For much of 2020, news media speculated about a potential epidemic of suicides as a result of the stressors and social strains related to the pandemic. For those of us in the work of suicide prevention, we urged for more conservative coverage. Why? Because we know that sensationalized media coverage around the topic of suicide runs the risk of developing what we call a cultural script.

Some journalists—unknowingly or intentionally—report in ways that, research has shown, increase suicide risk. Many elements of their reporting—romanticizing, glamorizing, gratuitously detailing the means of death or depicting the death scene—are considered unsafe reporting practices and have been shown to contribute to an uptick in suicide attempts and deaths in the days and weeks following a celebrity's suicide. Some media outlets do outstanding work reporting these newsworthy events with sensitivity. They follow practices that can help people find hope and link to life-saving resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Decades of research summarized in the Suicide Prevention Resource Center safe messaging reference guide encourage those giving public communications about suicide to follow these suggestions:

• Portray help-seeking as a reasonable action.
• Provide resources people can use for support.
• Give people who are willing to help others something to do.
• While you may want to communicate the importance of the issue, be careful not to normalize suicide.
• Emphasize that suicide can be prevented.
• Help distressed individuals to feel competent that they can do what needs to be done.
• Avoid giving very specific details of the tragedy.

The Power of Words

Language matters when discussing issues of suicide. Language reflects our attitudes and influences our attitudes and the attitudes of others. Words have power. Words matter. The language we choose is an indicator of social injustice and has the power to shape our ideas and feelings in insidious ways.

Phrases to Describe Suicide

For example, the phrase "committed suicide" is frowned on because it harks back to an era when suicide was considered a sin or a crime. Think about the times when we use the word "commit": "commit adultery" or "commit murder." Similarly, "successful suicide" or "unsuccessful attempt" are considered poor choices because they connote an achievement or something positive even though they result in tragic outcomes.

See also: What Is 988? Future of Crisis Services

Putting People First

Likewise, using "suicide" as a noun to describe a person ("the suicide was wheeled into the morgue") is considered dehumanizing and reductionist. When we identify a person solely by his or her mental illness ("They are bipolar"), we diminish that individual's wholeness. We wouldn't say, "They were a heart attack." Instead, we need to define a person by their life, not the manner of death, and say, "They were a person who died of suicide. They also loved to play golf, brew beer and climb mountains." Or: "They are a teacher, writer and animal lover who lives with a bipolar condition." Let's put people first and focus on their resilience. Instead of "suicide attempter," we can say "they are a person who has lived through a suicide attempt."

The litmus test for talking about suicide is to substitute the word "cancer" for the word "suicide" to see if the sentence still makes sense or if it has a negative connotation. We wouldn't say "committed cancer" or "successful cancer." We would simply say "cancer death" or "died of cancer." Thus, when it comes to suicide, we should say "suicide death" or "died of suicide."

We should also be wary of assuming intent when we use the phrases "cry for help" or "suicide gesture." This line of thinking can be a slippery slope. Instead of dismissing these suicidal behaviors as not serious, we should lean in and better understand what function they are serving in a person's life. Perhaps, we can get that need met in another way.

"Suicide Is Selfish"

In his book Myths about Suicide, Dr. Thomas Joiner goes to great lengths to dispute this common narrative of suicide as a selfish act. While it may appear that those who die of suicide are not taking into consideration the impact that their death will have on loved ones, there is much evidence to the contrary. The mind of a suicidal person is distorted and often holds the belief that he or she will be lessening their burden on loved ones by no longer being around. Avoid using this type of storyline.

"It Was Their Choice"

The idea of choice or free will is often discouraged when talking about suicide because thinking is often very impaired at the time of death. Sometimes, individuals in the throes of unimaginable emotional pain are not entirely capable of making a rational decision because their depression, addiction or other mental health condition often prevents them from generating alternative solutions to their problems. Many people I have interviewed who have survived an intense suicide crisis report that they experienced something akin to command hallucinations right before they attempted—voices inside their heads telling them to kill themselves.

At an American Association of Suicidology conference, Donna Schuurman challenged the audience to look up definitions of suicide. So, I did. Merriam-Webster defines it as "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally."

The concept of choice is confusing because, while we never have direct access to the inner workings of a mind of someone who has died by suicide, there is much evidence that the thought processes are often gravely disordered by the effects of trauma, mental health conditions and substance abuse. If a person can't choose rationally due to impairment of the mind, the decision is not a choice.

The concept of choice is especially confusing to those bereaved by suicide. On the one hand, survivors of suicide loss who tried to keep their loved ones alive over time find the notion comforting. Even though they did all they could to prolong life, the final "decision" ultimately rested with the suicidal individual. On the other hand, survivors of suicide loss sometimes cannot fathom why their loved ones would choose death over love or the possibility of a better life.

Getting Positive Messages Out There: Hope, Strength and Healing

A few passionate resilience advocates can only go so far in changing the culture of mental health promotion and suicide prevention. We need workplaces, schools, faith communities and healthcare systems to model safe and compassionate language to help challenge existing misinformation and myths. We must learn to disseminate our messages to large numbers of people effectively. To do this, we need to craft safe and powerful messages, work collaboratively with traditional media outlets and use social media strategically.

Crafting Effective Messages about Suicide: Hope Is the Antidote

Suicide prevention is a hard sell. As a result, well-meaning health professionals often make serious errors when crafting messages for suicide prevention. We have a tendency to think that we need to grab the public's attention through graphic and scary messages when that just tends to turn people off. Instead, we need to think about aligning with our audience's beliefs, values, priorities and needs. We must craft messages that are engaging, provide people with the information we want them to remember and give them action steps.

Instead of just raising awareness by sharing statistics of suicide death, we can inspire hope by sharing stories of recovery and letting people know that help is available. Kevin Hines's story is one that spreads a ripple of hope around the world. He survived a jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, and his BuzzFeed video now has over 8 million views on YouTube. His main message: You are not alone, and brain health is possible. He is a fierce advocate for mental wellness and lives his message of fighting for a passion for life every day.

See also: Workplaces Coping With Suicide Trauma

Another positive media campaign, developed by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline encourages everyone to #BeThe1To to take action to prevent suicide. The campaign is designed to be adapted to many different communities to help them move from awareness to prevention—because no one should die in isolation and despair.

We must talk about suicide if we are going to get in front of it. But HOW we talk about suicide matters. Unsafe messages and data that leaves us feeling that "suicide is an epidemic" can create harm. Instead, let's focus on messages and stories that inspire hope and healing and share resources that help people through their despair.

Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are not necessarily held by the author's employer or IRMI. Expert Commentary articles and other IRMI Online content do not purport to provide legal, accounting or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant or other qualified adviser.

Paradigms die hard, but they can eventually die. The idea of a carriage stuck around long after engines, rather than horses, began to power them, but the horseless carriage became the car over the course of a few decades. TV shows were initially just radio shows or Vaudeville acts done in front of a camera, but "I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners" and others eventually pioneered a better way, just as cable TV has morphed into its many, many current forms after initially being just broadcast TV carried on a wire. 

Even though email has been around so long that many of us can't remember life without it, it's actually based on an antiquated physical model -- the inbox and outbox -- and the paradigm is showing signs of dying. While it's still not clear just what approaches will supplant email, they could make internal communication more efficient and, even more importantly, provide better ways of communicating -- even collaborating -- with customers.  

The limitations of the inbox/outbox model have been apparent almost since email became widespread. I remember once having breakfast with Steve Ballmer, then the No. 2 executive at Microsoft, and asking him what the next killer app would be for personal computers. Email, he said. Well, that breakfast was in maybe 1991, and, by 1993 or so, email's limitations were so apparent that Lotus Notes had become popular as an alternative that allowed for better group collaboration.

Email: from killer app to serious pain in two years.

Companies have been wrestling with email ever since, if only by encouraging a code of etiquette that limits the number of people copied. (Email has been described as a way for others to add items to your to-do list.) Relatively recent tools, such as Slack and Microsoft's Teams, have facilitated collaboration, and those sorts of apps will become more prevalent as we older types age out of the work force and as more digital natives age in. (If I forward something to my daughters via email... crickets. But if I DM or text them... whammo! They may respond immediately. And just imagine the interactions if I ever start to use Instagram.)

As a New York Times columnist wrote recently in a piece titled, "The Kids Are Right About Email, Too": "For them, email isn’t annoying. It simply doesn’t exist."

I'm sure companies will continue to find ways to use collaboration tools to work more effectively than they have been able to just through email. As I've written previously, especially here, I believe that a lot of the increase in effectiveness won't be through speeding communication but by slowing it down, or, more accurately, letting senders and receives sort communications better so the time-sensitive issues get addressed quickly while others are set aside so they don't upset the flow of the receiver.  

But what has really caught my attention is the potential for better communication with customers. They are moving faster than companies are to a post-email world and, as usual, will get impatient with companies that don't keep up. 

Connie Chan, a general partner at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, lays out some intriguing possibilities in this blog post. (She uses China as an example, and I realize China is a controversial topic these days, but I figure we have to find examples wherever we can.)

She describes a new form of communication called "private traffic," which she defines as "a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy that emphasizes direct communication between brands and customers" and is better than email marketing "because private traffic enables two-way conversations. Customers expect a real back and forth whenever they communicate with brands, and in some cases interact not only with other brands but also with other customers....

"Here's one example of how private traffic might work: Let’s say you go to a store to buy a barbecue set. The sales rep might make a recommendation for a specific grill and say, 'Hey, after you purchase this, why don’t you add me as a contact? You can message me if you have any questions about installation, or any aspect of using your grill. If I come across cool barbecue recipes, or accessories for your barbecue set, I’m going to send them your way.'

"You agree, allowing the store rep to start a one-on-one chat with you. What’s the impact? You’re more likely to buy the barbecue set because you have the store sales rep’s personal support, and you’re less likely to return it because you now have a direct connection with them. This kind of private, two-way conversation also helps brands understand their customer better, which in turn helps breed deeper customer loyalty."

Chan describes an approach that Ctrip, the biggest travel company in China, began offering a couple of years ago: "If you booked an international flight for a week-long vacation, you’d have the option of joining a group chat with other travelers who booked tickets to the same destination, around the same time. There would also be a customer sales rep in the chat to act as a travel concierge before and during the trip. They’d answer questions about anything from what to do about a lost passport to which type of outlet converter to bring. But the best part is, once your vacation starts, you’re not only asking the customer sales rep questions — often, you’re talking to other group-chat members too. You might ask how long the line at an amusement park is, or see who has sightseeing recommendations, or even invite people to meet up for dinner. Essentially, the group of strangers becomes a community."

It's easy to see how the private traffic idea could translate to at least some situations in the insurance world. After a flood or wildfire, an insurance agent could act as a sort of concierge for a community, not only helping with claims but answering other important questions about how families can get back on their feet and connecting families with each other for counsel and support. Insurers could also act as a sort of insurance-plus concierge for clients with similar businesses -- landscaping firms, pizza parlors, etc. -- advising them while they advise each other. In addition, insurers could plug themselves into private traffic arranged by others -- perhaps the auto dealer who is maintaining a relationship with customers would welcome an expert to answer tricky insurance questions as part of the dealer/customer private traffic. 

It's easy, too, to see how quickly private traffic could get messy. For one thing, it requires a significant time commitment. And what if someone in the community you organize says something bad about you? Or gives inaccurate advice? Who would be liable? What will regulators say?

But the customer is always right. Right? So, we need to find some way to stop just blasting those email surveys to customers or simply sending forms about policy renewals and to engage them in ways that they find meaningful and helpful. 

If we do, we can obtain what some marketers are calling "privileged insights." The idea is that you can get certain basic insights from market research or from customers when they buy the first product from you but can gain deeper insights -- privileged insights -- if you establish a relationship with them and build trust by offering good advice, providing prompt service, treating them and their data with respect, etc. You develop a virtuous cycle. Customers grant you insights that let you improve your product or service, which makes them trust you more and grant deeper access to their thinking, which lets you....

But part of building that trusting relationship with customers will require meeting them where they are, with text, chat, DMs, etc. and less and less with email.

Yes, I realize the incongruity of my sending you an email about the end of email and expecting you to read it. But I think email newsletters, which are currently so successful for so many, can change as your needs and habits do. I certainly hope this one will. 

Cheers,

Paul 

With more pressure than ever to offer competitive pricing, insurers are seeking innovative ways to leverage additional data sources in underwriting. Today, there are over 4.62 billion social media users globally, leaving endless amounts of personal data across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. 

The need for more data sources to augment and support internal processes is growing, especially with the rise of predictive analytics, AI and new demands to improve the customer experience. 

Social media data provides insurers with an opportunity to gain insights into a customer's risk exposure in real time. But it comes with many challenges. It can be used—but take care!

Some insurers have already jumped on the bandwagon 

One auto insurer created a personality-type assessment based on certain choices and actions of potential clients. These included what athletes the client likes/follows, how concise their writing was and how often they used exclamation marks in social media interactions. The data enabled the insurer to determine if the client was overconfident or reckless, traits associated with many high-risk drivers. 

A life and health insurer in the U.S. tested behavioral data gathered from online retail sites and third-party databases as inputs for predictive modeling to determine the health risks of over 60,000 applicants. Examining user behavior helped the insurer get results similar to traditional medical examinations. Each application cost the insurer only $5, instead of $250 to $1,000 for conventional medical tests, according to a Deloitte report.

AI to the rescue

Scalability is a critical challenge with social media usage in underwriting. Manually collecting vast quantities of social media data is impossible. However, insurers can partner with third-party data vendors that use AI to scrape data from users' profiles. 

AI tools, equipped with machine-learning algorithms, can collect written and visual consumer data and build predictive models faster than human agents. Predictive models let underwriters gain a more detailed assessment of an insured’s level of risk.

Sentiment analysis, equipped with natural language processing (NLP), is a machine-learning technique that analyzes and interprets text. Sentiment analysis can take in written user information at scale and use it to assess a client's behavior. For example, sentiment analysis can read, analyze and collect information from a business's review section, flagging any potential risks that require further investigation.

Machine vision uses software algorithms to assess images based on existing data sets already evaluated by humans. Insurers can leverage machine-vision applications to investigate the photos and videos to discover more about a client's lifestyle, including eating, exercise and smoking habits.

Legal and regulatory pitfalls

Experts say insurers using social media data to fight fraud are on solid legal ground. But, what about underwriting? Regulation is evolving. Proceed with caution. 

Data mining through social media may violate privacy laws, such as the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

Closer to home, the New York State Department of Financial Services says they're concerned insurers could use their own algorithmic underwriting systems to discriminate against consumers illegally. 

New York’s insurance laws, and similar laws elsewhere, prohibit the use of race, national origin, lawful travel, mental or physical disabilities or traumatic experiences such as domestic abuse in any aspect of insurance underwriting.

Insurers must ensure that the external data sources they use meet their antidiscrimination requirements. Additionally, carriers must be transparent to customers about the content of the external data and its source when being used to increase premiums or deny a customer coverage.

One expert says insurers can test their algorithms for discrimination by examining the algorithm's results. For instance, insurers can test their algorithms by omitting standard customer data and only using information about the client's race. If the algorithm can predict the customer's premium by only using race, the model is too dependent on protected personal attributes. 

See also: Personal Connections Via Social Media

Does using social media data violate trust?

Collecting clients' social media information without consent or transparency can feel like a violation of trust. If not done sensitively, this can severely damage an insurance company's reputation, brand and relationships with policyholders. Always ask prospects and customers for permission to view their social media posts.

Lawyer Tyler Dillard compares the use of social media data to previous decisions arrived at on the issue of genetic testing for insurance. For example, while AI may suggest certain typing habits (e.g., excessive use of exclamation points) are correlated with bad driving, the causal link is dubious and supporting evidence is sketchy, unlike genetic testing. Insurers that use AI for big data analysis of social media should emphasize explainability above all else: Why did our program draw this connection?

From a proportionality perspective, analyzing social media data in such a granular way may only produce marginal benefits at the cost of severe regulatory consequences and offending customers. 

Of course, the accuracy of the source data on social media is suspect. The online personas users construct are not always accurate reflections of reality. Moreover, insureds can seriously undermine the underwriting process by learning what information carriers are looking for and publishing content they believe will help them get a lower premium.   

Personalized policies

Despite its challenges, social media remains a great tool for enhanced customer intelligence and developing more personalized policies.   

Although social media data offers a trove of growth opportunities for insurers, the legal challenges, brand-affinity risks and lack of data verification are causing many to steer clear of this underwriting method. In fact, out of 160 insurers investigated by New York state, only one used social media for underwriting. 

To mitigate risks, insurers should focus on rewarding “good” behavior on social media rather than punishing “bad” behavior. In other words, offer discounts to desirable risks. Many regulatory bodies are slow to respond with clear guidelines on big-data analysis of social media. Err on the side of caution. 

As social media data usage in underwriting is adopted, insurers must be transparent with customers about using and obtaining the data. This step is imperative, as undisclosed use of client social media data can infringe on privacy laws and antidiscrimination laws and leave customers feeling violated. 

Leveraging consumer external data remains critical for insurers today. Insurers that comply with regulatory requirements and emphasize explainability and proportionality can mine magnitudes of external customer data and turn it into actionable information. Of course, they’ll need modern rating and underwriting systems to leverage that information.

Physical assets that we can touch and see make sense to protect. Windows get broken by accident, thefts occur, pipes can burst and anything and everything can happen in between. But what about our assets that we can’t see? What about cybersecurity? The information that we store online can be extremely valuable to those looking to do harm. 

Roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created every single day, and phishing attacks, ransomware attacks and distributed denial of service attacks are so common that some 23% of small business owners have experienced an attack on their business in the last 12 months, according to a survey by Hiscox. 

Here are examples of how AI can be used to fight against specific types of cyber threats:

Privacy 

Whether it be federal government organizations, local law enforcement or even personal home networks that have unique features within their dataset that are used to train algorithms, the identities within these systems may be compromised. To avoid identities having their integrity compromised as part of the training data and adding risk to privacy, organizations/persons can use unique techniques such as federated learning. What it comes down to is training the separate models locally at the source and federating them on a more global scale, to keep the personal data secured at the site of origin. Finding specific samples of outliers and excluding them from the training is a good practice.

Bias Bounties

With older software, sharing the intricate details of an AI algorithm can become more and more of a liability, because it’s able to provide insights into the model structure and its operation. A good countermeasure, described by Forrester as a trend for 2022 (North American Predictions 2022 Guide), is bias bounties, which help support AI software companies to further improve their algorithm robustness and reliability.   

Bias bounties are becoming the go-to tool when it comes to the defense of having ethical and responsible AI because they can help ensure that the algorithm in place is as unbiased and as functional as possible. There are more sets of eyes and different thought processes involved to help review the data throughout the course of the campaign.  

See also: Quest for Reliable Cyber Security

Data Poisoning

Data poisoning is taking data and then using it for ill intent. Data used as samples in training algorithms are changed to have an output or prediction that is malicious when triggered by specific inputs. 

Data poisoning is done before the model training step occurs. Zelros has an ethical report standard, where they have been collecting a dataset signature on the successive steps of modeling to ensure that data has not been compromised.

Human Behavior

With data or AI manipulation, malicious activity is typically responsible, but personal data that we often willingly share can be used against us 

Cybersecurity's most prominent weakness is our ability to propagate knowledge of our identity and activities in seconds to millions of people across the globe. Artificial Intelligence or even basic tools that can collect data have exacerbated the problem. 

For instance, geolocalization data that is openly shared on social networks can be leveraged by AI systems to place into categories potential customer targets and provide specific outputs or recommendations. The "attention economy” has been built on the personal data that can be fairly easily accessed. Cultural and scientific awareness is going to be one of our best bets for countering the problem (as detailed in the first topic of this article).

A machine learning model may learn much more than what we could have anticipated. For example, when gender has not been identified in customer data, the algorithm can learn to infer about gender through proxy features, in a way that a human could not, at least with the same amount of data, and in such a limited time. For this reason, analyzing and monitoring the ML model is crucial. 

If we are to anticipate algorithm and model behavior, and help prevent discrimination from occurring through proxies, a key element is diversity. Having multiple reviewers who can provide input based on their socioeconomic, ethical and individual backgrounds can lower the risks of biases being placed into AI programs in the first place. Organizations can also request algorithmic audits by third parties if the organizations lack the knowledge and diversity to complete the tasks themselves.

While watching an old movie, have you ever thought about the fact that there's no computer on the main character's desk? What was it like back then? I imagine sipping coffee, opening my mail, wondering if a check has arrived that I can deposit at my local bank later in the afternoon, hoping the phone will ring and then actually answering it when it does. I might also think about the meeting I'll have that afternoon, penciled into my day planner for 3, while thinking, "I bet Bob will be 10 minutes late. Bob's always late."

Today's world travels at a different speed. I'd say light speed, but I'll spare you the cliché. No one hangs out a shingle and then hopes for customers to notice as they drive by. Customers expect to be wooed, they expect to be wowed and they expect to be impressed by personalized experiences. Your benchmark is no longer your industry -- it's Uber. Customer expectations are no longer based on your competitors -- they're based on Amazon.

There is no single technology that makes this happen. Rather, technology is brought to bear on customer desires. When done correctly, technology is as transparent as it is critical. When implemented poorly, it's like begging your customers to look elsewhere for services.

Here are some lessons that travel insurance has learned that could apply to other parts of the insurance industry:

Mobility

As a travel insurance company, Seven Corners has spent a lot of time transforming the experience of our customers. For example, having an app for both Android and iPhone devices that allows the insured to "carry us with them" wherever they go provides peace of mind for the traveler. Knowing they can pull up their digital ID card or get turn-by-turn directions to a reputable medical facility is a big deal when you're traveling, especially internationally.

Could there be a better sell for getting people to leave location services enabled for your app than travel insurance? People say fear sells insurance, and travel insurance is no exception. Fear of getting sick right before a trip, fear of weather-related issues and now, of course, fear of pandemics has travelers at the height of concern. Why wouldn't they want you to know where they are throughout their trip? It helps provide peace of mind and provides you with an excellent opportunity.

Scalability

Putting data in the cloud has moved from being suspicious to expected over the last 10 years. Having the ability to scale systems to the farthest reaches of the globe with relative ease is critical to providing low-latency access to your products and services for anyone, anytime and anywhere. Imagine being able to set up infrastructure in a new region or country in a matter of days, instead of months or years. Being nimble is a requirement for companies that intend to compete.

Customer Choice

Customers of different backgrounds and generations have different ways they like to purchase and communicate. You can buy a travel insurance policy on our website, of course, but maybe you have questions. Travel insurance is something that most people buy only occasionally, so talking on the phone with someone about where you are going and what you need can be very comforting. After you purchase, you may have benefit questions or need to update information such as trip costs, travel dates or destination country. If you need to file a claim, you might have questions or need clarification on why your claim was paid or denied.

Technology plays a big role in making this easy for customers, meeting them on their terms. For example, allowing customers to interact via WhatsApp or text messaging can provide a real wow factor, letting them use tools they live in all the time to interact with your company. On the back end, the right technology allows customer service representatives to interact with the customer like any other chat. Once the conversation ends, it's stored with their customer record for future reference.

See also: Travel Insurance: An Exemplary Experience

Terminology

While this might not sound like a technology play, it is very common for technology to drive terminology, rather than terminology driving technology. What is a member, or an insured, or a customer? Are they all the same thing? Did you know that most of your customers don't know what a provider is? To them, they visited their doctor or the local urgent care, not a provider. Travel insurance companies are notorious for making their customers learn new terms, rather than engaging with them using the terms they expect.

One way to make sure that technology is driven by customer terminology, rather than the other way around, is to ensure your systems use the terms your customers use. Creating a data dictionary with a glossary of terms, and using this company-wide, will help guarantee that technobabble and industry-specific jargon does not make its way into use on your website, your app and in oral and text communication with customers. Mapping your customer journeys, surveying your customers and simply putting yourself in your customer's shoes will do wonders for making your company seem accessible and available to your target audience.

Speed

In this modern era, new features, functionality, products and services need to be provided at record speeds. Whether you implement R&D, fail forward, set up hackathons or something else, you must have an agile mindset and make sure your technology allows you to deliver new things quickly. If you don't, your competitors will.

To stay competitive in today's fast-moving world and the growing industry of travel insurance, companies must adapt to customers' needs and wants and stay up to date with the latest trends in technology. Transforming the user experience to make things as simple as possible for travel insurance customers will not only make them feel comfortable when planning their trip but will also remain consistent with other technology-friendly user experiences they're already used to. This will only increase the chance that they'll choose to work with your company again in the future.

To be an incumbent means you have been around a while. That sounds old-fashioned, out of touch and full of "good old days" stories. As I have been told, “past performance is not an indicator of future performance.” However, this is shortsighted because this disclaimer is usually accompanied by a chart showing why I should invest today because the future is predictable to some degree. Right?

In our fervor to embrace new insurtech companies, we may have missed the opportunity to learn from those that have seen the ups and downs. Those underwriting cycles seem to persist no matter how much data and technology we have today vs. yesterday or how many new Instagram followers I got this week. 

Fundamentally, the challenges we face today: inflation, catastrophes, debt and destabilization, are not new to those incumbents. They are new to the insurtech community. The world is getting more complex by the day, and a solid foundation of the past certainly helps to pave the way through to the future. The trick is how to get rid of the “vs.” and replace it with “and.” 

The airline industry is a great example of the evolution not revolution that can happen. The technology revolution in this vertical enhanced our ability to access travel, not to replace it. Using technology, the industry suddenly brought to life the infinite possibilities of traveling the world. I could now see myself on a beach halfway across the world. That excited travelers around the world and grew the industry from $1.9 billion in 2000 to $4.7 billion in 2019 (pre-pandemic). A fourfold increase. This wasn’t because we reinvented the airplane. We used technology to make traveling on an airplane more accessible and interesting to all. That is powerful. 

The point is that we do not need to reinvent the insurance industry, we need to combine forces with the insurtech space and make it more accessible, understandable and interesting, to grow the market together. For the benefit of all. 

Agent vs. Digital 

So the next "vs." we are confronted with in the industry serves the same lesson. "The end of the agent is upon us" is as realistic as the end of brick and mortar. Oddly, these prognostications occurred about the same time. But within the last week I did business with both agents and brick and mortar, while also doing business digitally. I’m confused. This world is built on absolute statements because they are great headlines, but the truth is there are very few absolutes in this world except the ones your parents told you, death and taxes. Beyond that is pretty murky. 

While our industry toils in absolutes, the real winners and breakthrough companies will figure out how to meld together the agent and digital in a seamless experience. The first step in doing this is in a realization that the agent brings things to the table that digital cannot, and vice versa.

Whoever effectively figures this out will align digital and people assets to create a great customer experience. 

See also: Good, Bad and Ugly of Going Digital

The retail industry is one that we can learn from, as they are years ahead of the ballgame, and you can start to see winners emerge. If you were a company built on stores, you moved to create a seamless online and digital experience that may lead you to a store, but your order could get dropped off at your front door or shipped from a central warehouse. Two-day delivery was cool; how about 20-minute delivery? For the digital native players, they realized at some point they needed local stores to provide personal services, convenient options or perishable goods. All retailers are being rewarded as consumer spending has been on a tear even through the pandemic. The winners make it so easy to spend money and get stuff that the only loser here is my bank account. 

The point is, every time we get rid of the "vs." and insert "and," we grow the marketplace. The insurance industry could benefit greatly by partnering to build an agent and digital ecosystem. 

Wait, did anyone ever ask the customer? 

Funny how we can solve everything with solid academic theories and forget to ask the customer. This is exactly why this is my last section: to punctuate that our evolution as an industry needs to put aside our intellectual arguments and put the customer at the forefront of our decisions. 

If we build our industry to create more value, be more interesting, be more accessible, then the overall spending for our products will increase. How many of us have used this statement, “for the cost of one Starbucks a month, you can cover your family,” and then nothing happens? This needs to change because that protection is more important than a cup of coffee, yet many people still remain without adequate insurance protection. 

We all have work to do. The start of this happens when we replace "vs." with "and." 

We can get back to our most important promise and be financially sound enough that no matter what happens we hold true to our promise to our customers.

My family recently purchased me a coffee cup with the slogan, “I’m not always sarcastic, sometimes I’m sleeping.” And I get really sarcastic about the notion that insurers put the customer first.

What do customers want from insurance? 

That is a pretty broad topic, so let’s explore. Each day, we interact with products that are customary, or quite simple. We are familiar with them and therefore can make decisions with the use of minimal information and help. On the other hand, there are products that are unfamiliar and complex and even if we work with them quite frequently are still confusing. Take the purchase of my internet service vs. doing my taxes. Although there are a number of different bundles and options for the internet, I will quickly settle in on the right service for me. When I do my taxes, even though this is an annual occurrence, I still seek the advice of a professional because my circumstances may change and the array of options is confusing. 

Now consider insurance. We have some products like auto insurance that act a bit more like the internet service provider. Once I am comfortable with my limits of coverage, I likely renew each year without fail unless the provider does something that I question, like increasing rates. On the other hand, if I were to purchase commercial insurance, there are more moving parts -- my business may expand, payroll may change, I may add vehicles or I ay enter into a new service or product line. Commercial insurance takes some advice and hand-holding to ensure the coverages are appropriate and aligned with my expectation. 

Customers want delivery that meets their needs. That delivery is what we call distribution. Whether through an agent, directly online or via a call center, distribution must bring order to chaos. 

If we are going to make a breakthrough, where do we start? 

First, we need to step back and evaluate the go-to-market strategy. If you do not have a GTM strategy or it is “do what we have always done,” then now is the best time to review. 

Each product in the insurance industry can be categorized based on two attributes that determine how you should take it to market: 

• Product complexity 
• Margin

A product that has high complexity and a high margin can and should be supported by an expert who can answer questions, customize coverages and explain the product choices. Contrast that with a product that has low complexity and low margin. This can and should be digitized. 

The chart below depicts a simple view of the marketplace in terms of complexity, margin and market size. You could analyze your own offerings based on a qualitative and quantitative approach considering your own portfolio or considering the future growth opportunities facing your organization. 

See also: How to Achieve Customer Ownership

Product Comparison of Margin v. Complexity by Line of Business 

There is a linear path that exists in charting these products, suggesting that all lines of business fundamentally are either low-complexity and low-margin or high-complexity and high-margin. On the lower-left portion of the chart, competition keeps margins low, which means keeping complexity low. On the top right, you see products where competition may be more fragmented and where pricing advantages are not the only determining factor in taking market share. 

How do you put this analysis into action? 

First, plotting your own performance is key. Second, understanding your starting point and determining the important priority for each product will help you invest in the right change for the future. For instance, for a low-margin, low-complexity product like auto insurance, you may want to use agents today, call centers in the intermediate term and digital channels in the future, while high-margin, high-complexity products like commercial insurance would be taken to market by agents, whether now, in the intermediate term or in the future. 

A few important points to consider: 

• Agents and companies that do not perfect digital selling for low-margin/low-complexity products will suffer in the future. 
• The idea that agents will disappear is false. 
• Incumbent companies should evolve their distribution to obtain customers digitally and seamlessly refer these customers to professional agents to upsell and cross-sell. Insurtech companies need to consider this, as well, and the potential to partner with agents in the future. 
• Companies that have agents need to support their agents in moving to more profitable products, opening new market opportunities and finding ways to compensate for the value they bring to the customer journey. 
• Finally, decisions about change are guided by alignment with customer expectations first and further supported by financial success. 

The road to the future will be paved by companies that understand that customers want a seamless purchasing experience for all their insurance products and are able to design a strategy that meets them where and how they expect to purchase important coverages.

You’ve heard it before, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

The unfortunate reality is that too few of you reading this are measuring the most important numbers of your business. Because of that, you're not in a position to make the proper adjustment as you work to grow.

Admittedly, there are countless things you could measure, and I'd NEVER recommend you try and measure everything. But there are a handful of numbers that are too important not to track. 

If you aren't reaching your potential, something needs to be adjusted. But you can't make the proper adjustments if you're not measuring the right factors.

Close ratio

Why it’s important

The opportunities in your pipeline are too valuable not to capitalize on them as much as possible. Once an opportunity goes in your pipeline, you need to close as many opportunities as possible.

Establishing a baseline

Calculate your close ratio based on the percentage of clients that choose to engage you as an adviser based on whatever you deliver in a final meeting.

If you focus on quoting for new business, you'll measure your close ratio by the percentage of prospects who say "yes to the spreadsheet." Suppose your sales process is more consultative (our Q4i MORE system, as an example). In that case, you'll measure the percentage who choose to engage you based on your overall recommendations.

How to improve

Don't guess how to improve your close ratio; ask those on the receiving end of your attempt. And ask (game film) them, whether you win or lose their business.

As difficult as it can be, go back to those prospects who said “no” and ask them to be honest with you about why you didn't get the business. Don’t do this as some gimmicky way to try and get back in the door. Do it to learn and be better positioned to close your next opportunity.

Less intuitive may be to game film with those new clients who said “yes.” It might seem a little odd, but sit down with them and ask, “At what point during our conversations did you know we were the right adviser for you? 

Asking this question of your new clients accomplishes a couple of things. One, it will get them to reinforce in their mind why they made that decision, solidifying the new relationship. Two, it ensures you know what's most important to them. So, if you're only delivering “one thing,” you want it to be whatever they consider most important.

Finally, whatever they consider most important in their decision to hire you, other prospects will, as well. This insight allows you to emphasize it with future opportunities.

See also: An Inconvenient Sales Truth

Gross commission

Why it’s important

It is the ultimate scorecard of being a producer. Chances are, it is also what determines your income.

Establishing a baseline

Gross commission is calculated by taking a snapshot of all the business in your book and determining how much commission it will bring into the agency over the next 12 months.

How to improve

Oh, isn’t this the holy grail of sales questions? Without going over all of the countless ways in which you can improve your total commission, I’m going to start with the one approach that makes the others work. 

To improve your gross commission, you must make improving this number a priority. You need to eliminate the activities that don't focus on adding new business, so you can spend time on those activities that do. Decide what percentage of your time should be committed to sales activities, then block that amount of time on your calendar – EVERY.FREAKING.WEEK.

Revenue per relationship

Why it’s important

In my opinion, this is the most important predictor of your ability to grow consistently and profitably. Individual producers can only effectively service so many accounts. The larger the average revenue per account, the more efficient the book of business.

The problem is that most books of business have too many accounts that produce too little revenue. You've probably heard us say that the typical book of business only generates 6% to 7% of total revenue from the bottom half of that book. Beyond the imbalance, many of these accounts have too little revenue to allow them ever to be profitable.

Establishing a baseline

Take the total gross commission (as defined above) and divide it by the number of client relationships.

How to improve

Determine your target account size and your minimum account size. Now the hard part: Find the discipline to not allow opportunities into your pipeline that can’t make it through that filter.

Your minimum account size should be your current average revenue per relationship. After all, you are pulling yourself backward by working on something less than your current average. I would also suggest that your target account size be the average revenue of the top 20% of your current book.

Gross new business written

Why it’s important

The most obvious reason it is important to write new business is the additional revenue into the agency. But don't underestimate its impact as a source of confidence and energy in your organization.

Many of you won't agree with me on this point. Still, I believe producers should always be expected to produce new business. Too often, they stop producing, at least to their potential, once they accumulate a book of business that makes them financially comfortable.

This isn't just about the producer and their income. If producers aren’t writing new business, it affects the agency's ability to make additional investments. It destroys opportunities for other team members to grow personally. It hurts the brand of the organization.

It also gets the competitors circling. If they see that you, as a producer or agency, aren't growing, they see a weak and vulnerable target.

To quote from Sun Tzu ("The Art of War"), "The purpose of the military is to be so intimidating that the enemy dare not attack." When you're consistently writing new business, you are an intimidating force that will keep competitors at bay.

Establishing a baseline

Total the amount of new business written over 12 months and determine how much revenue it will produce in a full 12 months.

How to improve

Similar to my comment on gross commission above, there are countless ways to improve. To emphasize an improvement tactic, regularly ask clients and other centers of influence for specific introductions.

Retention

Why it’s important

Growth becomes way too difficult if you’re losing existing clients as fast as you bring them in. Poor retention also hurts your sales confidence. It’s hard to be confident in promising results to prospects if you doubt your ability to deliver.

Establishing a baseline

You need to measure retention in two ways: revenue and the number of clients.

Calculate your revenue retention rate by taking your total gross revenue at the beginning of a 12-month period and comparing it to the revenue that remains at the end of the 12 months. Divide the ending revenue by the beginning revenue.

I would encourage you to also look at “effective retention.” This is the same calculation but includes removing any revenue you didn't have a legitimate chance to retain. For example, remove them from the calculation entirely if a client was acquired or went out of business.

It is also important to make these same calculations based on the number of clients in your book. This is important because you could lose several small clients without setting off revenue alarms. However, tracking the number you lost and the reason could create an awareness that allows you to adjust and prevent the loss of a larger client.

How to improve

Improve retention by setting specific goals for each client at the beginning of the year and then report regularly on your progress through stewardship reports and check-ins.

See also: Why AI-Assisted Selling Is the Future

It does get easier

If you aren’t already in the habit of tracking these key performance indicators (KPIs), it will take a bit of effort the first time. However, updating them, once established, is relatively easy. Those updates don't have to happen weekly or monthly, but they need to happen regularly. 

As you read through this list of KPIs, how confident are you that you know your numbers? Which of your KPIs do you feel you need to improve most?

Well, then, what are you waiting for? Let the improvement begin!

While the insurtech movement has taken hold and insurers are rushing to automate core processes, a labor-intensive cost center ripe for modernization is often overlooked: regulatory compliance.

Heavily regulated industries, such as finance and insurance, must grapple with a compliance landscape that is fast-changing and chaotic. Without automation and modernization, compliance change management swallows up resources at an alarming rate. Maintaining compliance in these industries requires many manual, repetitive and error-prone processes that must be handled by small armies of well-compensated experts.

To stay current, compliance officers must keep up with not only regulatory changes from multiple agencies but also the enforcement patterns that illuminate on-the-ground realities in a range of jurisdictions, from local municipalities all the way up to international regulatory bodies. Without automation, finding, reading and interpreting relevant regulatory changes and numerous enforcement actions is a cumbersome, manual, labor-intensive process that shifts the attention of skilled specialists away from higher-value projects. 

Regtech solutions automate many of those core compliance processes, so skilled experts are freed to apply their skills to initiatives that better leverage their expertise to benefit the bottom line. 

How regtech complements insurtech

For organizations already benefiting from insurtech, an obvious next step in their digital transformation journey is to investigate complementary solutions, such as regtech, which rely on similar innovations. 

Insurtech and regtech solutions  have evolved along parallel paths. In fact, some insurtech solutions include basic compliance features and vice versa. 

Regtech leverages many of the same core technologies (SaaS, ML, predictive analytics) as insurtech to deliver operational efficiencies, cost savings and better overall user experiences. As the name implies, regtech also plugs important gaps, such as automating regulatory change management, flagging relevant enforcement actions and delivering actionable insights to various stakeholders throughout the organization in near-real time. 

As with insurtech, regtech solutions are also expanding rapidly. According to ResearchAndMarkets, the global regtech market grew from $6.26 billion in 2020 to $7.9 billion in 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%. The market research firm predicts that the sector will continue to expand at a CAGR of 24% for the next few years, reaching $18.89 billion in 2025.

The steep cost of legacy anchors

However, insurtech and regtech are both still early in their adoption cycles. A major reason insurance firms are often slow to adopt new technologies is the need to support legacy software that was designed for a different era, one when cloud computing was not common and software was sold as a product, not a service. Many organizations believe that the change costs are too high to abandon these systems. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  

Cloud/SaaS-based solutions have given businesses across the economy the opportunity to transform various cost centers in their businesses by optimizing processes, automating tasks that can be handled by new solutions, such as ML and AI, and adopting best-of-breed SaaS solutions that deliver fast ROI, turning capex into opex.

Legacy, pre-cloud systems, in contrast, are usually deployed on on-premises infrastructure that requires high up-front costs, steady maintenance overhead and steep management costs. These systems constantly burden IT teams with a range of labor-intensive, repetitive, error-prone tasks that are better and more affordably handled by technologies such as ML and AI. 

Most regtech solutions, just like insurtech, are built from the ground up as cloud-native, whether public, private or hybrid, and to be consumed as SaaS. With streamlined deployment cycles, intuitive user interfaces, automated workflows and application programming interfaces (APIs) that connect related solutions, regtech software eliminates errors, streamlines the compliance lifecycle and frees compliance officers from time-consuming, error-prone, manual processes.

Why 2022 is the right time to modernize compliance. . . before it’s too late

While regtech can help insurance organizations modernize, optimize and eventually automate many compliance processes and workflows, adopting regtech isn’t a simple bolt-on to insurtech platforms, and insurance companies will need to carefully manage the transition to automation-driven compliance.

A September 2021 study by McKinsey forecast the top 10 technology trends that are poised to disrupt the insurance industry in the near term. Of these, McKinsey zeroed in on five that will have the biggest impact on insurance: AI, distributed infrastructure, future of connectivity, next-level automation and trust architecture. 

All of these next-generation trends are converging with today’s best-of-breed regtech solutions, which are powered by AI and built on distributed cloud infrastructures. Regtech software also connects to related business solutions through open APIs, automates cumbersome tasks like tracking regulatory changes and should easily integrate into zero-trust architectures. 

In contrast, insurance organizations that continue to rely on ad-hoc workflows and outdated compliance software risk lagging behind competitors that are quicker to modernize. Lagging businesses also face higher risks of falling out of compliance and getting penalized for it. 

With regtech adoption on the rise and the regulatory landscape growing increasingly complex, 2022 is the year to get serious about modernizing compliance, so you can transform one of your organization’s cost centers into a competitive advantage. 

How to evaluate regtech providers: seven questions to ask

While insurtech and regtech have much in common, the two emerging technologies also differ in important ways. Here are seven questions to ask providers that will help you evaluate whether their solutions will meet your organization’s goals: 

1. How will your solution integrate with complementary solutions  we have already deployed, such as insurtech? 

Integrating insurtech with regtech will help you mitigate risks. For instance, many insurance companies are eager to leverage insurtech to deliver new products, but what happens if those products run afoul of existing (or pending) regulations? 

Ask regtech providers how data will be shared between the solutions and then throughout the organization, so business decisions do not undermine compliance.

2. Do you have reference customers in our sector of the insurance industry? 

Some regtech providers may offer solutions for your industry that are retrofits of solutions designed for other industries, such as healthcare or financial services. While some features may port easily to insurance, others may not. 

Ask vendors to provide references of customers from your market sector, so you understand any challenges that may be specific to your industry. 

3. What’s a realistic timetable for ROI?

Every SaaS provider promises low total cost of ownership and fast ROI, but don’t mistake this for table stakes. Those claims are often inflated. Ask providers to calculate your ROI. . . and then ask them to show their work. 

4. After the transition, where do our existing compliance experts fit in? 

Many fear that AI and automation could eliminate skilled positions that really shouldn’t disappear. Modernization shouldn’t destroy organizational strengths like institutional knowledge and the kind of nuanced subject matter expertise that AI cannot duplicate. 

Ask regtech vendors for a before-and-after picture. How will adopting regtech affect your existing compliance team, and how will the day-to-day work of compliance experts change?   

5. What happens if we decide to switch to a competing provider in the future? 

One of the biggest drawbacks of the cloud/SaaS era was supposed to be a major strength: data portability. In theory, data should be easy to move from one system to another and from one vendor to another if you decide to change, but proprietary software layers often prevent this. 

Ask providers about data ownership and find out how difficult it is to export your data. 

6. How do you protect data and control access? 

Automated compliance won’t deliver ROI if a data breach hits your organization. Be sure to have your security experts grill providers on their various access control and data protection features. 

7. Does your regtech solution satisfy regulators? 

Regulators will have their own priorities, and regtech solutions should have built-in features to address them. Be sure to ask providers about areas that regulators emphasize, such as transparency and the ability to repeat processes and audit data trails.

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FROM THE EDITOR Sometimes, innovation takes time.  Some 30 years ago, I wrote an article for the front page of the second section of the Wall Street Journal that declared a revolution in forms. We were far enough along in the personal computer revolution that software companies were coming out with products that would let users fill out forms on-screen, speeding the process and eliminating the errors that occurred as someone had to interpret people's handwriting. Even more magical, the spread of local area networks meant that information could flow straight from my screen into a corporate database, with no never to ever print the form and have someone re-enter the data.   Everything I wrote was correct, and forms did take a major step forward, but, here we are three decades later, still drowning in forms. And the insurance industry is Exhibit A. I realize that, in many ways, the need for clarity and standardization means insurance has to think in forms -- certainly, many regulators do. But there is so much inefficiency tied up in filling out forms, processing them and gathering them for use in underwriting and claims that I've been trying as hard as I can for years to drive people to consider the sort of automation that is the ITL Focus this month.  As you'll see from this month's interview with Nigel Walsh, a longtime consultant who is now managing director, insurance, at Google, he's pretty much moved beyond automation. His thinking is: Why automate a process when you can do away with it entirely?  He does acknowledge that automation can deliver loads of incremental gains, and the six articles I've highlighted this month lay out a number of possibilities for you to consider.  The whole experience with automation reminds of two lines I use often (apologies, if you've heard them before).  One is a Silicon Valley bromide: Never confuse a clear view with a short distance. That's something I did with forms and do all the time -- even though I know to never confuse a clear view with a short distance. The other is one I came up with on my own: Let's burn all the fax machines. They, to me, are such a symbol of antiquated technology and of the inefficiency in our industry. Let's automate all of them out of existence, then turn our attention to doing away with all the forms that we use fax machines to send back and forth. I may have been much too early about expecting forms to go away, but I'll eventually be right. Really, I will.   Cheers, Paul INTERVIEW WITH NIGEL WALSH As part of this month's ITL Focus on automation and RPA, we spoke with Nigel Walsh, managing director, insurance, at Google, about how far automation has progressed -- and about how to think about what comes next. Why automate a form or a process when you can simply eliminate it?  ""I think things have played out quite well. Bit by bit, area by area, division by division, process by process, things have improved. Adoption of automation throughout insurance businesses increased, without question, and there's no end of processes left to go, I would guess."" -Nigel Walsh Read the Full Interview READ MORE Stocking Caps and Insurance How Amazon’s approach to selling the former can help you move more of the latter. Read More Insurers Turn to Automation When automation is a core technology, transformation can occur at speed, meaning faster return on digital investment. Read More What’s Beyond Robotic Process Automation RPA is a primitive technology and represents only a small part of what’s needed to scale and allow for straight-through processing Read More Tipping Point for Claims Automation While virtual estimating for auto claims—using photos in place of a physical inspection—is not new, the pandemic has made it the preferred method. Read More How to Automate Your Automation It's crucial to take a top-down a pproach, to get a bird’s-eye view of all of processes, to be able to see which will benefit from RPA. Read More How Automation Adds to Need for Humans Automation does not mean industry professionals will be left out in the cold.In fact, the opposite may be true. Read More FEATURED THOUGHT LEADERS Tom Bobrowski Mark Breading Asheesh Mehra Sathyanarayanan Sethuraman Olivier Baudoux Harel Tayeb     View all ITL FOCUS topics Share Share Tweet