Changing the Subject Won’t Help

We firmly believe in the notion that anything is possible. If a person puts his mind to something, or if a group of people commits to working together to accomplish something previously unaccomplished, we’re among the first to believe it can be done. But believing anything is possible isn’t the same as believing everything is possible.

By the same token, common wisdom has it that the shortest route to any destination is a straight line. Along similar lines (no pun intended), the shortest route to the resolution of any question, particularly a business question, is a straight answer.

Presuming we’re all in agreement on those two points (why wouldn’t we be?), where does that leave us? We don’t know that we can answer for everyone. But we certainly can answer for ourselves.

Function Follows Facility

We make software to perform specific functions for a specific industry. Insurance. It does lots of things insurance software needs to do: It administers policies and claims. It manages billing. It provides business intelligence. It permits access through portals and mobile devices. And it features a WYSIWYG Design Studio that lets you design, configure, and manage the entire Finys Suite; to develop and deploy products, states, and lines of business; or to quickly change any of those things with or without our help, or any degree in between, depending on your needs and desires.

As much as it pains us to admit it, the Finys Suite doesn’t make coffee. It doesn’t play the violin. It won’t make us better looking.

The fact of the matter is, we don’t want the Suite do any of those things (with the possible exception of making us better looking). Our customers don’t need it to do those things. And we’ll never tell our customers or prospects the Suite will do everything they might want it to do. With their input and a legitimately demonstrable need, we can likely get the Suite to do anything they might like it to do. But we won’t make impractical promises, avoid their questions, or give circuitous answers to those questions.

Changing the subject, or avoiding it, won’t help anyone.

Let’s Be Careful Out There

At various points in the year, we like to review some of the things that have been forecasted to take place in or be important to the insurance industry. As a result of such a review, we came across a piece from PropertyCasualty360 called, “Four trends shaping insurance in 2019.” In brief, the four predicted trends were:

  1. Virtual claims adjusting
  2. Innovative use of mobile technology
  3. Better, more powerful data
  4. Blockchain will get bigger.

The first three are pretty much indisputable. Given the capabilities unleashed by the Internet (hello, IoE), the digitalization of darn-near everything, the ubiquitous advancement of mobile capabilities, the data generated by, accessible to, and running all those things, their inevitability couldn’t have been disputed. We do, however, wonder about #4.

The Jury’s Out

In November of last year, The Register published this — “Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don’t call back when asked for evidence” — which is the kind of thing that grabs our attention, especially when blockchain is being hailed more optimistically in other quarters. This was hard to ignore:

We found a proliferation of press releases, white papers, and persuasively written articles … However, we found no documentation or evidence of the results blockchain was purported to have achieved in these claims. We also did not find lessons learned or practical insights, as are available for other technologies in development.

We weren’t ready to give up on blockchain’s future in the insurance industry. In fact, some people, publications, and companies like SAP still hold out hope for it. But this one hurts a little more — “Blockchain Has Been Unblocked, Unchained And Broken” — especially when you get to this part:

Hackers have stolen nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2017, mostly from exchanges, and that’s just what has been revealed publicly … One does wonder why Blockchain is so wonderful, then, if in practical use, its supposed greater security is so easily circumvented … To anyone with a shred of common sense, this is a fatal event.

Don’t Panic

We can’t be any more hasty in dismissing blockchain than some folks were in embracing it. As it is with any new technology, time is our best friend. So, let’s watch and wait. We can’t be certain of the outcome. But we can be certain we’ll learn something.

We’re not saying blockchain is dead or dying. All we’re saying is let’s be careful out there.