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| Senior Ryan Wobbe has spent his summer interning at Grange Mutual Casualty Company. |
Throughout the summer, we're checking in with several returning student-athletes who are partaking in unique experiences relating to student research, an internship, or sport through cross-cultural exchanges. Our final profile features Ryan Wobbe, a senior men's basketball student-athlete.
Wobbe's spending his summer working at Grange Mutual Casualty Company (Grange Insurance) in Columbus, Ohio. Specifically, Wobbe is an intern in the personal lines department for the national product management team.
Wobbe and the fellow interns had a unique opportunity with Grange Insurance as they planned an innovation war competition for over 100 employees and outside vendors from local technology companies. The innovation war consisted of teams spending the day creating and inventing an InsurTech start-up or innovative company with $20 million. Many of the teams ideas revolved around usage-based or on-demand insurance.
"Right now, the insurance industry is technologically behind compared to other industries due to regulations and the history of the industry," noted Wobbe, when commenting on the industry. "With technological advancements happening every day, it greatly disrupts how things have traditionally been done in insurance."
In the pre-planning of the competition, Wobbe obtained insight from the senior leadership team of Grange Insurance, where he learned about what keeps the company's executives up at night regarding the future of the organization, and where they would invest $10 million to assure Grange Insurance is an innovation leader. This insight helped Wobbe and the fellow interns narrow down the problem statement for the innovation war.