During the February 2021 AAIS Pulse newsmagazine, AAIS VP Truman Esmond was joined by Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger, Brian Hoffman, Vice President State and Bureau Regulatory Affairs, at Travelers, and Arron Lamp, Vice President Enterprise Business Intelligence & Analytics & Operations, at Travelers, to discuss the obstacles and opportunities around leveraging open-source technology.

For more than a year, COVID-19 has impacted the lives of millions, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. With more than 25 million cases in the US, nearly half a million dead, countless businesses closed and millions of people jobless without financial security, no one has been left unscathed. It has also raised significant issues for the insurance industry, particularly spurred by Business Interruption-related questions and litigation.

In a well-attended edition to the AAIS Webinar Series, BriteCore’s Director of Product Configuration, Tricia Pattee discussed ways in which technology can support product changes, product configuration, rapid product development while giving a competitive edge.

IBM, who has partnered with AAIS on the development of the openIDL data-management platform on blockchain, has long been a strong proponent of open-source software development. Chris Ferris, an IBM Fellow and CTO for Open Technology at IBM, spoke to AAIS’s Joan Zerkovich on the importance of the open-source concept and the powerful outcomes IBM has seen from building technology in an open environment.

“Insurtech.” It’s a buzzword that’s ricocheting across the insurance industry. But what does it really mean, and how can regulators and carriers leverage insurtech to support their goals and objectives?

Insurance and technology have been linked together since the papyrus and quill.  While the technology has changed, from paper to electronic, from documents to apps to web-enabled experiences, the functionality provided by technology has always supported the business – and not the other way around.  While the latest technology is being marketed as “transformational” and “disruptive” to insurance, what is often lost is HOW that might take place. And without that, there’s little value in that transformational technology.