Can it be justified as ethical, professional and responsible for being unethical, unprofessional, and irresponsible in the name of business, and in doing the job, and just say "It is all business!"? For Christ sake, the name of the business is I N S U R A N C E ! There is only one explanation: people cannot differentiate between right and wrong, or simply just making wrong become right, and right become wrong, or both!
Let's step back a little bit, how about just sense of Social Responsibility? And how about Customer Care? Actually how about just Sense of Purpose for insurance and public interest? How much have you seen it happened before? How much you like to know more? Or perhaps, you just don't want to know!
When it comes to insurance, anyone who innocently or naively believes nothing bad will ever happen, then there is no need for any preparation or precaution, or even prevention! Actually, there is no need to buy insurance at all! Yet despite that, authorities and different interests often mandated insurance, like when you drive a vehicle, and like when you own a home and owe a mortgage............... Such coherent mind conflicts together with ignorance and inability about risks and insurance would make you and induce you to hear only what you like to hear, and see only what you like to see! As a result, the worst risk that people often don't see is, buying insurance that has no insurance! And even worse than the worst is, for some people who had seen things happened, but still take things in stride, just carry on, and simply don't care!
The reality is, risks exist with human existence. Risks (and accidents) will come calling even when no one has done anything. Insurance business is to provide insurance that insures! The end reality is claims! Insurance must ensure what is bought and what is provided can claim, as agreed. It should begin with genuine insurance contract making, based on Utmost Good Faith and True Agreement of Minds. Sound too technical and abstract? Actually it means just doing what is supposed to do! From buyers standpoint, most important is to know what is not covered, upfront, confirmed and sure, at the time of buying and binding insurance!
People don't like risks and don't like claims, it is all understandable, but we must not blind ourselves, or be blinded, from the end reality of claims with just a 'product' camouflaged with never quantified feelings like trust, sense of security, peace of mind,............., or even relationship! In all, perceptions that you just like to see and hear, but really of no meaning or effect at claims! Especially major claims! Even price is secondary only! Because, if you buy on price, chances are, your insurance 'product' will become just a paper package that is not even worth the paper it is printed on, when you need to put it to use, often under desperate circumstances! It will definitely cost you a lot more than what you paid!
Success in insurance business should be measured by how claims are properly handled, not how they are being played! If insurance business is only about sales, not about insurance, what will happen? That is the common misconception! Is insurance business just a people business? Yes, 'people' business, It is so true! Because people are the origin of risks! And that's how claims often become only a consideration of sales and marketing functions or accounting functions in insurance business, and not about insurance contract made and executed properly! 'People' again! Ending up with even more risks! Who will suffer at the end?
Everyday phenomena: Making promises that simply disappoint. Selling insurance, but no insurance when needed. Creating, driving and using people's ignorance and inability to support and justify what happened. In the course, adding even more unknowns and uncertainties, with unexpected and unlimited cost on top, and draining profits! And more!
Everybody in the Insurance Industrial Organization, including all its agencies, establishments, networks and trades just immersed themselves, or being immersed, in the same old traditional Insurance Business Model, basically in selling 'products', and then just trading dollars, bypassing all the expected difficulties, asymmetries and conflicts in proper insurance contract making, including many self-created ones, and turn them into advantages instead, thereby evolving with even more risks and tricks, and resulting in all the weird and treacherous unreasonings and experiences as witnessed everyday, doing it and not even knowing it!
Insurance business has a super Industry Model. Misfortune of a few to be borne and shared by many! But instead, it has been misused and misapplied in the sense that insurance declined and claims denied won't be made known publicly! The proximate cause of the current situation was due to lack of technologies in communication, data processing and management of insurance business, on top of the overall consumers' ignorance and inability in dealing with risks and insurance. There is actually a great asymmetry between buyers and providers of insurance in terms of conflicting interests, inconveniences, disadvantages and difficulties in applying the Theory of Insurance Business accordingly. In resolving such asymmetries and difficulties properly, if they are just camouflaged and turned into as if advantages, by way of creating, driving and using perceptions, and made them to be in favour of insurance providers, in the current old traditional Insurance Business Model, using human nature and giving them just what they like to see and hear, what will happen? Not will happen! It is happening everyday! Utmost Good Faith and True Agreement of Minds? Where?
Insurance is for dealing with ignorance and inability about risks, but in fact, their ignorance and inability are being used and taken advantage of instead! That means, in essence, not doing what is supposed to do and doing what is not supposed to do! Making wrong become right, and naturally, making right become wrong also. Human nature, especially human weaknesses, in being used that will all come back to haunt us all! Wasting time and money unknowingly, almost like as if being part of the strategies of the old traditional Business Model itself! When you know and understand insurance business is closely joint together and related to the investment industry, and particularly their OPM (Other People's Money) approach and considerations, that's the real picture! Accumulatively and overall, creating even more ignorance and inability that will inevitably generate more risks! At the end, a global size unfair reverse subsidizing game together with its vicious cycles, on autopilot, and remotely controlled!
For a business to thrive, it must be something that consumers like to buy and employees like to deliver. How does insurance business fit in to that? Experience tells us, no one likes to pay and buy insurance, and then be hassled when something happens! Since insurance touches on everything in life and in the society nowadays, so people just learnt, copied and followed, subconsciously and continuously! That's how Insurance business, actually the whole world, becomes what it is the way it is today!
Now, there comes Insurtech to the rescue. Insurtech can make insurance business unwired and untangled from the above described mess, and to repair, reformat, and reinvent itself. It can handle the 'legacy burden' too. A game changer and a change maker! Ultimately, a new connected and interfaced Insurance Universe, doing real insurance! We believe it is the Holy Grail, and the Mother lode, in combination, for Insurance Business! Eventually, A New Renaissance!
Unfortunately, up to now, most, if not all, still just cling to the status quo instead, and Insurtech becomes only digital transformation that does not really transform or disrupt anything! At best, only digital transformation on what have been doing and what have been happening, NOT what should be doing and what should be done! Just the same old thing, same old story, and same old traditional Business Model! Repeating and recurring! Is Insurtech just for efficiency and squeezing out more savings? But in fact creating and adding even more ignorance, inability, and conflicts instead? Insurance Business has been virtually hijacked in history, then Insurance Education, and now also Insurtech? End up making things even worse for everybody, and particularly for ordinary insurance buyers and consumers!
Why is it so difficult to just say what you mean and mean what you say, simple and straight, better also in writing, and then just do it? How? Insurtech is to provide the 'mechanism' to drive cultural change!
If Insurtech is being used in what it can do and in the right direction, to position and disrupt gradually the current old traditional Insurance Business Model and what it entails, through planned self-cannibalization, it will be the Big Bang for a New Insurance Universe! If not, it will just accelerate the Black Hole formation which will eventually suck up everything we see! Or perhaps, just staying with the same 5 Trillions US annual market volume, even renewing but actually diminishing, in real-dollar value, in the next 300 years.................! Or sooner than that!
We are endeavouring to make sure the coming "300 years of insurance........" won't perpetuate the same old way, restaging and replaying the same old stories, and history!
We will teach the elephant to dance to a new tune!