Innovation in Insurance – we are soooo far behind

ACORD’s Bill Hartnett gave a compelling, entertaining, and pointed presentation on innovation, technology, and the impact of same on insurance (my title, not his).

You will be sorely tempted to ignore this and move on to the next email or project update; Do NOT do this.

His money quote – Insurance is the DNA of Capitalism.  Buildings and homes don’t get built or repaired…”

This set the stage for a discussion of the future that fortunately began with a back-to-basics primer on what insurance is for – risk assessment and management. One lightbulb went off for me – does big data give us great predictability, which obviates the “risk” issue inherent in the concept of insurance?

We will be able to predict weather events, identify medical conditions, greatly reduce “accidents”, deliver medical care designed specifically for that individual patient.

A few factoids – every minute, there are:

• 4 million Facebook likes,
• a million Vine users play videos,
• 110,000 Skype calls,
• 700 Uber rides scheduled, and,
• 450,000 tweets

That’s a LOT of data.

And data mining uses this incredibly rich data trove to learn a LOT about you, about health issues, drug issues, crime, you name it.  Just by accessing, analyzing, and monitoring publicly available data.

Hartnett talked about vehicular changes dealing with autonomous vehicles – Ford and Tesla will have fully autonomous cars on the road before 2023. Given vehicular accidents are the single biggest cause of occupational fatalities, this is good news indeed – computers are better drivers than humans.  Yes, even me.

Moreover, frequency and severity will drop significantly within five years – this is going to greatly impact the auto repair business and auto insurance, but perhaps no industry will be more affected than long-haul trucking.

What will today’s drivers do?  How will they be classified for workers’ comp purposes? Will we get a spate of injuries as drivers see tech taking over the wheel?

New news to me – Guardhat is a hard hat with technology specifically designed to avoid falls, notify when falls occur, and monitor other movement and risk metrics. Other technologies include wearables that address posture and monitor vital signs via a tattoo on the skin.

But hard hats may not be necessary, as 3-D printed buildings are coming – a 3-D construction printing rig can build a 2500 square foot house in 20 hours and needs 3-4 technicians to move it around.

I’ll stop with this – cognitive cognition – computers that can do pretty much everything we humans can in terms of pattern recognition, intuitive capabilities, and perhaps have emotions – exponentially faster and more consistently than we ever could.

Can you imagine the impact on health care?  Doctors? Diagnostics? Medical information? The health care delivery system will be revolutionized, with the potential to dramatically reduce costs as the role of people may well be greatly reduced.

Of course, I’ll be retired by then…oh, wait, I won’t be.

That’s how fast it’s coming.

Then there’s Distributed Trust…