An organization the size of the University of California system—10 campuses, five medical centers, a student body of 239,000 and nearly 200,000 faculty, staff and other employees—requires the close attention of individuals who help assess and manage risk and insurance. Kevin Confetti, the UC deputy chief risk officer in the Office of the President, is one of those people who keeps the University of California operating and its employees satisfied. Born and raised in Pittsburg, CA, Confetti grew up in a hardworking blue-collar family with parents who worked at DuPont and at U.S. Steel. While in high school, he aspired to be a teacher and football coach, and he attended UC Davis, where he played on the varsity football team and graduated with a B.A. in rhetoric and communication. After graduation, he hung up his cleats and got his first real job working in claims adjusting for Cal Comp, where he found he really liked the variety of work. That experience led him to promotional opportunities at Fireman’s Fund, Ernst & Young and Octagon Risk Services. Serving for five years as a claim unit manager at Octagon—the UC system's third-party administrator (TPA) at the time—Confetti was hired by the UC system in 2006. Now, he's in the process of achieving his ARM (Associate Risk Management) designation. Kevin Confetti Within the UC system, Confetti reports to the chief risk officer, Cheryl Lloyd, and he provides overall management of self-insured workers' comp (aka “human capital risk”), employment practices, general and auto liability, medical malpractice, construction risks and $50 billion of property risks. Confetti said the UC system's various campuses and medical and research facilities are actually quite autonomous, while the Office of the President strives to manage the overall risks without using too many mandates. It's a program that responds to needs as it sees fit, and it helps set up system-wide policies. To do his job well, he said he needs to be a good communicator, a good listener and someone who facilitates collaboration and cooperation among his various facility risk management teams. He described the job as, essentially, convincing his campus teams that something is the right thing to do.  He loves the variety of what he manages, and his passion is to save the UC system money, whether it’s $1 or $1 million, so those savings can go to the UC system's mission. Confetti said, “Leadership requires the ability to convince others in the UC system of the value of our propositions and decisions." With an in-house risk management staff of 10 to 12, Confetti serves each campus risk management department (ranging from about two to three at UC Merced to 12 at UCLA) as clients. The UC system uses Sedgwick as its TPA for its self-insured programs, which provides in-depth metrics, data mining and monthly and ad hoc reports. Sedgwick also provides assigned analysts in virtually every UC risk area. Confetti also manages the UC Risk Management Leadership Council, which meets monthly on various campuses. In addition, his office hosts a Risk Summit conference once each year for every campus and facility risk management team. These teams come together to discuss trend statistics and emerging issues that are key risk factors for each unit as well as the overall UC system. While each campus team does things a little differently, they all operate with a similar mindset that fits within the UC system’s overall objectives. At the moment, Confetti's biggest area of concern is cyber security; cyber issues can be difficult to identify and prevent and can be one of the most destructive risks, threatening things such as power grids and other infrastructure. The UC system employs several different IT structures, and, because most insurance coverage excludes cyber risk, the risk is extremely dangerous from a risk manager’s perspective—especially given the size and nature of electronic data managed by the UC system. A second issue Confetti is currently concerned with is the risk to students and faculty from active shooters or other terrorist-minded groups. A third risk he's focusing on is the use of drones; Confetti said the federal government, businesses and institutions haven't been able to effectively manage the growing number of drones operating freely in the U.S. Confetti said he would tell newcomers to risk management that technology continues to propagate new risks. He advised, “Be willing to take on risks, but learn from your mistakes and know that you don’t have all of the answers. You have to take risks to move forward, but negative experiences should provide the knowledge and skills to mitigate risk more effectively. ... Be flexible and open to new ideas. ... Avoid reliance on statistics. Data will give you a trail of facts like breadcrumbs to show you what trail you need to follow. But get out of the office and make the rounds to see and hear what’s going on.”

When WorkCompCentral released a report, The Uncompensated Worker, I wrote about how a work injury affects family finances. I applied several realistic work injury scenarios to each state. In 31 states, workers receive a reduction in take-home pay of 15% or more when they’re injured on the job. In half the states, households with two median wage earners—one on work disability and the other working full time—cannot afford to sustain their basic budget. These findings confirmed what workers’ comp claims adjusters, attorneys and case managers already know: Many injured workers live on the edge of financial collapse. But the findings are by no means conclusive.  The research done for "The Uncompensated Worker" was too limited. I know, because I did it. To really understand the financial experience of being on workers’ comp benefits, one should run not a handful but thousands of scenarios through a statistical analyzer and then compare the data results with actual cases researched through interviews. The research agendas of the workers’ comp industry rarely involve looking at the worker her or himself. Instead, the industry has funded research mainly to understand the drivers of claims costs, specifically medical care. This focus can be explained. Over the past 25 or so years, the workers' comp industry has absorbed a huge rise in medical costs, more and more layers of regulation relating to medical treatment and even more specialties needed to deliver or oversee medical care. To illustrate the extent of this industrial-medical complex: Nationwide spending on “loss adjustment expense,” a proxy for specialist oversight of claims, has grown annually on average by 9.4%  since 1990, while total claims costs have risen on average by 2.5%. The quality of industry-funded research has improved, because of better data and strong talent pools in places like the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI), the California Workers’ Compensation Institute and the National Council for Compensation Insurance. Their research focuses on cost containment and service delivery. These two themes often intertwine in studies about medications, surgeries or medical provider selection. It’s time to pay more attention to the worker. Close to a million workers a year lost at least one day from work because of injury.  We hardly know them. Bob Wilson of Workerscompensation.com predicts that, in 2016, “The injured worker will be removed from the system entirely. … Culminating a move started some 20 years ago, this final step will bring true efficiency and cost savings to the workers’ comp industry.” Industry research, one might say, has left the worker out the system. An example of how the worker is removed can be seen in how the WCRI did an analysis of weekly benefit indemnity caps. These caps set a maximum benefit typically related to the state’s average weekly wage. (The methodology has probably not been critiqued by states for generations, despite better wage data and analytical methods.) The WCRI modeled different caps to estimate the number of workers affected. But it did not report on what this meant to workers and their families; for example, by how much their take-home benefits would change. As it happens, Indiana is one of the worst states for being injured at work; it has close to the stingiest benefits for a brief disability. You are not paid for the first seven calendar days of disability. Benefits for that waiting period are restored only if you remain on disability for 22 calendar days. Take-home pay for someone who is out for two weeks or less will likely be 83% less than what it would have been without injury. An Indianapolis couple, both at the state’s median wage, cannot afford a basic month's budget for a family of three when one is on extended work disability. These poor results are partly because of Indiana’s benefit cap, which is one of the lowest in the country. The weekly benefit cap used in the report, a 2014 figure, was $650. Les Boden, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, read a draft of "The Uncompensated Worker." For years, he has studied the income of injured workers and the adequacy of workers' compensation benefits. He told me, “Studies have shown that many people with work-related injuries and illnesses don't receive any workers' comp benefits. I don’t think that the problem is too little research. It’s political. Unfortunately, workers are invisible in the political process, and businesses threatening to leave the state are not.” I am not sure how the politics of this issue can change until the strongest research centers in the industry begin to pay attention to the worker. This article first appeared at workcompcentral.com.

Reform is changing healthcare delivery models, but there is a large gap between the healthcare related to workers' compensation and the group health approach. As a result of healthcare reform, the industry has experienced significant consolidation of health systems and medical practices, with an added emphasis on patients as consumers of healthcare, all as providers continue to evolve. As employers, though, our message is confused. We tell employees that we have a great healthcare system for them, encourage them to choose the best physician to meet their needs and remind them to get regular checkups. However, if an employee gets injured, we have a separate system with a separate set of doctors and a separate set of rules. If employers can find better doctors to treat workers, they can improve the quality of the workers’ compensation system. Employers are not going to get better doctors just by paying more; but, if they can identify which doctors are doing a better job and reward them, results improve. California’s model has been experimenting with the concept of rewarding doctors for providing superior care, which has resulted in significant cost reduction. Great doctors are actually reducing the amount of medical attention required and, overall, workers’ compensation claims costs. As a result of better care and employee satisfaction, litigation costs have also dropped. Quality matters. With advancements in technology, reimbursement models, a focus on quality and the movement of connected care, health systems across the U.S. are offering accountable care organizations (ACOs) for employer benefit solutions. Many think mergers and consolidation are a bad thing, however, in this consolidated world where health systems have changed, mergers and consolidation are changing "well care" to "sick care." By taking a holistic approach, you are able to take a patient from wellness to injury care. Workers' compensation needs to be part of this discussion. If not, we cause an even greater divide. This holistic approach is not a new concept. In the 1990s, there were three 24-hour care pilot programs that tried this approach and resulted in lowered cost and improved medical control. At the same time, 10 states also mandated 24-hour pilot studies. Employers generally liked the pilot programs, which resulted in benefits such as increased medical control and reduced costs. On the national front today, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has a total worker health program that considers the total person and the factors that affect the individual’s health. The workers' compensation system could borrow and apply successful elements from these programs. When you send an injured worker to the best and brightest, you make the workers and their families feel like you are treating them well. This gets the patient to do what the doctor wants and stops the unfortunate spiral of delays in care. Technology is going to refine this approach even further. Technology will enable patients to get in touch with doctors immediately and will make the worker feel like he was properly cared for. This has the potential to be extremely effective and efficient for the system. When a connected care system is not in place, the gaps in care are leading to needless disability and extended absence. Technology and telemedicine are essential components of this connected care. Gathering and analyzing health data is also important to drive positive behavior and improve overall quality of care. The patient base is also more complicated, and that is where finding the great doctor comes into play. Today, if you have a patient with a broken arm, you may, in fact, have a patient with a broken arm and diabetes, which is much more difficult to treat. We need to find these great doctors and find systems for them to work with that operate far more efficiently. Technology is a very big part of that. The current workers' compensation system is not set up to reimburse for payments under this new model, including the use of nurse practitioners and physician's assistants. The system needs to move in this direction. There are simply not enough physicians to see everyone. These healthcare professionals are essential elements of the group system, and the workers’ compensation system could be improved significantly by recognizing the need for these important providers. Workers' compensation currently works in silos, and that is an obstacle. The health system ACO model is communicating directly to the employers. As this model becomes adopted, the board room is not seeing the financial benefits just yet. However, when employers decide they want change, change happens. It is just a matter of getting their attention. Employers are paying attention to the data they receive on the types of health systems. If the data around what is working in group health becomes available to employers, they will evolve. Holistic care is certainly a trend that is largely becoming a reality. Workers with sedentary lifestyles who become injured on the job bring complicated connections between injury and pre-existing conditions that are hard to separate. It makes sense to treat people as they are—as a whole person. It is very important to try to get all of the systems to work together to treat the employee as one person. We need a network that drives total employee health, and we can only have that if group health and workers' compensation can talk to each other. Data is going to drive this evolution. The best-case scenario is if all this wonderful science and data can be put to use to help patients and merge what currently are parallel systems. These issues were discussed in more details during an Out Front Ideas with Kimberly and Mark webinar, which was broadcast on Sept. 30, 2015. The archived webinar can be viewed here.

Where does the time go?  It seems as if we were just ringing in 2015, and now we're well into 2016. As time goes by, life changes, and the insurance industry—sometimes at a glacial pace—does, indeed, change, as well. Here's my outlook for 2016 on various insurance topics:

1. Increased insurance literacy: Through initiatives like The Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights and increased resources, consumers and agents are both able to know their rights when it comes to insurance and can better manage their insurance portfolios.
2. Interest rates: The federal funds target rate increase that was announced recently will have a yet-to-be determined impact on long-term interest rates. According to Fitch Ratings, further rate increases' impact on credit fundamentals and the longer end of the yield curve has yet to be determined. Insurance companies are hoping for higher long-term rates as investment strategies are liability-driven. (Read more on the FitchRatings website here). Here is what this means: There will not necessarily be a positive impact for insurance policy-holders (at least in the near future). Insurance companies have, for a long period, been subsidizing guarantees on certain products or trying to minimize the impact of low interest rates on policy performance. In the interim, many insurance companies have changed their asset allocation strategies by mostly diversifying their portfolios beyond their traditional holdings—cash and investment-grade corporate bonds—by investing in illiquid assets to increase returns. The long-term impact on product pricing and features is unknown, and will depend on further increases in both short- and long-term interest rates and whether they continue to rise in predictable fashion or take an unexpected turn for which insurers are ill-prepared.
3. Increased cost of insurance (COI) on universal life insurance policies: Several companies—including Voya Financial (formerly ING), AXA and Transamerica—are raising mortality costs on in-force universal life insurance policies. Some of the increases are substantial, but, so far, there has been an impact on a relatively small number of policyholders. That may change if we stay in a relatively low-interest-rate environment and more life insurance companies follow suit. Here is what this means: As companies have been subsidizing guaranteed interest rates (and dividend scales) that are higher than what the companies are currently (and have been) earning over the last few years, it is likely that this trend will continue.
4. Increasing number of unexpected life insurance policy lapses and premium increases: For the most part, life insurance companies do not readily provide the impact of the two prior factors I listed when it regards cash value life insurance policies (whole life, universal life, indexed life, variable life, etc). In fact, this information is often hidden. And this information will soon be harder to get; Transamerica is moving to only provide in-force illustrations based on guarantees, rather than current projections. Here is what this means: It will become more challenging to see how a policy is performing in a current or projected environment. At some point, regulators or legislators will need to step in, but it may be too late. Monitor your policy, and download a free life insurance annual review guide from the Insurance Literacy Institute (here).
5. Increased complexity: Insurance policies will continue to become more complex and will continue their movement away from being risk protection/leverage products to being complex financial products with a multitude of variables. This complexity is arising with products that combine long-term care insurance and life insurance (or annuities), with multiple riders on all lines of insurance coverage and with harder-to-define risks -- even adding an indexed rider to a whole life policy (Guardian Life). Here is what this means: The more variables that are added to the mix, the greater the chance that there will be unexpected results and that these policies will be even more challenging to analyze.
6. Pricing incentives: Life insurance and health insurance companies are offering discounts for employees who participate in wellness programs and for individuals who commit to tracking their activity through technology such as Fitbit. In auto insurance, there can be an increase in discounts for safe driving, low mileage, etc. Here is what this means: Insurance companies will continue to implement different technologies to provide more flexible pricing; the challenge will be in comparing policies. The best thing an insurance consumer can do is to increase her insurance literacy. Visit the resources section on our site to learn more.
7. Health insurance and PPACA/Obamacare: The enrollment of individuals who were uninsured before the passage of Obamacare has been substantial and has resulted in significant changes, especially because everyone has the opportunity to get insurance—whether or not they have current health issues. And who, at some point, has not experienced a health issue? Here is what this means: Overall, PPACA is working, though it is clearly experiencing implementation issues, including the well-publicized technology snafus with enrollment through the federal exchange and the striking number of state insurance exchanges. And there will be continued challenges or efforts to overturn it in the House and the Senate. (The 62nd attempt to overturn PPACA was just rejected by President Obama.) The next election cycle may very well determine the permanency of PPACA. The efforts to overturn it are shameful and are a waste of time and money.
8. Long-term care insurance: Rates for in-force policies have increased and will almost certainly face future increases—older policies are still priced lower than what a current policy would cost. This is because of many factors, including the prolonged low-interest-rate environment, lower-than-expected lapse ratios, higher-than-expected claims ratios and incredibly poor initial product designs (such as unlimited benefits on a product where there was minimal if any claims history). These are the "visible" rate increases. If you have a long-term care insurance policy with a mutual insurance company where the premium is subsidized by dividends, you may not have noticed or been informed of reduced dividends (a hidden rate increase). Here is what this means: Insurance companies, like any other business, need to be profitable to stay in business and to pay claims. In most states, increases in long-term care insurance premiums have to be approved by that state's insurance commissioner. When faced with a rate increase, policyholders will need to consider if their benefit mix makes sense and fits within their budget. And, when faced with such a rate increase, there is the option to reduce the benefit period, reduce the benefit and oftentimes change the inflation rider or increase the waiting period. More companies are offering hybrid insurance policies, which I strongly recommend staying away from. If carriers cannot price the stand-alone product correctly, what leads us to believe they can price a combined product better?
9. Sharing economy and services: These two are going to continue to pose challenges in the homeowners insurance and auto insurance marketplaces for the insurance companies and for policy owners. There is a question of when is there actually coverage in place and which policy it is under. There are some model regulations coming out from a few state insurance companies, however, they're just getting started. Here is what this means: If you are using Uber, Lyft, Airbnb or a similar service on either side of the transaction, be sure to check your insurance policy to see when you are covered and what you are covered for. There are significant gaps in most current policies. Insurance companies have not caught up to the sharing economy, and it will take them some time to do so.
10. Loyalty tax: Regulators are looking at banning auto and homeowners insurance companies from raising premiums for clients who maintain coverage with them for long periods. Here is what this means: Depending on your current auto and homeowners policies, you may see a reduction in premiums. It is recommended that, in any circumstance, you should review your coverage to ensure that it is competitive and meets your needs.
11. Insurance fraud: This will continue, which increases premiums for the rest of us. The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud released its 2015 Hall of Shame (here). Insurance departments, multiple agencies and non-profits are investigating and taking action against those who commit elder financial abuse. Here is what this means: The more knowledgeable that consumers, professional agents and advisers become, the more we can protect our families and ourselves.
12. Uncertain economic and regulatory conditions: Insurance companies are operating in an environment fraught with potential changes, such as in interest rates (discussed above); proposed tax code revisions; international regulators who are moving ahead with further development of Solvency II; and IFRS, NAIC and state insurance departments that are adjusting risk-based capital charges and will react to the first year of ORSA implementation. And then there is the Department of Labor’s evaluation of fiduciary responsibility rules that are expected to take effect this year. Here is what this means: There will be a myriad of potential outcomes, so be sure to continue to monitor your insurance policy portfolio and stay in touch with the Insurance Literacy Institute. Part of the DOL ruling would result in changes to the definition of "conflict of interest" and possibly compensation disclosure.
13. Death master settlements: Multiple life insurance companies have reached settlements on this issue. Created by the Social Security Administration, the Death Master File database provides insurers with the names of deceased people with Social Security numbers. It is a useful tool for insurers to identify policyholders whose beneficiaries have not filed claims—most frequently because they were unaware the deceased had a policy naming them as a beneficiary. Until recently, most insurers only used the database to identify deceased annuity holders so they could stop making annuity payments, not to identify deceased policyholders so they can pay life insurance benefits. Life insurers that represent more than 73% of the market have agreed to reform their practices and search for deceased policyholders so they can pay benefits to their beneficiaries. A national investigation by state insurance commissioners led to life insurers returning more than $1 billion to beneficiaries nationwide. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is currently drafting a model law  that would require all life insurers to use the Death Master File database to facilitate payment of benefits to their beneficiaries. To learn more, visit our resources section here. Here is what this means: Insurance companies will not be able to have their cake and eat it too.

What Can You Do? The Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights directly addresses the issues discussed in this article. Increase your insurance literacy by supporting the Insurance Literacy Institute and signing the Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights Petition. An updated and expanded version will be released shortly  that is designed to assist insurance policyholders, agents and third party advisers. Sign the Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights Petition  What's on your mind for 2016? Let me know. And, if you have a tip to add to the coming Top 100 Insurance Tips, please share it with me.

Zenefits changed CEOs the other day, but is meaningful change really likely at Zenefits? Founder Parker Conrad is out as Zenefits' CEO, and David Sacks— who was its chief operating officer—is now in charge. The reason: lax compliance procedures leading to investigations by Washington state and others concerning alleged sales of insurance policies through unlicensed agents. If found guilty by Washington regulators, Zenefits could face a criminal fine of as much as $2.8 million, see some employees go to jail and potentially lose millions in commission dollars. While the penalties are unlikely to reach those levels, that is what is at stake. Perhaps this situation is a result of incompetence and naiveté by the company’s management. Maybe. Then again, it could be the result of a culture that puts growth above adherence to the rules—an “act now and ask for forgiveness later” attitude—an approach sometimes applauded and rarely condemned in Silicon Valley and similar locales; unless, that is, it hurts the bottom line. Not surprisingly, then, when Sacks took over he declared the company's old culture inappropriate and promised to instill new values in the company. On taking over as CEO, he informed employees that “a new set of values are necessary” for the company to continue considerable growth. He ended his letter proclaiming, “This is Day 1.” I don’t doubt Sacks’ commitment or intentions. But is Zenefits really likely to change its core values? Can it transform its culture? The problem, as I see it, is that the company, its values and its culture reflect those of Silicon Valley. That is both a blessing and a curse. They dream big in Silicon Valley, and Zenefits became big, one of the fastest-growing enterprises in American business history. The company is funded by an A-list of Silicon Valley heavyweights. As of May 2015, Zenefits became the single largest investment of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the Valley’s most august venture capital firms. Several of its board members are Silicon Valley royalty. The Valley values speed, innovation and disruption (“worships” might be a better word). While I’ve questioned whether Zenefits’ business model is innovative, the fact remains that the company has quickly shaken up more than one established industry. However, being of the Silicon Valley model also means Zenefits exists in a bubble (not the stock market-crashing kind, but the island of unreality variety). For example, none of the executives listed on Zenefits’ site has any background in human resources, payroll or insurance sales. Yet that is what the company does. Outside Silicon Valley, this would raise eyebrows, maybe even create concern. But not there. Of course, Zenefits has direct reports with subject matter expertise, but why do none of the company’s top eight leaders (nine before Conrad’s departure)? It looks like a bubble to me. Sacks is a Silicon Valley rock star. In a December 2014 Pando’s article reporting on Sacks' joining Zenefits as chief operating officer, Conrad was quoted as saying, “When you have an opportunity to hire LeBron, you hire LeBron.” And it was an apt analogy. Sacks is good. Extremely good. He was the first COO of PayPal and was the founding CEO of Yammer (purchased by Microsoft for $1.2 billion). He knows how to run a company—a Silicon Valley company. It’s also true that Sacks has been COO and a board member of Zenefits for a year now. Doesn’t that make him part of the company’s “old” culture? As chief operating officer, didn't he have at least some responsibility for knowing about Zenefits’ compliance problems? Maybe he did and raised the alarm internally months ago. Maybe. So that’s where Zenefits stands at the moment, stuck in a vortex of maybes. Maybe it takes an insider to lead the company outside the Silicon Valley bubble. Maybe it takes someone who has seen the company’s failure to understand what can no longer be overlooked or ignored. Maybe Zenefits can both grow and follow rules. Maybe the company can swagger less and execute better. Maybe. Who knows? Until it’s clear Zenefits has the willingness and ability and to change, perhaps a bit of skepticism is in order. Maybe.

Do you really think Richard Branson and Bill Gates write a long to-do list with prioritized items as A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and on and on? In my research into time management and productivity best practices, I’ve interviewed more than 200 billionaires, Olympians, straight-A students and entrepreneurs. I always ask them to give me their best time management and productivity advice. And none of them has ever mentioned a to-do list. There are three big problems with to-do lists: First, a to-do list doesn’t account for time. When we have a long list of tasks, we tend to tackle those that can be completed quickly, leaving the longer items left undone. Research from the company iDoneThis indicates that 41% of all to-do list items are never completed! Second, a to-do list doesn’t distinguish between urgent and important. Once again, our impulse is to fight the urgent and ignore the important. (Are you overdue for your next colonoscopy or mammogram?) Third, to-do lists contribute to stress. In what’s known in psychology as the Zeigarnik effect, unfinished tasks contribute to intrusive, uncontrolled thoughts. It’s no wonder we feel so overwhelmed in the day but fight insomnia at night. In all my research, there is one consistent theme that keeps coming up: Ultra-productive people don’t work from a to-do list, but they do live and work from their calendar. Shannon Miller won seven Olympic medals as a member of the 1992 and 1996 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team, and today she is a busy entrepreneur and author of It’s Not About Perfect. In a recent interview, she told me: "During training, I balanced family time, chores, schoolwork, Olympic training, appearances and other obligations by outlining a very specific schedule. I was forced to prioritize…To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute-by-minute." Dave Kerpen is the cofounder of two successful start-ups and a New York Times-best-selling author. When I asked him to reveal his secrets for getting things done, he replied: "If it's not in my calendar, it won't get done. But if it is in my calendar, it will get done. I schedule out every 15 minutes of every day to conduct meetings, review materials, write and do any activities I need to get done. And while I take meetings with just about anyone who wants to meet with me, I reserve just one hour a week for these 'office hours.'" Chris Ducker successfully juggles multiple roles as an entrepreneur, best-selling author and host of the New Business Podcast. What did he tell me his secret was? "I simply put everything on my schedule. That's it. Everything I do on a day-to-day basis gets put on my schedule. Thirty minutes of social media–on the schedule. Forty-five minutes of email management–on the schedule. Catching up with my virtual team–on the schedule…Bottom line, if it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done." There are several key concepts to managing your life using your calendar instead of a to-do list: First, make the default event duration in your calendar only 15 minutes. If you use Google Calendar or the calendar in Outlook, it’s likely that when you add an event to your calendar it is automatically scheduled for 30 or even 60 minutes. Ultra-productive people only spend as much time as is necessary for each task. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is notorious for conducting meetings with colleagues in as little as five minutes. When your default setting is 15 minutes, you’ll automatically discover that you can fit more tasks into each day. Second, time-block the most important things in your life, first. Don’t let your calendar fill up randomly by accepting every request that comes your way. You should first get clear on your life and career priorities and pre-schedule sacred time-blocks for these items. That might include two hours each morning to work on the strategic plan your boss asked you for. But your calendar should also include time blocks for things like exercise, date night or other items that align with your core life values. Third, schedule everything. Instead of checking email every few minutes, schedule three times a day to process it. Instead of writing “Call back my sister” on your to-do list, go ahead and put it on your calendar or even better establish a recurring time block each afternoon to “return phone calls.” That which is scheduled actually gets done. How much less stress would you feel, and more productive would you be, if you could rip up your to-do list and work from your calendar instead?

Since California led the way in 1996, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical or recreational marijuana sale and use. In 2016, several states are considering bills that would legalize medical marijuana, reduce jail time or fines for possession and amend existing marijuana laws. In 2014, Congress even put its support toward medical marijuana and hemp growers in the omnibus bill. As the medical marijuana (MMJ) industry grows beyond infancy, so does the scrutiny of its business liabilities. It seems every week brings a new growing pain for the industry. Here are three important liability concerns that you and your clients should be considering. Product Liability Product liability insurance is typically excluded from general liability policies for MMJ dispensaries and grow operations. This is for a couple of reasons: (1) the illegality of the product on a federal level and (2) lack of FDA approval for marijuana for consumption. Product liability is an essential coverage for MMJ operations as it protects them in the event of claims because of illness or injury from cannabis products. These claims are on the rise as more individuals are exposed to MMJ, particularly when those individuals experiment with various ways of consuming THC. A class action filed in Colorado in 2014 (Coombs v. Beyond Broadway) alleges that people became ill after eating THC-infused chocolate samples at an event. The class action is open to all attendees who may have been served at the event, so the demand and settlement could be dramatic. This claim would be handled under the product liability policy. This coverage is available as a stand-alone product, though some carriers may be willing to package it back in with the general liability and rate it separately. Product Recall In the Wild West that is the cannabis industry right now, a trend is emerging: product recall. Cannabis products are being recalled at an alarming rate. Denver alone has recalled 13 products in 13 weeks, including a vape pen oil containing a dangerous, banned pesticide. In October 2015, a number of products were recalled because of banned pesticide content. Product recall is expensive, and none of those expenses are covered by product liability insurance. In fact, in nearly all of the product recall cases in Denver, no one was sickened by the pesticide-laden products. Cannabis purchased to make the products was independently tested by the manufacturer and voluntarily recalled. Independent third-party testing is important for quality control, especially in the marijuana industry. When every media outlet and government organization has their eyes on your clients, they need to be one step ahead, so testing product before shipment or sale should be part of any risk management plan. Product recall insurance is becoming essential. This coverage is written on a manuscript basis to fit the needs of your client and can cover everything from retrieval and shipping costs to destruction costs and even provide public relations help to rebuild and maintain the insured’s reputation. Professional Liability With medical cannabis, the dispensary takes on the responsibility of a highly regulated pharmacy. Insureds may be compliant with all state and local rules and regulations, but mistakes do occur. The most common are:

• Failing to give the correct product to the patient or an authorized caregiver.
• Failing to confirm the identity of the patient or caregiver before dispensing.
• Failing to protect patient privacy.

All of the above and more can be covered with a properly written professional liability or E&O policy. Protecting patient privacy can also fall under cyber liability, which your clients should also be concerned about. MMJ business owners have the same concerns as any other business: profitability, legality, providing a valuable service to the community. As insurance professionals, not only must we look beyond the nature of the business to see the similarities, but also the industry-specific concerns.

Before the advent of underwriting in London’s coffee houses in the 1600s, civilizations used various mechanisms to provide financial protection within their communities. For example, in the Middle Ages, tradesmen learned their skills through apprenticeships in the guild system. These guilds collected fees, and the wealthier guilds used these fees as a kind of insurance safety net. If a member of the guild was robbed, if his house burned down or if he died, the guild used money from the safety net to rebuild the house, support the family or settle any financial obligations. The world of insurance has changed a lot since those times, but the fundamental definition of insurance as “the mutuality in the sharing of losses” hasn’t. Which brings us to emergence of the new generation of peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance firms. These InsurTech start-ups want to address the conflict between the insured and insurer, because the insurer is betting that the insured won't make a claim, while the insured is betting he will. The P2P InsurTechs also want to address human behavior and moral hazard. P2P insurance protagonists around the world Friendsurance – Germany The pioneer of P2P insurance in 2010, Friendsurance pools its users into small groups and gives its customers a cash-back bonus at the end of each year if they remain claim-less. Friendsurance operates as an independent broker in Germany. See here for an interview with CEO and founder Tim Kunde. Lemonade – U.S. Claiming to be the “world’s first P2P insurance carrier,” little is known about Lemonade other than that it is coming soon. The company hit the press when it was reported it had raised a massive $13 million in seed funding (a strong indication where the puck is heading). Inspeer – France Here, customers form friend-and-family groups to share the deductible (aka excess) element of a claim. This enables high deductibles, thereby reducing premiums from the insurance carrier. The group shares the benefit of lower premiums and provides each other with financial cover for the higher deductible if there is a claim. PeerCover – New Zealand This is a friend-and-family savings scheme to provide financial cover for deductibles in the event of a claim. Like Inspeer, the higher deductibles result in lower premiums for everyone in the group. However, unlike Inspeer, in the event of a claim, members get as much as three times their initial contribution back to cover their excess. Guevara – UK, TongJuBao – China For Guevara and TongJuBao, I spoke with the founders to find out more about how P2P insurance works and why it is different from traditional insurance. The two companies have two very contrasting stories. I'll start in China—or Shanghai and Hong Kong, to be precise. Recently, I skyped with Tang Loaec, founder of the Community Risk Sharing platform, TongJuBao (aka P2Pprotect). Tang is on his third financial business launch after a career in banking and risk management. In his spare time, he writes fiction books! Like most involved with InsurTech start-ups, Tang wants to disrupt insurance. Tang explained, “We all want protection, but nobody loves insurance. And our insurance providers have not done a good job. In China, customer satisfaction is low at around 19%. Something needs to be done. “People think the process is unfair. Consumers pay premiums regularly and on time, but, when it comes to the claim, insurers often delay and deny the amount to be paid out. This just leads to a breakdown of trust.” Often, an InsurTech startup builds a business model that relies on a traditional underlying insurance business model. Tang aims to build a P2P insurance model that is more than a social group sharing each other’s exposure to deductibles. TongJuBao, like Guevara and the recently announced Lemonade, plans to go further and completely redefine the end-to-end insurance model. This is not just a distribution play built on some social novelty factor. This is the start of a new wave of insurance business! With TongJuBao, there is no underlying insurance carrier. Its model separates the underwriting process from the claims process, thereby removing any conflict of interest. First, TongJuBao creates social communities or groups that customers join. The company then creates a deposit account for every member. All members pay two sums of money into their deposit accounts. One is the fee for administration. The other is, effectively, a guarantee deposit to cover the risk being insured. All members pay the same amount into the deposit account to buy units of protection -- in other words, if one unit provides £10,000 of cover, and I want £50,000 of cover, I buy five units. Tang explained that his first-year focus is on launching a range of social risk products into the Chinese market: – Marriage cover is typically not insurable because divorce is a human-based, not event-based, decision. TongJuBao’s product will launch with a flat-rate premium and a short-term, no-claims period (to guard against early payout on someone buying, marrying, divorcing and claiming in a very short period). Effectively, this is selling an insurance product as an alternative to a pre-nup. There is a similar product in the U.S. market from Safeguard Guaranty, which claims to offer the “world’s first divorce probability calculator.” – In China, child abduction is a massive social problem (see this report from the Guardian). Nobody knows the true scale of the issue, but it has been a problem since the 1980s and is possibly an unintended consequence of the “one child” policy. TongJuBao’s policy will provide immediate support to the family through an agency that will offer emotional support as well as initiate search-and-rescue activity in the critical early hours after abduction. How does TongJuBao work? Tang explained, “The members of each community pay premiums into a large pot, and then members draw on the pot when they claim. Essentially, everyone in the community signs a contract with everyone else. The members all share the risk and reward.“ This is a mutualization model, but there is a capital limitation with this model, so all payouts are restricted to a capped amount. In many ways, you could look at the TongJuBao model as a marketplace more than as an insurance carrier. However, unlike the Uvamo model, members are not speculative investors looking to get a return on an investment. As for regulation, TongJuBao operates under a civil law contract and not as a regulated insurance business. This is the model that has been working for P2P lending over the past eight years, and Tang expects it to work just as well for P2P insurance. Can this business model scale? Tang believes he can get the same rates of growth in protection as the ones China has seen in lending. He told me, “The model will scale. Just look at P2P lending in China, which has scaled to over 2,000 platforms and [where] total volume of lending is four times more than [the] rest of the world put together! And how did this happen? Because, in China, banks were not meeting customer needs. It’s the same story for insurance; they are not serving customer needs.” In many ways, TongJuBao’s business model takes us back to the roots of insurance. Way back in 1696, Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance,  the predecessor to Aviva, the UK’s largest insurer, was created to provide everyone in the community with protection in the event of a fire. Members paid a subscription, and Hand in Hand owned its own fire brigade. Everyone in the community enjoyed the collective support of all the other members in the event of a fire. Moral hazard A common theme when talking to InsurTech firms is “the moral hazard." The long form definition of moral hazard can be found here, on Wikipedia. In the modern context, the term is used to define the actions and choices of the protected party when it doesn't carry the financial consequences of those actions. If an insured party knows it is protected financially should it crash a car or drop an iPhone in the street, does it act with the same level of precaution as it would without any financial cover? And why should it? That's what the insured party has bought insurance cover for, isn’t it? (Source: http://www.lifetonic.co.uk/articles/moral-hazard) Leaving personal responsibility and the moral dimension of this debate to one side, the fact is that a riskier attitude ultimately leads to higher premiums for everyone. This is why P2P insurance offers the potential for lower-cost insurance. By having you join groups or communities you have an affinity with—whether family, friends or people with common interests—the business model relies on a socially responsible attitude to risk-taking, as well as a financial one. If the insured knows the deductible is going to be funded by family members, is she less likely to make an exaggerated claim, especially when she is also taking the deductible from her own pocket? Hanging out with Guevara  One sign of success appears when your name is regularly dropped as a pioneer in your field, which was the case when Guevara and Friendsurance were prominently named when the story about Lemonade hit the press.  So, it was my absolute pleasure to spend time with three of the four founders of Guevara at their London headquarters—Paul Anderson, Rich Philip and Mike Greer. (The fourth founder is Kim Miller.) Anyone who spends time in the investor community, especially during early-stage investing, will tell you it's all about the team. And there’s no better example than the team at Guevara, with a wide range of backgrounds, skill sets and experiences. Everything about Guevara is incredibly professional, from the cool branding and young Turks’ positioning to the grey-haired underwriting and pricing experience in the back office. Formed in 2013, Guevara started offering motor insurance in late 2014. As the founders explained the origins of this digital insurance business, they relayed their personal experiences in buying insurance, from paying high premiums to having no idea with whom they were insured. The best story came from Anderson, who is from Australia. When he first came to the UK, he bought car insurance based on having an Australian driver’s license. It cost him £1,000. Close to renewal time, his insurance provider reminded him that his Australian driver’s license was only valid for a year and that he needed to switch to a UK one. However, there was an unintended consequence of swapping. He was recategorized as a new/inexperienced driver of less than a year! His premium shot up to £4,000. Same driver, same car, same location. Sadly, this is an all-too-real illustration of how motor insurance works today and why there is real market opportunity for a new approach. 'Old insurance is rubbish' Guevara offers a standard motor insurance policy that is underwritten using traditional rating factors (ABI rating, driver history, location). The premiums are competitive, although drivers are unlikely to find Guevara on the aggregator sites. This is because Guevara is different. Here’s why. New customers are offered a choice of groups to join. Their base price (which is what Guevara calls the premium) is split in two, with one portion going into the individual group (called the protection pool) and the rest going into a single pot that supports all of the groups (called the insurance fees). The amount of the split is anything up to 50% and depends on the number of members in the group. For groups of fewer than 10, the pool contribution is 20%, with 80% going into insurance fees. But when groups get to be larger than 100 members, the base price is split 50-50 between the two pots. Claims are first paid from the money collected in the protection pool associated with each group until it runs out (or doesn’t, in which case there is a surplus). In the event that the protection pool runs out, claims are covered out of the collective pot (insurance fees). And in the event that the collective pot runs out—i.e. the combined ratio exceeds 100%—Guevara is reinsured by a traditional carrier. The key here is that any surplus is redistributed back to the members. At renewal time, all money in the protection pool stays where it is, and the renewal premium is discounted accordingly. The model works so that members can achieve 100% discount on their protection pot contribution and only pay the insurance fees element if everyone in their group does not make a claim. For larger groups, this is 50% of the originally quoted motor premium. To affinity and beyond! What makes Guevara work is affinity. Having an association with the group is really important, because this model relies on keeping claims expenses down. Even if there has been an accident and a claim needs to be made, the member has direct incentives to minimize the claims expense. For example, following an incident, how frequently does the insured go and arrange a hire car instead of letting the insurer do it at a much lower expense? If the Guevara customer knows that a claim will directly affect friends or family or will hurt its affinity group, the customer is more likely to only claim what is necessary. What you see is what you get Guevara also wants to tackle the continued complaint of customers is that there is no transparency with motor premiums -- How are they calculated? Why do they vary so much from one insurer to another? Why do they go up from one year to the next? Guevara not only lets customers make their own choices about the group they join but always lets them see who is in the group, how much money is in the protection pot, who is making a claim and, most importantly, how much is left in the pot at renewal time. Philip, one of Guevara's founders, said the company's aim is to “encourage customers to engage and understand our insurance product. ... Insurance is such a large proportion of household discretionary spending. By giving our customers accountability within their groups and making that transparent for everyone, we can reduce the cost of motor insurance for everyone.” What next for Guevara? For now, the team is totally focused on the UK motor market, but I can sense they won’t stop there. And this is more than a distribution play. Guevara is building a full-stack insurance model, and building an insurance business is no small feat. It takes time and a lot of capital to do that. Plus, there is the whole subject of regulation, which has to be embraced and fully adopted into the business model. Guevara's product is ultra-sticky because the upsides come at renewal time, just when buying decisions are being made. For Guevara to succeed, it has to show, over time, that it can deliver a better trust engagement, a change in driving behavior and, ultimately, lower, fairer premiums for group members (which is the goal for all the P2P InsurTechs I've listed). Insurance evolution Jeff Bezos is credited with saying, “What is dangerous is not to evolve.” The traditional insurance model is not in good health, and this is creating the dynamic for change. The emergence of P2P insurance is evolution in action, even if it is taking us back to the roots of the industry!

The digital banking conversation is alive and kicking within the FinTech world, focused on discussing the merits, definitions and initiatives around what it means for a bank to become digital across its entire technology and business stacks. I have yet to find the same level of discourse and vibrancy within the insurance world. Spurred by Yan Ranchere’s latest blog post, I am adding my own thoughts to the insurance narrative or, dare I coin it, the “digital insurance” narrative. First, let’s frame the discussion by attempting to define the evolution of the insurance model from old to current and future or digital: Old Insurance Model:  This model is mostly paper-based with an application collected from the customer by the agent and sent to the carrier. The agent quote is not binding and may indeed change once the carrier has reviewed the application. I would qualify this model as carrier-centric. The carrier does all the heavy lifting with data verification and underwriting, with little stimuli from external data feeds in real time; the agent merely serves as a conduit.  As result, underwriting and closing a policy may take several days or even several weeks. Claims management and customer service are cumbersome. Arguably, this delivers poor service in today’s age of instantaneous expectations. Not only can the old model be considered carrier-centric, I would also venture it is product-centric (in the same way that the old banking model is product-centric). The implications from a technology point of view are the same as in the banking world: a thin front end, shaky middleware and a back end that is silo-driven and that makes it difficult to optimize underwriting or claims. Current Insurance Model:  The current model optimized the old model and made the transition from carrier-centric to agent-centric, which means that things are less paper-based and more electronic and that there is more process pushed onto the agent to be closer to the customer. In this model, the agent is empowered to issue policies under certain limits and risk frameworks—the carrier is not the gating factor and central node anymore. Instead of batch-processing policies at the carrier level, the system has moved to exception processing at the carrier level (when concerned with nonstandard data and policies), thereby leveraging the agent. The result is faster quotes and policies signed more quickly, with the time going from days and weeks to hours or just a day. Customer service will go the same route. Claims management will still remain the central concern of the carrier, though. Digital Insurance Model:  This is the way of the future. It is neither carrier- nor agent-centric, and it certainly is not product-centric any more. This model is truly customer- and data-centric—very similar to what we witness in digital banking. The carrier reaches out to the customer in an omni-channel way. Third-party data sources are readily available, and the technology to process and digest the data is extremely effective and delivers fast and furiously. Machine learning allows for near-instantaneous underwriting at a carrier or agent level, any time, anywhere. The customer can now get a policy in minutes. Processes after policy-signing follow a similar transformative route. The technology implications are material: new core systems of record, less silo effect, more integration, massive investments in data warehouses and in products and services that act as layers of connection between data repository centers, core systems, claims management platforms, underwriting platforms and omni-channel platforms. Picture the carrier effectively plugged in to the external world via data sources, plugged in to the customer in myriad ways that were not possible in the past and plugged in to third-party providers, all of this in real (or near-real) time. That means no more of the old linear prosecution of the main insurance processes: customer acquisition, underwriting, claims management. Furthermore, with a fast-changing world and more complex customer needs, delivering a product is not the winning formula any more. Understanding the customer via data in a contextual manner is. To be fair, insurance carriers have nearly completed massive upgrades to their database architecture and can claim the latest in data warehouse technology. Some carriers have gone the path of renovating their channels and going all-out digital. Others are refining the ways they engage new customers. Most are thinking of going mobile. Still, much remains to be done. These are exciting times. Boiling down what a digital insurance model means, we can easily see the similarities with digital banking; digital insurance must be transparent, fast, ubiquitous and data-focused, and there must be an understanding that the customer is key and is not a product. Once you digest this new model, it is easier to sift through the key trends that are reshaping and will reshape the industry. I am listing a few that we followed at R66.  By no means is this an exhaustive list, nor is it ordered by priority, impact or size of opportunity: 1) Distribution channel disruption: There are three sub trends here—a) the consolidation of brokers and agents, b) channels going all-out-digital and disrupting the brick and mortar and c) carriers continuing to go direct and competing with brokers. 2) Insuring the sharing/renting economy: Think about Uber, Airbnb and the many other start-ups that are building the sharing economy. All of them need to or already are creating different types of coverage through their ecosystems. Carriers that focus on the specific risks, navigate the use cases, gather the right data and are forward-thinking will win big. James River is an insurance carrier that comes to mind in this space. 3) Connected data analysis: I do not use the term "big data" any more. Real-time connected data analysis is the right focus. Think of the integration of a series of hardware devices, or think of n+1 data sources. These are powerful, mind-blowing and will affect the trifecta of insurance profits: underwriting, claims management and customer acquisition. 4) Technology stack upgrades:  This means middleware to complement data warehouse investments, new systems of record, software platforms for underwriting (or claims management) and API galore. It's the same story with banking; there is just a different insurance flavor. 5) Technology externalities: GPS, telematics, AI, machine learning, drones, IoT, wearables, smart sensors, visualization and next-generation risk analysis tools—you name it, these will help insurance companies get better at what they do, if they adopt and understand. 6) Mobile delivery:  How could I not list mobile delivery? Whether it is to improve customer acquisition; policies or claims management; or customer service, we are going mobile, baby. 7) A la carte coverage: Younger generations are approaching ownership in different ways. As a result, a one-size-fits-all insurance policy will not work any more. We are already witnessing a la carte insurance based on car usage, homes or commercial real estate connected via sensors or IoT. 8) Speciality insurance products:  We live in a digital world, baby, which means cyber security, fraud and identity theft. It should be noted that the above describes changes in the P&C industry and that the terms "carriers" and "reinsurers" can be used interchangeably. Furthermore, I have not focused on health insurance—I know next to nothing in that field. Any insurance expert is welcome to reach out and educate me. Anyone as clueless as I am is welcome to add their thoughts, too! This article first appeared on Pascal Bouvier's blog, here.

Gallup has just released the Guide to Customer Centricity: Analytics and Advice for B2B Leaders. The study reports that 71% of B2B clients are ready and willing to take their business elsewhere – not even one-third are fully engaged in their relationships with suppliers. If you are operating in the B2B world – and you likely are, as either a supplier or client – do you find this statistic surprising? This finding should be a wake-up call for B2B brands to figure out what is going on with their clients. Do you know anyone in the business world who will say they are opposed to client-centricity? Putting clients at the center of a business remains an aspiration for many companies. Why is a strategy of such potential value so difficult to execute? What must happen to create mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and clients? Companies have to get out of their own way and provide the value that clients expect. B2B or B2C, people handing over their money to you because they believe you are meeting their needs demand personalized engagement. They will choose the right moment to go elsewhere if you fail to deliver. Here are some areas that can make a difference:

• Sales force compensation systems rewarding new client deals, with little incentive past contract signing and getting the client set up, can be updated to reward surfacing and delivering on continuing needs.
• A linear approach to winning, welcoming and engaging clients can be reinvented to treat clients like people and break old habits of putting them through a gauntlet of internal systems and silos.
• An outside/in understanding of client needs and wants can replace product pushing. Even traditional client needs assessments may not capture evolving needs – these methods tend to play back answers biased by the products driving today’s P&L.

There is no magic to this. Client-centricity requires change and a new mindset. It’s hard work. Where can you begin? Follow these four action steps to identify the priorities for your business:

• Go out and talk to clients. The value of conversations where clients do most of the talking and you do most of the listening can be far higher than quantitative research.
• Segment your client base. This is not just about bucketing clients by size, sector, potential value to you or historical purchase relationship. It’s about the clients’ journeys, including their attitudes and behavior, how they go about achieving their vision of success, and where you fit in.
• Reimagine your clients’ experience of doing business with you. How does your brand enhance the clients’ journey -- it’s not about making them fit in to your mechanisms for running your business. It’s about reflecting their preferences back to them in every interaction they have with you.
• Figure out what this means for your employee experience and expectations. Everything from sales incentives, to marketing communications, to servicing policies to channel capabilities – should contribute to the experience your brand will create so your clients see you as enabling their vision for their business. Hire people who are not only business-focused but people-focused.

The very term “B2B” fails to acknowledge the reality that every brand, irrespective of whether its audience includes individuals or enterprises, must prove itself to the people who will be its users, buyers or payers. Behind every B2B relationship are P2Ps – People-to-People. This post also appears in Amy’s regular column on Huffington Post.