“Insurance companies don’t stay around for 100 years because they are bad at business, they stay in business because of their capability to be rebellious in the market when they need to be, and ever-so-conservative at the right times.” Not Your Average Insurance Interview: Heather Blevins AKA: The Insurance Rebel

“Insurance makes the world go round and the risk-taking nature of insurtechs will benefit large carriers who are struggling to cope and adapt in an increasingly digitally-enabled world.”

Could you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?

I started working in the insurance industry in 2004 working for a major national insurance carrier within the exciting world of fire property claims. I have an extensive background in auto, fire, commercial, flood and large loss claims, and spent a large portion of my career serving in a claims training role, where I taught the future of this world-shaking industry. I’ve also dabbled a bit in policy writing and creation in a role within P&C Actuarial. Right now, I work as an Organizational Change Analyst helping my organization to evolve and adapt as our company continues to future-proof ourselves and transform as an organization. That’s my story about what pays the bills. On the side, I am heavily involved in the world of social media, and I am a research nerd about the world of insurtech. It’s been fascinating to watch this world develop side-by-side with the traditional insurance world. I also do a little bit of writing about a variety of subjects, mostly related to insurance, change and personal/professional development.

Are you working on anything interesting at the moment?

Right now I am working on building up my presence in the social media worlds I play in, @insurance_rebel and @HeatherGJB and trying to restart regular article writing on LinkedIn. I set a professional development goal to write and publish at least 8 articles on LinkedIn this year, and hopefully at some point, I will get these published into a book. I am also pursuing a Master’s degree in Instructional Design in my spare time as well as a couple of professional insurance designations. The most interesting thing I am doing with my work is developing an organizational change readiness approach to be applied to large transformative efforts in the company, and continuing to help drive some key projects with the evolution of the auto insurance market in one of our top 5 states.

Who are your customers and what types of services and products can they expect from you?

My customers are all internal business area partners within my organization. They expect change management tactical assistance, as well as a lot of coaching and consulting services. My company’s customers are very diverse, but we are mainly in the P&C and Life/Health marketplaces.

There’s a lot being written about the state of the industry; sometimes it’s difficult to know where to find accurate, insightful discourse. Which blogs and news sources do you use? And if you could only recommend one, which would it be?

Coverager, NAMIC, PLRB, The Insurance Library, Property Casualty 360, CEW Comms, Insurance Business Mag, CLM and the CPCU Society.

We are seeing that partnerships and cooperation are increasing in the insurance industry. What are the pros and cons from your point of view and any particular partnership that caught your eye recently and why?

Partnerships and cooperation in between start-up insurtechs and traditional insurance carriers will be the future model of our industry in my opinion. The pros for insurtechs? Lots of capital investments from stable carriers. Pros for carriers? They will be able to move quicker with the nimble resources of insurtechs who offer technology/upgrade solutions. The hope is that carriers will be able to make the transition with faster product to market production once they join forces with insurtechs. Cons: Insurtechs will find the restraints and confines of working with traditional carriers restrictive, and this could create friction in the relationships, but if they learn to work together with some give and take, both can benefit from the partnership. Cons: Carriers will tend to be too conservative in their strategies and many times unwilling to flex and move the way insurtechs can, primarily due to their risk tolerance levels. Once again, communication and collaboration are key to the success of these relationships. Not many traditional carriers today have that “start-up” mindset, but they are surely trying to adjust and adapt as they realize it’s the key to their relevancy in the market for the future.

Partnering with large corporates like insurers is never an easy feat. What benefits can partnering with large carriers bring to smaller partners?

The biggest benefit insurers can carry is their wealth of knowledge, resources and history in the industry. Insurance companies don’t stay around for 100 years because they are bad at business, they stay in business because of their capability to be rebellious in the market when they need to be, and ever-so-conservative at the right times. Insurance makes the world go round, in my opinion, and the risk-taking nature of insurtechs will benefit large carriers who are struggling to cope and adapt in an increasingly digitally-enabled world.

With innovation ever-increasing in the US market, what are the challenges faced on this path to digitisation by insurers? Any secrets you’d like to share?

The challenges faced on the path of digitisation by insurers is overcoming the shackles of legacy-based systems which are increasingly difficult to convert from, and the scale of the big data challenges insurers face in this conversion. Large carriers struggle with this transition because over the years they have continuously built systems on top of systems, layering them over one another, and their channels within these systems do not “talk” to each other. I’m no technology expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know this is the single greatest challenge for large insurance carriers today, and solving this challenge will be the key to the success of insurance carriers in the future. Secrets? It’s time to open up the steel doors on companies and start sharing the knowledge we have more freely and openly, without getting into each others trade secrets obviously, but that’s a hard pill for insurers to swallow because every company is competing in an incredibly tough marketplace. And I also believe it’s way past time for carriers to start creating partnerships with insurtechs who can build out the platforms we need to future-proof our product lines. There are also significant regulatory challenges to changes in the way insurance companies operate, especially in the US market, that insurers are going to face since regulation is handled on a state-by-state basis.

Thanks for your time. One final question, where do you see the industry in five-years-time?

The industry will evolve significantly over the next 5 years, but perhaps the 3 top things I see happening.

An evolution that is most certainly coming is the shift towards utilization of more AI resources to help with cost-savings strategies. Expense margins are notoriously high at many large insurance carriers, so the implementation of RPA, especially into those processes that are menial yet time consuming in organizations will be a major change that is forthcoming.

Non-traditional players will enter the industry en masse- Be on the lookout for the Amazon’s and Walmart’s of the world to start stepping into the industry with force. They have unparalleled distribution systems within these companies, and have only dipped their toes into insurance. Would be quite the opportunity for large carriers to see how they can develop products with these types of companies.

Insurance will become more personalized. Today’s consumers are incredibly savvy, and find themselves with knowledge literally at their fingertips 24/7. Largely, insurance products don’t vary much consumer to consumer except in a few selections of coverage. I would predict more modular-style insurance policies to be built with more mobile coverages available, backed by completely digital/online purchase structures. The companies which develop these products will be at the top of the game in the future.

Any other questions or statements that you would like to add? 

Those in the industry, please reach out to each other, and learn from our collective experiences. We all have a wealth of knowledge and resources to share, and I would encourage all of us to be open and share that knowledge for the betterment of the industry in general. Insurance is world-shaking business, and without it, a lot of the basic societal support systems would not exist. We need to be proud about that, and share our story, and work together to build the future of our industry!