My Risk Manager is an Avatar

In the world of Commercial Insurance there exists the very curious role of Risk Manager. I mean curious in the sense that successful risk managers appear to have superpowers. They are charged with taking the actions necessary to avoid or reduce the consequence of risk across an entire enterprise. Their knowledge must extend deeply into a variety of subjects such as engineering, safety, the subtleties of the business of their employer, insurance (of course), physics, employee motivation and corporate politics / leadership. Their impact can be wide-ranging, from financial (eg., dollar savings from risk avoidance / mitigation) to personal (the priceless value of the avoidance of employee death or injury).

Sadly, the tyranny of economics restricts the access that businesses have to continuous, high quality risk management. Full-time risk managers are prevalent in huge, complex, global companies. These firms often self-insure, or purchase loss sensitive accounts and the financial value of a risk management position (or department) is clear. The larger mid-market firms can afford to selectively purchase safety consultant services, their insurance broker might perform some of these tasks (especially at renewal), and their insurers may have loss control professionals working some of these accounts. However, for the majority of small businesses, risk management at the professional level is not affordable.

Over the past year, I have toyed with different ideas about how to automate this function in order to bring the value of a risk manager to the small commercial business segment. My attempts were always unsatisfying (and one reason I have not blogged this idea before). However at The Front End of Innovation conference last week in Boston, a presentation by Dr. Rafael J. Grossmann (@ZGJR) crystallized the vision. I can now clearly see how existing technology can be combined to create a Risk Manager Avatar.

Dr. Grossmann is a trauma surgeon who practices in Maine. In addition to the normal challenges of his profession, he is one of only four trauma surgeons servicing a very wide area. Although sparsely populated, the challenge of distance and time complicates the delivery of medical services. Dr. Grossmann presented his vision of a medical avatar, a combination of technologies which will perform 80% or more of the routine medical cases in a consistent, timely, and cost effective manner. Combining the technologies of mobile, voice recognition, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning and augmented reality forms a new silicon entity – a medical doctor avatar. He also introduced a company, sense.ly, that is now working to deliver similar services (video here: http://ift.tt/1o9orcj).

If such systems can deliver medical services, then why not risk management? For example, given permission, a system would monitor the purchases of a small company and identify when the historical pattern changes, eg., when the company begins to buy new types of materials. Using predictive algorithms, the pattern can be compared against others to evaluate if there is likelihood that the company is now performing new business operations. The avatar could then contact the small business, or could signal human intervention by an underwriter to evaluate the necessity for an endorsement to a policy to cover the new business operation. Eventually, some of these interventions would also be handled through machine to machine communication and would allow the endorsement to take place automatically.

Someone will build a Risk Management Avatar. The question is, who will do it first?

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You can take a horse to water but a pencil must be le(a)d: The challenge of “What does Digital really mean for the industry”?

Recently, I facilitated a roundtable discussion on “What digital really means for the industry”. Over the last couple of years, we’ve run many similar roundtables on the topic. Each time we run one, it never ceases to amaze me around the lack of a common definition for what digital really means, not just across the industry between firms but also between individuals within the same firms. In fact, I’m sure that there is a PhD paper waiting to be written on the topic.

One of my favorite set of questions at these events is to first ask the delegates how they define “digital” and then to follow-up by asking if this definition is shared across their organization. Generally, when you ask the first question, you get very articulate and clearly well-thought through strategic response that makes 100% rational sense. Then, when you ask the second question, you often get a look of despair or, at best, frustration with their colleagues who “just don’t get it” or are “pulling in different directions”. Well, I might be exaggerating a little here but hopefully you get the idea.

From the experience of asking this question repeatedly over the last couple of years, it seems to me that there are two challenges around “what digital really means for the industry”.

The first challenge relates to opportunities presented by technology, which range from the mundane (such as good old fashioned ‘Straight Though Processing’ and even the application of newer more exciting mobile technologies in customer engagement) through to the extreme (such as new device enabled propositions and business models fueled by the Internet of Things). This is the “what?” challenge, the one that we hear most about and the one that we can articulate the best. It’s tangible. You can see it. You can experience it. You can recognize what others are doing that you are not. There is no mystery around this challenge and you can build a program of change to address it.

The second challenge is a more subtle one. It is “as old as them thar hills” and can be aptly summed up by the saying “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. It’s also one that this industry, as well as others to be fair, have been struggling with every time there is a step-change in pace and direction. If you know where you need to head to, bringing the rest of the organization along with you is the next big challenge, especially when you’re a large and complex one. This is the challenge of “How?”.

When discussing the topic with one insurer, he shared with me his view that “digital” is merely a term used to get his team to think differently about the way things are done. To stop his team thinking about the way they do things today and start thinking about what could be instead. For me, this was a refreshingly honest perspective. It was not about the devices, the technology or the Apps, it was about re-envisioning his business. To achieve this takes great leadership and mustering support around a shared vision.

This brings me back to the title of this blog. Stan Laurel couldn’t have said it better (or maybe worse?) in “Way out West” … “You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be led”. Maybe now is the time to move the debate on to talk more about the “pencils” and the vital role that leadership has to play in addressing successful Digital Transformation? I’d be interested to hear your views about where the challenges around digital really lie for you.

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Quotes from the Innovation Roundtable

They said it couldn’t be done, but we held the latest installment in Celent’s series of innovation roundtables in Tokyo recently. Our innovation roundtables put the focus squarely on interactive discussion among the participants. This is a relatively untried model in Japan, where events typically take the form of conventional conferences with presentations. We’re glad we tried it though, because we got a very interesting line-up of firms. Participants included the whole spectrum: banks, capital markets firms, and insurers; Japanese and foreign firms; traditional mega-institutions and alternative new entrants.

The discussion was lively; below are some quick notes I took of some of the more interesting comments made, to capture a bit of the flavor of the day.

Why Innovate?

“Innovation is not the goal, it is a method and a tactic.”

“We need to innovate because it has become difficult to differentiate us from our competitors.”

“In today’s environment, innovation is necessary if you want to stay profitable.”

Paths to Innovation

“Incremental innovation is an axymoron. You can’t innovate by increments; innovation requires a big bang change.”

“It might be possible to rearrange existing elements to create something new.”

“When to innovate? If our clients think a new service is interesting, we try and create it for them and see if it succeeds.”

“Innovation needs to be business driven.”

“Financial institutions need to have an innovation division; an incubation unit that accumulates ideas from throughout the company.”

IT and Innovation

“IT is not the impetus for innovation, but because IT inevitably evolves, that creates need for innovation.”

“Legacy is a barrier: it is hard to throw things away.”

Cultural Challenges

“We need to justify ROI on any investment each fiscal year. It is hard to show this on an innovation project.”

“If you think about it, financial institutions don’t even have R&D departments.”

Quote of the Day

“Changing company culture is really about changing oneself. I personally enjoy innovation and change. Innovative culture is about getting a bunch of people together who enjoy change.”

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6.11.2014 Celent Webinar: How to Better Leverage Celent

Celent CEO, Craig Weber

This event is free to attend and we expect you to walk away with a better view as to how you can get more from working with us. For more information, please contact Anna Griem at +1 603 582 6137 or agriem@celent.com.

Please click here for more information.

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It’s The Little Things

I bought my wife some flowers recently, and was shocked to discover that the florist—as of this minute, my ex-florist—no longer gives out those little cards you tuck in the arrangement. The person behind the counter said, “We have these new ones from Hallmark, for only 99 cents…”

Huh? I’m spending $20 on cut flowers that cost you only $5, and you think it’s smart to eliminate the cards that cost you two cents each? That’s nonsense.

The real story here is that service experiences cannot be disaggregated. As a customer, I don’t view the Buy Wife Flowers Exercise as 10 separate steps, each with its own decision tree and cost benefit. I want it all, end to end, seamlessly. A good selection of fresh flowers, nice vases, honest and helpful service, a fast checkout process, maybe some ribbon, and those little cards that make sure I get full credit for my thoughtfulness. For that, I’m willing to pay $20. Start messing with the formula, I assure you I will look elsewhere.

It’s the same with all of my financial institutions. The basic product features and price are important. So, too, are how they sell to me, how they communicate routinely with me, what happens when things go wrong. And if I’m sitting across the desk from someone, how they treat my five-year-old when he interrupts a financial transaction with an explanation of his favorite Lego. It all matters.

The institutions I am loyal to are the ones that understand this. For example, I got an honest-to-goodness email from someone in a local bank branch when she noticed something unusual about my account that was, in fact, my mistake. “It didn’t look right, so I thought I’d ask,” she said. Problem solved, customer won over.

In the case of the Lego interruption (a different bank), the rep couldn’t have been more patient, which taught my son an important lesson about polite listening. The next time the bank calls me to offer a new service, I’ll return the favor.

I’m still waiting for one of my insurers or my broker to do something small but meaningful to convince me that I’m something other than a random, periodic check for them. They’ve got the big pieces in place, which is why I have relationships with them. But until I experience the extra touches and perhaps an occasional nice surprise, I’ll keep my eyes open for other providers.

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Consumer mobile apps in Property and Casualty: Webinar follow up

On April 16 and 17 we hosted our “Consumer Mobile Apps” webinar focusing on P&C apps availability in Latin America. We had a Spanish and an english version of the webinar.

The survey behind the webinar included the review of 169 insurers, focusing on the top 10 of each market (20 countries). Before you jump to tell me that I am failing on math 101, let’s put a note here: not all countries in Latin America have 10 P&C insurers.

A question that came up was about the role of brokers & insurers regarding customer -facing apps. There are at least two angles to cover this question:

1) Insurers and brokers competing to win customers/consumers

2) Insurers and brokers collaborating to win customers/consumers

Our research shows that insurers and brokers are investing, with different pocket sizes, to win customers attention through apps. First thing to consider here is that consumers don’t just want an app. They want to have easy interactions. Apps are just another cog in the engine. As investment (and capacities) are needed to provide these experiences it is most likely that larger brokers will be able to play this game along with insurers. Now, when we take a look to the intermediation in insurance in Latin America, banks and retailers play an interesting role too. Consumers usually interact more with these than with brokers and insurers, so if banks and retailers decide to invest in an app that would also provide access to the financial and non-financial products the consumer has with them (i.e. credit cards, product and service offers, insurance, travel? in the case of a retailer), would the consumer be more likely to use this app instead the one provided by the insurer? More broadly, will the consumer prefer to buy the insurance through a bank, a retailer, (fill in the blanks with the distribution channel of your choice) or through the insurance company?

It seems that insurers will play an important role in providing an app every time they have a direct model or by collaborating with the distribution channel that can’t manage these interactions by their own. On all other circumstances it is more likely to expect the app coming from the distribution channel that has a meaningful interaction with the customer.

There are some good examples of collaboration between insurers and agents. Allied Insurance, Celent’s Model Insurer Award winner for the digital catregry this year, enabled agents to brand the insurance app. The mobile app serves as another way for Allied to extend and enhance customer service. Select agency partners dynamically brand the customer experience with their own custom logo. Customers can view policy, save insurance ID cards for offline viewing, make payments, view agency information, get accident help and roadside assistance and start a claim. Future plans include expanding the dynamic branding feature; building additional personalized digital enhancements for its agents and customers. The project from concept to full delivery took approximately eight months. They already had 22,000 downloads and more than 200 independent agency partners personalized the app with their own agency brand. The app also enabled thousands of mobile payments. It’s a perfect mix of Broker/Agent presence with the needs of the insurer.

If you’re interested in learning more about effective technology use in insurance be sure to read about our Model Insurer Awards finalists and winners at http://ift.tt/1nRgXdx.

Another case highlighted in the report, John Hancock’s sales tool to empower its agents (though this one is for Life insurance):

• JH Life BriefCase: one central place to store, organize, and manage illustrations and client related information.


• JH Marketplace: manage sales and underwriting materials, increasing speed of distribution, decreasing cost of delivery, maintaining version control for compliance.

What is the potential for mobile apps in Latin America? This was another area of interest for those attending the webinar.

Latin America has surpassed 100% mobile phone penetration. On average, there are 107 mobile phones per 100 people across the region. However, this doesn’t mean everyone in Latin America has a phone or that there’s connectivity everywhere. Smartphone penetration is growing in Latin America, but adoption rates are behind more mature markets such as the US and UK. Smartphone penetration in Latin America is around 32%, though this differs significantly from country to country. Nevertheless, Brazil, for example, has more smartphone users than Germany or France. Brazil and Mexico together have more smartphones than Australia has inhabitants.

Consumer behavior in Latin America should help to accelerate adoption. Increasingly, consumers are using mobile devices to access the Internet. In Mexico, for example, 80% of smartphone users access the Internet daily, almost 90% access an app daily, and 38% did not purchase something on a store as a result of a search on the smartphone.

Apps are also becoming important in enabling new business and service models; providing a platform to distribute, in a cost-efficient way, insurance products that are less attractive to sell through traditional channels. Microinsurance is an example, as are e-wallet capabilities banks are making available, even in feature phones.

As smartphones become more popular and inexpensive (as announced by the major phone manufacturers in the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona) this trend will accelerate and open more possibilities for financial institutions, beyond the top tier customers. Institutions operating in the insurance space such as banks, retailers and non-traditional players such as Google seem to understand this very well.

Finally, from Brazil we got a question around what is it required before even starting with an app. I believe this could actually be a good title for a report! As we don’t have enough space here I would summarize in the following:

• Understand your customer – who/how/when/why he buys from you. Customer needs to be in the center of the design. We have moved to an environment where “the user” is beyond the insurer (and IT department) control.


• Don’t focus just on the mobility concept, most likely it will require an omni-channel strategy to deliver what they expect. Consistency and integration across channels is of vital importance.


• Work on your processes. Simplify and adapt to new channels and customers’ expectations.


• Invest in a core system that will be able to accommodate these processes, integration points and basically that will provide you with the flexibility to evolve in time with agility.


• If you insist and only want to focus on mobility, assuming everything else in your company works fantastically well, then portals/websites should be part of your mobile strategy besides apps. Use responsive design so it is easier to deliver content on any device (and size of screen).

If you are interested in our research about mobile, there is a series of reports published and some more coming out soon. Also expect a couple of reports about Online insurance. If there is any specific theme you would like to see us cover, please let me know.

See you around!

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Personalization in car insurance is just around the corner

In a 2013 survey in Latin America we asked CIOs about their views on the use of Telematics and UBI. We wanted to know if these were currently in their plans and if they believed that they would have any use and impact by 2016. Despite UBI and the use of Telematics has been well received in UK, Canada and the USA, we found that Latin American insurers were not so optimistic about it. Very, but very, few were in the process of investigating it or considering running a pilot, and the vast majority (overwhelming) said they were not doing (and would do) anything about it in the 3 year timeframe.

In our conversations with insurers some would be very cautious about how it could be introduced, particularly on how attractive this would be for a producer to sell. Particularly, successful incumbents reacted as if this had no chance to succeed and that they would not be the ones to try it, as they believed it would negatively impact their current portfolio (lose customers). Others would say that in Latin American countries the burglary component of the premium is significant, while the collision component not so much, and therefor UBI would not bring advantages in price to customers. All these typical reactions from incumbents to an innovative and disruptive idea that provides the means to personalize the rate to reflect the real risk that the driver represents. Pay as you drive, pay how you drive and more lately manage how you drive are value propositions that target to personalization (of risk) and loss prevention, two of the major trends we see in insurance in the future.

As any disruptive initiative, it only takes one to be bold enough and then change the dynamic of the market. We were conscious about some limited amount of initiatives that were being considered during 2013 in the region and our position was that the 2013 survey results would change completely as soon as UBI and Telematics was taken seriously in the region by at least one player (regardless of the size).

We also kept thinking about leading incumbents. Good for them if this did not succeed. But what would happen if they started losing the good risks towards an insurer with an UBI value proposition? For sure their revenue would be affected. But then, how would the leading incumbent’s portfolio look like if only the high risk drivers stayed? Not a pretty scenario, ha?

Some interesting facts that occurred since last year. The few pilots are taking shape; research is also indicating that in fact specific segments of customers pay more for car insurance just for being younger or a combination of factors that have nothing to do with the real individual risk; the use of telematics has seen its first implementation in a producer distribution model, moving away from being exclusively a direct insurance proposition (or targeted by a few specialized brokers); and last week Baseline Telematics, a leading provider of telematics based solutions, and Sistran, a leading provider of core insurance solutions, made available to Latin American insurers a combined offering with all the required technology for insurers to quote, sell and price insurance policies entirely based on the actual driving habits of a driver (mileage and behind-the-wheel behavior), which is obtained through a telematics device installed in the driver’s vehicle.

Guess what? Not surprisingly our 2014 survey (in edition) shows that, as we anticipated, the perspective on UBI and Telematics has changed completely in Latin America! Around half of the respondents indicated that they believe that in 2014 these technology will have some kind of impact or at least will be tried as a pilot, but most importantly, the view 3 years from now (2017) is that the majority believe it will be of use and impact in underwriting, rating and claims (against only 20% that indicate no use expected).

Solutions as the one presented last week enables monthly billing, with a variable premium based entirely on the usage of the vehicle (kms/miles) as well as the behavior of the driver (acceleration, braking and excessive speed). The objective is to attract the best drivers and rehabilitate (or eventually get rid of?) the more risky ones. The goal is to decrease exposure to risk (cost reduction), perfect your technical margins, and gain market share.

It seems now that the market has aligned in the right trajectory and personalization in car insurance is just around the corner. Will leading incumbents take their chances? Will this be the opportunity for others to grow in market share and quality of their car insurance portfolio? Does any of this resound familiar to you in any given market you may be?

If you are interested in the topic, feel free to contact us. Also, these are some of our reports related to this subject:

• http://ift.tt/1nNMWd0


• http://ift.tt/1kLKq4x


• http://ift.tt/1nNMWd1


• http://ift.tt/1kLKq4y


• http://ift.tt/1nNMWd3

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