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INSUREPODCASTSeason 2

FIELD NOTE 02 / HOW VALUE IS MEASURED

From seats alone to broader measures of value

Seats may explain only part of the value software creates.
By Ben Shaw Published September 2, 2026

DIRECT ANSWER

The short version

Hybrid pricing may combine a recurring platform fee with charges tied more closely to activity or value. An insurer might pay for the governed system, then for transactions, documents processed, reserved engineering capacity, or agreed outcomes. Seats can remain even when they no longer capture all of the work the product performs.

What changes

Revenue may become a stack rather than a single license: platform access, usage, transactions, implementation or engineering capacity, managed operations, and sometimes outcomes. Vendors need a measurable unit of work. Buyers need to understand how cost changes with adoption.

What does not

Predictability still matters. Procurement still wants a budget. Vendors still need committed revenue and enough capacity to serve customers well. Post-SaaS does not require pure outcome pricing or a meter attached to every click.

An illustrative insurance workflow

Hypothetical example, not a customer case study.

An MGA pays a base fee for policy administration, permissions, auditability, and integrations. It then pays by active policy or bound transaction, plus reserved capacity when launching a new product. The shared system remains licensed; more of the price now follows the work.

DOCUMENTED EXAMPLE

Intercom: seats alongside work-based charges

Intercom’s published plans combine human-teammate seats with separate charges for Fin outcomes and some messaging usage. The license has not disappeared; another billable unit sits beside it. Its documentation defines billable outcomes, including a resolved question or a configured procedure completed with a handoff.

What this does not establish: This is a customer-service software example, not evidence that insurance platforms have adopted the same contract. The comparison is the coexistence of access and work-based charges. A billable Fin outcome is not equivalent to a completed insurance result.

The Season 2 question

Season 2 asks how seat expansion may evolve, how buyers preserve cost certainty, and which measures of value remain credible in an actual contract.