Anticipate change and innovate: Sampson
The property/casualty industry is facing a time of unprecedented change, David Sampson, the president and chief executive officer of the Property Casualty Insurance Association of America (PCI), told delegates in his opening address at the PCI Annual Meeting on Monday October 16.
“We know that our future will look different from our past. The risk profile of the economy will change and we’ll have to adapt with it,” Sampson told attendees. “We’ve done it in the past and now, as an industry, we’re going to need to do it once again.”
He said that the PCI 2017 conference programme was designed to help executives manage their business operations, and help with anxieties related to change while allowing them to embrace new business opportunities.
“Our goal is to anticipate and facilitate innovation through our role in helping consumers and business manage the risks of the future. We are living in an unprecedented time of change, in terms of the nature and the pace of that change. Innovation and disruption are fundamentally changing the very fabric of modern American society,” Sampson said.
“Change comes from many sources and from many social, political and demographic forces. Change is supercharged by new technology. To effectively lead the industry during these times we need to understand how these forces are shaping the business operating environment. And as part of that understanding we should not underestimate the lasting impact of the financial crisis that still reverberates through society a decade later.”
Sampson said this effect was being amplified by local supply chains and technology. He added that most people in the room and indeed most economists would agree that the new technology and a more globally integrated economy have brought tremendous growth opportunities, for the US and for the world. However, at the micro level it has caused significant disruption to certain industries, regions and demographic sectors.
He stressed that these disruptions on so many levels have fed into unrest and disturbance the like of which the industry has not seen since the 1930s.
“All of this has expanded into a rising tide of nationalism and populism,” Sampson warned, citing recent events such as the Brexit vote, the issue of Catalonian independence and even the US presidential election of 2016, adding that a rising tide of populism was leading to distrust in existing establishments, something that the industry will have to cope with.
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