Many self-insureds and carriers use third party administrators as their front-line adjusters. A set of instructions or guidelines from the actual check-writer is supposed to regulate the TPA's procedures. Anticipating every permutation of every possible situation is impossible, but every set of instructions should include guidance on when and how to use mediation. Recently, I had the opportunity to review a set of TPA instructions. The TPA was directed to “negotiate settlements of covered claims pursuant to the authority granted by” the contracting party. No further details were provided. However, another section of the agreement spelled out in minute detail a procedure for mediation should a dispute arise between the TPA and its client. The client knew mediation was an important tool for resolving its own disputes, but provided no direction about how to use it to resolve covered claims. See also: How to Find Patterns in Workers’ Comp Claims   The regional risk manager of one national account tried to get its local team of TPA workers compensation adjusters to try new dispute resolution techniques, but the adjusters refused. “If they want us to do that, they need to include it in their instructions.” What Should TPA Instructions Say About Mediation? Here is some suggested language: "At appropriate milestones in the life of a claim, adjusters and attorneys should take active steps to initiate mediation and report on the results. These milestones include:

• Approaching trial date
• The injured worker has reached permanent and stationary status
• The injured worker has reached age 61
• 70% of the indemnity reserve has been paid
• Four reserve changes within two years
• The case is more than four years old

"Additionally, claims handlers should attempt to close claims with mediation in: -- Death cases -- When the injured worker is acting in pro per (propria persona, or "for oneself") See also: Are You About to Hire Your Next Workers’ Comp Claim?  

Ever since the dawn of civilization, societies have organized around the technology of their time. Likewise, people and corporations will reorganize around this new type of data and value exchange system known as blockchain technology. Blockchain technology represents a new set of both positive and negative risk opportunities that may not pool appropriately with the common set of business perils upon which today’s insurance products are based. See also: What Problem Does Blockchain Solve?   The insurer is faced with four primary categories of concerns related to blockchain technology:

1. How different would it be to insure a decentralized business or business processes than a centralized business? What historic data are still valid, what data needs to be collected anew? How much can the insurer rely upon a management system composed of nothing but software? How does an insurer assert dominion over economic value denominated in cryptographic tokens that are neither money nor property, according to the law? Who do you call when things go boom?
2. The insurance industry itself is an administration-laden database – could it operate on a blockchain? What are the opportunities and implications of culling legions of brokers and staff? Ironically, would an insurer be willing to insure a company that had just culled legions of brokers and staff? If a company does not adopt blockchain technology and a competitor does, what perils are then imposed on the firm? How does the insurer preserve institutional knowledge in the wake of replacing brokers with software?
3. The purpose of regulation of any kind should be to encourage or discourage specific types of human behaviors. If the human is taken out of the equation, what regulations are still needed? Are there any regulations that stand in the way? Are new regulations required? Can regulations be bypassed or shifted to another segment of a process? How fast can regulators respond to an unanticipated condition?
4. Finally, everything about database management has very little to do with the thing actually being computed. Blockchain and crypto-currencies exist in a digital realm. Meanwhile, real people are doing real things in real life where real objects behave according to physical laws. How exactly will blockchain software reconcile or interact with the real world? How will risk transfer between machine and human and back again?

These are extremely important questions that are yet to be resolved. It is worth the time and effort to learn and understand the opportunities and implications of blockchain technology because the value of opportunities for adoption by the insurance industry are magnificent:

• Insurers may achieve extreme efficiency with internal processes
• Insurers may achieve great profitability insuring blockchain clients
• Insurers may discover vast new markets that were previously unviable
• Insurers may scale up or scale down (micro-insurance) at near zero marginal cost.

The insurer needs to know exactly what is being insured, the numerical probability that the peril will or will not manifest and the consequences of a failure or breakdown in the process. Problems may arise where an organization loses important institutional knowledge, adaptability and innovation due to the wholesale elimination of important administrative personnel. The insurance company must know the difference between what a blockchain can and cannot accomplish. See also: How Blockchain Will Reorganize Society   Most importantly, blockchain has the potential to augment people. Blockchain technology allows people -- whether staff or clients -- to be elevated to a higher order of productivity. This is where true wealth is generated. The net value of this technology cannot be achieved by just firing up some blockchain, knocking off staff and cherry picking risk classes. The great opportunity for insurance will be to mitigate risk from fault-prone processes, thereby reducing the need for regulation and eliminating friction from the financial system. This will help bridge the capitalization gap that currently hinders the great innovations that humans are capable of. Adapted from; Insurance: The Highest and Best Use of Blockchain technology, July 2016 National Center for Insurance Policy and Research / National Association of Insurance Commissioners Newsletter: http://www.naic.org/cipr_newsletter_archive/vol19_blockchain.pdf

Apple is facing accusations that it copied Chinese innovations in the iPhone 7. Indeed, China’s smartphone manufacturers released dual-camera systems and handsets without headphone jacks long before Apple did. And the stickers and animations that Apple is adding to iMessage look like a direct knockoff from China’s WeChat. This is quite a twist from the days when Apple accused the Chinese of copying its inventions. The reality is that America’s most innovative company is no longer the world’s most innovative company. Entrepreneurs all over the world are producing innovations that rival what you see in Silicon Valley. This is also evidenced in the numbers of billion-dollar technology start-ups, or unicorns, that are sprouting up all over the world. Of the 191 unicorns worldwide, 42 are in China and eight in India, according to CrunchBase. Yes, more than 105 are in the U.S., but you would hardly have found any blockbuster technology start-ups in Asia as recently as a decade ago. Today, Chinese Internet companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, are among the most innovative and valuable few in the world. The world’s entrepreneurs used to dream of coming to Silicon Valley because it was the innovation capital of the world and there were few opportunities elsewhere.  This is no longer the case, as I learned during my recent trip to New Delhi. There are start-up incubators sprouting up all over India, and the quality of the start-ups is second only to those in Silicon Valley and China, which are running head to head. See also: Insurtech Ecosystem Emerging in Asia I spoke to about 50 entrepreneurs at local incubators and meetups. Unlike earlier generations, very few had interest in moving to the U.S. Most said they believed the greatest opportunities were in India. As technology designer Himanshu Khanna said, “Why should I move to Silicon Valley when I have a market 10 times as large here?” Five years prior, Khanna had asked me to sponsor him for a long-term U.S. visa, which he could not get. The tide has surely turned. For decades, the U.S. invited the world’s best and brightest to come and study at its universities and provided them with temporary work visas. But it placed tight limits on the numbers of permanent-resident visas for those who wanted to stay, so the lines grew longer and longer. My research team at Duke, Harvard and NYU documented that there were, as of October 2006, more than a million skilled workers in “immigration limbo” in the U.S., with only 120,000 green cards being made available every year for their work categories. Ten years later, I estimate the number of skilled workers in limbo is roughly 1.5 million. I explained in my book, The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent, that this would lead to a reverse brain drain. That is exactly what happened. Hundreds of thousands of highly skilled workers as well as the graduates of top American universities have returned home because of America’s flawed immigration policies. They are in leadership roles at top research labs and at the unicorns in China and India. America has lost an entire generation of entrepreneurs and innovators and bolstered its global competition. That is also why the proportion of immigrant-founded start-ups in Silicon Valley fell from 52% in 2005 to 44% in 2012 and is probably even lower today. It is in this context that the Obama administration announced its last-ditch effort to reverse the tide. On Aug. 26, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule to allow foreign entrepreneurs to enter or remain in the U.S. and work at qualifying start-ups. This uses the parole authority under which the president, through DHS, can permit certain individuals to temporarily stay in the U.S. But the president’s immigration authority is very limited, and this is a very short-term and very constrained fix. The start-up entity must have been formed within the three years before an application for entrepreneurial parole; the entrepreneurs must own at least 15% of the entity; only three foreigners can be employed by the start-up; and the applicant must prove that the start-up has “substantial potential for rapid growth and job creation” by receiving investments of capital totaling $345,000 or more from established U.S. investors with a history of substantial investment in successful start-up entities or at least $100,000 in grants or awards from local, state or federal government entities. This is not a slam dunk for entrepreneurs wanting to come to the U.S. — and it provides no clear path to permanent residency. Also, to become effective, the rule must undergo a 45-day notice and comment period in the Federal Register. Nevertheless, if it takes effect, it will be better than nothing: it will probably lead to several hundred start-ups moving to the U.S. and creating tens of thousands of jobs here. See also: A New Frontier for Venture Capital   What are needed even more badly are DHS rules that let foreigners on temporary work visas change jobs rather than be subject to abuse by their American employers. Present rules prevent employees from changing jobs while they wait for their green cards, which often take one to two decades to arrive. This disadvantages both the workers on temporary visas and American workers, because it allows employers to artificially depress salaries. The foreign workers also cannot start companies, so those who could have created jobs here are getting frustrated and returning to their country of origin. Immigration has become a toxic subject in the U.S., thanks to the xenophobia being served up in the election campaigns. Though the use of presidential executive privilege is no substitute for lack of governance on Capitol Hill, we do need to enact rules to improve the dire situation. The country’s competitiveness is at stake now more than ever. To quell the social disenchantment that is creating resentment toward immigrants, we need economic growth and job creation and we need to welcome those who would bring about both.

As senior security research engineer at security and compliance automation vendor Tripwire, Travis Smith spends his days studying the chess moves made by cyber criminals on the cutting edge. The hottest, most lucrative criminal activity of the moment is ransomware, the cyber detective says. The most common variant revolves around getting a victim to click on a corrupted attachment or web link that arrives in a legitimate-looking email message. If the malware successfully downloads to the victim’s machine, it’s game over. In mere moments, the malware will locate and encrypt sensitive files, then launch a shopping cart routine that guides the victim on how to use crypto currency, most commonly Bitcoin, to pay for delivery of a decryption key. Individual victims usually are required to pay a ransom of a few hundred dollars; business entities are routinely paying five-figure, and sometimes six-figure, ransoms. See also: Ransomware Threat Growing for Phones   How bad is it? A recent report from Arctic Wolf Networks estimates a 433% spike in ransomware attacks over the past year. And the FBI says ransomware attack victims paid $209 million in the first three months of 2016, up from $24 million in all of 2015. And that only counts complaints received by the bureau. Typically, the bad guys actually do deliver a working decryption key in exchange for the ransom payment, Smith says. Here is some other useful intel Smith shared in our recent video interview. Text edited for clarity and length. 3C: Why have healthcare organizations been so heavily targeted by ransomware gangs? Smith: Healthcare has a life or death connection to data. So it’s not a financial responsibility. Restoring lost data from data backed up and or reverting to some kind of paper trail takes time. And it’s not something that they’re really well-equipped to do. 3C: Any indication what sectors the bad guys are going to focus on next? Smith: We have been seeing that ransomware has been targeting IoT devices for consumers, as well, so they’re looking at thermostats and TVs and things like that as far as being able to encrypt those. And not only just encrypt them, but prevent access from the device. As far as businesses, the energy sector is definitely a big one, as far as critical components, and financial. Those are probably the next two markets that are going to see heavy ransomware attacks. 3C: Do you expect the bad guys to single out small and medium-sized businesses, because they’re less protected? Smith: Everybody’s going to be targeted eventually. Ransomware is just too profitable a business model for criminals. It’s a 1,400% return on investment, so the average criminal spends about $10,000 to invest in a ransomware campaign, and they get just under $500,000 back. So it’s very profitable for them. Every sector’s going to get targeted eventually. 3C: How has the availability of crypto currency come into play? Smith: Bitcoin provides the criminals with a completely anonymous way to get paid and get out. If you get hit with ransomware, they’ll usually change your desktop background and direct you to browse to a certain website. Then they’ll give you detailed instructions showing you how to pay to get access to your data again. They want to have a seamless transition for getting their payment, and they want to build a reputation for actually letting people access their data again. They want to instill confidence that if you pay the ransom, you are going to get access to your data. 3C: So they do supply working decryption keys if you use their crypto currency shopping cart tool? Smith: In every instance that I’ve seen, yes. I haven’t seen one instance where they haven’t tried to give access to the data. 3C: Couldn’t they just come after you again? Smith: Exactly. A lot of these things are completely autonomous; they don’t require action from the cyber criminal, especially these huge campaigns. If the business does not understand how they got infected, then that same email could still be sitting in the secretary’s inbox. If she opens up the attachment again, then she’s encrypted again with a different decryption key. 3C: What can businesses do beforehand to deter this? Smith: Ransomware can only encrypt files it can access. It only has the same access privileges as the person who opened the attachment or clicked on the web link. So monitoring employee access and granting the least privileges is vital. You want to give people enough access so they can get their job done, but not give them so much access that they have the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. See also: Ransomware: Your Money or Your Data!   3C: What about training? Smith: Employee awareness training is an important best practice. You want your employees to be aware these types of campaigns are out there. Don’t click on every link or every attachment, especially if you’re not expecting it. Always have your guard up, and try to verify from the sender before you open up any attachments. That’s usually how the ransomware is going to get in. 3C: Sounds like we can’t trust email? Smith: You can’t trust email from anybody. You can get an attachment and it’s ‘paystub.pdf.’ It looks like a PDF, it smells like a PDF, you say, ‘Oh, someone sent me my paystub.’ So you double click it to see what it is, and you get encrypted. This article originally appeared on ThirdCertainty.

Almost all insurers have started digital projects, many have digital teams, but only a few have a true digital insurance strategy. To develop a coherent strategy for digital insurance, first an insurer must decide what the term means. There is a distinction between insurance digitalization and true digital business. Digitalization consists of taking existing processes, procedures and services and using technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Fundamentally, digitalization takes what an insurer is doing already, and applies digital. In this circumstance, there is no real transformation of the business. Digitalization is critical in a price-sensitive, highly competitive industry, but it is not enough to distinguish an insurer from the competition. In the context of insurance, true digital business requires the application of technology to offer new business value or move the insurer to a new position in the market. In many markets, the form this new digital business will assume has yet to be determined. See also: Maturing Use of Mobile in Insurance   Many different methods exist to evaluate digital business maturity. I prefer a five-level model, based on methodologies used by industry analysts and other experts.

1. The first level is digitalization, taking existing processes and applying technology. Many insurers began this process in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and, unfortunately, many have stayed there. Insurers initially saw large efficiency benefits in moving internal processes away from paper over to digital, but those returns rapidly drop off after an insurer migrates the highest-priority processes. An example of this stage is offering PDF copies of insurance documents on a customer portal.
2. The second level is to create new digital experiences, using the capabilities of digital platforms. An example is creating mobile applications for agents to improve interactions with the company, using geolocation to offer nearby preferred vendors and other options.
3. Level three is offering new insurance programs that would not be possible without digital technologies. One example is a company creating a travel insurance product in partnershipl with a travel mobile application and offering that product at the time a customer purchases a flight.
4. Level four is an evolution of stage three, and consists of embedding digital throughout the enterprise. An insurer thinks of all aspects of the business in terms of digital, even in departments such as compliance and daily operations. An insurer knows that it has progressed to this stage when even traditional analog functions such as the mailroom evaluate all processes with digital transformation in mind.
5. At level five, an insurer has repositioned to a new competitive space inside the insurance market. We are only now beginning to see a few stage five insurers, and these insurers are often born digital. An example is new peer-to-peer insurance models that have begun to gain acceptance in recent years, like crop insurance in Africa. This insurance is paid for by a surcharge on farming inputs such as fertilizer and seeds. Claims are automatically initiated when weather stations recognize severe weather events. This is a form of protection that could only exist in a digital world.

See also: 5 Accelerating Trends in Digital Marketing   The first step toward transforming into a digital insurer requires evaluating where your company is on this continuum, and where you need to be in the next three to five years. What amount of disruption can your business model sustain? What steps can you take now to build the skills and culture you need to compete in the face of this disruption? Crop insurance in Africa may be a small part of the overall insurance market, but consider what could happen if a major agricultural market such as the U.S. began this same transition. All insurers today have digital processes and procedures, but relatively few have progressed past levels two or three on this digital continuum. Eventually all insurers will be digital insurers, but this transformation will move in fits and starts, with the leaders gradually pulling out ahead of the laggards and gaining a lasting competitive advantage.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court's split decision to strike down the Oklahoma Option to workers’ compensation in Vasquez v. Dillard’s is based entirely on Oklahoma’s unique constitution. The court chose not to consider the facts of Ms. Vasquez’ claim. For more information on that claim, see this letter from an experienced Oklahoma workers’ compensation attorney. See also: What Happened on the Oklahoma Option?   The Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation (ARAWC) issued “Oklahoma Option Performance Report,” showing that, despite the new court ruling, the Oklahoma Option has achieved all of its original objectives:

• Competition
• Employer Cost Savings
• Fewer Employee Disputes
• Better Benefits For Most Employees

This aggregate performance data is straightforward and impressive. Path Forward The court provided some guidance for a possible legislative fix to the Oklahoma Option. If employers and legislators in Oklahoma and other states find ARAWC’s Option performance report compelling, the pursuit of new Option laws will continue. The results of this two-year experiment in Oklahoma appear to be concrete confirmation that the meaningful successes achieved through the Texas alternative to workers’ compensation can be exported to other states.

No one can deny the great feeling you experience after earning that promotion. Not only does it validate the hard work you've done, but it's proof that you excel at your job. It means that your organization values your contributions and believes that you're ready to take on more responsibility. Ready for the bad news? Being an effective manager is tough. Whether you were a claims representative, an underwriter, an agent or a broker, or serving in any other role in which you were an individual contributor on a larger team, your new role is entirely different. Your new responsibilities--managing and leading others--requires a whole different skill set that you likely never learned before. See also: How to Unlock Group Insurance Market It's an all-too-common story. Studies say that up to 50% of new#managers fail within their first year on the job. Gallup says that only one in 10 people possesses the talent to manage. And there's the notorious Peter principle--the idea that employees are promoted until they are no longer good at their jobs--a particularly common pitfall for first-time managers. Those intimidating stats show just how jarring the transition to #management is for many people. But don't let them scare you. Instead, use them as a reminder that, as a manager, you need to begin thinking differently about your job, your role and your skills. Making a Successful Transition Repeat after me: "It's no longer my job to get things done. It's now my job to make sure that things get done." This is undoubtedly the hardest concept for a star performer turned manager to grasp. It's a subtle distinction, but understanding the difference could make or break your career as a manager. You're no longer a doer--you're a leader. The emphasis is no longer on working harder, it's on working smarter. If you're staying late to correct and touch up claims long after your employees have gone home, you may be working hard, but you're not effectively managing your team. It's a big mindset adjustment. But once you start thinking in those terms, you'll start utilizing more effective and sustainable management practices and be a better boss as a result. Here are four more ideas to help keep you on track as you go from doer to manager. 1. Don't solve every problem. If you've worked in your role long enough, chances are that you have the solutions to a lot of problems that creep up. In the past, your job was to solve them and move on. As a manager, your job is more to give your employees the skills and understanding they need to solve problems and keep them from coming up again. Approach every new scenario with direct reports as if you're their teacher. 2. Study up. There's a reason so many books are written on management. Most of them focus on what makes great leaders, not what makes great first-time managers, but regardless, management isn't a natural skill for most people. Find reliable sources that teach you more about what it takes to be an effective manager and leader, whether it's a book or two you can read over the summer or a comprehensive training session on management, like our Management Education at the Wisconsin School of Business program being held this October. See also: How to Find, Keep Good Service Reps 3. Check your relationships. You may suddenly find yourself managing your long-time lunch buddy. Maybe your former boss is now a peer. How you handle these evolving relationships is key to your success as a first-time manager. In the Gallup study, researchers list five traits all great managers share. Notice that they all revolve around successfully handling relationships on the job:

• They motivate every single employee to take action, and they engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.
• They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
• They create a culture of clear accountability.
• They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue and full transparency.
• They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.

4. Don't stop at managing. Once you're a successful manager, you're ready for the next challenge--becoming a leader. Managers are tactical. They put systems and logistics in place to make sure that things get done. Leaders are inspirational. They motivate and engage their teams to work hard and find new ways to get things done. Not all managers can be great leaders, but all leaders must possess at least a basic skill for managing. Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, sums up the distinction nicely: "Management works in the system. Leadership works on the system."

Blockchains have a problem: They cannot exist in digital isolation; their value must be derived from the value of something else -- something real. There will always come a time when something real must be represented by data on a blockchain, or when data on a blockchain must represent something real. The tools that we use today for the storage, exchange and representation of value are money and title to property. This is the most over-looked peril in blockchain technology. Are crypto-currencies actually money? There are many prominent articles by many smart people discussing this topic. However, at the time of this writing, according to U.S. Uniform Commercial Code, article 9, a very explicit definition for money is provided as follows: "Money" means a medium of exchange currently authorized or adopted by a domestic or foreign government. Therefore, the answer is clear. No, digital tokens are not money. See also: Why Insurers Caught the Blockchain Bug   While the destruction of digital tokens may represent an economic loss, that loss would need to be somehow quantified as something real. And we’re back to where we started; at some point, token must represent something real. The courts and law enforcement cannot be invoked to protect your bitcoin, and they struggle immensely to protect the value that the bitcoin is supposed to represent, except, notably, in money laundering. While we may be able to identify the peril and even calculate the probability of loss, we cannot predetermine the consequence of the loss and therefore we cannot price the risk correctly. End of story. Are crypto-currencies considered property? There is some ambiguity here, as well. When we think of property, we think of discrete units that are largely inseparable. The title to an asset travels with the whole asset as it changes hands. A lien on the property would be needed to assert dominion on the asset. But bitcoins are quite easily divisible, almost fluid, lubricating a blockchain as a secondary artifact or its maintenance program. If I loaned you a car but kept the wheels as collateral, the utility of he car would be encumbered. Or it would be like holding a lien against the money to purchase the car, and not the car. This doesn’t make sense. The answer for all practical purposes is that crypto-currencies cannot really be treated as property at least within the boundaries of law and are therefore uninsurable. Are we stuck? So, if bitcoins are not money and bitcoins are not property, what are they? How does one prove ownership? How does the owner assert dominion? How would liability be assigned for economic losses of another person in a transaction where all agreements are in the form of non-revocable contracts executed by software? Where do rights and responsibilities attach? This is a deeply troublesome discussion if you are in the business of assuring or insuring blockchain-based enterprises. More troubling is that these precise characteristics are what make crypto-currencies attractive for illegal activity, thereby increasing variance of expectations rather than reducing variance – the exact counter-effect of insurance. If assets can be converted to crypto-currency, they become difficult to seize or repossess. The extra-legal sector is categorically uninsurable by mainstream carriers. Fortunately, some clever legal scholars at Harvard’s Berkman Center have suggested that perhaps ownership may be established with a claim against the cryptographic keys that open and close the contracts that contain the value articulated on blockchain. This is a very interesting idea. We have already established that these nodes and these keys are insurable. Logic may be built into key distribution to assign liability or limit liability and, thus, price risk correctly. A Hybrid Approach In earlier articles, we identified the problems that blockchain solves. We also identified the problems that blockchains cannot solve. Using a hybrid approach of decentralized computers and decentralized human interaction, we may be able to build a bridge that can cross the insurability gap between the virtual and the real world upon which everyone from banks, entrepreneurs and modern decentralized organizations may cross. See also: What Is and What Isn’t a Blockchain?   Some conceptualization of the hybrid approach may consider the following: a system of physical proofs that are interchangeable with the digital proofs in a blockchain -- as needed or where appropriate. For example:

• Instead of a computer modeling a fake network of Byzantine generals, a network of real “generals” can be set up to model a computer network.
• Instead of a solution to a trivial puzzle as a means of generating a digital token, the solution to a real life puzzle can also be used to generate a digital token.
• Instead of a hashing program that generates a cryptographic key, a person’s résumé could be used as the algorithm to hash cryptographic keys that are authorized to open and close packets on the blockchain (see Curiosumé)
• Etc…

As long as each component of the blockchain ecosystem is insurable, the entire system would remain insurable. There would otherwise be no limit to the number of blockchains that can exist nor the number or combination of analog and digital components that can be mixed as long as the tokens, in the end, can clear accounts. (Adapted from: Insurance: The Highest and Best Use of Blockchain Technology, July 2016 National Center for Insurance Policy and Research/National Association of Insurance Commissioners Newsletter: http://www.naic.org/cipr_newsletter_archive/vol19_blockchain.pdf)

The relationship between the insured and the insurance company isn’t just business — it’s also personal. It’s important for insurance companies to be there when customers need them the most, but, over the past decade, “there” has been redefined, and too many insurance companies haven’t adjusted. See also: 5 Personal Traits of Great Leaders   Consumers today communicate on a variety of platforms, including: online, mobile, email and social media. Insurance company leaders who want to gain a competitive advantage must monitor shifting communication patterns and adjust their outreach strategies so they can be where their customers are. Insurance companies need data — both large and small. Big data has become an increasingly central component of modern business operations across all sectors, including the insurance industry. But insurance company leaders who want to implement a visionary approach and build a closer relationship with customers should think beyond the typical use cases, such as using big data to detect fraud. They need to consider “small data,” too — such as using social media and SMS contact information to build relationships. That’s a tall order for insurance companies, which typically don’t have that type of contact information in customer files and often struggle to maintain accurate phone numbers and addresses because many insurers only interact with customers when it’s time to process a claim or add a family member to a policy. But to truly modernize their approach to customer service, and make it more immediate and personal, insurance companies have to bridge the information gap, clean up existing data and secure the additional contact information they’ll need to reach customers where they are. Insurers will also need to ask customers about their communication preferences and obtain consent for future contact early in the customer journey and relationship lifecycle — or as soon as possible for their existing customer base. Insurers can analyze the communication channels available to customers and ask customers which platforms they prefer, then abide by the customers’ stated preferences. In this way, insurers are implicitly demonstrating that they respect their customers. See also: Personal Effectiveness – The Continuing Challenge   But following this strategy is much more than just a sign of respect or a signal that the company is tech-savvy. It opens up possibilities for relationship-building through technology. For example by using a secure, compliant platform that integrates data from multiple sources -- and automates messaging via voice, text or email -- insurance companies can engage in proactive communication, such as sending out alerts when a weather event threatens a customer’s area. And by integrating data from connected home products, like sensors in smoke detectors and appliances that connect to the Internet of Things (IoT), insurers can communicate with customers and their preferred providers to alert them of issues, as they arise, reducing property damage. A personalized approach like this not only reduces risk for both insurer and insured, it builds trust. As insurers create new lines of communication with customers, insurers can become an important part of the customer’s support network — truly looking out for the customer. The technology to make it happen exists today. All it takes to put data to work for a higher purpose is the vision to change the way the company communicates and make it more immediate and human. Because with insurance, it’s not just business — it’s personal.