Quadrant Quick Take: Retraining may be the best investment you ever make.
For more than 25 years, Quadrant Information Services has provided its clients—who include all the major insurance carriers in the United States—the information they need to make accurate, timely, data-driven decisions. We do this by offering the most advanced tools on the market, an unsurpassed database of rate information, and our own close observation of a rapidly changing industry.
A major transformation looming ahead for the industry is its reshaping due to automation. According to a recent report from Forrester, cognitive technologies such as robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will replace 7% of U.S. jobs by 2025. These technologies will create jobs as well—Forrester projects new jobs equaling about 9% of the total workforce. However, they also project that 16% of current jobs will be replaced, for a total net loss of seven percent.
The insurance industry will be particularly hard hit by automation. In addition to worker replacement by business process automation, some areas of the property & casualty industry, most notably auto insurance, find themselves threatened by automation designed to make life safer. Currently, the average driver will file a claim for a collision about once every 17.9 years, for a total of three or four accidents in a driving lifetime. Self-drive vehicles, however, have the potential to reduce the accident rate by as much as 90%.
Overall, in fact, the widespread expectation is for a steep decline in many of the kinds of jobs found in insurance today. McKinsey & Co. has estimated that automation could leave up to 25% of current industry positions consolidated or replaced over the next decade. This shift in staffing requirements doesn’t have to be a disaster for the industry—and it won’t be for insurers who have prepared themselves to deal with the changing landscape.
What’s important to remember is that competition in the industry—both for business and for appropriately skilled staff—is going to increase sharply. You may not need as many operations people as you used to, but you will urgently need people in new business development, new products and services, PR and marketing, quality control, and customer service. If you have employees in-house with the brains and attitude to move your company forward—and they’re in an endangered area—retrain them now. It may be the best investment you ever make.
At Quadrant Information Services, our business is helping p&c insurers become better competitors in a competitive world. Check out what we have to offer—it may surprise you!
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