2018 marks the 8th year for Wise Insurance Group and it has been an exciting and rewarding year for us! It marks the first time I’ve been awarded both the D Magazine Best Home and Car Insurance agent in Dallas, and the third year in a row I’ve received Texas Monthly’s Five Star Award for Best Home / Auto Insurance Agent in Texas. This is the second time I’ve been recognized by D Magazine; the first being in 2013.
As I write this, it appears the members of the Senate and House of Representatives have come to their senses and agreed to fund the federal government for at least 17 more days or until February 8. Who knows what will happen by then! Regardless of who’s at fault, I thought it would be interesting to look at how such a shutdown impacts individuals and insurance.
My email has been bombarded with notices since Monday from most of the insurance companies and brokers I work with. Each one has announced they are issuing a binding moratorium due to Tropical Storm Cindy. I thought this provided a good time to understand what an insurance moratorium is and how it impacts individuals and businesses when they occur.
The 2017 Texas Legislature is well underway with over 8,000 bills introduced for consideration. The hot topics are the bathroom bill, immigration enforcement, equal parenting, medical cannabis, educational savings accounts, abortion, handguns, and parole of certain inmates. Sounds like a typical Texas Legislative session! There are two insurance related bills I want to address in this post – texting while driving and restrictions on lawsuits against insurance companies.
Sheri and I watched an episode of 60 Minutes in November on IBM’s Watson, a super computer equipped with artificial intelligence, or AI. AI was merely science fiction material when I worked in technology, however, after watching 60 Minutes, it’s easy to see how far it’s progressed in the past 20 years. I began to wonder what jobs could AI replace? Specifically, could AI replace insurance agents in the not too distant to distant future? There is no clear answer if that will happen, but I think it’s interesting to look at the arguments for and against it happening.
The big word technology companies use when looking at the insurance industry is disruption. The thought process is if you can come up with the perfect approach, be it software platform, sales channel, or a different enough solution and you can disrupt an entire industry and perhaps build the next Amazon, Apple, or Uber. Do that and the next group of multi-millionaires or billionaires are created.
In 2016 the number of people accessing the internet using a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet surpassed those using a PC or laptop. That number will continue to climb since millennials tend to rely on their mobile devices for connection, shopping, information, and service needs. This raises the question as to how well insurance companies will respond by providing a meaningful app experience for millennials and clients in other age groups.
Technology has impacted our lives dramatically over the past 35 years. During that time, we’ve seen the birth of the distributed computing, the PC and Mac, networks, the internet, and smart phones. The iPhone I carry with me has more storage and computing power than the mini-computers I sold in the 1980s which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re not done changing. Companies, such as Amazon, Uber, and Netflix have changed the way we live and shop.
If you didn’t have to have insurance, be it car, home, or business insurance, would you? It’s an interesting question. Many people would probably say no simply because they don’t want to pay for it or think it’s a needless expense. Others would say yes, because they understand the purpose of insurance, even if they don’t care to pay for it.
Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Year! Sheri and I welcomed the New Year with friends at a lake house on Cedar Creek Lake. It was great to get away, unplug for a couple of days, watch football, fireworks, and hang out. It also gave me a little time to journal and think about things for the coming year.
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