MAPFRE Overcomes Challenges for Record 2023  February 20th 2024

Challenges Facing Tesla Insurance

In the ever-evolving landscape of the automotive industry, Tesla has carved out a unique niche not only as an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer but also as a disruptive force in areas such as autonomous driving and energy solutions. With their sights set on revolutionizing the insurance industry, Tesla Insurance aims to leverage their technological prowess to offer innovative and personalized coverage. However, despite the impressive technology at their disposal, the road ahead for Tesla Insurance is fraught with challenges.

Data Privacy Concerns

One of the cornerstones of Tesla's insurance strategy is the use of vast amounts of data collected from their vehicles. While this data can provide valuable insights for personalized risk assessment, it raises significant concerns about privacy. Customers may hesitate to share detailed driving habits and personal information, especially in an era where data breaches and privacy violations are at the forefront of public consciousness.

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Neeraj Kaushik, product manager for the NGIN platform initiative at Infosys McCamish Systems

Navigating Innovation: The Intricacies of Insuring Emerging Exposures

Between emerging risks and written coverage is a lot of science and more than a little art. There are always new exposures that owners would like to insure. Most carriers say development is just as much a push from their underwriting and claims groups as a pull from brokers and insureds.

Innovation is more than just a what; it’s a how.

“New and improved” gets a bad rap, but incremental enhancements to existing policies are often the fastest and easiest ways to respond to evolving risks. And fast is important. “Speed to market” was a familiar phrase among development executives. Unspoken, but implied, was the importance of not letting great be the enemy of good.

Creating Coverage

The foundational pillars of developing new coverage, according to Michael Marks, VP of emerging markets and innovation at Nationwide, “are understanding the risks themselves, the partners and collaborators, and then the specific policy language itself. The risks and the coverage might seem obvious, but the collaboration is just as important.

“It is essential that their strategic objectives are aligned with ours,” he said.

It might seem axiomatic, but “we are trying to find what is insurable,” said Marks. “For example, we are very interested in parametric, especially for single perils. That can simplify the offering both for us and for the insured. They can buy just the protection that they need. We are always trying to break things apart and make them more accessible.”

Gregory DL Morris is an independent business journalist

It’s Time for the Commercial Property Insurance Industry to Adopt Tech Efficiencies

Buyers of commercial property insurance are facing many challenges. Rates are rising, capacity is becoming scarce (particularly in catastrophe exposed zones), and large programs, often involving dozens of insurers, are proving harder to syndicate. Today, brokers and their clients are looking for new solutions, many of which have been moving to the forefront over the last several years.

Brokers in particular are expanding their toolkits. In addition to traditional roles such as placing insurance, they are helping their clients to analyze and take control of their total cost of risk, to optimize their buying strategies and to proactively manage their risks. Whether through resiliency investments or the establishment of captives, property owners are leveraging risk retention and mitigation to complement, or even supersede, traditional insurance practices.

Additionally, new methods to structure, capitalize and transfer risk have emerged. Catastrophe bonds, initially designed to cover re/insurers, are increasingly being adopted by large corporations to directly hedge their risks to supplement and/or replace sources of traditional insurance coverage. Then there are parametric policies — a type of insurance contract insuring policyholders against the occurrence of a specific event. These are outgrowths of the industry finding ways to sustain itself through a difficult period, moving fast and making changes for a dynamic risk environment.

Alex Lyashok, CEO of Archipelago