Abillity to innovate critical to insurers' future

It's official! The ability to innovate will play a key role in determining the future success, even viability, of insurers. 

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It's official! The ability to innovate will play a key role in determining the future success, even viability, of insurers. 

Why is it official? Because A.M. Best, the rating agency that is the industry's gold standard, says that "companies need to innovate to protect their ability to generate profitable business, and improve operational efficiencies and customer service" and that it "will be reviewing its Best’s Credit Rating Methodology to consider the inclusion of innovation in the assessment of a company’s business profile."

We know it's official because we have entered into an exclusive, multi-year arrangement with A.M. Best so it can draw on our Innovator's Edge platform to track the tens of thousands of insurtechs and other companies that will drive innovation in our industry. The need to innovate isn't exactly a surprise to anyone who has followed the insurtech explosion of the past two-plus years, but it's exciting that we're going to get to work with A.M. Best to help identify and measure the best of insurance-specific innovation practices for the benefit of established insurers, and to help A.M. Best to refine its projections.

Even though we live in turbulent times, we think that the insurance industry has unprecedented resources to draw on as it transforms. At ITL, we already have, in the aggregate, decades of experience setting up innovation programs, and that's just the start. The Innovator's Edge platform delivers the world of innovations and innovators relevant to the insurance industry in an online virtual community. The result is we all make each other smarter and can draw on the collective wisdom that the tens of thousands of innovators generate. 

To codify that knowledge and to make it as widely available as possible, we've been working with our friends at The Institutes to develop curricula that will help insurers leverage approaches and programs that will deliver measurable growth through innovation. More on those as they become available. Stay tuned.

Have a great week.

Paul Carroll
Editor in Chief


Paul Carroll

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Paul Carroll

Paul Carroll is the editor-in-chief of Insurance Thought Leadership.

He is also co-author of A Brief History of a Perfect Future: Inventing the Future We Can Proudly Leave Our Kids by 2050 and Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn From the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years and the author of a best-seller on IBM, published in 1993.

Carroll spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal as an editor and reporter; he was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. He later was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

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