Author: Rick Morgan
The Strategic Future Issues Work Group has published the 2018 Key Tech Trends Report, which takes 18 months of Risk Advisories and paints the overarching risk landscape. The 17 Risk Advisories are brief, digestible, stand-alone documents that dealt with specific issues of technology—both threats and opportunities. The topics, however, intersect and overlap, so we have connected the dots and made clear how they work together to affect the insurance industry.
The 2018 Key Tech Trends Report pulls them all together and creates a unifying vision of where we are today—our culture as well as our industry. It's an important read. While these technologies seem to stand alone, they form the environment we operate in. The technologies and our industry continue to evolve. If you don't understand the baseline of the technologies—at least their definitions and core uses—that evolution is going to outrun you very quickly.
These are not just fun or interesting things to know. They are critical developments changing what we insure, how we insure it…the very nature of risk. New products will result. The way we communicate with the consumer has changed and will further. The data we get and how we get it and analyze it are changing. Maybe more than ever before, the three members of our triangle—consumer, agent and carrier—are on equal footing in the transaction process. It used to be more between carrier and agent. Now the consumer is doing more of the driving based on the technologies they are adopting. Not keeping up is suicidal.
In addition to the 2018 Key Tech Trends Report, the Strategic Future Issues Work Group is taking some of the Risk Advisories that were already published and making a deeper dive into the topics. The first advisories introduced critical technology products and trends. We now want to explore them in a more thorough way to better define their impact on society and the insurance industry, including the threats and opportunities the technology brings. We've already started on one—the Internet of Things (IoT)—and will do others throughout the year. If a new trend pops up, we'll move on that with a new Risk Advisory.
Non-Techies Welcome
ACT is all about what technology enables, its challenges and how to use it to our benefit. We need people to join even if they don't have particular tech knowledge. We need agents' real-life insights. You don't have to be a techie. We need to hear from agents what customers are asking for, what their issues are, what obstacles the agents are encountering on the business side. We don't so much need to understand the nuts and bolts behind the technology as we need to understand how to maximize its value. Don't be intimidated. We want agents, principals, managers and those dealing with the public included in the design and creation of solutions based on their needs. The vendors are coming to us and listening, so get your voice heard.