In technology and finance, successful companies are rarely the product of a single, straight line. They are built by leaders who know when and how to pivot. Yaniv Bertele is one of them. His trajectory from cleantech venture capital to insurtech innovation and, most recently, to longevity finance reflects a consistent discipline: identify underserved markets, apply technology where it creates transformational value, and execute with rigor.
“A real pivot isn’t reactive, it’s a strategic re‑ranking of evidence,” Bertele says. “I start with the use case, size the market, and only then decide which technology belongs.”
From Water Technology to Insurance: Following Market Inefficiencies
Bertele’s approach took shape at Mekorot, Israel’s National Water Company, where he served as Head of Corporate Venture Capital. Managing sixteen water‑tech and cleantech investments taught him how to evaluate early‑stage companies operating under complex regulation and infrastructure constraints. A visible outcome from that portfolio in the form of exits, reinforced a lesson he carried forward: make complex systems legible, then build the rails for adoption.
“Water is a regulated, high‑stakes domain with long sales cycles,” he notes. “If you can standardize complexity and remove friction, small efficiency gains compound into meaningful enterprise value.”
The pivot to financial services was deliberate, not incidental. Many of the skills that matter in cleantech, managing regulatory risk, modernizing legacy infrastructure, and building trust through transparency map naturally to insurance. The sectors share heavy regulation, entrenched intermediaries, and large addressable markets where even incremental improvement creates substantial value.
Why Insurance Attracted a Tech Investor
Bertele entered insurtech before it was fashionable. “The industry still ran on decades‑old technology,” he recalls. “There were too many handoffs, too little transparency, and a persistent gap between actuarial reality and how products were priced and distributed.” With advanced degrees in physics and mathematics, he saw a familiar analytical canvas: statistical modeling, risk assessment, and process control.
“There’s still significant demand for alternative investments that deliver uncorrelated returns,” he adds. “Insurance, especially longevity‑exposed assets, wasn’t broadly accessible to the financial markets despite its scale and independence from traditional cycles.”
The Life Settlements Pivot: Opportunity in Overlooked Markets
Bertele’s most recent pivot centers on life settlements, the secondary market where seniors sell unwanted life insurance policies for more than cash surrender value. The market has existed since 1911, yet it remains inefficient. “For years it ran on spreadsheets and gut instinct,” he says. “Longevity assessment is complex, the market structure is fragmented, and transparency was limited.”
Rather than viewing complexity as a deterrent, Bertele saw a protected lane. “Where others see complexity, I see a moat,” he explains. “If you can make underwriting reproducible, clarify the rules, and give institutional investors a transparent methodology, you unlock a long‑duration, actuarial return engine.”
First‑Mover Advantages in Underdeveloped Markets
Durable edges survive because real obstacles deter copycats. Life settlements have several: fragmented regulation across 46 states, specialized underwriting, meaningful capital requirements, and an optics problem that Bertele addresses head‑on.
“The misconception is that life settlements are mortality‑based incentives,” he says. “In reality, mortality underpins financial products we already accept, pensions, annuities, traditional life insurance. Life settlements add a consumer benefit: liquidity and, often, materially better value than surrender for seniors who no longer need or want their policies.”
He structured EverOak with multiple jurisdictions in mind, North America, Europe, Asia, and the Gulf, investing early in the legal and tax infrastructure that institutional investors expect. “It’s slower to build, but it becomes a durable competitive advantage,” he notes.
Technology is the second lever. At his previous insurtech venture, Bertele pioneered AI‑powered underwriting for insurance‑linked securities, scaling operations across seven major financial centers and standardizing previously bespoke transactions. He is applying the same discipline at EverOak, developing proprietary algorithms that assess longevity directly from medical records.
“Without a technological structure to transparently bridge the knowledge gap between insurance and capital markets, adoption stalls,” he says. “The algorithms serve as a translation layer, what I call a ‘Google Translate’, turning policy and clinical data into investment metrics CIOs know how to underwrite.”
A Framework for Evaluating Pivot Opportunities
From cleantech to insurtech to longevity finance, Bertele uses a repeatable framework:
- Structural Inefficiency
Target information asymmetries, fragmented infrastructure, or outdated processes that technology can standardize. - Market That Matters
Pursue problems large enough that solving them moves the P&L at scale. - Transferable Edge
Leverage accumulated strengths, quantitative rigor, regulated‑market fluency, and building audit‑ready systems. - Defensible Position
Favor markets where incumbents haven’t addressed core inefficiencies, creating time to build moats. - Access to Enablers
Secure the legal, tax, distribution, and data partners necessary to accelerate learning and execution.
“A pivot is a choice to redeploy your capabilities where the mispricing is greatest,” he says. “It’s not about chasing a trend; it’s about committing to a problem where your edge compounds.”
Lessons from Strategic Repositioning
Several themes run through Bertele’s pivots:
- Proactive, Not Reactive
Each move followed analysis from a position of strength, not a scramble. - Pattern Recognition Across Domains
Deep experience in regulated markets transfers; the language changes, but the underlying physics, risk, governance, and incentives, do not. - Specialize After You Choose
Optionality is valuable during exploration, but execution rewards focus. “Pick the right hill, then build trenches, not tents,” he says. - Timing Matters
Enter before markets become crowded, when the noise is low and the runway to build infrastructure is long.
A period of reserve military service gave him room to reflect before launching EverOak Innovations. “Time away clarified the brief,” he says. “There is a sustained need for uncorrelated return engines. Life settlements align with that, and it’s a domain where our method has leverage.”
The Takeaway
The art of the pivot is not frequent reinvention; it’s disciplined repositioning when the evidence shows your capabilities will compound faster against a different problem. Bertele’s path shows how to execute that move: identify structural inefficiencies in large markets, confirm that your edge transfers, assess competitive dynamics, and commit fully once direction is chosen.
“Do the work others won’t, make the cash flows legible, and build governance into the product,” he says. “That’s how you turn complex, overlooked domains into durable businesses.”