1504 – Every Household in The US Should Know About This with Asteya’s Hadi Radwan

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0:54With us right now, it's Hadi Radwan. Hadi, you are the founder of Asteya. Astea is found on the web at astea.world. Now that's A-S-T-E-Y-A dot world. And Hadi, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Joe. Yeah. So Hadi, give us an overview of what Astea is. So Astea is an income insurance technology company with a mission to make income insurance accessible to everyone in the U.S. Because we believe that primarily this is a type of product that every household or business owner should have access to. And the reason we say this is the likelihood of someone getting some form of illness, accident that prevents them from going to work, or even if they're a revenue generator for their own company, they might sit out and not work anymore, which would impact their business.

1:56The likelihood is four times more than dying during your career. So everyone should think about having that. It's an important protection product that we don't talk enough about, especially with the current market. You know, more than 50 % of the U.S. population are living paycheck to paycheck. So the moment you're stopping work for whatever reason, there are certain bills that are going to be ongoing. Could be your company bills, your house bills, your mortgage, your children's schooling fees, what have you. And this is very important that someone needs a form of, let's say, plan B, because the unexpected can happen at any time to us.

2:36So we believe, and that's what our mission is, we believe every household in the U.S. should know about it, even if they don't want to buy it. It should be educated that it exists. In the U.S. specifically, more than 50 % don't know what disability insurance is, which is what we've rebranded and we call it income insurance because disability insurance is a little bit confusing. You're not insuring your disability. Your disability might happen irrespective of the protection, but your income is what you're insuring. So we changed that to form an income insurance brand. And I think a lot of times when I hear about disability insurance, I remember back in the day, Dave Ramsey really talking a lot about, well, you're much more likely to need disability insurance than you are life insurance.

3:30uh and so but then you know as a business owner i guess i i think of that and i say well that's just kind of an employee thing like i you know that's when you work a you know work within an organization they might provide that or you know you might supplement with something like that and so i always thought that this is something that was maybe not real accessible to business owners so can you kind of walk me through how this would work with someone that uh maybe runs a small agency? Yeah, absolutely. So the naming is just different. And what if you go and research, let's say on Google, you would be looking for what they call keyman risk.

4:11So if you're a keyman or someone who's key in your organization, which is you're a small business owner, something bad happens to you, that keyman risk policy gets activated, which is a form of income insurance. is just a more technical and fancy name. So you would go buy that keyman risk from us or from someone else. If something happens to the key owner, the insurance company would pay the company an amount, which could be X amount, depending on the policy. And that amount would go directly maybe to pay the expenses of the company or directly to that owner if they wish to use the money or they want to close their company and and and you know just uh not continue with their business because of that disability so that form of keyman product will be very well suited to a small business owner now the other products as you mentioned josh exactly they're more of uh employee based so you're uh you're you're an employee in a company they don't give you any form of income insurance you want to buy that individually there are multiple forms of these products the other type would be also for if you're a small business owner and you want to provide an interesting benefit for your employees so that you increase retention so that even if something bad happens to your employee you want to give them a sabbatical they know that at the end of that disability when they're healthy they know that they can come back to work because your income their income actually still got paid from you as an employer so it's an interesting benefit for retention for keeping happy employees and then definitely later to reduce that expense uh uh for from and from an employer perspective that that absentism expense yeah um can you is there any way of like ballpark um i don't know if we're talking about a, you know, a$200 a month product.

6:16Is this a$20 ,000 a month product? Is there any, and again, I don't want you to be uncomfortable. I mean, just total spitball. Like I just, you know, what universe are we talking? Yeah. So that's interesting. So if you go to our website, we have a quick quote widget where you put some information and it gives you the price, but I'll give you an example. So we have a product that pays you a lump sum amount. So something bad happens to you it's a permanent income insurance product so you're an uber driver you go in an accident you cannot drive anymore in your life you can do something else but you cannot drive anymore uh you get a lump sum payment and the starting premium is six dollars for 50 000 now it can go up to half a million now the price goes up but that gives you a segue it's a cheap a product it's not an expensive product for 50k it's six dollars per month it's as much as a cup of coffee in starbucks maybe a bit more but still it's not that expensive for months so i'm thinking about um okay let's so let's bad scenario here let's say that uh i i get in a car wreck and i'm in the hospital and i'm going to be in the hospital for a you know a week and a half two weeks or something like that.

7:35I'm just, I'm not able to work. I have to cancel all my sales appointments, have to cancel, you know, everything that, you know, that I've got on my schedule, that that's going to impact my business a bit. So I could, I have a policy, let's say I need a hundred thousand dollars and that a hundred thousand dollars, I could tap into the both for a little bit of personal income, but primarily is that part of what you called key man insurance as well, where I now can also tap into that for, let's say, business impact funds? So there's two types of insurance products when it comes to what you're mentioning.

8:15There's what we call short-term income insurance and long-term. So in case you're out of work for a few weeks, you need to have a short-term income insurance product. If you are out of work for a few years, you need a long-term income insurance product. We sell both of them. So that's why it's very important to work with an agent and you want to see your income gap. So if your income gap is you have some savings that can last you six months without working, probably you don't need a short-term income insurance. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you will probably need to cover or buy both products because as you said, if you're not saving, if you're paying your bills on time, but you're going to go out of work for a couple of weeks, whereby you usually generate an income.

9:06Now, you can either delay your bills, which is not a good practice. People will not love that. Or if you have a form of income insurance that's short term, then it might pay you. And I'm saying might, and I'll explain why. It might pay you for that week. When I say might, there is some form of claim administration that the insurance companies still do. Usually they pay out, but in case something is not right, they might not pay out. So that's one might. The second might would be on the type of product features you bought. So if you want a cheap short-term DI, sometimes the insured would say, you know what?

9:48I want to wait for a couple of days before I get my payment. And that's called the waiting period. So you actually select it when you decide what product you want to buy. The waiting period for a short-term DI could be one day, seven days, 30 days. So if you select a 30-day waiting period and you break your leg, they don't pay you for the first one month. Now, if you go back to work within that month, you don't get any benefit. if you

10:27they only pay you one month so the

10:42Josh, can you hear me? I think I lost you. No, it completely froze up there. Where did I lose you? Yeah, so let's... Yes, where did I lose you? Yeah, I mean, you were just kind of explaining the difference there. It's been frozen for maybe about the past 25, 30 seconds there. Okay, so you want me to repeat that? Yeah, let me just ask you that question from the top here. Okay, so here we go. Three, two, one. So Hadi, just so I understand this now, you know, in terms of like, you know, if I'm in a situation where, you know, both I'm going to have some operational impact to my absence to the company.

11:26And then, of course, then there's also the component where, well, if I'm not able to work, that's going to decrease my, you know, so if the owner requires the owner's participation in order to get paid, that's risk. And we need to put that in a risk box. And so which lines of service would we want to cover those two scenarios? So if you have a company behind you and you're funding it in case something bad happens to you, you need two forms of income insurance. You need a short term and a long term. The short term covers you for any unforeseen accidents or illnesses that happen during a period of less than one year.

12:10So you go in an accident, as you said, you break your leg, you cannot go to work, you cannot generate revenue for the company. Now that form of short term income insurance would kick in and you get the benefit activated from the insurance company. Now, if you get a longer term disability, like you have, I hope that doesn't happen to anyone, but like cancer, and it might take years and years of, you know, you go out and you have these treatments, then you probably need a longer term disability insurance so that you get a bigger benefit. Yeah. And what is the benefit? Because I know, you know, I could probably contact, you know, my local insurance provider and I could get, you know, either disability or certainly, you know, the life insurance, they love to sell you that.

13:04But the what is the benefit of working through or going through a stay versus just your local broker or local state farm or all state agent or whatever? yeah so we have our own income insurance products so you cannot find them with another let's say a carrier or another broker you'd have to come to our website to see the differences between us and a state farm and what we target is we target a price sensitive customers so if you compare apples to apples you'd see that on every dollar of of benefit we are in the in the affordable range So price is important. The second part, we work with brokers.

13:48So if you have a local broker and you want them to give you a vast comparison between multiple carriers, we could sit right there in the table as a comparative option for them. We're not the only option. We are a comparative option that has affordability. And then the final one, if you don't want to go through your broker, you want speed, efficiency, you want to get the policy today, you just log into the website. You fill an application that takes you probably two to five minutes. You get an instant decision most of the time if you're healthy. And you put your credit card information and we issue the policy and send it to your inbox.

14:26So you can get protected quite fast and in an affordable way just by going with us. We are fully digital. So that's the main difference and we're affordable. Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty easy. So, you know, if I'm on the website right now, I just, a stay a dot world and I click on get started. It's like, okay, what line are you looking for? Your zip code date of birth and then it's the basic and then you get the quote. So it's pretty easy. So, so how do you, what is the, what's the future for a stay? Where are you going? And, and, And please outlay all your specific plans for global domination. So we're on a mission to make income insurance accessible to everyone in the U.S.

15:15And as I mentioned earlier on this, people don't know about the product. People don't know the importance of having income insurance. Income is your most important asset. As you protect your brain, your health, you need to protect your income. most of the people you rely on on life insurance they say hey we're definitely going to die let me buy a term life insurance and hopefully if something bad happens to me at least some of the beneficiaries would get remunerated what they don't know about is when you buy a term life the the payout ratio is very low because most of the time during the term you don't die so you have to renew and every time you renew the price goes up and when you're 65 or 67 or 70 you haven't died yet you cannot buy life insurance anymore the carrier says you're a risky client we don't want to sell you any more life insurance so people overpay for life insurance because of the connotation of death and they completely disregard their the element of disability that something bad might happen to you everyone thinks they're invisible but the reality is you know the unexpected might happen so that form of protection is very important we are trying to work with other third party licensed agents and brokers to help them educate their end consumer and hopefully we can reach a bigger audience by by doing this and and i'm i'm on your show because this is one of the forms of bringing out the word that it's important for you to protect the income even if you don't decide to buy it today at least think about it look at your income gap is there something that is very risky in case an unforeseen circumstance happens to you no savings at all that's a very risky or a red flag in your in your income gap so you should consider some form of protection.

17:17You're happy with life insurance. That's fine. But just consider that there something else might happen to you as well. As a business owner, as an employer, as an employee. And partnering with Esteya. So that would anyone that's a broker, benefits providers, and how do they connect with you? So they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. They can reach to our contact us page. And by the way, we have a page on the website where it's called partner with us. And then you click there, use yourself, subscribe, and then we will get you on board it. Yeah. And again, all of that is at Asteia.world. That's A-S-T-E-Y-A.world.

18:05And I was just taking a look at the partner program page. And again, if you're in the industry, benefits, HR, insurance, then you'll probably want to take a look at that. Hadi Radwan, again, founder CEO, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Josh, for having me.

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