In the 26 July 2017 edition of Insurance Business, a staff reporter penned a prescient headline – Climate change: Can insurers take the heat? – with a challenge to back it up: Climate change could lead to a larger market for insurers as more people seek protection from losses – but the higher probability of… Read more »
On the US Election, Tech, and Coming Home
Since the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, the path forward has been a bit foggy. There is one straightforward result, however, which impacts Canada’s largest tech community. Why is tech different? Shortly after the U.S. declared a president-elect, Fortune’s editorial director, Adam Lashinsky, penned a short column on the new reality for the tech… Read more »
Millennials Leading the Way for Digital Transformation
With 75% of the workforce expected to be made up of digital natives by the year 2025, digital communications are becoming more and more important. I’m not a millennial, but I live with a few of them, and I have noticed some differences. Big Group/Big Differences. Big Dollars/Big Opportunities. At first I didn’t buy into… Read more »
InsurTech: Going Hard or Hardly Going?
To avoid being ‘disrupted,’ and – potentially – to improve the balance sheet, some insurers are driving experimentation of Insurance Technology (InsurTech). However, some initiatives are geography-specific and, from a global industry perspective, the commitment is underfunded. Is this just the nature of today’s innovation paradigm, or are we treating InsurTech as a lower priority?… Read more »
On People, Platforms, and Predictable Disruption
A recent report from Accenture provides an interesting synopsis of trends in the insurance and technology world, including some extremely important insights on the role that intelligence (real, not artificial) will have to play in order for insurers to stay viable and actively manage what Accenture calls “predictable disruption.” This Year’s Vision is “Predictable” This… Read more »
Will Technology Bring a New Insurance Model?
In the early days of my insurance career, an older, wiser colleague told me that the insurance business model was elegant in its simplicity. It’s “money in and money out, and you take your profit from the float.” Things have changed. A number of analysts are suggesting that technologies are driving fundamental alterations to the… Read more »
Which Came First: The Strategy or the Digital?
It is amazing how the turn of a phrase can quickly put a complex issue issue into perspective. What brought me to my knees around ‘digital strategy’ was taken care of in two sentences that fit nicely into a tweet, with room to spare. Long Day’s Journey Into Misunderstanding … For almost a year, I… Read more »
What role will insurance play in the Sharing Economy Theatre?
The “sharing economy” (code for disruptive services such as Airbnb and Uber) is catching on with high consumer acceptance. Governments are setting a stage which will allow consumers easy access to these new services. Insurance will play a key role as well. Our question is: Will we be wearing a white hat or black hat?… Read more »
Emerging Auto Threats and Opportunities: In Conversation with Catherine Kargas
For the third year running, the Insurance-Canada.ca Executive Forum (ICEF2015) will feature Catherine Kargas, Vice President, MARCON leading an expert panel in exploring how upcoming changes to regulations and technological improvements will impact auto insurance over the next decade. Patrick Vice, Partner at Insurance-Canada.ca, interviewed Catherine for some additional background. Following is an excerpt. Vice:… Read more »
Threats and Opportunities in a Totally Connected World
How does insurance work in a totally connected world? Would the available data and expanded mitigation opportunities decrease risk, potentially lowering premiums? Or would we see new risk opportunities with increased value and exposures associated with connectivity (cyber risk, critical failures)? Stick around, the next decade will be informative. And you can get a preview… Read more »
