Why Insurance is Exciting in 2015

Nine years ago, I made a career shift: I switched from banking to insurance because I wanted to learn a new business. My banking colleagues looked down on me for switching to a comparatively “boring” industry, but they didn’t anticipate how quickly insurance would change along with digital technology. With my first blog post on LinkedIn, I thought it would be fitting to talk about my industry - specifically, why 2015 is an exciting time to be working in insurance and how we'll navigate the unclear future ahead of us.

What characterizes the insurance business? As I see it, there are three core goals:

1. Identifying, understanding, pricing and managing risk
2. Fostering economic growth by helping entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground
3. Providing protection for the people and the things that matter most in our lives: our families, our health, our homes, our belongings, our future

 But just as digital is forcing businesses like taxis, hotels, bookstores, and banks to change, digital will force insurance to transform itself to meet our customers’ needs.

In 2015, consumers have the entire world at their fingertips. While there is nothing more effective than a face-to-face interaction when it comes to retirement plans or protecting one’s family, our consumers also need to be able to shop for policies and file claims online out of sheer convenience. Consumer preferences will decide when and where our business needs to transform.

We’ve always tried to serve our customers by looking toward the future. Now access to real-time data tells us more about our customers, allowing us to be more customer-centric than ever before. This has allowed us to understand the present and anticipate the future in a more informed way.

We have to benchmark ourselves against retailers like Apple or Amazon, not against financial or insurance companies. Holding ourselves to the standards of the brands and services our consumers love to interact with is an incredible challenge, and I’m proud to be taking it on at AXA.