Certainly insurance management has become one of the core competencies for even corporate executives outside insurance providers and intermediaries. Let us have a glimpse of one general insurance and one life insurance anticipated encounter with changing technological landscape.

There is emerging connectivity in automobiles and other transportation equipment. Global Satellite Positioning Systems (GPS) are becoming affordable. Most future automobiles will be GPS enabled. Potentially it may reduce accident hazard but driver becomes vulnerable to detection for any incidence of inattention. Next generation automobile will be full of sophisticated softwares as evident from several R&D, whether in near home TATA TYCO System or GM-Microsoft ventures. The driver will find himself stuck on the highway in the midst of a shutdown and will have to wait for the car to reboot. There will be new forms of traffic congestion as viruses and computer worms enter into automobiles and not necessarily an erratic driver wrongly moving in a lane, thereby causing accident. Imagine what will be the added dimension to our already messy motor insurance with these not so distant changes.

Now let us peep into life insurance. A wide variety of “device implants” for human bodies are developing, which is termed as sub-dermal bio-connectivity. This will provide for constant-body monitoring and repair. There should be insurance against what might happen if such technology goes wrong or fails to operate as promised! Future life insurance quotes will be based upon the life saving connectivity that such a technology might provide but a bug in the software resulting in a failure may be the domain of general insurance. I wonder how the regulator will compartmentalise the lines of insurance! More eminently how the actuary will factor this sub-dermal connectivity technology into his insurance quotes!

You must be prepared to carefully assess the insurance requirements your corporate and employees might be faced with, as well as giving consideration as to how you can ensure that your employees are kept up to date in terms of emerging insurance management issues. That is why you should gain an appreciation for the new types of insurance requirements that are emerging in a world undergoing rapid, relentless change, with resultant new forms of untested insurance becoming the norm. I believe there are four distinct areas where new challenges are occurring.

Firstly, there are new potential hazards. These are the unforeseen risks resulting from rapid innovation and change. The world is changing on a continuous basis, with a rate of scientific advance that is simply unparalleled. Many new products, whether pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, automobiles or food products to name but a few, are coming to market faster than ever before.

With the innovation, R&D and fast market introduction of new product, new and completely unforeseen problems emerge. A fast business cycle implies more insurance requirements in untested areas for risk management.