The on-demand culture has been rapidly growing over the past decade. Groceries, car rides and dinners can all be purchased and promptly delivered with the touch of a button and insurance is catching up. At the 2019 Pinnacle U event, we presented on the topic of on-demand insurance and what its future may hold. We partnered with Noah Sierer, an Illinois State University student, to provide examples of current insurers and the market’s potential.

Pinnacle University is an annual event hosted by Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc., where analysts and actuarial science students from various universities collaborate to research and present on a relevant topic in the insurance industry. This year, our group explored how universities obtain insurance.

The 2018 news cycle was flooded with disturbing images of roaring fires in California. These wildfires were cataclysmic in scale and severity. Even more concerning is that the 2018 severe wildfire season was preceded by an awful 2017 season, which was the worst in recorded history until it was outdone by 2018. These events are troublesome and seem to be increasing in frequency. How can we in the risk management industry account for these seemingly worsening risks?

Today, insurance is more competitive and more accurately priced because of better data, computing power, customization and emerging technology. Lytx (formerly DriveCam) records 30 seconds before and after a crash. These recordings can be used to prove innocence or guilt in most cases, saving insurance companies millions in litigation costs. The insurtech boom caught many insurance companies off guard. When they did not adapt quickly enough, they lost a significant portion of their competitive position. New approaches to claims adjusting, premium pricing and underwriting will continue to arise. The best chance insurance companies have to remain relevant is to develop unique technologies and rating variables to outprice the competition.

In the spring of 2019 we attended our first industry event: the Casualty Actuarial Society’s (CAS) Ratemaking, Product and Modeling (RPM) Seminar. RPM serves as a networking event and provides continuing education for CAS members by way of numerous workshops and sessions. We both work on predictive analytics projects, which made this event relevant to our work and solidified our understanding on many of the topics we work on every day, including modeling methods, model testing and implementation.