Source: thebrokernews
The platform is designed to ease the workload on insurance advisors, automatically analyze policies, and, for the first time, integrate artificial intelligence into the day-to-day work of brokers in a truly practical way. In this interview, the two founders discuss their vision, the pitfalls of AI, the fight against inefficient systems, and why the future of the industry lies not in competition but in collaboration.
Silvio Siegenthaler knows the insurance industry inside out. Starting as a traditional insurance advisor, he worked his way up at Vaudoise to become one of Switzerland’s most successful client advisors. At the same time, however, the 31-year-old became increasingly fascinated by the world of artificial intelligence. Together with Michel Di Vito of Olai Interactive, he developed the Sothura platform, which is designed to automate brokerage processes while simultaneously improving the quality of consultations.
Swiss-based hosting, white-label compatible, and capable of integrating with virtually any existing software—all while adhering to strict data protection regulations for highly sensitive customer data. Sothura isn’t here to manage; it’s here to make insurance consulting smarter. Shortly before the official launch, the founders discuss their motivation, their technical breakthroughs, and their ambitions for the Swiss insurance industry. Is this the product the brokerage industry has been waiting for?
Silvio Siegenthaler, you had a successful career in the insurance industry for many years. What was the moment when you realized you wanted to start your own business?
Silvio Siegenthaler: Just imagine : a secure job, a good income, a career that many envied—and I threw it all away. With no safety net. Today that sounds brave; back then, it was a leap into the unknown, against all reason. But something inside me knew: If I don’t take the plunge now, I never will. I started out as a freelance broker and, on the side, I built a tool that turned my work upside down. At first, just for myself. Then I showed it to some consultant friends, and their reaction was electrifying. At that moment, I did something that’s actually forbidden for a salesperson: I stopped selling. I halted new business development, radically downsized my client base, and put all my eggs in one basket with this platform. I had to break free from the old structures to build my own. Because that’s exactly what our industry is missing: people with real-world experience who decide to take technology into their own hands instead of waiting for someone from the outside to do it. That’s when an idea became a mission.
You taught yourself how to program. How difficult was that while you were working in the insurance industry?
Silvio Siegenthaler: The real challenge isn’t the technique, but consistency. It’s the perseverance you need to focus on it without distractions: making consistent use of your time and repeatedly stepping outside your comfort zone. That was the hard part. Ich hatte mich schon rund zwei Jahre mit künstlicher Intelligenz beschäftigt – zuerst aus Neugier, dann immer ernsthafter – bis mich ein Bekannter endgültig in diese Welt hineinführte, die mich seither nicht mehr losgelassen hat.
I succeeded because I never saw this path as a sacrifice, but rather as a driving force. Today, as a freelancer, I develop and program practically nonstop. I see this consistency as a real advantage: most AI solutions for our industry are built by teams that have never sold a policy. With me, it’s the other way around, because I know the day-to-day of consulting from thousands of conversations and have brought the technology into my own work. This combination of domain expertise and technical depth is rare, and it’s precisely what’s embedded in every detail of Sothura.
Many people talk about artificial intelligence, but few actually build concrete solutions. What convinced you that the insurance consulting industry is ready for this transformation?
Silvio Siegenthaler: Because psychological distress and technology are coming together for the first time. Insurance advisors—whether they’re brokers, field representatives, or agents—have been struggling for years with tools that take more time than they save. At the same time, AI has reached a point where it truly understands language, contracts, and context—reliably enough for professional use. The question is no longer whether AI will enter the insurance consulting sector. The question is who will get it right first—in a Swiss, precise, and practical way, rather than as a gimmick. This is exactly the window of opportunity we’re tapping into.
Michel Di Vito, what motivated you to join Sothura as CEO of Olai and help develop the project from a technical standpoint?
Michel Di Vito: When Silvio showed me his prototype, I was honestly impressed. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen countless systems, many of them technically impressive. But rarely one that was developed with such foresight and attention to detail.
I was just as impressed by the person behind it all. Silvio had given up a secure, well-paying job and staked everything on his vision. Anyone who takes such a bold step and works with such consistency and integrity is clearly serious about it.
At the same time, it was immediately clear to me where the real challenges would lie: security, infrastructure, scalability, and the platform’s technological foundation. This includes real vector databases containing thousands of documents, an intelligent network of relationships between policies, lines of business, and insurers, as well as AI responses that are always based on real insurance documents. Added to this are data protection, FINMA requirements, and the pseudonymization of particularly sensitive data. Especially in this environment, regulatory compliance determines whether a platform can be operated at all.
That is exactly where my strengths lie. For over 21 years, I have been developing digital solutions at Olai Interactive for leading Swiss companies, including Coop Pension Fund, Bell Switzerland, and many others.
Sothura is one of the few projects I believe in so strongly that I’m investing in it myself. For me, everything about this project is right: the people, the technology, and the economic potential. My collaboration with Silvio has long since evolved into a friendship. And the progress we’re making shows that we’re on the right track: interest and inquiries from institutions are steadily increasing.
How do you position Sothura in the market, and where do you see the greatest potential?
Silvio Siegenthaler: SOTHURA SAFE understands data rather than merely managing it, and it is precisely this intelligence that many systems lack today. For brokers, this means, in concrete terms: less administration, more time for consulting, and better decisions. What truly sets us apart is our understanding of the consulting process: SOTHURA SAFE doesn’t just read policies; it understands the consulting process behind them. Sie erkennt, ob eine Deckung zur Situation des Kunden passt, wo eine Lücke klafft, was als Nächstes zu tun ist.
Most AI tools stop at data extraction or the inbox; we take it a step further, all the way to the actual consultation. On top of that, we have a clear home-field advantage: we’ve built the platform specifically for the Swiss market, using Swiss hosting and ensuring full compliance with local data protection and regulatory requirements. Very few others offer that. And that is precisely where we see the greatest potential: a platform that noticeably simplifies day-to-day work, enhances the quality of consulting, and thus becomes an integral part of the industry over time.
A major problem with generative AI is hallucinations. You claim to have solved this problem. How does that work, exactly?
Michel Di Vito: Preventing hallucinations is one of the most demanding challenges in AI systems. That is precisely why this issue has been a central component of our architecture from the very beginning.
Generic AI models tend to fill in missing information using probabilities. While this may be acceptable in many areas of application, it is not in the insurance sector. That is why our system is based exclusively on a controlled and verified knowledge base. Every answer is traced back to verifiable sources. If the necessary information is missing, no answer is generated; instead, the uncertainty is transparently disclosed.
The reliability of the answers is therefore not the result of subsequent corrections, but a direct consequence of the technical architecture. This is crucial for brokers: they must be able to trust that answers are based on reliable information. An AI that hallucinates when it comes to insurance law or regulatory issues is not an innovation, because it poses a significant risk.
Sothura relies on verified data and publicly available legal and industry standards. How important is data quality for reliable AI systems?
Michel Di Vito: Data quality determines whether or not you can trust an AI system. An AI system is only as good as the knowledge it is built upon. If it learns from unreliable or questionable sources, it will produce errors that sound deceptively convincing. No one in this industry can afford that. That’s why we’ve built our own specialized solution: based on a carefully reviewed, verified knowledge base of publicly available legal and industry standards, hosted in Switzerland and fully under our control. Every document undergoes classification and approval by us before the AI is allowed to work with it. This clean foundation is invisible and unspectacular, and that is precisely why it is our strongest advantage.
Brokers have been complaining for years about inconsistent policy presentations and inefficient processes. How exactly does your platform simplify their day-to-day work?
Silvio Siegenthaler: Today , every policy looks different because each insurer presents coverage, terms, and exclusions in a different way, and brokers have to painstakingly compare them by hand. That’s exactly what SOTHURA SAFE does for them: The platform scans the documents, standardizes their structure, and makes them comparable across all insurers. Was heute einen halben Nachmittag kostet, dauert Minuten.
But we take the entire day-to-day advisory process into account: The platform automatically identifies new potential clients from public registries, tracks tenders ranging from retirement planning to health insurance and cyber coverage, manages appointments, tasks, and meeting minutes, and keeps advisors up to date on every relevant change in the law or the industry. Particularly important: We also automate advisory documentation so that the legal advisory obligation under the revised Insurance Supervision Act (VAG) is reliably and future-proofed. In the end, the real benefit is not just the time saved, but the quality: The broker identifies coverage gaps that can easily be overlooked in day-to-day work. They become faster and, at the same time, better.
You mention that policies will be able to be automatically recognized, interpreted, and evaluated in the future. How far along are you technologically at this point?
Silvio Siegenthaler: This is no longer just a vision—it’s already a reality. Our AI reliably and accurately extracts data from policies—and not just policies, but also pension statements. A complete analysis takes less than a minute. The result is structured data that can be automatically imported into existing systems or a CRM. But we don’t stop at mere extraction: The system interprets the policy and compares it with the customer’s actual needs. We rely on recognized industry and classification standards and even take into account legally binding requirements from the respective work environment. Anyone familiar with the industry knows just how deep this goes. And the key point: Our pipeline updates itself automatically, year after year with new, up-to-date data, without anyone having to manually update it. It is precisely this step—from the lab to the real-world brokerage environment—that is more important to us than any show demo.
What role do APIs and the integration of existing CRM systems play in your strategy?
Silvio Siegenthaler: A key one . We integrate seamlessly into the broker’s existing workflow, and that is precisely one of our greatest strengths: thanks to our new technology and API capabilities, we can connect to virtually any existing system—including CRMs, industry platforms, and marketplaces. We’re a startup, not a company that’s grown over decades. Our technology stack is brand-new and extremely agile; we integrate and evolve faster than most. That’s exactly what makes us the natural partner for established providers: They bring their reach and established structures; we bring the specialized intelligence that generic AI simply cannot provide. Open interfaces are not an add-on for us, but a foundation. The future of the industry lies in connectivity, not isolation, and we are already in discussions with partners who share this vision.
How flexible is your platform in terms of language and compatibility with different providers?
Silvio Siegenthaler: We’re very flexible—and that’s by design. For one thing, we don’t just cover the four national languages. In the Swiss consulting industry, other languages are used on a daily basis, and that’s exactly what we offer, because the market is desperately seeking them and hardly anyone is providing them. On the other hand, SOTHURA SAFE has been white-label-ready from the start: A company can use the platform under its own brand and with its own branding as its own system, not as a third-party tool with our logo. This adaptability is not a side effect, but part of our strategy: We want to integrate, not impose ourselves.
In addition to the brokerage solution, you are also developing an AI-powered learning tool. Why is continuing education so crucial in the age of AI?
Michel Di Vito: Two years ago , I began developing an AI-powered learning platform for personalized memory techniques. Born out of a desire to give children with learning disabilities the same opportunities, LearnCards is one of the projects closest to my heart.
We will be implementing this project together as well. The SaaS solution will be available in Europe and the U.S. by the end of the year.
Together, we will integrate LearnCards into Sothura. The synergy is clear: Sothura provides proven industry expertise, while LearnCards ensures that this knowledge is retained long-term. This is an ideal combination, especially in an industry where ongoing professional development is mandatory.
Silvio Siegenthaler: Continuing education is not optional in our industry, as every insurance broker must obtain certification to keep their knowledge up to date. This is exactly where we’re taking it a step further: Since we already have specialized AI, it’s not a big leap to turn it into an adaptive application—one that not only imparts knowledge but also anchors it directly in long-term memory through a targeted methodology based on neuroscientific principles. Learning that truly sticks, rather than being crammed right before an exam and then forgotten afterward. But I’ll be completely honest: This is a standalone, second product that we’ll launch at a later stage. Today, our entire focus is on the broker solution, but the direction has been set.
Mr. Siegenthaler, you have invested about 3,000 hours in the project, and Mr. Di Vito has also put in well over 1,500 hours. What motivates you personally?
Silvio Siegenthaler: What drives me is the desire to solve a problem I’ve encountered firsthand in the field—for an industry I feel a strong connection to. I deliberately put my successful client base on hold and put almost all my eggs in one basket because I see potential that cannot be ignored: giving brokers and their clients a platform that finally creates space for genuine advice again. And I didn’t invest all those hours to make myself indispensable, but to build a system that works without me—one that thousands of brokers use every day, even when I’m not in the room.
Michel Di Vito: What drives me most is the work itself. I began specializing in AI over five years ago, long before it became all the rage. I develop my own neural networks from scratch. This goes far beyond simply using existing AI systems.
The insurance industry presents exactly the kind of challenges that require this level of depth: highly sensitive data, complex interrelationships, and absolutely no room for error. Solving problems like these is what inspires me. It’s the kind of challenge I’m passionate about.
I’m fully committed to this, and I say this with conviction: I’m the right person for the job. When you truly love what you do, you don’t keep track of the hours.
Many startups fail not so much because of their technology as because of their inability to penetrate the market. How do you plan to build trust with brokers, insurers, and partners?
Silvio Siegenthaler: You can’t buy trust —you have to earn it. Especially in this industry. Three things are crucial. First, background: I come from a hands-on background myself; I talk to brokers as an equal, not as a tech salesperson. Second, substance: Swiss hosting, verified data, data protection under Swiss law—no compromises when it comes to sensitive customer data. And third, attitude: We’re not here to take anything away from anyone. We collaborate with Union Swiss Brokers Holding AG and the established platforms and groups in the industry. Those who think in terms of networks build trust faster than those who try to do everything on their own.
When we speak again in two or three years: What would serve as proof to you that Sothura has truly transformed the industry?
Silvio Siegenthaler: The proof would be if a broker no longer viewed Sothura as an AI tool, but as a natural part of their work—just as no one is surprised by email anymore. When people in the industry no longer ask whether they’re working with AI, but rather with what. And when the standard for good advice has risen because the machine handles the tedious work, leaving people time again for what only they can do: listen, assess, and advise. When we’ve achieved that, we won’t have replaced the industry—we’ll have made it better. That, to me, would be the proof. Because for us, the future of insurance consulting begins right now.
The questions were asked by Binci Heeb.
Silvio Siegenthaler ( born in 1994) is an insurance broker, entrepreneur, and founder of SOTHURA—a results-oriented visionary. As a top salesperson, he worked his way up to become one of Switzerland’s most successful consultants before taking the leap into self-employment and developing SOTHURA SAFE. He is married, the father of two children, and lives in Lohn-Ammannsegg.
Michel Di Vito is the CEO of Olai Interactive and a technical co-developer of SOTHURA SAFE. With over two decades of experience in the digital industry, he is regarded as a technical pioneer. He is married, a family man, and an avid golfer, and lives in Oberdorf.
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