Analytics for Insurance

Chapter 13Visions of the Future?

Pick up most books about quotations and they have pithy lines about the future. Many if not all of them could find a place here. Two useful famous lines come to mind:

‘You can never plan the future by the past.’

Edmund Burke, British statesman (1729–97)¹

‘It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.’

Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965)²

It is probably possible to find a quotation to fit any particular personal point of view. If one is worried, then someone somewhere will already have expressed that in some form. Alternatively, if one is optimistic then equally there will be words but overall it's important that quotations are kept in context. When Shakespeare in his play The Tempest referred to a ‘Brave New World,’ it was with a sense of irony. Context is everything.

So it is therefore with a slight element of trepidation that a number of analytical visions of the future are suggested which involve insurance. The intention is to stimulate, reflect and challenge. Perhaps within a very short time some of the ideas which have been suggested will have crossed the finish line whereas others may not even have got across the starting line.

If we are to think about what makes an ‘analytical insurer’ then it will be the way that the insurer behaves both internally and externally, how it is connected between departments, with its supply chain, with its partners, with its customers and perhaps even ...