Co-authored by Alexandra Wilson, Insurance Project Director at Reuters Events, and Matteo
Carbone, Director of the IoT Insurance Observatory and Board Member at Net Insurance.

Over the last 5 years, the risks insurance tackles and the people it protects have undergone a
systemic shift. In such an intense period of change for the industry, the race is truly underway for insurance companies to keep up with the most innovative technologies and rising customer
expectations – all whilst operating in an increasingly unpredictable risk environment. Insurers must
move faster than ever before to execute ambitious transformation plans and innovate with
customer-centric products to not only gain market share, but ultimately retain it profitably.

But for those that successfully leverage the huge wealth of technology and data with a digital growth
strategy that places the customer at its very heart, the opportunities of untapped potential and risk
prevention are endless.

That’s why Reuters Events are holding a number of in-person conferences across Europe, USA, and
Canada to ensure the industry is indeed ready for the future:

• The Future of Insurance USA (Chicago, June 14-15). Click here to attend!
• The Future of Insurance Canada (Toronto, September 13-14). Write to
  sonia.saiedi@thomsonreuters.com for more information.
• The Future of Insurance Europe (Amsterdam, October 18-19). Click here for more
  information!

These events will bring together key industry stakeholders from Strategy, Product, Technology,
Customer, and Risk to transform products and services, meet shifting customer needs, and strategize
for success in a changing world.

There are significant benefits to meeting in-person at events like this. Matteo has been one of the
boldest voices pushing for the return of the in-person events. “As a speaker, I need to feel the
energy of the people in the room and to look at their eyes while I’m presenting – this is what allows
me to deliver a great speech. Also, quality networking requires an onsite presence. You build quicker
(and better) relationships with people who are physically in front of you, than virtually. These are
the reasons that motivate me to speak at each event of the Reuters Events Future of Insurance
Series.” Furthermore, continued Matteo, “These are the first things everybody in the insurance
conference circuit says. However, I see one more fundamental reason for going back to the inperson format: the deepness and broadness of the lessons learned.”

In today’s fast-moving market with unsettled customer behaviors and trends, rapidly adapting to
change is fundamental. A concrete and deep understanding of the trends, as of thinking outside the
box are fundamental not only for thriving, but even for surviving. Reuters Events exists to deliver the
intelligence and foster the relationships that shape strategy and secure growth in the future for
leading insurers worldwide – and there’s no better way to do this than in-person.

Each of us have reflected on the personal experience, and identified at least three interconnected
reasons why in-person conferences are better for learning:

• The Commitment: When you decide to attend an in-person event, you are investing a
  significant amount of your time. You keep your diary clear all day, the only placeholders
  from the outside world are truly unavoidable things. Moreover, you trust the editor who
  curated the content, and you attend most of the sessions on the agenda. However, at virtual
  events where computer fatigue is a real thing, you don’t block out the calendar and listen to
  each session – instead opting to attend a few sessions that you have pre-evaluated as
  important for you, therefore limiting your experience to solely familiar content. You likely
  leave the online platform just after you ingested the content, leaving you without
  interaction and exposure to lateral thinking. On the flipside, at an in-person conference you
  spend time hearing from and talking with strangers, and you feed your brain with their
  alternative points of view and out-of-the-box ideas.
• The Interaction: To speak in front of a cup of coffee with the speaker and some of the attendees allows you to get the color that exists around a topic. Everything seems easy on the polished slides presented, and online you are only scraping the surface of an insurance innovation initiative. It is only when talking with those who have directly experimented and tried new ideas that you can understand what happens behind the scenes. The interactions between the brains of the in-person attendees generates new knowledge that no one of them would have obtained alone.
• The Attention: With an on-site presence, you are there 100%. The contents of the conference and the participants around you come first. When you are attending remotely from your home, you have many sources of distraction from your partner to your pet, and even your fridge! There’s always that presentation to finish, and that email backlog to address. All these forces compete – together with the notifications on your phone – for your attention and limit your focus on learning.

For these reasons, the broadness and deepness of the learning at in-person events remains unique.
Alongside this, quality attendance and an unmatched speaker line-up is a given at any Reuters event,
attracting senior decision makers, domain experts and industry key influencers as a rule. The result?
Forums where business gets done – not just discussed.

Reuters Events Future of Insurance Series will bring together CEO and C-level executives from the
most relevant players in the insurance arena worldwide. We are looking forward to catching up with
you in-person at these events in the coming months.