The Risks of Hazard

Last week on AMBest TV there was an interview with Hemant Shah, the articulate co-founder and CEO of cat-model makers RMS. It was a standard set of questions one would ask a cat modeler, but there was one response that’s worth a deeper look. 

One of the things venture capitalists are good at — when they are not funding and driving innovation — is blogging. Those VC guys really like a good blog, and VC blogs are a good place to read about insurance, as the combination of fresh thinking on stale technology is hard to resist.

Hacker Daily is one such blog worth checking out. It talks about any and all industries from an innovative and entrepreneurial perspective, including (from time to time) insurance. Last month, Josh Nussbaum wrote a post about the art of predicting how successful a successful investment might be. One of the industries he used for his study was insurance (along with healthcare, and a bunch of other stuff), and it’s worth a look at what he had to say about it.

Every year, AM Best publishes Understanding the Insurance Industry, and the 2015 edition came out a week or so ago. It’s subscription only, but here’s the link.

Inside is the Property/Casualty Market at a Glance, and it’s worth a glance because they call out so many topics we cover at Risks of Hazard. After the summary of what the segment is, and some cool "Top 10" lists (State Farm and Berkshire Hathaway dominate them), the editors state that “the property/casualty industry faces several issues.” That’s where it gets interesting.

First up is Personal Lines, and how “the segment and the industry as a whole continue to allocate significant resources toward improving technological systems.” Indeed, indeed, and indeed! AM Best goes on: “Companies continue to move away from legacy systems and invest in technology to improve and streamline all aspects of the insurance process.” The move towards these technologies is "being undertaken by companies of all sizes in an attempt to reduce long-term expenses and gain or maintain a competitive advantage.”

As I have studied underwriting natural catastrophe, one of the more interesting things I’ve learned is that it’s widely done with software built for something else: accumulation. Even though many accumulation solutions (including some cat models) offer an underwriting function, it is not suited to the actual task of underwriting.

The Internet of Things (or the IoT) is a real boon for technology bloggers, and it is time Risks of Hazard took a look at it. First, some background: here’s what the IoT is, how it works, why it’s not everywhere yet, its impact on insurance, and how it threatens the insurance industry (!). But there is not much about the IoT and natural catastrophe risk out there yet, presumably because they are not really related…

False. The IoT and natural catastrophe risk assessment have one thing very much in common: the importance of location.