Customer LOVE story · Pollatir
Jari Penttilä 👍 is a partner at Pollatir, a Guidewire consultancy whose buyers are the people who run core-system programs at large insurers, a group small enough to fit in a conference room. He started posting with Haamu in April 2026. By October, Guidewire's own social media manager walked up to Pollatir's booth at Guidewire Connections and asked: "Who's the guy who posts on LinkedIn? Oh, it's you!"
183k+
People reached in seven months
8x
Reactions, 7 months with Haamu vs. the 7 before
11x
Comments, 7 months with Haamu vs. the 7 before
Jari Penttilä 👍
Partner, Pollatir
Most LinkedIn advice assumes you want a big audience, but Pollatir wanted a small one. The people who buy what Pollatir sells are the executives and program directors who run Guidewire transformation programs at insurers, and in Europe there are a few dozen such programs at any one time. Jari's own estimate at the kickoff was that the real buying group is under a hundred people in the world, and he already knew most of them in the Nordics personally.
The problem was different: people knew the three partners as individuals, not Pollatir as a company. Pollatir had just rebranded, Jari had just joined as a partner, and his LinkedIn profile did not even mention it yet.
In seven months the posts have reached 183,000 people, his following has grown by two thirds, senior Guidewire consultants are calling to ask for work, and the company that nobody knew is one that the platform vendor itself recognizes on sight.
So, this story is all about what visibility does in a market where everyone who matters already knows each other.
Pollatir is a consultancy built around Guidewire, the US platform that large insurers use to run policies, billing and claims. Its partners are former Guidewire people, and the company works as the technical advisor on the big transformation programs that the large consultancies staff, as well as delivering smaller programs end to end. The team of about 25 works from Finland, Poland, Latvia, the UK, Ireland and Malta.
The question Jari raised at the kickoff became his most read post. On June 29 Jari asked what would happen if international players entered the Finnish insurance market tomorrow: four domestic companies share the market, nobody is forcing anyone to work in more efficient models, and the Nordic level of claims automation is a cost base no newcomer could match without it.
The post reached almost 28,000 people – more than ten times his following at the time.
37,842
Impressions
27,956
People reached
Jari started the way every Haamu customer starts: with a kickoff on the business goals and a LinkedIn strategy built from those.
01
The problem
“We know our stuff. We really do know our stuff. The problem is that people know us as persons, but not as a company.”
“If somebody asks what I do, I say insurance IT. You understand? The conversation stops there.”
02
The goal
The goal was to make Pollatir's expertise visible to the people who run insurance core-system programs, so that they would want to talk, so that recruiting would get easier when the company needed people, and so that conference stages would start to open.
Jari also wanted the company to be, in his words, the cool guys of a nerdy industry: bold about its successes, never boring, never a corporate account.
03
The question he had never written down
One question Jari raised at the kickoff as something he had been wondering about for years: why is there no international competition in the Finnish insurance market? He had his own theories. He had been asking insurance people about it. He had never written it down.
“I can talk about these topics for hours, but I don't know how to formulate that into a story, to be honest.”
PRIMARY audience
The executives and program directors at insurers who own or run Guidewire programs, in the Nordics above all.
SecondARY audience
Everyone working inside those programs, because they are the people Pollatir will want to hire, and the people who will one day be senior enough to buy.
The topics
Claims automation and what AI can and cannot do inside it, insight and reflection on the insurance industry, leadership, and the personal side of building Pollatir.
The topics
Insurance, from the inside
◉ Why four domestic insurers and no international competition shapes everything about how Finnish insurance works?
◉ Why the Nordics automate 70% of claims while the US still checks them by hand?
◉ What climate risk does to insurability?
◉ What it was like to leave Nokia for Guidewire in 2013?
Automation and AI, as it actually works in claims
◉ Why “probably right” is not good enough for an insurance decision, and what that means for AI?
◉ Why not everything is worth automating, after 20 years of transformation programs?
◉ Why analysts expect 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled, and what he sees happening in insurance?
Building Pollatir
◉ Why he turned down leadership roles at Big Four firms?
◉ Why a 25-person consultancy of senior people works differently from a 200-person program staffed with juniors?
◉ How Pollatir grew from a small consulting firm into a recognized name in the industry, with a sponsor's booth at Guidewire Connections?
◉ Nobody wakes up dreaming of becoming an insurance IT consultant, and how he ended up as one anyway?
The numbers
Jari had been on LinkedIn for years with about 2,000 followers and posted a few times a year. The cleanest comparison is seven months against seven months: September 2025 to March 2026 (time before Haamu), then April to October 2026 with Haamu.
Key figures
September 2025 to March 2026 vs. April to October 2026 with Haamu
Posts published · 8x
Sep 25 – Mar 26
10
Apr – Oct 26
81
Reactions · 8x
Sep 25 – Mar 26
512
Apr – Oct 26
4,210
Comments · 11x
Sep 25 – Mar 26
30
Apr – Oct 26
343
Followers · 1.7x
End of March
2,059
Early November
3,433
26,000
People reached in an average month, April to October 2026.
For an audience this specialized, the reach number matters less than who is in it – which is where the next part comes in!
Beyond the numbers
April
After the first posts, Jari went to an industry event and was recognized from his LinkedIn posts by people he had never met.
October
Senior Guidewire consultants started calling. Jari's own count: if Pollatir needed to hire ten or twenty people tomorrow for a program, it could.
“There are a lot of people knocking on our door, because they see that these guys are being successful and doing something different. And because people know us as persons. I think that really comes from the LinkedIn visibility we get.”
Las Vegas
Pollatir sponsored Guidewire Connections in October, its first time at the event under its own name – and the booth had a queue! More than one company from Pollatir's target list came by to ask about partnering on delivery programs. And as a cherry on top, the person who runs Guidewire's own LinkedIn presence walked up to the booth. “Who's the guy who posts on LinkedIn?” Then, pointing at Jari: “Oh, it's you.”
“I also feel that we, through our LinkedIn activities, feel familiar to people. So I think that's why it's easier for them to reach out. The investment in LinkedIn visibility, I think, has paid off very well.”
Jari is careful to say that LinkedIn is one driver among several: the delivery track record and the timing of the market matter at least as much. The year still reads the same way from any angle.
“A year ago nobody knew what Pollatir is. Now there are a lot of companies in the insurance sector who know us and want to work with us.”
The process
After the kickoff and the strategy, Jari runs on the monthly rhythm every Haamu customer runs on.
Step 1
He talks
One recorded interview a month, about what is happening at Pollatir, in the programs, in the Guidewire ecosystem, and whatever he has been thinking about since the last one.
Step 2
He reviews and approves
The interview comes back as a month of posts in his own voice, with his own stories and his own photos. Nothing is scheduled before he has approved it.
Step 3
The posts go out
Haamu publishes them on schedule. He answers his own comments, and when something happens that he wants to say right away, he writes it himself.
Step 4
The numbers come back
Every post's reach, reactions and comments land in the Haamu platform. Before the next interview, three things get checked: the strategy, what the data says about the last month's posts, and what is timely in his field right now, from research and news to the discussions running on Reddit. That is the brief the next hour starts from.
If the people you need to reach already know your name but not your company, visibility is the whole job.
Ready to build your own LinkedIn growth story? Let’s have a chat!
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