Barry Rabkin Insurance Book Announcement

This has been a long journey for me to write this book.

I don’t mean only the time between 4Q19 and 1Q22 when I actually drafted the manuscripts and worked with my editor (Patrick Wraight) at Wells Media.

I mean my entire multi-decade insurance career which spanned working within the industry, being a management consultant to it, and then being a technology-focused insurance industry analyst of it. The latter two career segments provided me the good fortune to work with insurance experts, technology firms, and technology analysts across the world.

All three career segments provided me the foundation, experience, and ideas to write this book.

Let’s get to it …

This is the first of 8 every-other week posts about my book that Wells Media is going to publish in June. I will strive to keep each post between 500 and 1,000 words. The publication date for his post is March 9, 2022.

First, some facts about the book:

• Title – Stone Tablets to Satellites: The Continual Intimate but Awkward Relationship Between the Insurance Industry and Technology
• Length – approximately 80,000 words, 400 pages, 130 visuals
• Type: hard cover, paperback, ebook (Kindle), audio book
• Publication date: June 28, 2022

Next, the ‘why did I write this book.’

I have three over-arching objectives for writing this book:

1. To amplify a persistent truth that insurers have always applied technology, and always will apply technology, to get-and-keep customers.
2. To use a lens of P&C insurance commerce, as well as data and analytics perspectives, to discuss the ways that insurers do or could apply technology to conduct commerce.
3. To consider the near-term future of P&C insurance industry technology applications to support insurance commerce. (I distinguish throughout the book – or strive to – between ‘technology’ and ‘technology applications’.)

My intended audience:

My intended audience for this book are people working for incumbent or startup insurance firms or working for incumbent or startup technology firms who provide, or are planning to provide, solutions and services to the P&C insurance industry.

As I strive to accomplish the three objectives for my intended audience, I wrote this book to be a buffet of my perspectives of the ways that carriers are using or could use technology to positively impact insurance commerce … all the while fighting the intimacy-awkwardness dynamic to resolve customer objectives (e.g. purchase, administrative service, and claim service).

The guts of the book are the Sections and Chapters:

I discuss an array of issues and perspectives throughout seven sections and the chapters within each section to support the three objectives.

The seven sections are:

• Section 1: Foundation — This section includes four chapters that encompass discussions of the shifting conduct of commerce; the nature of the intimate but awkward relationships between the P&C insurance industry and technology; technology being the DNA of society; and of the five technology eras that society and the insurance industry have experienced
• Section 2: The Insurance Decision Matrix — This section includes three chapters that encompass discussions of the ancestral insurance decision matrix; resolving the ancestral insurance decision matrix; and of the modern insurance decision matrix and resolving it.
• Section 3: Strategic and Business Models — This section includes six chapters that encompass an overview discussion of strategic perspectives; a discussion of expanding business models; of moats defending business models; of both the Amazon and Netflix business models; of an insurance business model; and of lessons which insurers can learn from the Amazon and Netflix business models.
• Section 4: Tactical Perspectives: Actions Supporting Strategies — This section includes four chapters which encompass a discussion of insurance value chains; of shared systems which are a bundling of value chains; of market platforms which essentially leverage the Interconnected Technology Era (note: this is one of the five technology eras I discuss in Section 1); and of industry ecosystems which are triggering frameworks and actions for the On-Demand Era (note: this is also one of the five technology eras I discuss in Section 1).
• Section 5: Insurance Commerce Perspectives — This section includes seven chapters which encompass a discussion of risk landscape perspectives; of customer perspectives; of carrier perspectives; of product development perspectives; of channel management perspectives; of producer productivity perspectives; and of claim management perspectives.
• Section 6: DataAnalytics Perspectives — This section includes three chapters which encompass discussions of data perspectives; of analytics perspectives; and of specific analytical solution perspectives.
• Section 7: The Road Ahead — This final section includes three chapters which encompass a discussion of the contours of the road ahead; a P&C carrier roadmap; and a discussion that focuses on insurance firms needs to keep the intimacy while losing the awkwardness.

Please keep in mind that although the various sections that capture my perspectives might seem to take stand-alone points-of-view, these sections, inclusive of the chapters within each section, are not stand-alone because the suite of perspectives are interconnected and interdependent.

Indeed, one glaring challenge which the insurance industry has not resolved throughout the decades is to overcome the silo organization and structure of the industry and of each insurance firm that participates in the industry.

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The next blog post will be published on March 23, 2022. I will excerpt content from one of the chapters within the Foundation Section. Specifically, I will excerpt content from ‘The DNA of human society” chapter which includes discussions of six strands of technology, four major innate human skills, and five technology eras. (What, you were expecting ‘and a partridge in a pear tree?’.) The last blog post of excerpted content will be published on June 15, 2022. The book will be published on June 28, 2022.