New business models like a sharing economy (Airbnb and Uber) and social brokers are emerging in insurance. Disruptors in the market called “InsurTech” innovators are capitalizing upon these opportunities. The insurance industry of tomorrow, will be incredibly different from what we see today. Unlike today, it will be a technology savvy, youthful and cool market to work in. Millennials will be a big part of that change.
Guidewire Insight
There has been more disruption in the P&C insurance industry over the past few years than in the preceding few decades. In this video of a talk at a TEDx event targeting millennials, Guidewire VP of Business Innovation Laura Drabik shares her experience in the industry and where the innovation in the industry is headed. She shares many important lessons from her career, including a powerful experience as an insurance adjuster. It is evident from her talk that she is passionate about the industry and recognizes the importance of it. She is one of the many here at Guidewire who hold strong convictions about the P&C industry and vital role it has in society.
Transformation is underway in P&C commercial lines – finally! The nature and speed of the transformation will play out quite differently for small/medium/large commercial, workers’ comp, and specialty lines. And the stage of the transformation journey may be very different based on business strategies, the appetite for innovation, emerging technologies, InsurTech, and the geographic scope of the insurer. But the overriding theme is that commercial lines insurers are more aggressively looking to go beyond business as usual.
Guidewire Insight
As Strategy Meets Action (SMA) Founder and CEO Deb Smallwood states in her blog and the SMA report, "Across commercial lines, leadership teams are experiencing a new urgency to transform." We at Guidewire agree. Commercial lines insurance is experiencing significant disruptions—from new modes of digital engagement, rapid technology change, and competition—that are raising the expectations of customers, producers, and employees. We've seen it with our customers, including Nationwide. When we listen to stories like Nationwide's Commercial Lines Transformation, we get first-hand information on how our customers are using our products to deliver innovative digital experiences to their prospects, customers, partners, and customer service representatives.
Business interruption and cyber incidents are this year’s top business risks globally, according to the ‘Allianz Risk Barometer 2018.’ Larger losses from natural catastrophes are also a rising concern for businesses, with the record-breaking 2017 disaster year also ensuring climate change and increasing volatility of weather appears in the top 10 most important risks for the first time. Meanwhile, the risk impact of new technologies is one of the biggest climbers, as companies recognize innovations such as artificial intelligence or autonomous mobility could create new liabilities and larger-scale losses, as well as opportunities, in future. Conversely, businesses are less worried about market developments than 12 months ago.
Guidewire Insight
According to the Allianz Risk Barometer, for the first time, cyber incidents rank as the most feared business interruption trigger, with business interruption also considered the largest loss driver after a cyber incident. Risks, such as these, are evolving rapidly and pose unique underwriting and pricing challenges for insurers. Complexity and non-obvious patterns of risk linkage and risk accumulation require more diverse and dynamic data sets to be modeled effectively. Guidewire Cyence Risk Analytics exists for this reason. The data listening and risk analytics solution combines internet-scale data curation from public and proprietary sources together with machine learning and robust risk modeling to enable risk selection, pricing, and analysis of risk accumulation.