things. So I think you've made it sound a lot easier than it is. Kind of like watching the Olympics, when I was watching the ski jumpers. They're like, you know, they all have to make it look easy, right?

So maybe take it step by step, you know, and I've seen these objections, I've seen more of these products, these efforts broken down. One is, you know, making the initial business case to the carrier. Now you said Nationwide, this, that, offering this program create differentiation in the market. You also said it has potentially better mortality impact. Maybe talk us through, how did you have to talk through, work through, help your advocates at that company make a business case to spend more money on our life insurance on a product that's probably a thinly margin product to begin with?

Darren Rowe (14:04) It's not easy, first of all, as you said, there's a lot of steps to it. There's a lot of different stakeholders involved, but I think at the core of it, the industry does recognize that policyholders are looking for something more than just a cash payout.

This idea of liquidity at a certain event in life is not new. What I think people are now realizing is that as healthcare solutions or particularly when you think about cancer, as cancer treatments get increasingly complicated, and health insurance becomes increasingly expensive and so on and so on and so on. People are starting to see that there's gaps and they're starting to, I think, appreciate that they need help in navigating some of those things that cash alone doesn't address. You need expertise.

And life insurance companies, I think, feel the same. They see that they have a spectacular array of living benefits and riders, but for the most part, they're cash payments triggered at different events. I think the industry is realizing that they have an opportunity to do a lot more and to add a lot more value.

So that's kind of the first foundational layer. You engage with a company that believes that's the case and you engage with a company that is forward thinking enough to say, you know, this is what we think is right for our policyholders. We think our policyholders will see the value. And then you start to just, you know, you work through the process.

So you get people comfortable with the program, you demonstrate that the program works and we have some really good data. We've developed a program called Kadance University. So we have our own genetic testing lab down in Huntsville in the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology. So we had a big contingent of the Nationwide team come down and spend two days with us and they really got immersed in the program.

The people, in the scientists, in the physicians, they walked around the lab, they even did some genetic testing themselves just to kind of see, you know, really get a good understanding of what goes on and I think that was, you know, at that point I think they really started to see, you know, the benefits of what we were doing. They really started to believe that a program like this could add real value and it was real and it was tangible. And I mean, that's essentially how, that's kind of how we approach it. Does that answer your question?

Paul Tyler (16:42) Oh yeah, yeah, and I guess from an actuarial perspective, how much data is gonna take before companies would, or reinsurers would say, yes, we actually see that this is improving mortality? Is that six years worth of data, 10 years worth of data?

Darren Rowe (17:01) I'm not sure because I mean certainly different companies, different actuaries have told us different things. I think they all have their own view of what that would take. The way we've addressed this is to say look there's a lot of published data out there that looks at different components of our program and it all leads to improved mortality.

However, when we sit down with a new carrier we typically say look — brand equity, lapse rates, better engagement. These are things that we can affect today. So let's focus on that and let's work on the basis that we believe mortality will improve over time and we are very confident that will be the case. But I can't speed up time and so we are structuring our data, we're structuring our program such that we believe that we can show good mortality improvements, the carriers believe it, but they're not basing today's proposition on it.

Today it's about will a policyholder see the benefits of this? Will it give us a differentiated product advantage over our competitors? Will we get better engagement? Will we get better lapse rates? They're easier to show and so that's kind of how we've positioned it, but we are — advisory team and we're all very confident that we'll have significantly better mortality rates over time.

Paul Tyler (18:30) Yeah, I would suspect the same. It's just business moves slowly, very slowly. And speaking of which, the other part you mentioned, I'd like to talk about training advisors. It's very, very hard to build an insurance practice as an advisor or an agent. And listen, if it works for me, I keep doing what I'm doing. Yeah, it changed. There's a lot of work to change.

Tell me about how you've worked with the advisors to make this part of their sales conversation, make it feel natural and make them feel like they want to be talking about this.

Darren Rowe (19:11) Yeah, so I think the first thing you have to do is, and I think it's the same for all of us. If we're going to talk to a customer about anything, we have to feel very confident. We have to feel, you know, knowledgeable. I think the worst thing that can happen is that you start a conversation that quickly gets out and you get out of your depth and then you start to panic.

So we've really, you know, done everything we can to equip everybody in that sales process with the information they need. And as I mentioned, we developed Kadance University. It's a two day sort of immersive course on site. And we take these guys through every layer of the program, as well as giving them the background, sort of foundational knowledge as well.

So we start with what is genetics? You know, what is DNA? Why is it relevant? Where is the health system broken? What is the program? What are the benefits? What's in it for you, what's in it for the patient, so for the policyholder, what's in it for the carrier. So we take every sort of stakeholder through every aspect of the program. And then we give them talking points, we do role plays, we go through the whole process.

It's a very, you know, it's probably the most comprehensive health management or precision health management program in the industry. I can't imagine there's anybody doing anything more robust than what we're doing right now.

And, you know, I think for the most part, certainly the producers and the agents that we've hosted, they really enjoy it. It's completely different to what, you know, to anything that they've done before. And you have to have that commitment, you know, and I think it goes back to what I said earlier on. If the industry believes that this is the way that Living Benefits is moving and if they really do want to innovate, then you've got to do things in a different way.

And so one of the things we look for is the commitment to attend training and to learn about the product but that's how we've done it and you know it's been successful so far.

What's been really interesting for us is we've now got agents out there who are selling this product who have got feedback from actual patients, policyholders that have bought policies from them and they've gone back and said, you know, if it wasn't for you selling this program to me, I, you know, I may not be here today. I mean, that's really powerful.

So, you know, that's, that's where we start to, you know, that's when everything really starts to build and that momentum starts to build. Yeah, no, it's been really interesting, but we recognized immediately that having a great program is only one aspect of it. You know, you've got to, like you said, you've got to go all the way through the value chain and figure out where is it likely to get stuck and how do I unblock it and that's you know it's kind of the approach we've taken.

Paul Tyler (22:00) But what was the most significant lesson or surprise you came across in your journey here?

Darren Rowe (22:10) That's a great question. Let me think about that. What's been the biggest surprise? Gosh.

I mean it's not a surprise as such, but I think we were all really excited to see — so we've done a huge amount of consumer, you know, we had a lot of feedback from consumers. We've done a lot of polls. We've done a lot of market research. We actually worked with an independent market research organization. And we wanted to ensure that the information that we were working on was as accurate as it could be. So these are big sample sizes.

Some of the results were just — they were so overwhelming, so compelling, it really reinforced. So it wasn't so much a surprise as it was, you know, it was an exciting time when we realized that people are ready for these types of products.

I think we're at, unfortunately, we're at a point now where virtually everybody over the age of about 30 knows somebody that's had cancer. You know, if you're over the age of 40, 45, you likely know somebody that's taken a lot of medication. We can relate to these issues. Most people have seen the struggle.

So when you explain what we're trying to do and how we're trying to make these things available through sort of non-traditional routes, there's an immediate acceptance. There's an immediate resonance with that. So that's been a surprise to a degree, but it's been probably more exciting and liberating for me to see that.

Let me come back to you on that because I'm sure there's been some other big surprises as we've been on this journey. I just can't think of any at the moment but I'm sure there's been many and I'll likely think about them when we finish this podcast.

Paul Tyler (24:07) Yeah, well, we'll put it in the show later. Well, you know, speaking of the change and stuff, you know, we were both at, you know, Refocus in Las Vegas here early this week, well, early this week. How quick it was.

Darren Rowe (24:31) I know, it's gone quickly, isn't it?

Paul Tyler (24:35) I guess, you know, one of the surprises I heard there was just how many questions there are around some of the medical advances coming, like GLP-1. This is a conservative industry. Usually it's a very fact-based set of underwriting. I was kind of surprised at both the optimism of the reinsurers as to how some of these new drugs will impact health over the longer period of time, even though we don't necessarily have a nice long five year, six year history.

Do you think, it felt to me like the industry is more open to taking a leap of faith on early scientific results than they may have been in the past. Do you think that's true, false, am I just reading into something I heard for the first time there?

Darren Rowe (25:34) I'm not so sure. I think certainly the life insurance industry, rightly so, is very risk averse and it's cautious. I think there is, there's degrees of acceptance or utilization of some of these newer sort of technologies.

I mean the weight loss pills for certain, I mean they have exploded. And if you look at other therapeutic areas, other settings, you're seeing across the board some tremendous leaps in the way some of these diseases are being managed. Cancer is no exception. We've kind of moved from chemotherapy to targeted therapies to immunotherapies, CAR T, cell therapy. I mean, there's just almost a never-ending pipeline of new approaches to treating some of these things.

In relation to your question, I don't know, I think the life insurance industry is waking up to the fact that there are opportunities for them to add more value. I think they are cautious about how they're doing it, which is right. But from where they were a decade ago, I think they've made huge strides. So, yeah.

Paul Tyler (27:03) Yeah, well, I totally agree. Well, guess, so I love what you're doing. You know, life insurance, I think, what do you say? Life insurance that helps me live longer. I love this. I love this. Trying to bring this type of technology to mainstream US through life insurance is, could be a grueling task for most people.

You know, Darren, what's your why? This is hard, but you're succeeding. What keeps you going?

Darren Rowe (27:42) I mean, like most people, I've seen what cancer can do to a family and to an individual. I've had family members die of cancer, unfortunately. But I've also seen what happens when you have access to really great care and innovative treatment options and so on. I've been fortunate enough to be involved with companies that are really at the cutting edge of those things and my view is that that type of experience shouldn't be limited to people with resources — it should be readily available.

It's 2026, people shouldn't be dying because they can't access things or they can't get the right information. I mean, it's just, it shouldn't happen.

Paul Tyler (28:36) I agree.

Darren Rowe (28:40) So, you know, my driver is to create an environment where people do have access to these things. Unfortunately, you know, when you look at this, step back a bit, there's a lot of friction in the system. If you look at the health system, there's a lot of friction. If you look at the, even the insurance industry generally, there's just a lot of friction. It's not easy for people to navigate their way through the health system and through health insurance systems. It's a lot of issues there, friction I should say.

You add into that, you know, not feeling great, you know, life's on the line. I mean, it's just, it's very, very overwhelming. It's very problematic.

We're trying to create an environment and we're trying to create solutions that address all of that. Not just the financial side, which is important, but the practical side, the clinical side, the overwhelming sense of, you know, what do I do? How do I make decisions? How do I get clarity with all this information?

We've looked at what it means to have cancer and where those problems are. And we've really thought hard about how can we address those issues in a way that is affordable for many more people. And of course, the future of insurance, as you know, is that many people can pay a small amount of money and many people can benefit. And so that to me was an obvious, you know — the life insurance industry is very much aligned with me as a policyholder because we both want to live as long as possible for the most part. We both want to be as healthy as possible. And it just makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, to go back to your question, what is my why? My why and what drives me is this desire to create an environment that is supportive of an individual when they're diagnosed with cancer or any other disease in the future. Now it's cancer rather than feel like a burden. And I think for too many people when they're diagnosed with cancer it's not just the cancer they're dealing with, it's life and the system that they have to navigate through and it shouldn't be like that. I mean, cancer is hard enough on its own without layering all the other things that people have to deal with on top of it. So that's really the why. That's the why.

Paul Tyler (30:50) Yeah. Yeah, well, listen, thanks so much for spending time with us. I do hope that we can work with you, help get your product into a number of other carriers' products because as you say, I think the power of insurance is you can spread cost and make some of these things much, much more affordable for more people.

So, if people want to learn more about your product or your company, what's the best way to do it? Your website?

Darren Rowe (31:21) Yeah, so you can go to Kadance.com. That's K-A-D-A-N-C-E.com and there is a contact us form on there. I'm on LinkedIn, Darren Rowe is on LinkedIn, Kadance. If people want to contact me directly, that would be great. We would love to hear from individuals who personally, I like to hear from individuals who have maybe gone through a similar experience. We can always learn from them, but carriers, agents, reinsurers, we're always keen to have those conversations. Yeah, we'd love to do that.

Paul Tyler (31:58) Okay, well, actually, listen, thanks so much for your time. And if you're listening, make sure to subscribe and leave us comments on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks so much and make sure to join us again next week. Thanks.

Darren Rowe (32:15) Cheers.