Human element still core amid technological change: Panelists

Technology will continue to revolutionize the insurance industry but will do so around the core of human activities, according to panelists who spoke Tuesday at the InsureTech Connect Conference in Las Vegas.

“The human is still the core element of our business,” Brian Hetherington, president of San Mateo, California-based broker and technology company Newfront (ABD), said during the session “Technology Enabled or Technology Disrupted. Which Will You Be?” at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. He added that technology must build around that premise to “supercharge the human element” and go “further and faster.”

Mr. Hetherington started brokerage The ABD Group some nine years ago and reached about $125 million in revenue and $2 billion in premium placed before merging with Newfront about six weeks ago.

Brendan McCord, president of Acrisure Technology, part of broker Acrisure LLC, agreed with Mr. Hetherington. “It’s a complex product bought by somebody applying a complex, subjective trust-based value function, which means that you need those human qualities, the intuition, the creativity, the empathy,” he said.

Technological change will begin at the edges of the industry before penetrating more deeply, said Ramneek Gupta, founder and managing partner of Palo Alto, California-based PruVen Capital. Thus, technology providers will begin by partnering with incumbents and, as time passes, “the ecosystem develops.”

“We’re now four to five years into that journey. It takes time to go from disrupting at the edges to completely disrupting the core. That’s the way things evolve,” Mr. Gupta said.

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