Economic headwinds usher in challenging climate for fleets

This post is part of a series sponsored by IAT Insurance Group.

Historically high inflation, a looming recession and serious supply chain struggles continue to plague fleet owners and owner-operators who are the backbone of our economy, moving 72% of the nation’s freight.

Consumer spending is showing signs of slowing and an economic downturn or full-scale recession would significantly impact freight demand and margins.[1] Although that lower demand could help alleviate some of the pressure of the fleet driver shortage, smaller fleets are likely to feel more pain.

While larger fleets, with shipper contracts, will typically weather the economic storm, some will be forced to park trucks and reduce staff. With an estimated driver shortage of 80,000,[2] some fleets will have an opportunity to expand as there will be less competition for quality drivers.

While significant, these strong economic headwinds represent only of a few of the challenges

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Insurance News: The next horizon of expansion | Insurance Blog

As insurers look to the next horizon of expansion with an inclusive and diverse approach, there are a number of opportunities influencing scale potential including acquisitions, capital investments, the metaverse and the emergence of insurtech 2.0.

In this month’s Insurance News Analysis, Joanne Laffan and I discuss how a pre-scale insurer like Lemonade is planning to leapfrog its competitors through its recent acquisition of Metromile, a pay-per-mile car insurance company.

With the advent of Ethereum Merge in an effort to combat the carbon-intense energy consumption from blockchain in cryptocurrency, we discuss what it means for insurers’ capital investments as they’re trying to stay on top of both new technology and net zero targets.

We also discuss some of the early ways we expect to see the metaverse impact insurers’ operations and their customer and employee experiences. Plus we focus on the implications of so-called ‘insurtech 2.0’ which emerged as

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Explore the insurance trends for 2022 and beyond | Insurance Blog

What role will insurance play in the future? How can insurers work with customers and parallel industries to create tangible value and make a positive impact on our planet? These are some of the questions answered in the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Trends Report, which is out now.  I believe that this year’s trends show how insurers and their partners are reinventing themselves to support the evolving needs of their customers, intermediaries and employees.

The report gathers rich and diverse data from the hundreds of submissions received by the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards, an annual awards program that celebrates the wide range of innovations shaping the future of the industry, from smart, collaborative ecosystems to compelling uses of AI and more. From vaccination incentive programs to remote claims assessment solutions and AI-enabled health checks, this year’s awards showed clear trends in insurance innovation and illustrated how innovation

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What does the metaverse mean for insurers? | Insurance Blog

The metaverse is a concept making headlines across the globe, with its application being imagined across all industries. However, until recently, the practical manifestation and future impact of the metaverse was unknown. The newly-released Insurance Tech Vision for 2022 not only defines the metaverse, but contains valuable, timely insights for insurers on how the metaverse is ushering in the next wave of digital change.

Accenture defines the “Metaverse Continuum” as a spectrum of digitally enhanced worlds, realities and business models poised to revolutionize life and enterprise in the next decade. This applies across all aspects of business, from consumer to worker and across the enterprise; from reality to virtual and back. The metaverse continuum is being built on a wide range of mature and emerging technologies. These technologies include artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), blockchain, digital twins, edge technologies, cloud, digital currencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), social platforms,

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Why smart insurers are modernizing their mainframe now | Insurance Blog

In a market that calls on insurers to be agile and digitize at scale, an insurer’s mainframe can either catalyze or inhibit progress. While the mainframe was once a valuable core technological function, many legacy mainframes lack the agility to meet the demands of customer expectations and rapid digital progress.

The call for mainframe modernization

Insurers want to reach a digital end-state and embed the enabling functions they need to perform in the cloud using a route that is faster, better, and cheaper. Modernizing the mainframe is the last mile towards enabling business capabilities, reimagining the business and driving a cloud operating model.

If we look at the market forces shaping the wider industry, insurers are being called upon to be more agile so as to keep pace with rapidly changing demands. This is due to a range of factors, from higher inflationary environment expenses for insurance operations and increasing

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