Practice and client management

Allstate and John Hancock recently announced a partnership to reward John Hancock Vitality members with points if the policyholder is also a safe driver with the Allstate Drivewise program. The alliance is the first of its kind and could be an indicator of where the insurance industry may be going.

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.

Insurtechs are everywhere, covering every sector and raising money at record-setting clips. But the legacy insurance businesses, from carriers to agencies, have already been here and have the deep pockets to remain. So naturally the story has become about competition for market share.

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.

New methods, using artificial intelligence, ease the fraud detection burden and help insurance companies stay one step ahead.

Digital Insurance spoke with Rand Harbert, chief agency, sales and marketing officer for State Farm about celebrating 100 years and its support of small businesses.

New research from SMA shows that the plans and progress of some transformational technologies are accelerating ahead as others have hit the brakes.

In 2021, only about 40% of claimants interacted with a claim estimator via digital channels and 47% made a claim using a website.

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.

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.