As we near the end of 2022, the insurance industry is responding to disruption across all lines of business. From customers concerned about crypto losses to employers still assessing the risks of COVID-19, insurers are finding ways to offer protection.

In this final Insurance News Analysis of the year, Abbey Compton and I are happy to welcome Cindy De Armond and congratulate her on her new role as Accenture’s Insurance Lead for North America. We also welcome back Jim Bramblet as he moves into his new role as Accenture Financial Services Lead for the Midwest.

Our discussion begins with the recent developments in crypto and the expansion of cyber policies that protect insurance customers from losing their assets in the metaverse. While insurance in the metaverse continues to evolve, we consider how traditional home insurance is also evolving to include cyber coverage of personal devices.

The cost of commercial property

This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.

For carriers looking to own the future of their distribution channels, having a reputational advantage with downstream agencies and their producers is mission critical.: To help, AgentSync has sponsored a report with Aite-Novarica, called Modernizing the Producer Onboarding Experience.

Read the report to learn more about how most carriers’ existing processes pose liabilities, how mergers and acquisitions will likely increase as agent churn rises, and how emerging tools like carrier management software will need to decrease risks while enabling growth.

Or, if you’re ready to transform your appointment management processes beyond onboarding to impress your producers and downstream insurance distribution partners, download Checklist: Turning Compliance into a Competitive Advantage for Carriers.

Carrier challenges to the producer experience

Many carriers have rightly trended toward opening direct sales tools to consumer audiences as they become more comfortable with tools that provide a

A year ago at re:Invent, Accenture and AWS announced a joint investment to accelerate cloud migration and industry differentiation for our clients. Increasing demand in commercial underwriting made insurance the obvious industry to blaze the trail.

At AWS re:Invent 2022, Anand Premsundar and I will talk about how innovation transforms experiences, processes, and decision-making for the core insurance functions of underwriting and claims.

Across the insurance industry, we are seeing a great deal of progress in the use of cloud and AI in claims—especially in auto claims. IoT crash detection, APIs, and intelligent solutions are delivering the speed to settlement insurance customers want and enabling the operational transformations and structural cost reductions insurance companies need.

Underwriting is the next area in which major transformations are taking place. Many underwriting processes are still highly manual, particularly in lines of business that rely heavily on intermediary distribution through agents and brokers.

This year’s InsureTech Connect conference brought together an incredible group of carriers and some of the industry’s most innovative insurtechs to connect over the technology that’s transforming the insurance landscape. ITC provided an opportunity to understand what’s happening in the insurance community right now, what carriers are excited about and what’s next for the industry. I wanted to share a few insights from ITC, including how carriers can take action on the ideas and offerings they learned about at the conference.

AI has reached viable maturity and is rapidly becoming an industry standard

Everywhere you turned at ITC, someone was demonstrating their AI expertise. From unstructured data digitization, to streamlined claims processing, fraud detection and more, insurtechs are quickly scaling and diversifying AI to solve all kinds of business problems. As we mentioned in our recent report, Why AI in Insurance Claims and Underwriting?, AI has reached maturity and

Insurers and their customers in Florida may feel some relief with the end of this year’s hurricane season. But restoration from the damage left by Ian and Nicole is just beginning. And so are the questions about how the insurance industry will respond.

In this month’s Insurance News Analysis, Abbey Compton and I are joined by Jane Tutoki, an expert in Claims and a Director on the Boards of Sedgwick and Fortitude Reinsurance. Jane shares her perspective on how insurers responded as the massive toll of Ian was being assessed and Nicole was bearing down.

While a storm of Ian’s magnitude would test the preparedness and resilience of any business impacted, insurers are having a particularly difficult time helping customers with restoration. Inflation and supply chain delays are complicating the already daunting task of assessing the costs of repairs in areas that are difficult for claims adjusters to visit.