Lights, camera, action! Insurance coming soon to your screen...

After addressing the topic of fire protection systems and predictive analytics in Hollywood productions, I thought I would complete the task and do some wider research into the way insurance and risk management are portrayed on the big screen. It's no secret that for the non-initiated, insurance may seem obscure and unfair, if not plain dull. It's not surprising therefore to find out that insurance has been generally neglected by the cinema industry, or at best represented under negative terms.

Most films revolving around insurance deal with fraud (Double Indemnity), unjustly denied claims (The Rainmaker) or the battle between the individual hero and the large, corrupt insurance corporation (The Apartment, Save the Tiger, Sleuth).

Insurers themselves, including insurance agents, are represented either as dishonest (Entrapment, Cedar Rapids) or as geeky, boring and socially inept individuals, closed in their ivory towers made of excel spreadsheets and not in tune with the surrounding world. There are a few archetypal characters that illustrate this model. They are trapped in the monotonous cycle of a repetitive job, measured and timed by the regular alternation of premium collections and claims payments.

In Along Came Polly (2004) Ben Stiller is a sad risk analyst who has nothing better to do than to enter information about his girlfriend, played by Jennifer Aniston, in a computer software that measure risk...

In Crazy, Stupid Love (2011) Steve Carell is a middle age corporate insurance employee who needs professional lessons in the art of talking to women.

In Take the Money and Run (1969), Woody Allen is tortured by being forced to share a tight underground enclosure with an insurance salesman!!!

In The Truman Show (1998), Jim Carrey is Truman Burbank, a na?ve corporate insurance employee who is unaware that his entire life, where every day looks like any other day, is actually a television show.

The perception and realization that life is just an endless repetition of the same actions is enhanced in Groundhog Day (1993), where Bill Murray has to repeatedly face the most horrible of the insurance salesmen, the nerdy Ned Ryerson:

Do you have insurance? Because if you do, you could always use a little more!

Now, whoever knows my dear colleague Simon Baker-Chambers, Sr. Manager, Global Sales for 美国法特瑞互助保险公司 , knows that he would never use this punch-line to boost his chances of binding a new prospect and as far as I know he doesn't have friends who live and die by the actuarial tables, although I have to admit that like Ned, every time he sees an opportunity he charges like a bull!

This is in stark contrast with the way some other jobs are glamourized in Hollywood. For example, I have never met an archaeologist like Lara Croft, a zookeeper like Ace Ventura, a policeman like Robocop or a free-lance security expert like Lisbeth Salander.

Beautiful, sexy, funny, successful, indestructible, super-clever. Totally different story with insurers. Insurance is, at best, something that is not necessary:

Insurance? I have never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There is no risk.

Burt Reynolds' quote from Deliverance are famous last words for a character about to challenge a creek without a paddle. It becomes a metaphor for what can happen to a company that does not take the fundamental steps of risk management. As Malcolm Roberts, FM CEO, observed in an article on the New York Times, denial is one of the weaknesses of human being and one of the main issues a risk manager has to face.

“By itself, insurance is pretty boring and uncinematic,” says George Pelecanos, producer and Emmy-nominated writer on the hit HBO series “The Wire” and author of best-selling crime novels including “The Cut.” “The way that the movies have made insurance work is by throwing sex into it. And good-looking people”.

Mmhhh, really? All this is sooo different from my own experience in working in this field.

In real life, insurance acts as a powerful parachute behind any activity, including the movie industry itself: it protects against the loss of life, limb and livelihood of everyone on set, the intellectual property of the writers and director, the potential liability of location shoots, the studios property assets and the substantial investments of the producers.

Secondly, far from being stuck behind a desk, insurers have to deal with some of the most spectacular manifestations of the force of nature, understand emerging technologies, evaluate huge industrial locations and supply chains, try to prevent or mitigate events that could bring down multinational companies, engage in complex relationships and travelling across the globe.

Do you need some examples?

Natural Catastrophes

Natural catastrophes (referred with the cute nickname CAT in the insurance industry world) are daily food for property insurers and by far the most spectacular and screen-friendly occurrences. Examples abundant. Let's start with earthquake: from San Francisco or When the Earth trembled to 2012 and San Andreas, the California tectonic plaque has been protagonist of countless action-packed films.

Dwayne The Rock Johnson may well play the hero helping people avoid crumbling buildings, but the reality is that in the aftermath of a disaster, it will be insurers who will visit the devastation zones in temporary accomodations and improvised vehicles exactly like he does - just providing much more useful advice to those affected.

As far as windstorm is concerned, The day after tomorrow (2004) offers a broad array of hurricanes and storms of biblical proportions. Twister (1996) leads the charge for tornadoes, showing a range of inadequately secured equipment and roofs. For flood all the movies mention above, like many others of the catastrophic genre, offer some graphic scenes of widespread inundations.

The fiction: a Mayan prediction about a series of devastating natural catastrophes anticipating the end of the world in 2012.

The reality: Superstorm Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on records, affecting the Caribbeans and the US East Coast in 2012. One of the most devastating natural catastrophes of recent times.

If you go to the cinema with an open mind and a learning attitude, 2012 and Deep Impact (1998) in particular provide some meaningful risk management advice, as people manage to survive by running to higher grounds. If you have property located in a flood exposed area, you don't need to build an ark and flee to the top of the Himalayan range like in 2012, but keeping stock high up in the storage racks, relocating key equipment at higher level or building your new plant on top of a hill would nevertheless be a good idea.

Storm surge is featured in the British Flood (2007), where a devastating flood strikes London and overwhelms the Thames Barriers. Tsunamis are featured in many productions, most notably The Impossible (2012), which describes the devastating effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and The Wave (2015), that was the official Norwegian submission to the 88th Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. I am particularly keen to mention Vajont (2001), an Italian film telling the real story of the Vajont Dam disaster occurred on October 9th, 1963m, when 260 million cubic meters of rock fell down from Mount Toc into the artificial lake formed by the Vajont dam, one of the higher dams in the world. The landslide formed a 250-meter high wave and 50 million cubic meters of water destroyed the majority the houses of the town (Longarone) below, killing almost 2,000 people.

Fires and Explosions

These are the bread amp; butter of Hollywood productions as well as of property insurances.

The incredible destructive power of fires has populated innumerable movies across the history of cinema. The most prominent example Id select here is Towering Inferno. This 1974 film deals with some basic risk management principles, such as ignition sources, building construction and design, emergency planning and personnel evacuation. The deadly mix in this film: a newly constructed building without functioning sprinklers, faulty electrical wiring causing a short circuit and oily rags and paint thinner cans conveniently stored near an overloaded circuit breaker:

Add to this a party on the top floor and an inept fire department and you have an immortal movie.

Leaving aside disasters created for scenic effects and thrilling storylines, many films describe actual events, serving both as an opportunity to learn from the past and as a commemoration for the departed ones. Deepwater Horizon (2016) is a dramatization of the April 2010 disaster when the offshore drilling rig of same name exploded, resulting in the worst oil spill in American history and the death of 11 crewmen.

Wild fires have recently created havoc in many parts of the world; Only the Brave (2017) tells the story of a crew of firefighters who lost 19 of 20 members while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire in June 2013, and is dedicated to their memory.

Boiler & Machinery

A good All Risk policy would also cover equipment breakdown. In terms of equipment failures, the Oscar goes to The China Syndrome (1979), starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon. This movie features a turbine trip with a dramatic scene that could easily find place in any training programme for power generation operators. The event, shot in the main control room of the nuclear plant, includes a list of cascading failures including safety valves trips, disconnection from the grid, boiler feed-water alarms, cooling system malfunction etc.

Cyber risk

Also here, many examples (Wargames, Sneakers, Hackers, Enemy of the State), but when I think about physical cyber damage I immediately think about Independence Day (1996), where a computer virus is uploaded into the alien motherships systems to deactivate its protective force fields.

The role of the insurer

The shop window of any insurance company is claims handling. Loss adjusters play a vital role in making sure a business recovers as quickly as possible after a loss, assets are replaced after a theft or a house is kept safe after a burglary. To me, there is a character that impersonates the qualities of the ideal loss adjuster, although not an insurance person at all.

I am Winston Wolf. I solve problems.

With this legendary phrase, the unforgettable Pulp Fiction (1994) character played by Harvey Keitel does what the perfect loss adjuster should do when appearing on the scene after a messy loss. Sort things out, quickly and effectively. Winston Wolf is (unknowingly) quoted often by our FM London Operations Claims Manager, Chris Pink, when turning up at a clients location following a large loss. This quote is so brilliant and instantly recognizable that it is famously used today in the radio adverts of....an insurance company!

Another notable example, this time within the cargo insurance area, are the two claims investigators sent to interrogate the only survivor of a ship disaster in Life of Pi (2012). They are faced with the dilemma of whether to report a normal shipwreck or to believe a weird recounting of a tiger and a boy leaving together for months in the middle of the ocean and a magical island populated with flesh-eating plants. Whoever follows my colleague Jamie Baker, FM London Cargo Risk Engineer, knows that his own real adventures are by far more interesting than any of these Hollywood fantastic stories....

I leave you with a little bit of trivia:

• Too big to fail (2011) is an American biographical television drama which tells the story of the big financial meltdown of 2008 and includes a full explanation of the US governments bail-out of insurance giant AIG.
• Accidents will happen (1938) is a film about an insurance investigator starring no other than...the future US President Ronald Reagan!
• Acceptable Risks (1986) was a TV Movie about a chemical plant leaking toxic waste into a nearby town.
• Assumption of Risk (2014) revolves around an insurance company using predictive analytics to gain unfair profits.
• Loss Prevention (2018) has unfortunately nothing to do with risk mitigation or risk engineering.
• Mission Impossible: Insurance Protocol (2018) is a parody of the famous Tom Cruise saga, where the actor himself, notoriously performing his own stunts, is set-up by his insurance agent who wants to get him to sign off his companys liability.
• The following are all actual film titles: Stop-Loss, Primary, Excess, To The Limit, Aggregate, Compliance, Waiting Period, Liability, The Arbitration, The Appraisal, The Proposal, Small Claims, Inception and Captive!
• Merkaats - The Movie. I wasnt sure whether this was about insurance but I have put it here anyway.
• The Gregson vs. Gilbert 1783 court case provides background for the British period drama Belle (2014), set in the period of the Slave Trade. This case refers to what became known as the Zong massacre, when slaves were thrown overboard from a slave ship to claim compensation for their insurance; the insurance company denied the payment and this became a key episode on the road to abolition of the Slave Trade.
• Lloyds of London (1936) truly and fully deals with the history of insurance. Tyrone Power stars as Jonathan Blake, a waiter at Lloyd’s Coffee House in the early days of the shipping insurance firm Lloyd’s of London. Determined to make something of himself, he joins a Lloyd’s syndicate and becomes a rich and successful underwriter. However, in 1805, war with France results in disastrous losses that threaten to bankrupt Lloyds, prompting insurers to raise their rates to exorbitant levels unless the merchant vessels are provided with armed escorts. This would have diluted Nelsons fleet at a time when it needed to keep the French fleet blockaded in Toulon. Ultimately, Jonathan agrees to commit to the old rates without escorts, helping Lord Nelson win the Battle of Trafalgar. A fantastic explanation for the origin of the soft market...

So in conclusion, I feel that George Pelecanos quote I mentioned at the beginning can be modified more appropriately as follows:

By itself, insurance is pretty exciting and cinematic. The way that the movies should make insurance work is by describing it exactly as it is. And its full of good-looking people!