Technology should mean evolution

Re/insurers should view technology as providing the means to evolve and not view it as something that will disrupt the industry, Paul Mang, global CEO of analytics at Aon, told PCI Today.

Mang said that technology was changing things on an organisational level to an extent that has never been seen before, and that the old traditional way of operating therefore had to change in order to cope.

“Uber is the largest transportation company and it doesn’t own a single car,” he pointed out. “Airbnb is the largest hospitality company in the world and it doesn’t own a single building. They have no assets.

“Those are exceptions at the moment. Most things are like this hotel that’s hosting PCI—someone owns them. But over time that will change; the normal corporate form of organisation will yield to some degree to a more independent form of network.

“That doesn’t mean that insurance risks go away, it just means that they are shifted around. We need products that better address these new risks, and that’s what this new community concept is about. There will be different types of affinities, different organisational forms and therefore different risks that will need to be managed.”

Mang agreed that the insurance industry needs to become more agile in addressing these new risks, adding that the practical matter was that those new forms of organisations will still need things such as retirement services and healthcare delivered to them.

“There are all kinds of topics we take for granted that are part and parcel of being a part of an organisation,” he said. “If more of the economy shifts to this new form—and we don’t even have a name for it—then we’ll have to organise things in a very different way.”

According to Mang the insurance industry should not be looking at these new organisations or technologies as being disruptive, as that word implies a form of displacement.

Instead, he said, they should be treated more as a form of evolution, concluding that in 10 years’ time the market will be fundamentally different from where it is now, and that individual companies will have to come to terms with those changes.

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