Risk Management

Tech adaptability key for insurance industry: Experts

Matthew Lerner

December 14, 2018 Reprints

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Tech adaptability key for insurance industry: Experts

NEW YORK — The insurance industry must keep up with the pace of technology development and the use of new tools such as blockchain, according to a panel of industry experts speaking at the Business Insurance Women to Watch Awards program in New York on Friday.

“Every company across the insurance value chain has to change to respond to these trends,” said Kassie Bryan, head of solutions, property/casualty, Americas, for Swiss Re Ltd. in New York. “We also recognize that we have to shift.”

Blockchain will change data sharing and management “like the internet changed the way we sent mail,” said Jacynda Smith, CEO of Tyme LLC, based in Bellevue, Iowa. “Think about sending a letter before the internet.”

One insurance industry group, B3i Services AG, which began as an industry consortium but in March incorporated in Zurich, is working on a blockchain use case for a natural catastrophe excess of loss contract, Ms. Bryan noted.

Jessica Robinson, CEO of PurePoint International, based in Forest Hills, New York, called blockchain a “great technology,” and added it “is still very young. I think there’s still challenges in how to think about it and use it in a larger network,” perhaps within an established organization.

Continuing to develop such use cases will spur development and innovation across sectors.

“Technology is in different industries, so you learn about a technology in a use case in a particular industry and it allows you to think about your industry in a different way,” said Artemis Emslie, principal of AGM Holdings LLC in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida.

For those who may be hesitant to embrace the technological revolution, it is important to “recognize the experiences we have and the way you’re already interacting with some of these technology themes,” through the use of personal electronics, for instance, Ms. Bryan said. “Recognizing that you actually may know more than you think you do can empower you.”