The Certainty of Uncertainty

Because we work in the insurance industry, we do our best to … well … keep up with the insurance industry. Nevertheless, something PwC published earlier in the year — “Next in insurance: Top insurance industry issues in 2022” — managed to get by us, until now.

We were really grabbed by this headline: “The insurance industry is no longer predictable”. As we read on, we found this:

The business of insurance, which once was stable and predictable, isn’t that way anymore … climate change is irrevocably impacting certain risk profiles, distribution needs have become truly omnichannel and customers expect products tailored just for them … industry executives now have to make an array of deliberate and aggressive strategic choices to succeed … Compounding the difficulty of addressing these challenges is how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated them.

No longer predictable? Was it ever?

How’s This Grab You?

If you consider the variables that have aways existed — market conditions, economic climates, consumer demand (or lack thereof), disasters (natural and unnatural), global conflicts, and myriad other things — that doesn’t feel much like stability or predictability, does it? And since we’re now in the 21st century, there are a few other things to consider. Here’s the short list.

• The internet of things (IoT)
• Telematics
• Mobile technology
• Data analytics
• Machine learning
• Artificial intelligence
• [Fill in your favorites here.]

Those things may not necessarily result in instability. But they definitely interject elements of unpredictability because they’re new and they’re different. New and different are the ways of the world. As long as we have new and different, we’ll have instability and unpredictability. Just make sure you’re prepared to take advantage of them as they became proven.

That’s Life

As hard as we try to avoid it, ignore it, control it, or change it, uncertainty is a fact of life. One could even argue that, without it, there’d be no need for an insurance industry. We’d all be healthy, live forever, and have no accidents. Actually, if everything were predictable and certain (or certainly predictable), there wouldn’t be any accidents. Then we’d all be healthy, live forever, and be bored to tears.

The only thing in life — and in the insurance industry — that’s certain is uncertainty. So, let’s just accept it and make the most of it.

Oh … and pay your premiums.