The story you are about to read is true. Names, links, and actual terminology have been withheld to protect the innocent and the unwitting from skulduggery and knavery — and to shield the duplicitous and the unscrupulous from the slings and arrows of righteous indignation.

It came to our attention that, at the end of last year, one of the members of the analyst community published a … uh … research report or something that listed five changes it viewed as possible for the insurance industry in the coming year. We were tickled at the notion that it saw fit to publish conjectures and suppositions, rather than calling them predictions and at least feigning the courage of its convictions.

However, given the price point of said report ($750 for non-clients) and the fact that, in the immortal words of the late Hunter S. Thompson, we are, after all, professionals, we saw no reason to preclude ourselves from profiting handsomely from a complementary effort. Therefore, the Chautauqua Research Academy Collecting Kudos Prematurely On Tricky Suppositions (CRACKPOTS) commissioned its own study of the presumptively plausible and passably probable prospects for the coming year.

SUMMARY

Some people in the insurance industry think change will occur. Others, as is their wont and predilection, think the industry will remain in a state of swampish stagnation. Everyone believes change, if it were to occur at all, would occur over the long term, painstakingly and at glacier speed. And everyone agrees we’ll be stuck with popular rhetorical gibberish like innovation, disruption, and insuretech until the cows come home … unless, of course, Doomsday arrives first.

TOPICS

  • Technological innovation
  • Technological disruption
  • Product innovation
  • Product disruption
  • Insuretech.

KEY POINTS

  1. Real change isn’t likely to occur at all unless we stop distracting ourselves by calling it innovation and disruption.
  2. Technical change isn’t likely to occur at all unless we stop distracting ourselves by calling it insuretech.
  3. Meaningful change isn’t likely to occur at all unless we start trusting ourselves, rather than buying reports from alleged experts.
  4. 2017 and all subsequent years are likely to be continuing exercises in futility unless and until we get the hang of #1, #2, and #3.

The discounted price for non-clients is $749. And you can download a graphic summary of the report here.

We’re not sure when the next report will be available from the usual CRACKPOTS. Whenever it is, it’ll be too soon.


Photo by KlausHausmann, courtesy of pixabay.com.