Earlier this month, our team attended the ReFocus 2018 conference in Las Vegas. The conference brings together executives from the life insurance and reinsurance space to discuss challenges faced globally by the industry. This year’s theme focused on the impact of life expectancy and longevity on life insurance and reinsurance. While there were a variety of insightful sessions, the highlights below focus on the digital and technological opportunities discussed at ReFocus 2018.
Many Life Underwriters will tell you that when it comes to underwriting ulcerative colitis, you need to know the cold hard facts, such as:
- When it was diagnosed,
- The severity of the disease,
- And whether it is for life or critical illness (CI) insurance.
The underwriter will want an APS report in addition to the application itself. The more we know about the severity of the condition, the better we can assess the risk.
Ulcerative colitis most definitely can be insurable for CI, but it is often attached with a rating. The size of the rating will be determined by our understanding of the impairment. To better understand the disease, let's take an in-depth look at ulcerative colitis.
Did you know that tweets could soon be used to help insurers price premiums? That’s right! Insurance companies are looking into ways to combine social media data with artificial intelligence and predictive modeling to inform coverage among other aspects of insurance programs. Or at least that is what Paul Lucas of Insurance Business Magazine explained in his recent article!
As someone new to insurance, reading about innovative ideas such as this gets me excited for the future of the industry. I mean, it really seems like the opportunities are endless! I had a similar ‘awe-inspired’ experience after recently hearing insights from The Insurance Disrupted Conference.
As a longer-standing member of LOGiQ3’s team of underwriters, I often get asked a lot of questions, both from an internal coaching perspective, as well as an external interested stakeholder perspective. On the external side, the number one question I get asked is, “HOW do you pronounce the name of your company!?” And I tell them, just exactly how you would think ;).
Once they get over that hurdle and blush from the fact that it is actually an easy name to pronounce, they move onto things like: “What is your workflow like?” or “What types of life insurance products do you handle?” “What resources do you have access to?” All very logical questions if you ask me! Below is actually a direct quote from a current colleague of mine who, prior to joining, was interested in working for us. And this is just a short snippet from the 21 questions game we played about the company in what was a very long (re: humorous & enjoyable) email chain indeed.
Recently I wrote an article on Financial Underwriting and how it relates to Crime Scene Investigations. I loved seeing all of the discussions it sparked on LinkedIn! In that article, I outlined the concepts of underwriting financial life insurance products and thought I’d expand my reach by sharing some of my expertise on a hot topic that is definitely going to be having an impact on the life insurance industry; pharmacogenetics.
I’ve decided to break this out into two parts. In part 1 of this series, I’ll walk you through the definition of pharmacogenetics, various related concepts and dive into the specifics of DNA and Genetic Code. Part 2 will talk explicitly about how pharmacogenetics will have an impact on the life insurance industry, and more specifically, on life underwriting. All of this knowledge is aimed at helping underwriters grow! After all, for underwriters to set themselves apart from the masses, knowledge, expertise and a great attitude are their biggest differentiators.
With the recent news of a major Canadian Life Insurance Company offering coverage to individuals with HIV, our three-part-blog series has explored various elements of how this major change affects the industry, companies and underwriters alike. While we discussed how to switch the perspective of an underwriter as well as the intricacies & concerns for underwriting HIV+ clients - we haven’t addressed the impact on an underwriting team.
This has been an exciting month for a couple of reasons – firstly, I joined the LOGiQ3 team as our Inside Sales Specialist and have spent this week getting to know the great group of people here. Second, there have been some exciting things going on in the insurance industry which will broaden the value offering clients have access to and also drive a more customer-centric industry. Check out a few of the major announcements that have been made below:
Earlier this month the 10th annual ReFocus Conference, co-sponsored by the ACLI and the Society of Actuaries, was held in Las Vegas. ReFocus has become a “Must” Go-To destination for leaders in the life insurance and reinsurance market in North America and beyond. Our team was also invited to speak at the conference and share insight (see here for a sneak peek of our presentation highlights!). This year, more than 600 participants from around the world attended. As always, there was a variety of topics to peak the interests of attendees. But an overriding theme was the need for change in the life insurance industry to be able to better serve its customers of today and tomorrow.
There are some harsh realities in the life insurance world, some of which have always existed, while others are only now becoming prevalent.
We recently attended the European Insurance Forum where discussion focused on the ever-changing and innovating insurance landscape. Technology has been a driving force of this change but not without the innovative minds of those coming up with solutions, products and ideas. As agents of change ourselves, we are always excited to hear about opportunities for innovation in the industry.
This got us thinking – where do these opportunities for innovation exist? Given these hubs for innovation have the potential to majorly influence and shape the future of our industry, we wanted to keep you in the loop. Without further ado, here are four events encouraging innovation in the insurance world that YOU should know about!
