A Global Conversation
A Look at Innovation

“Innovation is about changing the process and how you do things. It's changing the product, and that's back down to the insurance product and how you're helping your customer deal with the changing risks that they have.

What are the different things and nuances? How you are continuing to evolve your product to deal with it is an important piece to it. We look at it in terms of—'It's changing the process, changing the product'—two critical aspects to innovation, and you need the culture to allow that to occur. Very often, we hear from companies about, 'We're updating all our IT systems and improving our databases.'

That to me is the foundation for innovation. You have to have that. You have to have the information to be able to innovate, to develop new products, and to be able to assess the risk of different areas, but when you come down to really innovation itself, it's, 'How are you changing your process and the product to make things easier for your customer to get to and provide a better product for them?'”

Matt Mosher
Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer
AM Best

“Diversity is helpful in promoting innovation, in my opinion, because when you have boards that are diverse you end up having different types of conversations that, maybe, wouldn’t have happened in the past. That promotes innovation, as well as any manner of new and interesting ideas.”

Andrea Keenan
Senior Managing Director-Industry Relations
AM Best

“Our core, as an insurance industry, is to serve our customers and provide that peace of mind.

How do we do that, to continually compete with the Amazons, and the Googles, and the different innovation that's happening outside the industry.

My role, I see, is becoming the innovation, the change champion for the industry and selecting the right talent, and progressing the industry to a world of being there for our future consumer.”

Jyotipriya Ajay
Assistant Vice President
Amica Mutual Insurance Company

“Innovation. It’s been critical in my career. It’s been something that I’ve focused on significantly over the last several years because in the excess and surplus sector, our freedom of rate and form will allow us to create solutions, bring new products to market with the requisite speed that our clients increasingly are requiring. To me, it’s not simply about looking down the road and seeing what’s coming at you, it’s more about what’s around the corner, and understanding how the clients’ needs are changing and will evolve. Creating that requisite product, again, well in advance of the need, that’s what innovation is all about in this sector. It’s what keeps the business fresh and relevant.”

Matthew Power
Senior Managing Director
Risk Strategies

“There are a host of issues that we’re going to continue to monitor and talk with companies about—innovation first and foremost. Innovation in terms of underwriting risk and claims management, claims handling. Also, innovation in data management, predictive analytics and whether this is driving some of the favorable improvement we continue to see in the combined ratio for workers’ comp. I think we’re also going to monitor innovation in terms of the internet of things and for workers’ comp.”

Jacqalene Lentz
Senior Financial Analyst
AM Best