One of the best talks I’ve heard on insurance innovation is The Changing Landscape of Risk presented by Robert Schimek of AIG (SVP and CEO of Americas Region). He was speaking at MarketScout’s Entrepreneurial Insurance Symposium in Dallas in December.
The fact that only the people in the room, plus 63 people on YouTube, have heard it is a shame. It is super informative, very entertaining (on the Insurance Technology Lecture scale), and (for me) it accomplished the elusive goals of a good talk: it asked questions that changed the way the audience thought of problems, and provided answers to questions the audience didn’t know they had. As a bonus for blog writers, it is a gold mine of material – I will be visiting Mr. Schimek’s material over and over.
The overall subject of the presentation was the importance of entrepreneurial innovation in insurance. He had to lay a little groundwork, because AIG’s view of innovation is likely to be different from pretty much the rest of the industry’s; i.e. 63,000 employees and they pay ~ $110M in claims every day…not quite your typical insurance company. Because of this, he is also able to bring some interesting holistic macro viewpoints to the conversation.