Future risk management is key to success: VCIA
The insurance industry must come to terms with the increasing velocity of technology in the everyday world, VCIA 2024 has heard.
The final presentation of the conference was a keynote speech by futurist and public speaker Jim Carroll, entitled ‘The acceleration of risk’.
Carroll pointed out that technology is accelerating rapidly thanks to elements like the internet and artificial intelligence (AI).
The danger is that technologies are starting to emerge faster than society can manage the risks. Carroll stressed that everything is accelerating, with things that we now take for granted, like 3-d printing, droner law, the internet of things and biometrics did not exist just 15 years ago.
He shared research that half of the knowledge you have in your first year of college will be transformed or obsolete by the time you graduate, so that instant obsolescence is now a very real thing for personal knowledge, unless people do their best to try and keep up with updates.
Modern society witnessing increasing velocity, he stressed, adding that the pace of change is scaring many people. A lot of children nowadays will have jobs in their future that do not exist now – or rather do not exist yet.
Although he warned that areas like AI might be overhyped now, he added that this will not continue, eventually there will be a reaction to heightened expectations, resulting in a backlash – but then things will build up towards those expectations again and plateau onto a level of more realistic productivity.
Volatility is the new normal – companies need to be aware of this and look ahead. They must anticipate further acceleration, with AI growing at a rapid pace, but society not yet certain how to deal with it.
And as a direct result, he said, insurers must try to look ahead to prepare to underwrite risks that do not yet exist. The more that insurance companies – including captives – try to anticipate the accelerating pace of progress, the more chance they must begin to cope with the changes to risk management that could lie ahead.
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