Connected Consumers

Special Report Insurance-Canada.ca Executive Forum

Information networks, the gig economy and the Millennial lifestyle are changing the way consumers buy insurance, but younger people are still in need of guidance when buying insurance, speakers noted at the recent Insurance-Canada.ca Executive Forum.

The Executive Forum is an annual event produced by Insurance-Canada.ca

Speakers at the 2017 Executive Forum included: David Crozier, president and chief executive officer of Everest Insurance Company of Canada; Debbie Landers, vice president of cognitive solutions for IBM Canada; Matteo Carbone, Milan-based founder and director of the Connected Insurance Observatory; and Mark Dowds, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Trov Inc.

The insurance industry is “going to face massive decline if new products and channels are not established for the younger generation,” Dowds told insurance professionals attending the forum.

Changes affecting the insurance industry include the “Millennial lifestyle,” Dowds said, with young people living in cities and not buying cars, for example.

“If they are at work, a lot of the times they are using their own computers or their own gear,” Dowds said during the session, Enabling On-Demand Insurance.

Meanwhile, Crozier suggested that regulators can be a “catalyst” for change “in some areas where insurtech can play a role and that is modelling and integration with predictive analytics.”

But regulators’ “number one job is to protect either a consumer or a market and, as such, change is not the first thing on their mind. It is assessing that change and what impact it can have on their stakeholders,” Crozier said.

“Innovation is not their goal,” Carbone commented in general on regulators around the world.

Also speaking on an Executive Forum panel was Lorie Phair, managing director of the Canadian Broker Network, said during the Executive Forum.

“I think many of the younger people, who we assume are very comfortable buying online, in fact, as it turns out, they are the ones who need the advisor,” Phair said. “They need the personal touch.”

Read the full article in the Digital Edition of the October 2017 Canadian Underwriter.

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