Auto underwriting is no longer a "one size fits all" proposition, and technology - in the form of a telematics data exchange - is bringing a tailored approach to more effectively writing individual auto policies. The exchange is an accessible platform of driving information data provided by automakers, telematics service providers and Internet of Things providers. Through the exchange, insurers now have a single and efficient access point to data about driving information.

A telematics data exchange platform has the potential to transform relationships among insurers, consumers and automakers. The platform aims to complement existing solutions, also enabling insurers to bring their own usage-based insurance (UBI) models or other third-party models to the game.

With customer consent, insurers can review the driving history of consumers at point of sale and renewal of auto insurance policies. The exchange can also potentially help manage details of the automaker-insurer relationship, freeing automakers to focus on their core competency in developing advanced vehicles.

In the auto insurance marketplace, there are a few rules of the road:

• Every insurer using telematics data in determining respective pricing must make corresponding filings with state regulators. As a licensed advisory organization with established filing procedures and government relations, the exchange has the potential to file UBI models and rating guidelines on behalf of insurers, providing faster time to market.
• Although insurers retain the roles of underwriter and pricing specialist, the data exchange models provide an insurance score, one of the factors that insurers may use as part of their proprietary pricing and underwriting.

The telematics data exchange is a game changer because it brings benefits to insurers, policyholders and auto manufacturers. The power of data and analytics is being harnessed to bring a variety of benefits:

For participating insurers

• Easy access to telematics data without significant investment in technology and logistical support
• Improved customer satisfaction through fast, informed quotes at point of sale and renewal
• Enhanced customer acquisition and retention through innovative UBI programs that potentially attract and retain safe drivers

For consenting consumers

• Discounted insurance options for lower-risk drivers
• Portable driving history for ease of insurance shopping
• No need to plug in a telematics device or use a smartphone

For automakers

• New revenue from connected-car data
• Lower total cost of vehicle ownership, which can help boost vehicle sales
• Additional opportunities for consumer engagement

As use of telematics technology gains acceptance and expands in the marketplace, is it any wonder the game is changing?

The U.S. spent $2.6 trillion on healthcare in 2010, with wages accounting for more than half of that sum, making healthcare one of the most labor intensive of all industries. For decades, healthcare leaders and policy makers have worked to reduce healthcare spending. Over that time, it has become increasingly evident that cost-reduction strategies focused on utilization and quality improvement will fall short if nothing is done to lower the cost of labor per unit of service. Unlike other industries in which technology has significantly boosted productivity, healthcare has experienced no such gains during the past 20 years.

At the same time, the U.S. is faced with health professional shortages. For example, there is a projected shortage of as many as 31,000 primary care physicians (PCPs) by 2025, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Healthcare's overlooked opportunity

How can the industry and individual health organizations bend the cost curve in a meaningful way, particularly at a time when chronically ill and aging patient populations are growing and more consumers have health insurance than ever before? A solution to balancing the demand/capacity equation is through virtual health approaches. In this way, healthcare can not only reach consumers who have been underserved, it can also serve in a better way those who already have routine care.

Virtual health can enable more clinical care work to get done without expanding the workforce, by streamlining work and redirecting clinician time to high-value tasks. Virtual healthcare models can expand clinician capacity in three critical ways: shift tasks and work to patients, replace labor with technology and automate tasks.

Combined, these three levers can streamline clinician work, decrease clinician demand and focus clinicians' time where their training and experience have the greatest value.

More available time means greater coverage for more patients, without increasing workforce size. The optimal combination of traditional in-person and virtual interactions could also offer the best patient experience and has the potential to create a new standard of care across the entire range of clinical services.

What is virtual health?

Virtual health combines clinical care and professional collaboration through telemedicine, tele-health and collaboration-at-a-distance to connect clinicians, patients, care teams and health professionals to provide health services, support patient self-management and coordinate care across the care continuum.

Specific to physician-patient encounters, virtual health enables live and asynchronous clinical interactions, clinical practice and patient management supported by a wide range of communication, collaboration and cognitive computing technologies along with digital devices and data.

Scenarios to illustrate the opportunity

These three common primary and ambulatory care scenarios illustrate the opportunity of virtual health approaches and reveal both the potential time savings and economic value to healthcare. The industry faces clinician shortages in areas other than primary care, of course, but familiar primary care scenarios serve to highlight the possibilities of virtual health.

The need to palpate, auscultate or take samples for lab tests requires that most diagnostic encounters today remain in-person. However, in any "typical" office visit much of the physician's time is spent gathering patient information, reviewing the information, considering potential treatment options and interacting with the patient. Often, the patient shares information in bits and pieces at different points in the exam, sending the physician back through the diagnosis and treatment option cycle.

Imagine, instead, if the patient provides information prior to the scheduled appointment. Common consumer devices, such as wearable sensors and digital weight scales, allow the patient to capture and share biometric information prior to the exam, which the patient can submit through a secure portal, with concerns or discussion items for the visit. The portal is also where a "virtual character"-a computer generated medical assistant-can guide the patient through the standard intake questions, such as family medical history and physical. Then, analyzing the combined information with a diagnostic engine, clinical options can be suggested to the physician prior to the in-person exam.

Reducing the amount of time gathering patient information and considering options prior to the exam can significantly streamline in-person encounters. Accenture analysis shows that applying virtual health to annual ambulatory patient encounters can save each U.S. PCP an average of five minutes per encounter. This is a time savings equivalent to as many as 37,000 PCPs-or 18% of the PCP workforce-with an economic value of more than $7 billion annually across the U.S. health system.

Equally important, after that initial exam, most of any follow-up visit can be conducted via video for greater patient access and both patient and physician convenience.

e-visits are becoming an increasingly common alternative to in-person office visits to manage patients' continuing clinical needs. E-visits are asynchronous clinical exchanges completed via secure messaging in which patients submit information, questions and images for physician review and response. E-visits typically take fewer than 10 minutes of physician time. One example where e-visits can be applied is hypertension management. 26% of outpatient physician visits each year are related to hypertension. According to Accenture, if each patient has one in-person annual physical with half of the remaining hypertension-focused encounters converted to e-visits, the time savings could be the equivalent of around 1,500 PCPs-roughly 1% of the workforce- with an approximate annual value of $300 million.

Virtual health can support those with chronic conditions to self-manage their conditions to remain medically stable. As an example, adults with diabetes can use sophisticated mobile technology to effectively manage their lifestyles and conditions, and reduce the need for in-person encounters. Available technologies with sophisticated analytics can track, trend and assess data provided by patients-and medical devices-such as blood glucose levels. The same technology can also offer prompts and suggest a personalized self-management plan-and that plan can evolve as the patient's health status changes. Further, the information can be made available to the clinical team when needed. The goal is to maximize patient self-care and allow physicians to practice "by exception." In fact, such FDA-approved technology is available via physician prescription today.

Accenture analysis reveals that a care model composed of an annual physician exam and technology-enabled self-management the rest of the year can save time equivalent to approximately 24,000 PCPs-representing 11% of the workforce-for a value of almost $2 billion annually.

The enterprise-level impact of these scenarios is just as compelling as the industry-level view already described. Consider a large regional health system or independent practice association with approximately 1,800 affiliated or employed PCPs. Accenture analysis shows that an average of five minutes saved across all ambulatory annual encounters can release almost $63 million in physician capacity per year, the equivalent of about 320 practicing PCPs. For a smaller system or clinically integrated network, a staff of about 800 PCPs is more the norm. A five-minute savings across all annual encounters for that organization can release the equivalent of roughly 140 physicians' time with a value of almost $28 million annually.

Toward a new gold standard of care

Virtual care and in-person care are equally important and complementary, the best mix depending upon the nature of the encounter. The ratio of virtual to in-person will shift over time as technologies evolve to enable more patient self-testing and caring.

The scenarios described are only some of the many ways that virtual approaches can unlock the time and capacity of the highly valuable clinical workforce. The gold standard of care will become the best combination of in-person and virtual approaches that support sound clinical practice, continuity of care and episodic clinical needs as well as continuing care for those with chronic conditions.

This is not a far and distant opportunity; technologies exist now that can help deliver quality care in a more affordable way by optimizing clinicians' time. The industry as a whole, as well as individual organizations, must act now to integrate virtual care models into everyday clinical practice. Only then will healthcare begin to address the looming cost and labor crises affecting the industry at national and organization levels.

Employers need to define and fortify the position of workers' comp manager. It is a sad reality that this job often falls short of the impact and respect it deserves. It owns no distinct professional standard as compared with the role of risk manager, HR manager, safety engineer or even production supervisor, and the role is often added to those positions as an afterthought. Worst of all, employers freely allow vendors (third-party administrator or broker) to assign this job's process and tasks. I say we retire the current notion of the "workers' comp manager" and unleash the "workers' comp warrior."

Why? Because "warrior" recognizes what should be the employers' daily fight against a WC system that puts data-driven process and so-called efficiency above personal service and intervention. The term "warrior" does not imply a negative position that simply fights fraud and bad actors... Rather, this is a noble fight that seeks the best and fastest route to employee healing and return to productivity.

Consider that "healing and return to productivity" as an endeavor has been dumbed down by our industry. Vendor preferences in the name of best practices would have you believe the task is met by simply reporting a new loss and leaving the employee at the whim of the claims and managed-care team. In reality, healing and return to productivity is an extremely complicated and personal process that is easily thwarted by the insult and cross-purposes of a claims team seeking "fast track" method while a managed-care team seeks "savings" based on a rigged system of medical reimbursement. Our industry-wide elephant in the room -- churning WC claims -- evidences a dire lack of ability to "heal and return to productivity."

A WC warrior fights to ease the gauntlet for employees. She proclaims the hub-position in a turning wheel of WC action while establishing vendors and other aspects as spokes. Other wheel-spokes include employee expectation and responsibilities, supervisory role, top management support and resources, experienced-based allocation of costs, return to work (RTW) culture, medical providers, cooperation, etc. No two employer-wheels are completely alike, but all need a workers' comp warrior at the center. No single vendor can re-create or support such a turning wheel. Most critically: In practical application, no employee skips the ride to a quality medical healing and return to productivity; however, any ill-intended employee who jumps off early is easily spotted.

Quick Tip: Raise the Bar and Redefine an Employer-Based "Warrior" Position

Key aspects of a "workers comp warrior" include:

- Emphasis on employee advocacy above all else

- Technical knowledge and experience in all the processes and interactions of WC

- Claim-by-claim insight otherwise not available via the common process

- Solutions, options and strategies tailored to each situation

- Real-time interaction, not adhering to adjuster diaries

- Inclusive program with company-wide involvement and awareness

- Learning opportunities seen in a poor claim outcome

- Accepting inevitable frustrations without blaming adjusters, doctors, state laws or employees

- Not falling for the perfect-world bubble that a broker or other vendors might try to claim exists

Henry David Thoreau famously said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation..."

People who lead desperate lives don't make good subjects for wellness programs, nor, for that matter, lifestyle advice from doctors. Below are two real life examples of ordinary people I've chatted with about matters of personal health. After both of these conversations, I was quite humbled.

Case 1

I had a chance conversation with a pleasant but overweight woman I'll call Donna, a cashier in a big city grocery store, who was about 50 years old. We were having a nice chat, and I asked her if she had opportunities to exercise after work. Donna said that, after being on her feet all day, she had to go home and put her feet up. That prevented her from having much of a social life, too. Donna said she would never have a better job, that she'd never buy a new car, nor afford vacations or holiday trips. Her rent was so high, it was all she could do to makes ends meet. Donna said her only fun in life was buying a take-home pizza and a six pack of beer once or twice a week. Take that away, and Donna said she had nothing. Truthfully, and sadly, in my heart I could not blame her.

Case 2

A few years ago I had a lengthy cab ride in Baltimore and struck up a good conversation with the cab driver, a friendly, middle-aged man I'll call George. He asked what I did for living, which resulted in a good chat about personal health. George smoked, had high blood pressure and diabetes and was overweight. He said he'd tried to get those things under control but just couldn't. The interesting part of the story is why he couldn't control his health risks. George said he'd lived in Baltimore all his life and had the same set of friends since grade school. One night a week, they'd go bowling, eat huge meals and drink way too much beer. Also, once a week or so they'd go to a sports bar and do the same thing. George truly believed he'd have to give up his lifelong friends if he were to cut out that lifestyle. He knew it was slowly killing him, but he just wasn't willing give up. It was hard to blame him either.

Those are two true stories of people trapped in a lifestyle they can't or won't willingly forfeit. Huge numbers of people are in the same boat.

Some people are going to comply with doctor suggestions on lifestyle without any help at work. But, if Thoreau is right, there are many people out there like Donna and George.

Bad lifestyle choices can be terribly complex. They virtually never arise from the lack of the kind of information that wellness vendors push as the solution.

1. 100% Employment: One of the big reasons to go to college is to make sure you're employed in a good career after you graduate. The insurance industry is predicted to continue growing for decades, and the existing risk management and insurance (RMI) programs only feed 15% of its needs each year, which means if you graduate with an RMI degree you'll be a hot commodity! RMI programs had 100% employment, even through the 2008-2012 recession.

2. An RMI degree is basically a focused business degree: Majoring in business is a very popular choice already, but it's a very general degree that usually takes a few years to really get you a solid career. RMI degrees are usually housed by a university's school of business and have all the usual classes you'd get in a business degree (accounting, finance, marketing, statistics, management, etc) with the addition of a few RMI specific classes. What this means is that even if you change your mind and decide you don't want to work in insurance (which you won't), you can still easily get the same jobs that you would have been getting with a general business degree.

3. It is preparation for a career making a difference: If you love making a difference in the world, you'll absolutely love the insurance industry! Even though we get a bad name in the press sometimes, the reality is that we are here to help people and businesses get back on their feet when unexpected things happen, and being a part of that is very rewarding. Also, many carriers offer time off to volunteer and to study for insurance designations.

4. Insurance is an incredibly stable career: The economy will continue in its ebbs and flows, and that means every few years people will lose their jobs when the economy contracts. Some very popular careers like banking, consulting and real estate are usually among the worst-hit when the economy slows. Insurance is incredibly stable because pretty much regardless of what happens in the overall economy, people and businesses continue to need insurance. This means career stability for you!

5. You'll have more vacation than most of your friends: Most insurance carriers start you up with around 18 days of vacation a year. That means much more time off than most employees just starting careers in other industries.

6. Your senior year will be a LOT less stressful: RMI majors are expected to continue to be in high demand and feed only a portion of the insurance industry's need for new talent, which means that a lot of RMI majors have accepted great job offers by December of their senior year, a good five months before graduation, and senior year is a lot more fun when you don't have to worry about finding a job afterward.

7. You're pretty much mathematically guaranteed to be in demand: The current makeup of the insurance industry workforce is very mature, meaning that 1 million insurance professionals, 43% of the workforce, are expected to retire in the next 10 years. In addition, the industry is growing and is expected to create 400,000 jobs. RMI majors are already pretty much immune to unemployment; they will be in increasingly high demand right around the time you graduate!

You pretty much can't go wrong by majoring in RMI! There are not a lot of RMI schools out there, so click on the map below to open an interactive map of RMI schools. Schools marked in red have a full RMI major while schools marked in green have an RMI minor or concentration.

Some 500 million people use Gmail and Google Drive. I'm one of them.

Gmail and Google Drive are wonderful for communicating and collaborating. But it turns out they're also ideal tools for hacking into your computing device.

Bad guys on the cutting edge have discovered this. And their success so far indicates attacks manipulating Google's productivity platform-and similarly exploiting other popular cloud-based business tools-are destined to progress.

This development should not come as a big surprise. Cyber criminals are quick to recognize fresh opportunities created by our headlong rush to use cloud services and mobile devices without giving due consideration to security and privacy.

Intelligence about the latest iteration of hacking comes courtesy of security startup Elastica.

Flying under the radar

Researchers at Elastica this summer discovered scammers using Gmail accounts to send messages crafted to fool recipients into downloading corrupted PowerPoint presentations stored on Google Drive. Scammerswere thus able to slip the malicious PowerPoint file past malware detection filters.

Video: Viral Gmail, YouTube alerts spreading via email

Another tactic discovered by Elastica involved scammers opening free Gmail accounts from which they sent out spoofed messages tricking recipients into visiting a website they controlled that was hosted on Google's own servers. Because the bad guys' website was hosted on Google servers, it was deemed trustworthy, making it easier for them to trick visitors into divulging account logons.

Any hacker can tell you that once you get someone to download a corrupted file, or get them to navigate to a website you control, the rest is comparatively easy. At that point, the target is a half-step away from being owned.

Keys to the (data) kingdom

"In the cloud environment, the username and password become all-powerful; almost all these applications use some sort of username and password as a way to get in," says Eric Andrews, Elastica's marketing vice president. "Once you have that, you can do anything you want. You can get all the data. You can get all the files. So a lot of these attacks that are going at the cloud apps are all about trying to get somebody's username and password."

These fresh hacking opportunities are being presented not just by Google but by each and every one of the most popular cloud-based email, productivity tools, file-sharing and customer-relationship tools.

"Office365, Dropbox, Salesforce, all of these apps are very, very convenient and have a lot of great business utility," Andrews says. "But there is this kind of lurking concern. You don't really know if your company's data is safe. You don't know if other people can get to it. This move to the cloud really has a fundamental ripple effect through all security functions."

Gmail more widely used

In abusing Google's services, cyber criminals are taking advantage of the fact that Gmail has become a de-facto backup email throughout the business world. It is widely used by well-intentioned workers, in companies of all sizes, who are hustling to work more productively.

No one is surprised anymore to receive an email from the private Gmail account of a supervisor, colleague, partner or customer-or even an administrative message from Google. A trust exists. And this creates a perfect environment for spoofing.

Likewise, free or cheap Google Drive file storage makes for a perfect repository to set up phishing attacks and distribute malicious web links.

In a case recently dissected by Elastica, the bad guys sent phishing emails out to victims who they guessed would have an interest in controversies surrounding Tibet's Dalai Lama. The enticement: Click to a link to a corrupted PowerPoint presentation hosted on Google Drive.

Aditya Sood, chief architect at Elastica's Cloud Threat Labs, describes how the social engineering aspect of the attack then unfolds:

"There are no attachments in the email. Basically, it's just a direct link to the Google cloud service, which hosts the PowerPoint presentation. When the user retrieves that link, the user won't be able to view this PowerPoint presentation. So the user then is going to download that file onto the local machine. Once the user opens it on his local machine, the PowerPoint presentation actually extracts two files. One, the INF file, contains a launch code for the second, a GIF file. The GIF file downloads malware to the end user system."

Gmail and Google Drive are powerful, flexible, reliable, easy-to-use and free. Yet, it turns out that these are the very characteristics that make them ideal tools for cyber criminals to infect computers. In essence, the bad guys are simply adopting infection-techniques that proved highly effective in the desktop environment to new opportunities presenting themselves in the cloud environment.

These bad guys no longer have to trouble themselves with creating malicious email attachments, nor do they have to worry as much about spreading tainted Web links that can be quickly detected and blacklisted. And as long as the trust remains high in Gmail, Google Drive, Office 365, Salesforce and other top cloud services, social engine trickery remains easier than it really ought to be.

"Attackers don't have to invest too much time or money in gaining credentials or compromising servers to attack people," Sood says. "They simply create one Gmail account and then, basically, abuse the Google publishing functionality."

The workers' compensation industry has created and stored huge amounts of data over the past 25 years. The copious amount of data has led to a new phenomenon in our industry, similar to most others-the concept of big data. The goal is to corral, manage and query the industry's big data for greater insight.

Big data is a general term used to describe voluminous amounts of data, whether unstructured or structured. It’s that simple.

Unstructured data is a generic term used to describe data not contained in a database or some other type of prescribed data container. Examples of unstructured data are claim adjuster and medical case manager notes. The data can also include emails, videos, social media, instant messaging and other free-form types of input. Gaining reliable information from unstructured data is significantly more difficult than from structured data.

Structured data is that which is housed in a specified format in a predefined container that can be mined for information. Structured data is designed for a specific purpose so that it can be accessed and manipulated.

The workers' compensation industry has both forms of data. However, structured data is more available for mining, analyzing and interpreting.

To evolve ordinary data to big data in workers' compensation, data from multiple silos must first be integrated. The industry uniquely maintains claim-related data in separate places such as bill review, claims systems, utilization review, medical case management and pharmacy or pharmacy benefits management (PBM).

While integrating data is an achievable task, other issues remain. Unfortunately, much of the existing data in this industry has quality issues. Data entry errors, omissions and duplications occur frequently, and if left unchanged will naturally become a part of big data. Poor data quality is amplified when it is promoted to big data.

The reason big data is so attractive is that it provides the quantity of data necessary for reliable analytics and predictive modeling. More data is better because analysis is statistically more valid when it is informed by more occurrences. Nevertheless, greater volumes of data cannot produce the desired information if it is wrong.

Predicting that a devastating earthquake will occur in the next 25 years does not generate urgency. Likewise, knowing "clean" big data will be needed to remain competitive and viable in the future does not inspire aggressive corrective action now. But it should.

Correcting smaller data sets is easier than trying to fix huge data sets. It may not even be possible to adequately cleanse big data. Moreover, preventing erroneous data before it occurs is an even better approach. Data quality should be valued. Those responsible for collecting data, whether manually or electronically, should be held accountable for its accuracy. Existing data should be evaluated and corrected now to create complete and accurate data.

Doing so will speed migration to big data without drowning in big bad data.

I've recently returned from the World Economic Forum annual meeting of the "new champions" in China, where the subject of innovation was high on the agenda. I was relieved to learn that robots can effectively work alongside humans instead of necessarily replacing us (and we can thank the dexterity of our fingers, of all things).

But the meeting got me thinking. With all the current investment into self-driving vehicles (SDVs), could robots ever replace us as drivers?

I deeply care about any developments in motor technology that might affect the risks that our customers are exposed to, and in Zurich we are dedicated to helping them manage these risks. Consequently, we are very interested in the potential for making road usage safer for everyone.

On-board sensors (telematics) and SDVs could be disruptive for society, and they will have a dramatically positive impact in saving lives, reducing accidents and injuries and increasing productivity, as well as benefiting the environment and road infrastructure. However, I expect that it will take at least another 10 to 15 years before SDVs move from controlled tests to a first adoption on some public roads. So, while this is an emerging technology trend to watch out for, it is not the most imminent.

Insurers will play a critical role in ensuring the success of this new technology, both for individuals and businesses, and will continue to protect them against unforeseen events. Given the potential to increase vehicle safety and change the basis of insurance from individual liability to product/vehicle designer liability, SDVs will significantly affect assessment and pricing of current and emerging risks. Specifically, insurers have a very important role to play in the dialogue about SDV liability, which needs to be resolved before SDVs can further evolve.

We will see more innovation in the next 20 years than in the last 100, with the introduction of autonomous vehicles and the connected traveler steering the future of the industry: SDV technology will evolve, rather than arrive fully formed, as assisted-driving (ADAS) technologies are adopted over time. The speed and extent of change will be influenced by regulators, insurance associations and cross-industry bodies, in addition, of course, to customer's needs and acceptance.

At WEF, the Chinese premier Li Keqiang said that his country is moving to a "growth model driven by [both] consumption and investment," and digitalization will be a key enabler. I believe it will also add bottom-up demand to Li's goal of "promoting the development of private banks, financing guarantee and financial leasing" and more open markets (including in insurance!).

What are you afraid of this Halloween? That your customers might disappear like ghosts? That your competitors might pick them off like vultures? That it's all going to drive you batty?

Your fears may not be unfounded, given public perceptions about insurance carriers, agents and brokers. Many people don't find the industry trustworthy. (Just more than 50% trust the financial services industry as a whole, according to Edelman's 2015 Trust Barometer.)

Many also view the industry as overwhelmingly complex. And most are not satisfied with their current providers. (Only 29% of property/casualty and life insurance customers surveyed by Accenture said they are satisfied, according to an August 2015 report.)

The current environment is, in a word, frightful.

To overcome these demons, insurance industry leaders must start addressing them at the source. To that end, and in the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, below are the Top 10 ways that insurance providers spook their customers. (Read on...if you dare!)

10. Respond to customer requests like a zombie.

Are your responses to customer inquiries heavily scripted like they came out of some low-budget horror movie? Might your customers feel like, no matter what they say, they get form letters and teleprompter-like messages in response?

Remove active listening, critical thinking and personalized problem-solving from your front line and you miss a huge opportunity to impress your customer. If your front-line personnel perform like zombies, you can guarantee that customers will run from them.

9. Communicate in gobbledygook (or, on Halloween, goblin-dygook).

What do premium bills, policy contracts, claim settlement statements and other insurance communications have in common? Supernatural wizardry typically is required to decipher them.

Insurance professionals are steeped in the practices and language of their industry. As such, they often forget to translate their communications for easy public consumption. Instead, they convey their messages using jargon and acronyms that make their customers head for the hills.

8. Cut expenses and operate with a skeleton staff.

Particularly in times of economic distress, or increasing loss ratios, some insurers' first reaction is to slash investments in post-sale operations, because these areas are not viewed as driving revenue and therefore become easy targets when profits need to be propped up.

But while skeleton staffs might offer some immediate gratification in expense reduction, they also foster negative impressions that could snuff out your company's true brand.

Bare-bones operations translate into long wait times, inattentive service and visibly overworked and irritated employees-characteristics that are hardly the best ingredients for a great customer experience.

7. Embark on monstrous transformation projects.

Business transformation is overrated. It's good to have high aspirations and stretch goals, but you've got to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Big, hairy, audacious projects have a tendency to be ill-defined and nearly impossible to manage. Plus, most companies suffer from "organizational A.D.D." and have trouble staying focused on a three-month project, let alone a three-year one.

Transformational projects make for good annual report copy, but they often fail to deliver meaningful improvements to employees and customers. Sometimes, all they deliver is disruption and dissatisfaction.

Yes, have a long-term vision-but never underestimate the power and efficiency of incremental advances toward that destination.

6. Never do a post-mortem.

In the whirlwind of daily business activities, people rarely take the time to dissect and diagnose customer annoyances.

Customer complaints present a wonderful opportunity to not just recover gracefully (and perhaps win back a policyholder's loyalty) but to also dig up the root cause of a problem and fix it, once and for all, so it never again rears its ugly head.

What's even rarer than post-mortems on customer complaints? Post-mortems on customer compliments. There's great value in pinpointing what person or process generated customer delight, so you can then figure out how to replicate that outcome more routinely.

Post-mortems can yield silver bullet-like learnings that forever eradicate customer frustrations or permanently institutionalize loyalty-enhancing business practices.

5. Create a workplace that sucks the lifeblood out of people.

To create happy and loyal customers, you need happy and engaged staff. If yours is a work environment where people don't feel appreciated, respected or well-equipped to do their jobs, then you're practically guaranteed to make their energy and passion disappear faster than a vampire at dawn.

And if you don't think customers will notice that difference in your employees, agents or brokers, then you really are hallucinating.

4. Don't tell customers what's lurking around the corner.

Creating happy, loyal customers is a lot about managing expectations. People's frustration-or delight-with a business is closely tied to the expectations they had of an interaction.

Customers don't like ambiguity or unpleasant surprises. If you don't tell them what to expect-how long they'll be on hold before speaking to a live person, how the claim adjudication process will unfold, what information they'll need to provide for a premium audit, etc.-then they're more likely to be annoyed when the interaction isn't as quick or straightforward as they anticipated.

3. Give customers tricks and never treats.

Do policyholders walk away from interactions with your company feeling good about the encounter? Do they get what they expected; do they feel like they got a good value?

For many insurers, the answer is no-thanks to coverage terms that are narrower than what customers reasonably expect, insurance teaser quotes that rarely match offered insurance rates and fine print that inevitably results in unpleasant surprises.

These are examples of insurers' tricks of the trade, and, while these practices may draw customers in momentarily, they certainly won't create a foundation on which to build loyal policyholder relationships.

Contrast that with the indelible positive impressions left on policyholders who experience treats-like insurance representatives who do what they say they're going to do, policy documents that describe coverage in plain language and premium bills that can actually be understood.

For the average insurance consumer, these are pleasant surprises and personal touches that they (sadly) have come to not even expect from carriers, agents and brokers. But when consumers do experience treats, they'll come back, again and again.

2. Avoid ownership and accountability like the plague.

A gruesome ailment has descended upon the business community, eradicating all vestiges of ownership and accountability. Customer calls are not promptly (if ever) returned. Commitments are not kept. Obligations are forgotten. (If you're like most consumers, you've surely experienced such rage-inducing frustrations, be it when dealing with the smallest local businesses or the largest multinational corporations.)

Here’s a little secret: What customers care most about isn't your company's stadium naming rights, funny commercials, Facebook feed or snazzy new mobile app. That's all for naught if your core insurance product doesn't work as advertised or your representatives simply don't follow through on their promises.

Want to create a brand experience that outshines all others? Start by nailing these basics and making sure your policyholders feel cared for.

And the No. 1 way that insurance providers spook their customers…

1. Put scary people on the front line.

Who's interacting with your policyholders on a daily basis? Is your front line composed of superheroes who go the extra mile for your customers or soulless automatons who frighten your customers with their discourtesy, uselessness and utter inability to get anything done?

It doesn't matter how advanced your customer relationship management systems are, how well-adorned your field offices are or how sophisticated your predictive analytics engine is. It all means nothing if the people interacting with your customers-agents, brokers, underwriters, servicers, auditors, adjusters and others-are not professional, responsible and genuinely helpful.

Lose the Spookiness

No right-minded insurance provider sets out to spook its policyholders. But that’s inevitably the outcome when companies lose sight of what’s important and valuable to the people they serve.

Are you haunted by the prospect of your policyholders defecting to a competitor? Do something about it before your worst nightmares become a reality. Use this Top 10 list as a guide to avoid the most common pitfalls, and, before you know it, you’ll be casting a spell on your customers that’ll have them coming back for more.

This article was first published on carriermanagement.com.

Lots of people are saying these days that the insurance industry, after essentially not ever changing, is suddenly moving too fast to follow -- for instance, the recent ITL article, "Feeling Like a Keystone Cop." But in my 37 years in the industry, insurance has evolved continuously.

Insurers have changed from the days where syndicates consisting of individuals provided insurance coverage through the Lloyds market; today, China Re with a majority ownership by China's ministry of finance, has a syndicate at Lloyds. Today, a large number of insurers are owned by multinational conglomerates.

Other types of evolution include Berkshire Hathaway's use of insurance premiums as a means of financing its investment interests. Similarly, Fairfax Financial Holdings of Canada uses premiums collected from its insurance companies around the world to finance investment interests.

Financial services groups such as Suncorp Group in Australia now offer insurance through a number of brand names, such as Shannons (classic car insurance), APIA (Australian Pensioners Insurance Agency) and AAMI. Rand Merchant Insurance Holding Group of South Africa offers insurance in Australia under the name of Youi (https://www.youi.com.au).

In addition, some insurance companies, like Progressive, are taking a technology-only approach to offer motor vehicle insurance in Australia without a "brick and mortar" presence. Apart from the option of reporting a claim by phone, all other communications are through email or a web page. With this approach, Progressive in Australia will only attract those who use technology. Here is the link http://www.progressiveonline.com.au/car-insurance.aspx

People talk about Google, Walmart, Amazon and others possibly entering the insurance market -- again, this isn't something new. Brand names have been used by insurers for many decades. Coles, a large supermarket chain in Australia (https://financialservices.coles.com.au/insurance) (similar to a Safeway or Ralphs here in the U.S.), offers various insurance polices to its customers that are underwritten by Insurance Australia Group.

Whether Google, Walmart or Amazon actually decides to underwrite risks, act as channels for insurance or simply provide a means to compare insurer premiums remains to be seen, but, regardless, none of this is new. For example, InsWeb has offered car insurance price comparisons since the mid-1990s. Here is the link: http://www.insweb.com.

One thing that is certain, however, is that the insurance market will continue to be driven by price and service, especially service at the time of a claim. In his 2013 annual report, Warren Buffett made the following comment, "GEICO in 1996 ranked number seven among U.S. auto insurers. Now, GEICO is number two, having recently passed Allstate. The reasons for this amazing growth are simple: low prices and reliable service."

Over time, risk types change, and insurance coverage follows. Boiler explosion insurance for example, was a major type of insurance through the 1800s and into the mid-1900s. It still exists but is only a very small percentage of the insurance market.

We will see changes to vehicle insurance coverage when driverless vehicles appear on our roads, as mentioned in the recent ITL article titled, "Beginning of the End for Car Insurance." There are many risk coverage issues for potential exposures with driverless cars. Imagine if a child runs onto the street to retrieve a ball without looking (a common occurrence for those living in the suburbs). With advanced technology built into driverless vehicles, the vehicle would be programmed to make a decision about which action to take in the best interest of all parties (i.e. the child, occupants in the vehicle or nearby vehicles as well as pedestrians): (1) brake but still hit the child or (2) brake and avoid the child but possibly hit another object such as another vehicle or lamppost, injuring the occupants of the vehicles as well as nearby pedestrians.

All this will need to be addressed by laws and road rules when driverless vehicles are introduced, with insurance following on. Premiums and who pays are the least of the insurance complexities involved with driverless vehicles. If a manufacturer is required to obtain insurance coverage or volunteers to obtain insurance coverage, the premium would be factored into the price of the vehicle; otherwise. it would be paid by the owner of the vehicle. Regardless, insurers will receives premiums from one source or the other.

Another evolving insurance coverage relates to a disability occurring from a work-related, motor-vehicle or non-work-related incident. While U.S. jurisdictions ponder whether coverage for a work-related injury or illness should be through a workers' compensation policy issued by a property/casualty insurer or through the opt-out option (a hot topic in the U.S. at the moment), Europe, Asia and Australia are focusing on what people with a disability can be doing and deciding on how best to achieve this, including funding. In this case, the evolution relates to who will pay the premiums. Will employers continue to pay for work-related injuries, or will individuals buy personal injury coverage to cover their recovery costs, no matter whether associated with a work-related, motor-vehicle or non-work-related incident?

In the evolution of insurance, technology has always played an important role in areas such as deciding which segment of a market companies want to attract, meeting reporting obligations and improving processing efficiencies. In workers' compensation, a number of U.S. carriers have chosen to outsource many of their claims functions, as I outlined in my last article. Whether this practice continues remains to be seen, but something needs to change in the way the workers' compensation insurer or its representatives (e.g.. third party payer) handle claims, because clearly what they are doing is not producing the desired outcome for the injured worker or the employer, and no form of state legislature or technology change will address this shortfall.

Products like IBM's Watson and Saama that are able to use unstructured data in addition to structured data to perform analytics are part of the technology evolution, and there is high probability of success. But we saw something along the same lines during the early 1990s, when all the buzz was about neural networks.

In closing, I don't feel as if I'm a Keystone Cop when it comes to professional development, either relating to insurance or the technology used now or offered in the future. I also don't think the major players in the insurance industry (like Berkshire Hathaway, Fairfax, Suncorp and others around the globe) feel they or their personnel are operating like Keystone Cops. If they were, I'm sure their share prices would not be as high as they are.