Entries by Mark O'Brien

Got Me Under Pressure

No. We’re not talking about the ZZ Top song. We’re talking about the pressure insurers are feeling from a very difficult reinsurance market. According to an article in beinsure.com, “Global Reinsurance Market 2023: Challenging Renewals & Realignment“: Mounting pressures in the reinsurance market … were exacerbated significantly by Hurricane Ian … reinforcing one of the […]

Weathering Storms

The September edition of Best’s Review ran an article called, “Slow and Steady”, about the resilience of mutual insurance companies. While the article covered life and health companies, too, it had this to say, in part, about property/casualty insurers: In 2022, property/casualty mutuals posted a net loss while stock carriers had a profit … With […]

In the Pocket

When we think of pockets, we think of three things: The first is dentition. Perhaps you’ve been to the dentist for an oral exam. And perhaps in the course of the exam, the hygienist has asked another person to come into the room. That other person is carrying a scorecard and a pen. As the […]

Trouble Brewing?

An old corporate adage goes like this: “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.” Needless to say, that applies to systems implementations, among other things. And it’s pretty funny if: You’re laboring in the belly of the beast, and the money isn’t coming out of your pocket. […]

That’s Shocking

The classic model of technology adopters outlined in Geoffrey A. Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm, comprises the psychographic categories innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Based on an article in the July edition of Best’s Review — “Fires, Hacking Are Just 2 Hazards at Electric Vehicle Charging Stations” — perhaps two other psychographic […]

Mastering the Approach Shot

The March/April edition of Claims Magazine included an article entitled, “The Top 10 Risks for P&C Insurers in 2023“. If our golf game were better, we might think about it more. But it isn’t. So, we don’t. Nevertheless, key risk factor #1 was digital exhaustion. That made us think about why our golf game isn’t […]

Chatting with GPT

If you ever want to see a room full of people go crazy, run in, yell — “ChatGPT!” — and run out. And if you ever want to see a roomful of insurance people go deathly quiet, walk in, sit down, and ask — “ChatGPT?” — as a sincere question, and listen for pins dropping. […]

Roots and Wings

The man depicted here was born 200 years ago. What’s that? You don’t know him? If not, don’t worry. It’s not terribly surprising. And it’s okay. History can tend to obscure such people after a while. His name was James Goodwin Batterson. He was born in 1823 in either Bloomfield or Windsor, Connecticut. The accounts […]

The Forecast Calls for Change

The first single from Robert Cray’s 1990 album, Midnight Stroll, was “The Forecast Calls for Pain“. We couldn’t help thinking of that song when we read a couple of recent forecasts about the insurance industry for 2023. In its report, Property and Casualty-Insurance Top Trends 2023, Capgemini wrote this, in part: Personalized value-added services can […]

The Digital Promise: Part Two

Matteo Carbone, an insurance industry strategist with a specialization in innovation, wrote a post for Insurance Thought Leadership called, “Lemonade: No Sign of Disruption Yet“. In the post, Carbone pointed this out: Lemonade has written almost $370 million in premiums (showing 42% growth from 2020) … with a combined ratio (gross of reinsurance) above a 150% […]