Announcement: A Podcast Series Launched by Barry Rabkin in January 2024 (This post updated February 24, 2024 with Apple and Spotify podcast addresses)

I launched a monthly podcast show in January 2024.

I had gotten encouragement from several LinkedIn members suggesting that I launch a podcast. Moreover, I figured that it was definitely time to learn how to use GarageBand to spread my analyst opinions faster and further than just using the written word. 

One of my LI members told me that if I had a podcast, I should make sure that I rattled cages, or, in other words, to be myself. No worries on that suggestion. Industry analysts should never be wallflowers.

In my podcasts, just like my LinkedIn posts or comments, I strive remain objective when I discuss my points-of-views about issues at the intersection of the insurance industry and technology.

Of course, ‘technology’ and whichever of its applications are created and implemented in the technology’s portfolio is never the reason for the existence of the technology. The primary (and secondary and tertiary and … ) objective of the existence of (any) technology is fulfilling a business objective: hopefully that objective is meeting or exceeding (one or more of the insurance industry’s) client’s (or ecosystem participant’s) needs, requirements, and / or expectations.

That includes the expanding set of technologies and their associated applications referred to as ‘AI’. The topic of ‘AI ain’t a thing’ will be one of my podcasts.

But discussing AI technologies and their associated applications for the insurance industry are not the be-all and end-all of my podcasts.

Neither are issues surrounding cyber and the insurance industry.

Regarding that prior comment, as many of you know, I’ve begun work on a second book beginning in January 2023 which will focus on the insurance industry and cyber. I have a (better) working title that I will share in early 2Q24. At that time, I will begin my stream of drafts (and episodes of writer’s block). I’ll be working with the same editor (Patrick Wraight) who edited my first book and same publisher (Wells Media Group, Inc.). I’m targeting getting him my final draft sometime in 2025. Then, Patrick and his team will do their magic to get the book published on Amazon in 2026.

Please keep in mind that while I will discuss cyber issues in some of my podcasts, I plan to use the platform to express my opinions about a larger variety of technologies and their implications for the insurance industry.

I share my list of planned (but not cast in concrete) podcast titles after the next section of podcast specifics.

Specifics about my podcast

Podcast Title & Artwork: The Skeptical Analyst: Insurance & Technology Contemplations

Artwork from Dave Calibey, BigThunk LLC

Podcast Launch Date: Sometime during the weeks of January 8 or January 15, 2024

Beginning audio snippet:

Apple address of my podcast show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-skeptical-analyst-insurance-technology/id1725348412

Spotify address of my podcast show: https://open.spotify.com/show/2oXcbZfkD9VdRoju18UW8F?si=dbb460def0d74666

Length of podcast: 10 to 15 minutes

Frequency: Once a month

Severity: Your call

Guests: Not at this time. Certainly not until I can figure out how to have guests for my podcast.

Platforms: Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and whichever other platforms that BuzzSprout supports.

Audience Feedback: Listeners can make comments about the podcast on my LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryrabkin/).

Of course, everyone is free to suggest podcast topics for me to opine about. However, I reserve the right to choose the topics I’ll discuss. I won’t discuss the healthcare insurance industry (unless I’m discussing cyber issues regarding healthcare). I also won’t discuss blockchain, bitcoin, or crypto.

Intent: I intend to discuss my opinions about issues at the intersection of the insurance industry and technology, inclusive of current or emerging technologies and their various applications. 

Objective: I will always strive not to be a cheerleader for any startup firm, any technology, any technology application, or any insurance industry role (e.g. reinsurer, primary insurer, broker / broker firm, agent / agency, MGA, MGU, E&S carrier / broker).

Career Description Summary: Insurance carrier business side (e.g., marketing / market research) of the insurance industry with a persistent love of technology, with about five decades of contemplating the business implications of applying various technologies and their associated applications across non-health insurance lines of business.

Publications (Books): From Stone Tablets to Satellites: The Continual, Intimate but Awkward Relationship Between the Insurance Industry and Technology, by Barry Rabkin, June 2022, Wells Media Group, Inc. (Available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, hard cover, and audible formats.)

Publications (Reports and Presentations): Hundreds of reports and presentations to insurance audiences, to insurance technology audiences, and to technology audiences around the world during my career. To call out a few countries outside the US, I was fortunate to have insurance consulting and / or presentation engagements in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Planned Podcasts

Here is my initial list of planned podcasts. I might add to this list or change the order from time-to-time.

1. Introducing myself and my podcast objectives – Ready for listening
2. Let’s talk cyber – Ready for listening
3. AI ain’t a thing
4. Is data mismanaging you or are you mismanaging data?
5. Not every risk is insurable
6. What is a Digital insurer?
7. Do Disruptive Technologies exist?
8. Insurance Realities vs Insurance Client Expectations
9. Platforms and Ecosystems: Important Bases of Insurer Competition
10. IoT and Connected Devices: Growing & Reshaping the Cyber Attack Space
11. Complex Adaptive Systems are a critically important outcome of the Cyber Age
12. Frontier Applications & Applications for the Insurance Industry

Note: This WordPress blog post serves as the “sister” blog post to my first podcast.

Ending (Beginning?)

On my LinkedIn profile, I stated that I was “semi-retired”. I left as a full-time active insurance industry analyst in 2019 to write books and blog posts about the insurance industry and technology.

However, a LinkedIn member told me that I was not “semi-retired” because I have a wealth of industry experience to share. I removed the “semi-retired” phrase but I’m not putting in the similar number of hours I did before 2019.

I hope my first book helped to accomplish the objective of sharing my insurance experience and this current book I’m working on does as well. (I have a 3rd book on my back-of-my-mind drawing board discussing the implications of New Space – the commercial uses of low earth satellites – for the insurance industry. Given the importance of cyber, maybe I should think about a sequel to this current book about the insurance industry and cyber that I’m working on?)

Overall, I’m really not much for providing answers. I did when I was a management consultant and when I was an insurance industry strategy analyst.

But, what’s the “shelf life” of any answer dealing with insurance and technology issues? Days? Weeks? Months?

Now, I prefer to share my 5+ decades of industry experience by sparking questions based on what I say and write. Questions that you will decide to find answers that are pertinent to your corporation.

One “answer” I know that is a fact: the insurance industry has always used technologies and their applications to get-and-keep customers. For many, many centuries … No technology and its associated applications has ever or will ever transform an insurance carrier into any type of technology firm.