We can’t cross over to a new year without reflecting over the past year and setting our hopes, expectations and plans for the new year. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated headlines and minds for almost two years, there have been other events in the past year that have changed and will continue to change the world. For those of us in the insurance field, how have the events of the past two years changed our perspectives? It would be interesting to check how realistic the pandemic scenarios in our stress testing exercises prior to the pandemic were, compared to the real pandemic. Were our parameters reasonable? Have any of our reasonable expectations been challenged or needed to be adjusted? What actual effect of the pandemic on insurance loss experience was surprising to you? How shall we improve our assumptions based on the actual event? How long can we allow this pandemic to be an anomaly in our risk projections? Please send us your thoughts and share how you have changed your projection parameters for scenario testing!

If you are interested to find out the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic on U.S. workers' compensation losses, check out our COVID-19 Impact Study.

As a recap of 2021, we bring to you from BRINK News, what a cross section of experts felt was most surprising to them in 2021. Looking forward, the top trends for the insurance industry revolve around technological transformations. We will share with you articles related to the spotted trends over the next few issues, starting with Oliver Wyman’s insight to where Artificial Intelligence will boost companies’ competitive advantage.

Here’s to a better 2022!

WHAT SURPRISED YOU MOST ABOUT 2021?

A Survey of BRINK Contributors

To round out this year, we asked a cross section of our BRINK experts to name — in a couple of sentences — what they had learned that surprised them the most in their areas of expertise over the last year or so since the pandemic began.

THREE AREAS WHERE AI WILL BOOST YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

By: Sian Townson

Summary: The question is no longer if a company should use AI, but where it brings the greatest competitive advantage. There are three areas where AI has now shifted from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” technology. Companies that push the boundaries of AI to sharpen predictions, boost efficiencies, and optimize the real-time pricing or stock control of their products are moving faster and further than rivals still conservatively wavering over the wisdom of using AI for these purposes.