In an increasingly digital world, the modern day update to the old real estate refrain of "location, location, location" may be "communication, communication, communication." It may also be true that companies are only as good in the customers' mind as the quality of their last transaction. That is particularly true when there are infrequent transaction, thus limited opportunities to make up for mistakes. In financial services, banks may have daily transactions with their customers, but insurance companies have far fewer transactions, many of which are associated with unfortunate events. Finding a way to make the most of these interactions can be important in retaining customers for the long term, in a world of low switching costs and lots of transparency. I was reminded of this when I got an email alert from my personal lines property and casualty carrier. Like much of the East Coast, we found ourselves dealing with a winter wonderland over the weekend, which included icy roads, snowy hillsides and falling trees. Many people lost power. In any event, the email alert reminded me that our carrier was aware of the potential implications coming from the storm and was ready to help. The message included various forms of contact info and was an opportunity to remind me of the benefits I can gain from the relationship. As my thumb moved to delete the message, I was reminded of the value of the coverage, and I realized this was one of the few messages I've gotten that didn't convey a billing increase or some other "bad" information. I had been thinking that the renewal would be coming in four months and that I probably needed to begin shopping for coverage to see what the market looks like, in anticipation of another premium increase. Getting the email reminded me that insurance is not just about rate but also about what happens when the world goes sideways. This realization leads back to a challenge – which is to say an opportunity – for carriers to start thinking differently about the form and frequency of interaction with customers. Different demographic cohorts may have preferences for different communication channels, but one likely universal truth is that individuals want to know that they have the opportunity to do the same thing that other "smart people" like them are doing. Amazon, of course, does a remarkable job with this. The retail brokerage investment company I deal with is nearly as good, and, as a consequence, there is little chance I will ever look to move assets. Conversely, the life insurance company I have had a relationship with for three decades only has a dialogue with me when sending documents required by regulation. In fact, when I have chosen to initiate dialogue with the carrier, it has proven to be both painful and incredibly time-intensive to get things done. The recent example with my homeowners insurance was a pleasant surprise. It might even cause me to slow the shopping process or be more accommodating of the rate increase, which is no doubt coming. All of this has potentially significant implications for the marketing and technology organizations for insurance carriers. Increasingly, the competition is not against other, similar companies. The issue really becomes how well carriers operate against a customer service standard that is being framed by retailers and financial institutions that are more transactionally intensive. As the lines between traditional industries and products families become blurred through the use of better technology, carriers will need to up their games considerably to maintain relevance.  Checking in on customers after an unfortunate event is a step in the right direction.

Successful businesses continuously draw on their strengths – and their people – for growth. How do you describe the strengths of your business now? How would you describe the strengths that you’ll likely need in a year? In a few years? And how do these strengths translate into the skills your people will need in the future? For most companies, the answers to these questions are always evolving, as disruption increases and the pace of business picks up. We’ve seen the recent evolution of companies’ capabilities -- like fast-food chains rolling out deluxe coffee-shop menus, or utilities delving into smart home appliances. A lot of organizations have solid processes for evolving their business strategies. But as sound as the development and approval process is, it often leaves out an important aspect: Can your people evolve, too? Most CEOs aren’t certain that theirs can. In our latest CEO survey, nearly 80% of U.S. business leaders say they’re concerned that a lack of key skills threatens their organizations’ growth prospects. This stat raises the question: Are some of these organizations taking their growth strategies too far afield, beyond their core strengths, in a desperate search for faster growth? In Strategy+Business Magazine, we recently wrote about how companies that deliver sustainable growth remain true to what they do best and take advantage of their strongest capabilities—what we call a capabilities-driven strategy. It takes a substantial effort. As we say in the story, “If you respond to disruption by changing your business model and capabilities system, you can’t dabble. You have to commit fully.” That level of commitment is only possible, of course, with the right people to step up and deliver on your company’s greatest strengths. Think of the potential talent issues at hand for so many businesses: How does a legacy technology company avoid disruption and commoditization? How can a fast-food chain turn up its café side of the business without trained baristas on hand? How can a utility amp up the tech-savvy talent needed to design Internet-and-data-fueled thermostats and security devices? They’ll all need to align their talent strategy with their business strategy. In our advisory work with clients, we are in frequent talks with companies that need to make these moves. And talent is at the top of the priority list. Before preparing to grow your strengths, think about the capabilities in your current ecosystem of people and where gaps might pop up:  People strategy, leadership and culture: Does our people strategy support our growth initiatives (and, more importantly, is there a strategy)? Is the right leadership development system in place, including a robust global mobility program? Will our culture support the execution that’s required?

1. Reward: Does our compensation and benefits strategy still fit? Is pay competitive? Are there areas to be restructured that could free capital for re-investment?
2. Talent acquisition: Do we need to pull in brand-new talent by strategically hiring from the outside or by making strategic acquisitions?
3. Organization design and operating model: Have we designed an organizational structure and operating model that have clear links between all our capabilities?
4. Change management and communications: Do we have the right program management structure and strategic change methods for execution? Do we know who the real information brokers are in the organization who will informally drive the change?
5. Technology: Do we have the right technology to support the kind of employee experience our people need? Are we leveraging workforce analytics to retain our top-performing people, and are we conducting frequent employee surveys to understand the pulse of the organization?

These are just a few of the talent areas that are important to understand. Odds are you won’t need to revamp all of them. But a carefully designed and innovative talent strategy underlies the successful evolution to get growing.  To read more details on the strategic changes you may need to make to stretch your growth, read the full article, “Grow from your strengths” in strategy+business magazine.

Why is this taking so long?! The challenge I hear echoed throughout the insurance industry is, “How do we speed up the claims process for customers?” Insurance companies often bear the brunt of frustrations from customers stressed out about delays. As we all know, processing claims takes time and patience to gather information, details, photographs and a myriad of other documentation. Getting the right information and accurate documentation takes even longer. Based on the volume of claims, resources and personnel can become stretched thin quickly. Despite all the efforts within organizations, it’s not uncommon to see claims departments contorting themselves like Gumby to get it all done. Insurance claims are stressful, and relying on customers to reliably and quickly provide information is a challenge -- even when it’s to their benefit. The problem becomes exacerbated following natural disasters or claims in geographic locations where companies have little to no footprint and limited resources to document and gather the information needed. In those situations, companies have to reallocate and sometimes relocate resources, which is expensive, time-consuming and a logistical nightmare. Saving time and improving data quality and accuracy are all key components to avoiding customer frustration and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Traditional Challenges Meet Disruptive Solutions Recently, there’s been a lot of handwringing about the “sharing economy,” the “gig economy” and what it means for traditional lines of business and workers. Will the workplace as we know it change completely? As Tony Canas shared in his Insurance Thought Leadership piece, "What Will Be the Uber of Insurance?," the gig economy is hardly the end of the world, and the insurance industry is probably due for some disruption. What a number of traditional lines of business are beginning to discover is that the gig economy presents an opportunity to leverage the power of crowdsourcing to solve challenges, eliminate inefficiencies and even spark innovation within their organizations. Target and Instacart, GM and Lyft, are great examples of how large, traditional verticals are finding ways to integrate the gig economy into new products and services to attract and keep customers while increasing the bottom line. Now going back to one of insurance’s greatest challenges -- saving time and improving accuracy in the claims process, particularly when it comes to getting information such as photographs, records, police reports and inspections. These tasks sometimes feel like they can go on forever with a single claim as companies try to coordinate logistics with policyholders. What if there was an Uber for insurers? A service that could dispatch an objective third party with a smartphone to quickly take pictures and gather exactly the information needed in the claims process almost immediately? There is. Disruption Gets Good for Insurance Like Uber, WeGoLook is changing the way the gig economy is disrupting B2B by providing inspection and custom tasking services. Building on the strength of the gig economy and using the crowdsourcing model, WeGoLook has built a nationwide network of field agents that provides a nimbleness that is often buried alive in large enterprises. Here's how it works at one of the nation's largest auto insurance companies, where WeGoLook is incorporated into the claims-handling process:

• A claim handler places an order on a custom dashboard and chooses a service: (1) vehicle photos, (2) scene inspections, (3) salvage retrieval, (4) police record retrieval.
• A WeGoLook representative calls the onsite contact/policyholder to verify address/item information and schedule an appointment.
• The “Looker” arrives on-site and captures the data needed for the service/task.
• Data is submitted via the mobile WeGoLook app and reviewed by internal staff at WGL for quality assurance.
• The completed report is sent directly to the claim file.

Turning to the gig economy and its on-demand workforce is generating economic benefits and creating true efficiency. We’ve witnessed the process being replicated in companies both large and small and in a variety of categories. Since starting the company in 2009, I’m continually inspired by the creativity of entrepreneurs and how they’ve found new and inspirational ways to apply crowdsourcing. From crowdfunding, ridesharing, coworking and delivery services to even “pet Airbnb,” the gig economy marketplace is homing in on specific consumer and business needs and delivering.

Though the U.S. insurance industry is entering 2016 well-capitalized and profitable, too much capital capacity does not bode well for pricing as new capital flows in, seeking opportunities and driving pricing competition. Against this backdrop, insurers will be juggling priorities: modernizing their core systems, maintaining profitability within existing portfolios, accelerating their digital transformation and cultivating new products and services.

 

Download the full summary here.

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.