Climate change

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.

In other news: Chubb teams up with Betterfly in Latin America; Franklin Mutual partners with vipHomeLink; Aon announces last-mile insurance with CarrierHQ.

The clock is ticking for banks, insurers and asset managers still providing support to oil, gas and coal producers. It’s not just the moral imperative—that fossil-fuel use is destroying the atmosphere and life on Earth with it. It’s that their financial health requires leaving such companies behind.

New research highlights the evolving role of the insurance industry from reimbursements to incentivizing to reduce risk and prevent losses altogether.

In other news: Liberty Mutual launches insurance agency; Neptune Flood releases carbon-neutral plan; New York Life announces CEO-elect.

American International Group Inc. and other insurers avoided steep losses from a spate of extreme weather this year thanks in part to the reinsurance industry. But increased reliance on those policies probably means price hikes are coming.

About 20 nations have signed on to a deal to stop funding foreign fossil fuel projects -- with a last-minute entry by Italy. But the impact of the accord is undermined by the absence of key countries like China.