The Insurance Year Ahead – 2022
For many insurance professionals whether they are a claims handler, an underwriter, someone in the operations or technology side, the new year means setting resolutions for better health and well-being. Whether you work for a Lloyd’s Syndicate in EC3 or an international non-bureau carrier, we must consider the scenarios that may threaten or enable our success. The London market and wider insurance industry is no different.
This time last year, our insurance clients were telling us how eager they are for COVID-19 vaccines to end the continuing cycle of lockdown and the disruption it brings with the need for physical distancing and travel restrictions. There was light at the end of tunnel, then new variants emerged, meaning that we must practice continued vigilance to control the virus. The people at DOCOsoft, however, are natural optimists and we anticipate that our business along with our clients, will thrive as we kickstart the new year.
In this blog, we look ahead to 2022, predicting what we think will be some of the key trends that affect claims handlers, their senior leadership teams, and the business they work for, starting with the great digital disruption that is currently taking shape. COVID will no doubt continue to shape our daily working lives, but the opportunities posed by digitisation is infecting us all with a new optimism as we grapple with the new challenges and risks that were being thrown up as a result, starting with cyber perils.
Beware the Juice Jackers!
Phrases like ‘cyber-extortion’, ‘crypto jacking’, ‘juice jacking’, ‘social engineering fraud loss’, ‘ransomware demands’, ‘bricking coverage’ are just some of the modern-day currencies of insurance language. Our evolving virtual world requires a new field of classification (or taxonomy) to understand modern cyber risks, which are more specialised and complex than the traditional specialty insurance classes. The tremendous growth in writing Cyber necessitates close monitoring of claim trends to ensure appropriate coverage is being offered in alignment of developing claim exposure.
Cyber risks are special; therefore, they demand a special depth of Management Information and granular insights, which is why a new DOCOsoft Cyber Claim Management System Module is being launched this year aimed at claims teams and their underwriting counterparts.
Flexible Cyber Technology
Claims managers and underwriters are operating in a complex world where Incident Response Costs, Crisis Management, Public Relations, and Forensic and Legal Expenses have become a daily part of their global Business Interruption exposures, so they need their insurance technology to be flexible to help them keep up with the pace of change.
The DOCOsoft Cyber Module has been designed to helps claims handlers respond to international cross-border malware variants at the click of a dropdown menu or to access information as soon as they receive a ransom demand. Underwriters are now writing cyber business across the world, and it is big business. Cyber portfolios need their own reinsurance protection, requiring a heightened level of granular detail that new claims technology provides.
The purpose of this additional data capture is to give claims handlers the facility to gather data about the claim (and the financials) at a more meticulous level than is possible through central Lloyd’s or company systems. Information for cyber claims could be captured in a hierarchical structure with a significantly increased number of cyber fields for MI. Imagine the benefits of a new unique information area and transaction overview within the claim and the multiple numbers of fields that claims handlers can select against.
The ability to assign cyber information to a specific claim, cyber data captured at both claim and transactional level, connecting claims, underwriters, brokers, finance teams at 360-degree level, a backload claims facility, and the ability to Integrate cyber data across all specialty class verticals are all there for the taking.
We’ll explore the further benefits of cyber technology in our next Year Ahead blog.