The Risks of Hazard

A few months ago, Dr. Anand Rao of PwC published an article in Carrier Management that explored a few of the psychological barriers to innovation. It was an article that stood out because it’s not really insurance-focused, but entirely relevant to insurance and its laggard approach to innovation thus far (right, Mr. Wilson from Aviva?).

Dr. Rao identifies three biases that sand the skids of change. Here they are, quoting his article:

• Status Quo Bias: Over the past couple of decades, behavioral economics has documented human bias toward the status quo. This individual bias manifests itself at the organizational level, as well—very seldom do organizations willingly want to change—and change usually occurs because of external factors.
• Risk Aversion: Evolution has programmed us to avoid risks. The amygdala, the integrative center for emotions in the brain, inclines us to avoid risks. This individual trait carries over to most institutions, except for the few that deliberately have been designed to be risk-seeking. By their very nature, most insurers are very careful about which risks to take.
• Self-Serving Bias: People often conflate what is fair with what benefits oneself. Similarly, we are open to making by gut instinct decisions that favor ourselves.

As we move into the Thanksgiving weekend, I would like to wish everyone who has explored location-based risk analytics with Risks of Hazard a happy holiday season.

This blog is a joint collaboration between Ivan Maddox and Susan Parks.

Cloud computing has rapidly become the method of choice for countless applications across many industries. Insurance is a relative newcomer to cloud computing, but most software solutions for insurance now at least offer a cloud option (if it’s not entirely based in the cloud). However, there are still concerns that cloud computing is not the right technology for insurance solutions. Those concerns are usually based on a misconception, though. To help clear things up, here are four common myths about “the cloud” debunked.

Myth #1: It is unreliable.

The opposite is usually the case. Most providers of cloud services (most commonly, Microsoft and Amazon) bend over backwards to offer backup options, and the cloud can actually be more reliable than other types of infrastructure platforms. The cloud provider can easily back up data to multiple locations to provide an additional level of protection through redundancy. Usually, the cloud service provider and the application vendors will automatically send you emails updating you on critical events.

There is a great article over at Insurance Thought Leadership by Deb Smallwood describing the traditional interaction between agents and insurers. Or, to be precise, the lack of interaction between them (It’s not a good sign when the metaphor for the link is a trench!). The issue she explores is the difficulty in exchanging the necessary information between agents (or brokers) and insurers to ensure smooth business processes. The same problem could be expanded to include any interface in the entire insurance industry, including reinsurance brokers working with their customers and the reinsurers, and even the reinsurers working with the markets.

Last week I wrote about the event in San Francisco I went to where we explored innovation in insurance with Big Data. The point I made was that Big Data and new software are innovating insurance incrementally, but not disruptively. Since then, I’ve been wondering if I was selling the innovation short. Is there actually something disruptive happening? There are plenty of articles out there suggesting there is, so what am I missing?