As insurtechnews.com we’ve had the pleasure of participating at last’s week Chicago edition of the Insurance IoT USA Summit 15-16 November 2016 – an important meeting place for the Connected World and the Insurance Industry where disruption is confronted - an event sponsored by Octo Telematics, IBM and L&T Infotech.
We’ve seen lots of exciting presentations on the role of IoT in insurance and what some of the top insurtech thought leaders have to share with us from their vast experience. The first day started with an introduction by Marsha Irving on behalf of the Insurance Nexus team and from Stephen Applebaum – Principal at Insurance Solutions Group – who was the event’s host. It all kicked off with a couple of great speeches from behalf of Sushil Pramanick from IBM and Ed Rochfort from Carrot Insurance on where insurance IoT stands now and what are the next steps in the industry according to them.
How is insurtech being funded? There were several constructive discussions on this topic during the two days including useful insights on the relation between startups and incumbents. A very practical advice comes from Dan Reed, American Family Ventures: it seems that if you are a young insurtech startup just getting on your way you’d better be ready to trample on those estimates you’ve made and consider that the time needed in order to get an insurance partner and go to market will be twice, if now thrice of what you might have expected.
Having the right solution is not enough anymore, said Matteo Carbone – 50insurtech influencer and Founder of the Connected Insurance Observatory - because the market is starting to understand that we are still in an ongoing learning process with a framework that changes every 12 months. He also talked about the amazing growth he has witnessed in the Italian motor telematics market that currently counts around 6 million connected cars. An important observation is that the growth from 1.2 million connected cars in 2012 to what we have today is half due to the so-called self installing boxes (as opposed to professionally installed boxes) which were in experimental phase and still unreliable at the end of 2012. He predicts that by the year 2020/2021 Italy will have around 13 million connected cars and part of that portfolio will be obtained mainly through a solution that is not currently in use. He’s basically telling us to have faith in the elements of surprise that technology innovation has in store for us.
John Kramer, Business Development Director at Octo Telematics took part in a fruitful Q&A session on connected claims as a loss prevention tool and how a change in the claims department of an insurance company will almost certainly create a wave of change that propagates throughout the whole company, potentially revolutionizing the way business is done. Jon-Michael Kowall from USAA explained what a correct customer-centric approach should be like: start by giving an answer to the question ‘how can we solve the client’s problem and what are the pain points?’; only after having clarified that, go and figure out the business situation.
Discussing the new age of connected cars and whether or not insurers are ready for it was Jonathan Charak, experienced insurance professional and actuary. He suggested that insurers should focus on identifying the most efficient liability system when it comes to maximizing benefits for consumers and paying the claims quickly. Another highly debated subject was cyber security and privacy risks in a connected world. Dean Weber, CTO at Mocana, made quite a case about how vulnerable connected devices are to being hacked and that manufacturers, alongside insurance companies, regulators and governments, should be more proactive when it comes to making sure that customers and citizens have their safety and privacy well guarded. Everyone is susceptible to a certain degree of manipulation and the recent 21st October attack serves as hard proof that hackers are very much capable of high level sustained attacks so much so to access some low-protection connected devices that people use in their day by day lives starting with the smartphones and smart watches to digital door locks and security cameras.
The public also chose its insurtech IoT leader of the moment and the winner was announced at the award ceremony which took place on the first day of the Insurance IoT USA Summit in Chicago at Hyatt Regency. And the award goes to… Sylvain Theveniaud, Allianz Accelerator. Unfortunately Sylvain was not able to be present at the actual ceremony because he had to participate in one of Allianz’s accelerators in Nice at the time, but he was so kind as to prepare a thank-you video for those participating at the summit. You can see the short video below alongside a selection of pictures taken during the two days.
We really want to thank all insurance IoT thought leaders that were nominated among the finalists and here they are in no particular order:
*Sabine VanderLinden, StartUpBootCamp
*Matteo Carbone, Bain & Company
*Kevin Meagher, ROC Connect
*Craig Beattie, Celent
*Shefi Ben-Hutta, Insurance Entertainment
*Andreas Staub, FehrAdvice & Partners AG
*Fabrizio Villani, Fintech Italia
*Mark Breading, Strategy Meets Action
*Jenny Williams, XL Catlin
The InsurTech IoT Leader Award was made possible by insurtechnews.com together with Insurance Nexus – a division of FC-BI. Insurtech IoT champions were individually nominated for their leadership around the future thinking of insurance and over nine-hundred votes have been submitted. We hope to be able to offer this award again at future editions with the purpose of identifying those thought leaders to whom the public looks up when it comes to InsurTech IoT expertise.