Decluttering the office - and giving up my security blanket......

Trying to de-clutter my office and have finally given up the ghost .... I'm getting rid of all of my back copies of Best's Review. For those of you not in the know, AM Best publishes a monthly magazine called Best's Review and I have to say, it is the best insurance industry publication to be found. Looking real quick, I think my oldest copy was from 2015, maybe 2014. I have stacks of Best's Review (along with Best's Week, the weekly newsletter) taking up tons of shelf space in a bookcase that needs to be repurposed.

I always loved getting copies of Best's Review in the mail, for several reasons. The first is, the articles were always interesting. I'd throw my most recent copy in my bag while traveling and developed the habit of reading it cover to cover. They had a knack for making some of the driest insurance content interesting (yes, that is quite a trick). The second was that it would keep me up to date on the latest trends that were happening across the industry. The third, and honestly this was the most important, it was a great reference when doing research, which is really why I started keeping all of these back issues.

"Back in the day," on line resources were either non-existent or hard to find. I could always rely upon Best's Review to give up a nugget or two on any subject I was looking into. Either while working as a management consultant on projects, trying to write whitepapers or creating a go to market message for one of the software companies I've worked for, Best's review was my go to resource when starting to do research.

Now, with everything on line (and print publishing dying), all of my research is done with a combination of straight internet researches or AI supported search (yes, I check all AI quoted sources, I still don't trust the AI not to hallucinate). For example, we're doing work on identifying the "friction" in insurance operations and the impact it's having on both expenses and underwriting results. Within seconds I now have plenty of resources to pour through to test our hypothesis and create a point of view on what is happening within the industry. This would have taken a minimum of a week or so back in 2015 and the amount of real data uncovered would have been relatively sparse. Best's Review was worth its weight in gold for the reliable, referenceable data and resources it supplied. It also provided a jumping off point for other areas to explore with the source data it referenced.

I still read Best's Review (it's published online, although printed versions can be requested apparantly). I do not read it with the regularity of the copy that arrived in my mailbox. The articles are still great and I do search it directly on occasion for some content. But, I have to admit, I read the magazine when I think about it, not with the same regularity as in the past.

Attached is a copy of the cover from the October 2017 issue that addressed the rise of artificial intelligence and the impact it was going to have on the industry. Everyone thinks AI became "real" when Chat GPT was launched, but Best's Review has always been ahead of the curve, even on AI.

PS Advisory LLC be releasing a whitepaper shortly on the impact of friction (the impact of imperfect processes, systems and business practices) on both underwriting and the application intake process, based on research that included searching AM Best information for insight. Ping me if you want a copy.

You know, I think I'm going to have to keep this issue.....

#insurance #digitaltransformation #AI #artificialintelligence #underwriting #friction #journalism AM Best Information Services AM Best Rating Services Society of Insurance Research