The IDC "2016 Global Chief Marketing Officer FutureScape" predicts CMO turnover continuing at 25% per year or higher through 2018. This is not surprising, as marketing continues to be disrupted and reinvented. The CMO must anticipate the expectations of the connected consumer, master an accelerating digital learning curve and negotiate a new role and relationship to the CEO – who himself must come to terms with marketing playing a new position in the organization. While this is true across companies in all sectors, it is a special consideration in insurance, where marketing is emerging from a historical “back seat” role in sales support and becoming the leader of customer-centricity and digital transformation efforts. The CMO is now often expected to be a superhero – one who speedily turns customer-centricity into P&L results … uses technology and data analytics to drive performance … delivers marketing ROI … drives leads to sales channels … and advances capabilities to keep up with marketplace opportunities. She is a leader who gets beyond intellectualizing the need for change and quickly makes change happen. She gets Millennial consumers to flock to the brand. Being data-driven is core to the wiring of the CMO who can accomplish all of this. Being a member of the Millennial generation may be useful, too. But I’m hearing a hunger for even more, from start-ups to Fortune 500 leaders. These leaders are looking for a CMO who demonstrates:

• Strategic, visionary and transformational wiring, with the ability to execute
• Skill at seeding and scaling innovation
• Analytical, technical and creative abilities
• A collaborative style - someone who is a motivator and a networker
• Digital native instincts and intuition
• Links to P&L performance
• A sense of urgency

This profile is a tall order. To find your marketing superhero: Define what marketing means in your business. Marketing can be the high-impact discipline that connects your company’s brand with customers to create growth. If you have defined marketing as the advertising, promotions and research function, my definition proposes a much-expanded view with implications for the broader team, goals and metrics and alignment. Being clear on the function’s role is the basis for picking the must-have CMO qualities. Maximize the CMO’s potential by envisioning a function that can:

• Be immersed in customers’ lives and be the internal advocate for their needs
• Surface, synthesize and apply market insight and data - pushing beyond demographics to a segment-based understanding of attitudinal, behavioral and cross-cultural attributes
• Create experiences that attract customers and strengthen relationships
• Test and learn – acquiring and applying data to get better
• Have a P&L focus - connecting customer behavior to financial outcomes
• Be a collaborator with colleagues, especially technologists and data scientists

Look to the CMO to adapt the mature methodologies that matter, and meld these with what technology and data now make possible. Segmentation, A/B testing and positioning methodologies work and are essential in an environment of channel proliferation and media fragmentation. Apply these alongside customer journey mapping, machine learning capabilities and the best social, mobile, community and other connection tactics to motivate customer engagement. Hold the CMO accountable for metrics that make sense. The best metrics focus on the drivers of prospect and customer behavior that marketing can affect. While awareness, intent to buy and volume of qualified leads are on the list, more rigorous metrics linked to P&L outcomes also belong on the marketing scorecard – accounts opened, sales closed, evidence of loyalty such as repeat purchase and recommendation to others. Be aware of the dependencies beyond marketing, across a multi-functional business, to move these levers. Provide sponsorship. Marketing will continue to transform irrespective of the size or stage of maturity of the business. The function's success increases in a culture of customer commitment and insight, where leaders keep the customer at the center of decisions. Chances are your CMO will be mortal. So, how will she succeed? Whether digital migrant, native or newbie, data-driven or intuitive, CMOs will rise to superhero status when they: 

• Operate with a relentless customer focus.
• Achieve differentiation that matters to your target.
• Build and motivate a diverse team – creating, in effect, the composite superhero marketer.
• Lead with openness, trust and collaboration, self-awareness and humility, clarity of vision and connection to execution.

This post also appears in Amy’s regular column on Huffington Post, Medium.com and LinkedIn.

Sally Welborn wrote a good blog post in The Health Care Learning & Action Network calling on self-insured employers to take the lead in reforming healthcare purchasing. She is senior vice president of benefits at Walmart Stores and is responsible for the design and administration of benefits. She writes, “Fixing the payment system can actually result in limiting the cost increases AND drive quality improvements.” We can’t wait for carriers to fix the fee-for-service system. She writes:

• Most are publicly traded and must consider their shareholders. The amount of money they make directly correlates to how much healthcare costs. The more it costs, the more they make from their customers…us.
• Most consider their provider network to be a key competitive advantage. So by default they must consider the provider community a primary stakeholder they can’t ignore.
• Many have a large volume of business with CMS/Medicare and must have systems and processes that support their largest payer.

“More importantly,” Sally says, “I urge you to consider what you [self-insured employers] can do to move your organization to smarter, value-based purchasing of healthcare.” If true reform is to occur, and such reform is quite overdue, self-insured employers will need to make it happen.

I read the article Nick Lamperelli wrote after attending the Insurance Disrupted conference titled "No, Insurance Will Not Be Disrupted," with his conclusion that there are insurmountable barriers to the "Uberization" of insurance. I’ve developed great respect for Nick’s perspectives. But our team at Insuritas disagrees. We think disruption within insurance (at the Uber level) is emerging. We just need to think about insurance in a very different way, much like how Uber thought about the ubiquitous taxi cab and getting a customer from point A to point B while making sure the customer actually enjoyed the ride. Uber knew a vehicle was a requirement to provide the ride, so they focused on reimagining the role of the driver to deliver a new, and enjoyable, customer experience. There are approximately 234,000 licensed taxi drivers in America – and there are approximately 466,000 licensed insurance agents. Our Perspective When our team thinks about the three primary actors in insurance – the insured, the agent and the carrier – we’ve drawn a couple of conclusions. First, we’ve concluded that the insurance carrier will not be replaced. The scale and immense capital required to insure the unknown is substantial. We believe carriers will continue to transform their businesses. Automated pricing algorithms and streamlined delivery systems will continue to emerge, particularly as the actuarial science and actual claims history affirms that the new algorithms and modified delivery systems work. There will just be winners and losers among the current providers. Some thought leaders have been looking at the disruption in banking, particularly in lending, and suggesting insurance disruptors will try to mimic OnDeck, Kabbage, SOFI and Lending Club. These banking disruptors are making loans by underwriting repayment risk using nontraditional and publicly available data points and algorithms (e.g. "likes" on Facebook, Glassdoor ratings, LinkedIn contacts, etc.) to determine if a borrower is likely to meet her repayment obligation. Until there is a market cycle downturn, no one will know if these new underwriting algorithms using publicly available data will prove to be prescient or a disaster. Some folks are thinking this same type of "disruption" is available for a new generation of insurance carriers. We think it’s important to remember that these new online lenders do risk losing the $100,000 they might lend to a borrower, but they can only lose the $100,000 they lent to a borrower. With insurance, unlike repayment risk, claims risk is open-ended, and the open-endedness of claims loss requires capital levels that make an entirely new model carrier entrant unlikely. Just as Uber concluded that the role of the car should not be replaced in providing the customer with a satisfactory ride, our team has concluded that the insurance carrier will not be replaced in providing the actual insurance. Insurance customers, like taxi cab customers, aren’t happy with the current experience, so just as Uber decided to look at the licensed taxi driver, we decided to look at the licensed agent. Uber and Insurance Uber thought long and hard about the one actor it could reimagine to deliver the customer a simple, comfortable ride: the licensed taxi driver. Uber didn’t disrupt the product – i.e. the car – because it knew people still need a vehicle from point A to point B. Uber simply reimagined the driver experience so the customer got what he wanted. Uber reimagined a new generation of "drivers" operating with elegant new tools to finally deliver a ride the way a customer wanted it, a ride experience the customer would love. That includes: clean and detailed cars because of personal vehicle ownership; technology to better understand each driver’s addressable market; instant guidance on where the customer wanted to go and the most efficient way to get there; ways for the customer to instantly access a picture of the car and driver; the ability to rate, rank and celebrate great service instantly that in turn automatically leveraged more business for the driver; the ability to coordinate multiple riders on a single trip to multiple destinations to save time and money and lower the environmental impact of the ride; and a simple, instant payment method … and that’s just to name just a few. Uber didn’t eliminate the driver. It couldn’t. Uber simply reimagined a driver who delivered the product a customer wanted – a comfortable ride. Consumers responded, and the rest is history. Now, think about insurance. The actors are very similar – just think about insurance rather than a taxi ride:

• the consumer is anxious for a new insurance experience;
• the insurance carriers are like the ubiquitous taxi cab the taxi driver uses – the carrier may be a bit old and clunky with aging operators and legacy distribution capabilities (not as upgradable as a Toyota Camry), but, as the car is needed to get the customer from point A to point B, the carrier is currently the only source for the risk management products the consumer needs;
• the licensed agent, who like our licensed taxi driver is the licensed intermediary who delivers the product the consumer wants. And we think it helps to think of the term "agent" globally – agent, broker, MGA, direct writer, core system, raters, IVANS, ACCORD, LeadGen – the collective delivery system of the insurance products to the customer today. Is it possible to reimagine the agent?

We believe the customer is simply looking for a better insurance experience. And, as with Uber, we are focused intensely on the agent. We see the same challenges Uber saw: Traditional agents and all the stakeholders surrounding them are strongly committed to the notion that there is only one way to deliver a customer/insurance experience, and it is through them.The taxi industry stakeholders were (and still are) insisting, “We have the vehicles, the licensed drivers, the medallions, the ride meters, the street maps, the taxi parking spaces, the taxi license, etc. and thus are the only platform able to deliver the ride the customer needs.” Uber didn’t eliminate the driver; it simply reimagined the work and found a new generation of drivers delighted to deliver a reimagined ride. In that same way, our team is reimagining the licensed insurance agent in America. A Customer Reimagines an Agent What do today’s insurance customers want? The ability to shop, compare and buy all of the risk management products they need to protect themselves, their families and their small businesses in a simple, one-stop, omni-channel, comfortable and advisory shopping experience. They want to be able to buy multiple products in a single shopping cart, make a single payment at checkout and have an online insurance account that stores all of their insurance information so they never have to provide the same information twice, never have to keep paper records and buy and cancel all additional products using their online insurance account. The list would be long, all tied to a simple notion: a trusted, comfortable insurance experience. Now, this is the hard pivot for all of us in insurance. Imagine in 2008 that someone asked you what you wanted from a taxi ride, and you ticked off all of the things the Uber driver actually delivers today, and that list was turned over to the taxi cab industry. Could you ever imagine the taxi industry getting close to delivering what you wanted? Ask that same question of insurance customers, let them tick off everything on their wish list for a great insurance experience, and hand that list over to the insurance industry. The Reimagined Agent  For insurance carriers, delivering their product to the customer requires a three-step process:

• The application – collecting public and nonpublic information (NPI) about the character and collateral of a prospective insured;
• The quote – once an application is complete, using actuarial science to profitably underwrite and price the claims risk;
• The sale – once a price is accepted, payment is collected and coverage is bound.

We can leave it to historians to explain how we got here, but there’s a massive infrastructure, including more than 400,000 insurance agents and a multibillion-dollar lead-generation industry in America, designed to sell insurance products to the customer. It is a system almost as old as the taxi system. Go back to your list of things a customer might want for an insurance experience. How about, "I want a trusted adviser who works for me and gets me what I need in a safe and frictionless environment"? As consumers, we don’t like providing private, nonpublic information to anyone, and we are reluctant to engage with people whose job it is to collect it, period. We never have, whether dealing with insurance agents, mortgage originators, tax preparers, government regulators, auto lenders, nurses, doctors, landlords or attorneys." Is it possible to imagine a new type of licensed agent with the tools (just like the ones the Uber driver has) that would let them provide a transformative insurance shopping experience: a simple, comfortable insurance purchase? Can we imagine a new generation of agent that can instantly access all of the public and non-public information about a customer’s character and collateral, deliver it to a wide stable of insurance carriers in exactly the format they need it, get instant quotes from the carriers that reflect the customer’s risk tolerance and assets to be insured, be available to provide any of the advisory insights the customer might want -- all at exactly the moment the customer has an insurance need? What about a new generation of agents, fulfilled in their work as risk managers and customer advocates, operating in a seamless, frictionless ecosystem in service to the customer? Similarly to how Uber has built a new generation of drivers, we are building a new generation of agents, who are empowered and excited to deliver insurance solutions to consumers, who are operating inside companies that have long and deep trusted brand equity with the customer and that have access to everything a carrier needs to know about their character and collateral, eliminating the dreaded insurance interview and application. Our new agent never prospects, sells or steers a customer; she simply focuses on delivering a frictionless shopping, buying and post-purchase service experience tailored to each customer exactly at the instant the customer needs it. We believe the role of an agent, with a completely reimagined operating environment, is more important and more valuable than ever before. More than 5,000 consumers and small business owners ask our agents for help every month. Our agency owners have addressable markets and underwriting packets on more than five million households and get more than 30 million web visits a month with no cost of customer acquisition and application preparation. Our partners have underwriting packets filled with everything a carrier needs to know about character and collateral, ready to be delivered instantly to the carrier, and our reimagined agent is like the Uber driver who is simply focused on providing a concierge level of service to a consumer who has to buy insurance, making sure price, coverages and support are all frictionless. In 2009, Uber imagined a new kind of taxi driver. In just six years, 162,037 reimagined Uber drivers are at work, earning $6 per hour more than the legacy taxi driver, while self-employed, controlling their destiny and glad to be providing the customer with a safe and comfortable ride. A new generation of agents is emerging, reimagined to reflect what the customer actually wants. We are very excited, as the customer is starting to respond.

Pull up your drink and relax – you're in for a deeper read. Thanks in advance for your eyes and time. Read on ... Here, I subscribe to the Elon Musk school of applying "first principles" to problem solving. I like to call this one my "Big W." It has the potential to save tens to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, as well as provide solutions for other challenges we have outside of healthcare. [Note: "Big W" comes from one of my favorite movies - if you know it, feel free to let me know. Chime back. Let's just say a "Big W" is something so obvious many people simply pass right by. Often, value comes from finding and digging deeper.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r97Nv8N7-mI OK, let’s get the scary numbers out of the way and frame the situation. Numbers: According to the latest government statistics, private health insurers, Medicaid and Medicare collectively pay nearly $2.7 trillion annually to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare services. There is $53 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid unfunded liabilities. Mind you, expectations call for these numbers to rise considerably. Players: On one side, we have services and products, including health insurers, doctors, medical services, hospitals and big pharma. On the other side, we have consumers, which are self- and fully insured companies, private pay citizens and individuals who receive state or government benefits. Problems: Our healthcare system is for-profit, with publicly owned companies in different sectors, with shareholders, with funds held by current and future retirees and with massive numbers of employed individuals. So, which companies willingly lower their charges to let customers keep more money to afford growing healthcare costs? Aetna, Merck, HCA? If they do lower their revenues, what happens to their stocks? Do people continue to hold? If not, how does that affect employment in the respective healthcare sectors? The latest stats show that nearly 35% (78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese. Obesity leads to heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, which together are some of the leading causes of preventable death. About half of all adults – 117 million people – had one or more chronic health conditions. One in four adults had two or more chronic health conditions. Just think about the magnitude of this. Do you honestly believe Americans are going to change their poor eating and exercise habits en masse and in a reasonably short term? Do you really expect the majority of obese individuals to take action to lose their excessive weight? The reality is that we have a connected group of self-serving and self-centered individuals, businesses and political leaders, none of whom are willing to make sizable efforts to fix our healthcare system. Add in the massive marketing from food and beverage companies (sodas and alcohol), as well as fast-food restaurants that appeal to a majority of Americans who have little in the way of savings. That all spells a continuing downward spiral for our country's healthcare costs and future affordability. Enter the Big W The Big W is the creation of what I call the "transition plan." This starts with the revelation that a mere 6% of Medicare patients who die each year make up an astounding 27% to 30% of all Medicare costs. This accounts for nearly $200 billion in outgoing payments. According to statistics ​provided ​from the Center for American Progress fellow Ezekiel Emanuel and the latest CMS report on ​our 2014 ​national health expenditures (NHE), ​we add in another $250 billion for end-of-life care ​on those ​covered under Medicaid and private insur​ers. ​In all, that is nearly a half-trillion dollars per year, which plays, I believe, a very important role in our healthcare crisis. The "transition plan" starts with an understanding that those insured individuals who will die in the next 12 months are, in a sad way, a monetary commodity for medical professionals, hospitals, big pharma and medical services/products companies. Many of these individuals will die with little to no net worth. Since 1989, the proportion of those older than 75 with mortgage debt has quadrupled. Many seniors have large amounts of debt because of high medical bills, long-term care and dwindling retirement savings. In addition, credit card debt for seniors is larger and is rising faster than for the younger generations. Let's also not forget that many "last year" patients are people who are not senior citizens. Some come from the nearly 47 million Americans living in poverty or from the working, lower- to middle-income earners. While a portion of this population has life insurance, the industry reports that, of all U.S. adults, only 60% carry any level of coverage at all, and that our country is underinsured for life insurance by nearly $15 trillion. We've extended life, and that is a noble task, but ask a chronically ill person or even an elderly person what they think about being kept alive for as long as possible. Those who are suffering recognize the importance of dying with dignity, instead of slowly wasting away through a myriad of medical appointments, drugs, therapies, surgeries and lab tests. Here’s where the transition plan begins. It’s a system where health payers identify terminal patients or those who are highly likely to become terminal patients and willingly choose to forego payment for most related medical services. In return, they receive a guaranteed tax-free, single-windfall payment. The payment constitutes a large portion of what would have been paid out to the medical community.   Take Charles Smith, a 68-year-old man who has been diagnosed with Stage 3B lung cancer. The average case has a 95% chance of death. Let’s estimate that between chemotherapy, radiation, lab tests, doctor visits, home health, costly medications, pulmonary therapy and several possible surgeries, a typical health payer can expect to reimburse between $345,000 and $375,000. The health payer, ABC Insurance Co., receives the patient’s initial diagnosis on a medical claim. It’s flagged – the case is passed to the company's medical management department. Once substantiated with medical records, the health payers’ actuaries set an estimated value of $350,000 on the case. Now, the health payer gets in contact with the patient and presents the offer for the transition plan. The letter would state the following:

• That, with the current diagnosis, the payer is offering the opportunity for the beneficiary to participate in the offer.
• That the program is voluntary. If the beneficiary does not choose it, nothing will change with his current health coverage.
• That, if the offer is accepted, the payer will send a one-time, tax-free, non-refundable payment to Mr. Charles Smith for $150,000.

Once the insurer makes the payment, the following would occur:

• The health payer would no longer be responsible for payment for any treatment or services, directly or indirectly related to the chronic condition. All such conditions would be clearly identified in the Transition Plan Agreement.
• The insured could continue to see medical providers and have them bill services to the health payer, so long as such conditions are separate from the main diagnosis and other listed conditions. However, payments for any future medical services billed, in keeping with company policy, must be determined to be medically necessary.
• The insurer would continue to pay, on an as-needed and medically necessary basis, any palliative or "pain management" care associated with the main condition. This would not include hospitalization, therapy, home health or premium-brand medications.

What has just happened is a unique meeting of the minds between poor to middle-class dying Americans and the health insurance industry. In giving insureds the option to be financially compensated, health payers shift payments from the medical establishment back to individuals who are taking clear control of their lives. In this specific case, corporate or private insureds receive back a large portion of the $200,000 cost savings in the form of reduced premiums, perhaps mandated by government to certain levels based on certain savings points. Naturally, for self-insured entities, the savings would flow back to the company or organization. Imagine Mr. Smith having less than $5,000 of total savings and no insurance.  He is divorced, yet he has two children who are also in the lower income class.  While $150,000 of tax-free money is not millions, it could make a difference to that family and perhaps their ability to afford healthcare, a home or even college. Without the transition plan, Mr. Smith might struggle to pay his remaining debts and have no money left over for funeral expenses. With the transition plan, he might take, or at least send, his two kids and their families on a trip around the world. Perhaps he would choose to contribute to several 529 plans for the education of his grandchildren.  He could also choose to give to charities, political groups or churches or even share with his most beloved friends. The transition plan is the patient's choice. If the patient is mentally unable to make a choice, she may default to the normal relationship with the health insurer, or the decision could shift to her immediate family or appointed surrogate.  Public payers, private health insurers and corporations that pay for their own health benefits will now have the ability to help others make the transition and perhaps leave better legacies. Nothing puts a smile on someone's face, especially in times of stress and depression, quite like when they give and get to see others enjoy their gifts.  Contrast this transaction with the same money going into medical and drug house pockets, leading to a continual raise of everyone’s plan premiums and a decrease in savings. Who are the financial losers here? End-of-life medical services including chemotherapy, radiation, imaging, testing, surgeries, therapies, medical equipment sales and home health services. The transition plan may not be the entire answer for our growing healthcare crisis and spiraling costs. Certainly, it is not going to be the choice for those who are dying and have plenty of savings to pass on to their loved ones or charity; nor will it be the choice for those who want to fight their diseases to the very end. However, for a large majority of Americans who don't have the assets to leave but recognize their value per historical healthcare payments to providers, the transition plan could be a useful measure. It would effectively allow them to stake a claim toward money normally ending up in the pockets of medical service professional  for cases not often resolving positively.

For several years, I’ve heard clamor from the agency world about how Millennials' demands are so different from previous insurance buyers. Well, as a Millennial insurance buyer, I’m here to say… we still have some work to do. We still have a lot of work to do. According to Accenture Outlook: Who are the Millennial shoppers? And what do they really want?, Millennials are exceptionally loyal …if they feel they’ve been treated right. And, we all know it’s cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. “Right” is an incredibly subjective term and can certainly get lost in translation in the insurance world. “Right,” in the insurance world, typically means paying exactly what is fair for losses. No more, no less. That’s understandable, and, as someone in the insurance world, I understand the sentiment. But I’d like to help you to understand how I define “right” as a Millennial insurance buyer. Educate, don’t sell The days of the uninformed insurance buyer are long gone. The added value of the agent is around education. Take a step back and help the Millennial customer understand the fundamentals of risk management and see that insurance is one of many tools used to manage risk. Millennials will identify the value that you bring to the purchasing transaction and remain loyal customers rather than commodity-buyers. Empower them to make good financial choices You empower Millennials to make smart financial decisions through education. This also means explaining the upsides and downsides of different policy options. For example, explaining how deductibles and premiums correlate, rather than trying to get them to take the lowest deductible. Millennials expect that, when they come to you asking for help in the realm of personal finance, you’ll be looking out for their best financial interests, rather than your commission check. As soon as a Millennial believes you’re NOT looking out for her best interest and are more interested in the sale, you have just made yourself the commodity. No more fancy terminology We have an epidemic of insurance buyers who have no clue what they’re buying. "Limit," "peril," "liability," "occurrence" – these are not words the Average Joe and Average Jane have any practical reason to know, outside of purchasing insurance. Millennials won’t settle for someone who isn’t able (or willing) to give the layman’s definition of these terms. This requires you to have a real command of the fundamentals of risk and insurance, rather than a command of policy forms and exclusions. Embrace technology to increase service Sure you have a Facebook and a Twitter, maybe you even post regularly, but that’s not what will retain Millennials. Make yourself and your agency available to them on their terms: phone, email, text or social media. Encourage them to take pictures and videos of all their belongings if they don’t want to make an inventory list. Send periodic, non-marketing text messages to encourage safety. (Example: “With the coming cold weather, be sure you clean off your furnace and think about getting it inspected. Build-up can reduce efficiency, which costs you more money and might even cause a fire.”) These are the types of things that will differentiate you and your team from every other agent out there. As an aside: If you want to serve Millennials, you must make online payments easy. Most Millennials don’t own stamps and are using the same checkbook they got when they were 16 and opened their first checking account. Humanize them at claim time Millennials want to be treated like the humans they are when claims hit, which, in all reality, isn’t asking much. Instead of aiming for that minimum threshold, exceed expectations by doing the following when you are notified of their claim: 1) Make sure they’re okay, 2) Check in and see how they’re doing and if they’re worried about anything (lawsuits, another loss, further injury, claim not getting paid, etc.), 3) Make sure you’re communicating with them, in addition to the adjuster, 4) Explain to them how this might affect future premiums. Claims are your time to shine, and, if treated well, Millennials can be some of the most loyal customers you’ll have. In closing … Insurance is a paper and a promise Without anything more tangible than that, it’s not too much to ask to be treated well, as a smart and autonomous human being. If you can show that to your Millennial customers and follow it up at claims time, you’ll crack the nut that is the Millennial insurance-buyer. The views expressed by the author are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Aon or its affiliates. The standard information provided in this blog is for general purposes only and should not be construed as, or used as a substitute for, financial or other professional advice.

We frequently get complaints from “average” employees about wellness, and our most popular article on the Huffington Post was about the fat-shaming aspects of wellness programs that obsess with BMIs.  (Weight discrimination under the guise of weight control is one of the hallmarks of wellness, of course.) But what about triathletes? What about people for whom those wellness incentives are a complete windfall? They can collect money for what they do anyway, sort of like when you buy something at a store and don’t learn it was on sale until you check out.  Obviously, as the beneficiaries of these programs’ largesse (at the expense of other employees indirectly, of course), fitness buffs should embrace wellness, like –to quote wellness apologist Larry Chapman — “a beloved pet.” Sure, if that pet is the Hound of the Baskervilles. (Note to the literal-minded.  This isn’t actually the Hound of the Baskervilles, who declined to sit for a photo session. This isn’t even a dog, as far as we know.) I’d encourage you to read this critique of Virgin Pulse’s program in its entirety.  You’ll have to scroll down through the blog post (not too fast – you’ll miss the review of Quizzify) to Comment No. 3, but it’s worth a full read to capture the essence beyond these excerpts. First, Virgin Pulse — here’s a shocker — can’t do math.  Because of its innumeracy (also one of the hallmarks of wellness), Virgin is accomplishing exactly the opposite of what wellness is supposed to do: When I ran 5 miles in 50 minutes, at a 10-min/mile pace, I got more points for having >45 min of active minutes, but when I actually ran it faster, say, 8-min/mile pace which gave me a 40 min time, I only got >30 min activity, and fewer points, despite performing a much harder task. Nothing like being punished for being successful. And Virgin Pulse apparently can’t do wellness either (yet another hallmark of the wellness industry): Those of us who lift weights and do things that do not have “steps” but require greater physical acumen are greatly disadvantaged. Sadly, most government programs place a higher priority on “aerobic” activity rather than strength training. This “cardio = fitness” mentality is about 30 years behind the times. The author, of course, is completely correct about this on multiple dimensions. Virgin Pulse’s information is way out of date, outdated information being — you guessed it — yet another hallmark of the wellness industry.  Among other things, giving “points” for cardio but not strength will increase back pain and other musculoskeletal problems, which account for a vastly higher share of employer health spending than the 1-in-800 incidence of heart attacks – in two different ways:

1. Strength exercises are now shown to be the best way to prevent and control back pain.
2. Obsessing with “steps” increases the likelihood of falls, sprains and repetitive motion injuries.

At the risk of “burying the lead,” here is another thing Virgin managed to do: It can also be annoying to be reminded constantly to get my mammogram. I am a breast cancer survivor and have had a double mastectomy. No mammograms for me. How insensitive of you! After several paragraphs of other observations about the intrusiveness (still another hallmark of the wellness industry, in this case including monitoring employee sleep), she concludes: The entire program is childish and silly. Another “social media” forum for people to get imaginary medals or stupid stuff while [Virgin] surreptitiously inserts little “healthy” reminders that may or may not be considered current health information. [Editor's note: The majority of Virgin’s “1,440 habit-building interactions per member per year” are self-evident and cliched, outdated, wrong, unrelated to wellness or controversial.] I’m sure there are better ways to promote corporate fitness that are not insulting to the intelligence of adults. As a personal trainer and health coach, I’d be happy to give you a few ideas. Here’s one idea: Require wellness vendors to know the first thing about wellness.

It's the time of the year when we look back fondly at the year just gone and look forward with trepidation and excitement at the year ahead. 2015 was, all in all, a good year for most, with a number of significant events that saw a good end to the year. Weather, on the whole, was mild, with the UK floods over Christmas being responded to well by all. Regardless of the news/political agendas, we are still investing £2.3 billion into flood defenses over the coming years. As we look forward, here are my thoughts on how we start 2016. What do you think? As always, I look forward to your feedback! 1. FinTech and InsurTech. 2015 will be remembered as the year of the zone, loft, garage and accelerator. This trend will continue with a new level of maturity and focus. We will see the emergence of the first three to four successful candidates from accelerators, as well as more failures (we need more to help hone the focus). Either way, this trend will continue upward as we look for the next unicorn and existing carriers worry about FOMO (fear of missing out). We will see more acquisition in this space, too, where existing carriers acquire to improve or extend their value chain and reach -- for example, as we did last year with Generali and MyDrive. 2. Evolution of IoT. The Internet of Things buzz has reached a fever pitch. (I've even written about it myself.) 2016 will be the year we all realize it's just another data/automated question set, from connected homes, cars and fridges to the connected self. Focus will move to strong use cases and business cases, but anything here on its own will not survive. It needs a partner – or three. 3. Digital and data. 2016 will continue to be a big area of growth for both, and I've bundled them as I believe they are intrinsically linked. That said, if you haven't done anything here yet, you are very late to an already crowded party. Both will continue with huge levels of interest and hype, but both need to move into genuine execution of the plans made last year. Ultimately, the only thing that matters here is the customer. Don't just have a plan because others are doing it. It needs to be right for you and your particular customer segment. 4. M&A will continue but will slow. 2015 saw a record-breaking year for M&A in the insurance world. As the economic climate changes and we see interest rates rise in 2016, I see this slowing down, while the current set of newly combined companies focuses on bringing together the multiple new units into a cohesive, efficient, fighting machine. 5. Will the CDO survive? (By CDO, I mean either the chief digital officer or the chief data officer.) As with my first point, the focus and drive in these areas has been great; there has been the right effect and a wake-up call. However, for organizations that implemented these "change agents" and "purposeful" disruptive roles, I suspect we will see a move back to a focus on the chief customer officer. 6. New business models. To take advantage of all this data, technology, customer intent and more, we need to find and be clear on what the new business model will– and needs to– be. 7. What we buy and sell. We need to move away from a product mindset and become more relevant and more convenient – my two favorite terms when it comes to insurance. Rick Huckstep did a good piece on engagement insurance, which, to me, sums up how we better embed ourselves into daily life, rather than once a year or in the current cycle. This is where organizations such as Trov will come into play. Trov and others will be more integrated into our everyday lives, becoming more convenient, seamless and relevant to us, driving more engagement. From a convenience perspective, companies such as Cuvva made the news last year. This is just the start of things to come. The key questions are whether they can scale and whether they will make money. Peer-to-peer also made lots of noise; however, I think the same questions here apply. I still feel we will move away from the current product mindset we have today to just buying complete cover for the individual and anything she does, regardless of where she is. I previously called this the "rise of the personal SME." I expect to have insurance rather than five to 10 products. 8. Cyber is the new digital. While the last few years have focused heavily on digital transformation and data, this year will see a big shift in focus to cyber, both on the buy and sell side, with organizations moving quickly to not be the next headline for the wrong reasons. So, each organization needs to have the right measures in place, followed by the right cover. For carriers, this means new products and opportuniti,es with specialists including ACE, XL Catlin and Beazley already making strong moves. We started 2015 by saying that the risk was simply too big to cover and finished it with calls for a government-backed reinsurance scheme for cyber, as we have already created for floods. Is it a real need or a political agenda? My view is that it's a real need, regardless of the politics. 9. Partnerships and bundling. Like many of the points above, on their own, partnerships and bundling are significant issues and opportunities but perhaps don't answer the key questions around relevance, engagement, etc. For this, I see a big rise in the partnerships between insurers and third parties or the orchestration/bundling of services that just happens to include insurance. Insurers could become the systems integrator for lifestyle services, by default increasing relevance and engagement. Finally, let's not take our eye off the here-and-now. Organizations will continue to need to run the ship, BAU is still BAU (business as usual). We must aim to reduce internal costs and inefficiency. Not one organization I have spoken to over the last year is not riddled with legacy and has clear ambitions to reduce costs and improve efficiency - all to further drive support for the year of the customer. However we look at things, 2016 is looking like it will be an exciting year. I look forward to sharing it with you!

If you had the luxury of focusing on one thing in 2016, what would it be? We polled nearly 1,000 Twitter users regarding their perception of the No. 1 resolution that chief information officers (CIOs) should have in 2016. Here’s a list of four areas where respondents feel CIOs should channel their resources in 2016 to meet growth expectations:

1. Mobile apps 40% of respondents said mobile apps should top the CIO’s agenda. Only a select few enterprises have strategically employed mobile to drive business transformation and facilitate dynamic customer experiences. Given that there are now more mobile devices than people, mobile demands a place in every corporate strategy. So, it’s not surprising that poll respondents say CIOs should push mobile to the prime spot on their to-do lists. As they do, here are three things they should keep in mind:
   • Design and execute a strategy that considers customer needs and digital experiences spanning existing and new business models, agnostic of platform or device.
   • Do more than make the same content available on a smaller screen. Instead, focus on mobile’s fundamental distinctions (always accessible, convenient, high personalization), enabling increased engagement and delivery of a new and better customer experience.
   • Treat mobile as an enterprise-wide initiative and bring change to the entire organization (people, process and technology). This requires commitment and consistent messaging from leadership and cross-functional collaboration.
2. Data-driven insights 25% of respondents to our poll said data-driven insights should be priority No. 1. CIOs who want to take the guesswork out of their decisions should explore the Internet of Things. CIOs can add sensors to people, places, processes and products across the value chain to capture and analyze information to advance the goals of the organization. By mapping different sensor outputs to enterprise events, companies can take “business activity fingerprints.” These data-driven, digital impressions can enable companies to match actual sensor outputs with pre-tested business scenarios to prioritize and direct resources, improve workplace safety, reduce wasted effort, streamline product and people flows, strengthen relationships with customers and increase revenue.
3. Work more with the CMO 21% of respondents want the CIO to work more with the chief marketing officer (CMO), which is encouraging. The CMO is a critical part of the new digital world, yet our Digital IQ survey shows that the CIO-CMO relationship is the weakest and has been over the last three years. Collaboration is key to bringing all of the distributed investment together – and it appears we haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe 2016 is the year that CIOs and CMOs will work together productively to usher in digital transformation. Without a CIO-CMO partnership, digital deployments are shallow, instead of deep, and fail to live up to their revenue-generating potential.
4. Emerging tech evaluation 14% of those who answered the poll say CIOs should spend more time on emerging technology evaluation. As they do, they should consider overhauling their process for filtering and prioritizing emerging technology. I often see three different types of approaches with varying degrees of success: 1) vendor-driven, 2) technology-driven and 3) business-driven. In the first approach, vendors are in the driver’s seat, and businesses can end up with cookie-cutter solutions late in the game. The second option, a technology-driven approach, can lead to deploying technology for technology’s sake rather than to advance the enterprise’s business goals. The last approach is ideal and driven by the unique needs of the business.

French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery said a goal without a plan is just a wish. Thinking about CIOs engaging in goal setting reminds me of the late Steven Covey’s Time Management Matrix. CIOs tend to focus on what is urgent, while neglecting what is important. Resolutions are always at risk of getting sidelined as CIOs focus on putting out fires rather than sowing seeds. CIOs need one additional resolution: to make what’s important as much of a priority as what’s urgent. Please share your No. 1 resolution in the comments section.

What if there was a technological advancement so powerful that it transforms the very way the insurance industry operates? What if there was a technology that could fundamentally alter the way that the economics, the governance systems and the business functions operate in insurance and could change the way the entire industry postulates in terms of trade, ownership and trust? This technology is here, and it’s called the blockchain, best known as the force that drives Bitcoin. Bitcoin has gotten a pretty bad rap over the years for good reason. From the collapse of Mt. Gox and the loss of millions –  to being the de facto currency for pedophilia peddlers, drug dealers and gun sellers on Silk Road and the darling of the anarcho-capitalist community – Bitcoin is not doing well in the public eye. Its price has also fluctuated wildly, allowing for insane speculation, and, with the majority of Bitcoins being owned by the small group that started promoting it, it ‘s sometimes been compared to a Ponzi scheme. Vivek Wadhwa writes in the Washington Post that Chinese Bitcoin miners control more than 50% of the currency-creation capacity and are connected to the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem through the Great Firewall of China, which slows down the entire system because it is the equivalent of a bad hotel Wi-Fi connection. And the control gives the People’s Army a strategic vantage point over a global currency. Consequently, the Bitcoin brand has been decimated and is thought by too many to be a kind of dodgy currency on the Internet for dodgy people. The blockchain, a core technology behind what drives Bitcoin, has been slow to enter the Zeitgeist because of this attachment to Bitcoin, the bête noire of the establishment. But that is changing fast. Blockchain as a tool for disintermediation is simply too powerful to ignore. People are now beginning to really look at the blockchain as an infrastructure for more than monetary transactions and what it has done for Bitcoin. Just as Bitcoin makes certain financial intermediaries unnecessary, innovations on the blockchain remove the need for gatekeepers from a number of processes, which can really grease the wheels of any business, including insurance companies. How blockchain works and can work for the insurance industry Because of the way it distributes consensus, the blockchain routes around many of the challenges that typically arise with distributed forms of organization and issues such as how to cooperate, scale and collectively invest in shared resources and infrastructures. In the blockchain, all transactions are logged, including information on the date, time and participants, as well as the amount of every single transaction in an immutable record. Each trust agent in the network owns a full copy of the blockchain, and, in the case of a private consortium blockchain (more relevant to the insurance industry), the transactions are verified using advanced cryptographic algorithms, and the "Genesis Block" sits within the control of the consortium. The mathematical principles also ensure that these trust agents automatically and continuously agree about the current state of the blockchain and every transaction in it. If anyone attempts to corrupt a transaction, the trust agents will not arrive at a consensus and therefore will refuse to incorporate the transaction in the blockchain. Imagine there’s a notary present at each transaction. This way, everyone has access to a shared, single source of truth. This is why we can always trust the blockchain. Imagine a healthcare insurance policy that can only be used to pay for healthcare at certified parties. In this case, whether someone actually follows the rules is no longer verified in the bureaucratic process afterward. You simply program these rules into the blockchain. Compliance in advance. Automation through the use of smart contracts also leads to a considerable decrease in bureaucracy, which can save accountants, controllers and insurance organizations in general an incredible amount of time. While the global bankers are far out of the blocks when it comes to learning, understanding and now embracing blockchain technology, the insurance industry is lagging. Between 2010 and 2015, a mere 13% of innovation investments by insurers were actually in insurance technology companies. There are some efforts to tap innovation, as the Financial Times in the UK recently wrote. European insurers such as Axa, Aviva and Allianz, along with MassMutual and American Family in the U.S. and Ping An in Asia are setting up specialist venture capital funds dedicated to investing in start-ups that may be relevant for their core businesses. Aviva recently announced a "digital garage’ in Singapore, a dedicated space where technical specialists, creative designers and commercial teams explore, develop and test new insurance ideas and services that make financial services more tailored and accessible for customers. And others are sure to follow in the insurance industry, particularly because both the banking industry and capital markets are bullish on investing in innovation for their own sectors – and particularly because they are doing a lot of investment in and around blockchain. Still, the bankers and capital markets are currently miles ahead of the insurance industry when it comes to investing in blockchain research and startups. Competitors in the capital markets and banking industries in terms of blockchain solutions include: the Open Ledger Project, backed by Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu Limited, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo; and the R3 Blockchain Group, whose members include the likes of Barclays, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, State Street and UBS. Then there are start-ups like Ripple and Digital Asset Holdings, led by ex-JPMorgan exec Blythe Masters, who turned down a job as head of Barclays’ investment bank to build her blockchain solution for banking. There are others in the start-up world moving even faster in the same direction, some actually operating in the market, such as Billoncash in Poland, which is the world’s first blockchain cryptocash backed by fiat currency and which passed through the harsh EU and national regulatory systems with flying colors. Tunisia is replacing its current digital currency eDinar with a blockchain solution via a Swiss startup called Monetas. There are both threats and opportunities for the bankers... so what about the global insurance industry? Every insurance company’s core computer system is, at heart, a big, fat centralized transaction ledger, and if the insurance industry does not begin to learn about, evaluate, build with and eventually embrace blockchain technology, the industry will leave itself naked and open to the next Uber, Netflix,  AirBnB or wanna-be unicorn that comes along and disrupts the space completely. Blockchain more than deserves to be evaluated by insurers as a potential replacement for today’s central database model. Where should the insurance industry start? Companies need to start to experiment, like the bankers and stock markets, by not only working with existing blockchain technologies out there but by beginning to experiment within their own organizations. They need to work with blockchain-focused accelerators and incubators like outlierventures.io in the UK or Digital Currency Group in the U.S. and tap into the latest start-ups and technologies. They need to think about running hackathons and start to build developer communities – to start thinking about crowdsourcing innovation rather than trying to do everything in-house. Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of thousands of innovators creating products on spec via their massive developer communities. Insurance companies that don’t start lowering their walls might very well find themselves unable to innovate as quickly as emerging companies that embrace more open models in the future and therefore find themselves moot. Kodak meet Instagram. The first step for insurance companies with blockchain technology will likely be to look at smart contracts, followed by looking for identity validation and building new structural mechanisms where parties no longer need to know or trust each other to participate in exchanges of value. Blockchain technology, for instance, can also allow for accident or health records to be stored and recorded in a decentralized way, which can open the door for insurance companies to reduce friction in the current systems in which they operate. Currently, the industry is highly centralized, and the introduction of new blockchain-fueled structures such as mutual insurance and peer-to-peer models based on the blockchain could fundamentally affect the status quo. As comedian and writer Dominic Frisby once penned, "The revolution will not be televised. It will be cryptographically time stamped on the blockchain." Some of the many questions that the industry should explore:

• What kind of effect will blockchain technology adoption in markets have on the the public’s perception of risk?
• Today, the insurance industry is centralized, but what could it look like if it were decentralized?
• How could that affect how insurance companies mutualize?
• Can the blockchain improve customer relations and confidence?
• Can smart contracts built on the blockchain automate parts of the process in how business is done in the insurance industry?

If you want to explore further, sign up to express interest here about our coming event in London: Chain Summit Blockchain Event for Insurance.