Profile: Kristie Beck

Meet Kristie Beck. CEO of Proformex. 

Name: Kristie Beck

Job: CEO of Proformex

City: Cleveland

Hometown: Cleveland

Q: What do you do at Proformex?
Proformex is the leading inforce management platform offering data aggregation, analytics, and portfolio monitoring for life insurance and annuities. The platform is purpose-built to help independent life insurance and financial advisory firms protect their clients’ best interest and ensure regulatory compliance by monitoring individual policy performance, identifying at-risk policies, and uncovering new sales opportunities. Our automated solutions make inforce management more efficient, more profitable, and results in better experiences for policy owners.

Q: What’s a problem that you are working to solve? 
In the life insurance industry, post-sale policy servicing has historically always been a reactive process – financial advisors and independent life insurance brokers address problems with policy performance after they arise. Our technology aims to transform the industry to a more proactive approach, using proprietary algorithms and data aggregation to predict (and avoid) disaster and to spot opportunity. 

Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned that has helped shaped your work? 
I think the most important lesson I’ve learned that has helped shape my work is that you really have to continuously cultivate peak performance. Great teams do not happen spontaneously, and are not merely comprised of the most credentialed, renowned professionals in their space. You have to be proactive in nurturing your team of people to grow and work better together, and you have to be flexible enough to move people around based on their evolving skill sets and growth potential. The business will change, and people will come and go, but if you continuously cultivate for peak performance, that’s exactly what you’ll get. 

Q: What’s a trend in technology or innovation that you believe doesn’t get enough attention? 
There’s a general trend in tech right now where it seems, in many markets, there’s a preference to go direct to consumer. And in a lot of those markets, it totally makes sense.

But for us, in the fintech and insurtech space, there’s more of a divide. There’s this looming fear or reservation about technology replacing human beings, and that’s particularly off-putting in an industry like ours where the need for human connection and empathy is so vital.

People who are looking to buy life insurance are considering their own mortality. They’re preparing for a future for their loved ones once they’re no longer in the picture. Even if artificial intelligence or machine learning can suggest suitable recommendations for consumers seeking life insurance coverage, it’s something that will probably always be best delivered by another human being.

Social interaction is core to our industry, no matter how cool or functional technology becomes. Consumers want to purchase life insurance from someone they can trust – an expert in the space who can offer guidance and an understanding of the emotional context under which someone buys life insurance.

Q: What’s one moonshot idea that could help make Ohio a world leader in technology and innovation? 
For me, there’s a 2-pronged approach here. First, it’s about exposing young people to different career paths based on their propensities for logic and innovation earlier. Something the coasts have done a great job for decades is having such a high density of colleges that specialize in software and technology that draws talent from all over the world because they have the tools and resources to educate those young adults. If we could create a pipeline to educate young people to help ignite that interest and passion earlier on, that could really help create the talent pipeline we need to be a bigger source of innovation. Smaller ecosystems like Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus are starting to do this, but a lot of the challenge is creating and developing the talent pool that can execute. 

The second piece, and we are early on in this process, is filling the capital gap between seed and growth-phase companies. 

Q: What’s a recent book, podcast or news story that you found interesting? 
A book I truly cannot recommend enough is “The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups” by Daniel Coyne (who, ironically, is also a Clevelander! I didn’t realize this until after I had finished his book).

Daniel Coyne has been studying what makes a high-performance team so successful in any environment, and this book is a reflection on his learnings. I’ve spent my last fifteen years in management and leadership positions, and I’ve invested a lot of time in learning about ways to create strong company culture that promotes learning and growth. This book is by far the most actionable book I’ve read on this topic, because you come out of it with an incredible understanding of behaviors that you’re either doing or not doing, and as a result, how those behaviors can drive a strong culture or create unintended consequences.  

Q: What's your favorite place in Ohio? 
It might surprise you to hear this from someone who has lived in three different countries and dozens of cities, but my absolute favorite place to be in the summertime is Cleveland, Ohio. Sure, our winters can be brutal, but being able to spend our summers on Lake Erie makes the temperamental climate so worth it!

Q: What makes Ohio special to you?  
First, Midwesterners – and Ohioans specifically – are just different. The character of our people is centered around loyalty, to people and to places. Ohioans demonstrate a level of commitment to their different tribes, whether it’s friends or family or co-workers that quite frankly is nearly impossible to find elsewhere. Young talent here is driven toward meaningful work for STEM, but they also are more likely to want to stay closer to their families and friends, meaning they’re not going to be hopping around from company to company as much as their coastal counterparts might be. 

Secondly, there’s a reason they call Ohio “the heart of it all”, and it’s not just because so many of the major highways cross through our state. We have a demonstrated history of being able to produce talent on a widescale from all the different colleges and universities headquartered here. For decades, we’ve been very focused on becoming a manufacturing engine. We now have the unique opportunity to pivot that engine into the next generation of talent, which will be knowledge workers and technology workers. 

Connect with Kristie on LinkedIn.