Climate change

More than 14.5 million single and multi-family homes were affected by natural disaster events last year. There was an estimated $56.92 billion in property damage.

We want insurers to transform from premium collectors to lifelong protectors. And technology is at the core of helping them achieve this.

The total losses and physical damages were estimated to cost $343 billion, well below the peak loss year in 2011 of $615 billion, however the 2021 losses, compared to 2011-2020 were about 4% higher than the average of $271 billion, according to the 2021 Weather, Climate and Catastrophe Insight report.

A recent study shows cyber incidents, business interruption and natural catastrophes are the most important global business risks for companies in 2022.

In 2020, natural disasters, excluding COVID-19, caused a total of $76 billion in insured losses, as opposed to the $7 billion in man-made insured losses. Companies must prepare to meet the demands of an increased customer base, including facilitating an easy claims process and expanding digital access.

The pandemic and industry challenges that lie ahead have fast-tracked innovation and a push for much needed modernization in the industry.

As we look ahead, evolving technologies are presenting home and auto owners with new potential risks. Hacking and ransomware, once confined to computer networks, may become an endemic cyber vulnerability for our increasingly connected vehicles and “smart home” devices. Yet many of these same technologies could create new data sources and risk mitigation options for personal lines insurers.

In other news: Online embedded insurance, Bubble launches; Obie partners with Munich Re company; Nintex, Insuresoft team up on digital transformation.

Breakthroughs in AI over the past decade mean we can now use it to train computer vision algorithms to perform visual tasks as accurately or more than humans. Smartphones can be turned into visual experts in your pocket, which can appraise some aspects of the environment better than people.

In a report titled Shifting Powers, academics at the University of Cambridge and experts at the insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London try and imagine what that reshaped world is likely to look like.

As we emerge from the pandemic and look to the future, the case for cloud must be elevated beyond the limitations of IT savings, to how insurers can use it to address their biggest business challenges.

The disruptions created by the pandemic, natural disasters and a shifting workforce in the past year have challenged insurers to respond to market uncertainties with speed. Before looking at where technology met its goals and where there are opportunities for 2022, it bears noting how carriers mitigated uncertainty and aggressively charted a path forward. Carriers didn’t shy away from the need to digitize or accelerate movement to the cloud.

A group of the world's biggest insurers and reinsurers jointly pledging to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from their underwriting activities have run into an unexpected opponent of their planet-friendly mission: competition law.

There’s little faith in the global economic recovery accelerating, with officials and business leaders citing climate change and rising social tensions, alongside the pandemic, among their top risks, the World Economic Forum found.

The U.S. utilities sector could suffer annual losses of up to $4.1 billion as climate hazards threaten to batter the industry’s infrastructure, according to a new report.

Ecosystems, sustainability and workforce transformation were the main topics of the EY 2022 Global Insurance Outlook, which comes out in January 2022. It’s important to understand how digital transformation is uniquely related to each of those topics.

In case you missed it, insurtech -- technology developed to improve and transform the insurance industry -- is having a bit of a moment. Forrester recently reported record-breaking funding for insurtechs, closing Q3 at $15 billion - more funding than in 2019 and 2020 combined - with more deals anticipated by the end-of-year.

Consumers getting policies from the California FAIR Plan climbed about 25% in 2020, according to data from the state’s insurance department. That was due to increases in both new policies and renewed ones.

The final standards, which govern the release of carbon dioxide from the tailpipes of cars and light trucks, roughly translate into fleet-wide fuel economy values of 55 miles (89 kilometers) per gallon in model year 2026.

Commercial structures across the U.S could face up to $13.5 billion in damage in 2022, an amount that will rise at least 25% over the next 30 years as climate change exacerbates flooding from sea rise, storms and extreme rain events, according to First Street Foundation.