exists in the first place.
“Members realize collaboration and cooperation are important to exist today. If you are a big insurance company and spend
a lot of money looking internally at how you might innovate,
you may not be inclined to share that information, but there are
individuals in those companies that would participate in some
of the projects we would like to get underway,” he says.
Hartnett reports his intention is to reach out to smart individuals in various areas of insurance—underwriting, actuarial
science, data science—and look at what would be an appropriate step for ACORD to undertake.
“I’ve found people are willing to work on industry prob-
lems,” he says. “They are not going to find anything different
than we do as far as trends. You can’t look at some of the devices
available today and say, ‘We are the only ones who can leverage
them.’ Everyone has the ability to leverage technology and if we
want to do it effectively we have to work together.”
The “secret sauce” for insurers is what they learn from the
data, not standardizing the data, explains Hartnett. The innova-
tion done on the Internet was based on standards and brought
tremendous improvements to the world and to insurance.
“Once you can describe the data coming from devices that
can be consumable by everyone, people will come up with
products where they can use the data,” says Hartnett. “That’s
how they’ll innovate. Who can use it the most effectively and
the best way to use that data is through some type of standardized form.”
Insurance Innovation Challenge
Hartnett was involved heavily in the Insurance Innovation
Challenge for ACORD and he maintains it is going to be a key
part of what the organization does in the future. As part of
the 2020 initiative, he explains ACORD felt it could be a good
platform for people to develop innovative ideas.
“Innovation is hard and it is characterized by failure,” he
says. “People don’t
expose themselves
to failure that way. If
ACORD has people
with great ideas and
no platform, and
ACORD can build
that platform, it can
be a great thing.”
Hartnett wrote
up a proposal for
ACORD last winter,
spoke to Maciag
about it, and ACORD
decided to pilot the
challenge. Hartnett
thought they would
get a few dozen
entrants, but by the
close of the submis-
sion period there were more than 100 entries.
“We were like the dog that caught the bus,” he jokes. “Now
what do we do?”
This summer, all the entrants competed in a semifinal round
and the top 12 advanced to the finals, which will be held at the
ACORD 2015 conference this month.
“It truly is a pitch competition,” he says. “It’s a tech crunch
meets “Shark Tank” kind of environment. Our plan for next
year is to expand it and have three semifinal rounds in the U.S.
and one in London and at the ACORD 2016 event we’ll have a
competition from each of those. Universally, the reaction from
the people that participated—especially the ones that didn’t
make the finals—was so positive and appreciative that someone
provided the platform for them. Everyone that participated felt
they gained something just from participating.” ITA
The “secret sauce”
for insurers is
what they learn
from the data, not
standardizing
the data. The
innovation done
on the Internet
was based
on standards
and brought
tremendous
improvements .
Bill Hartnett (second from right) takes part in a pitch for the Insurance Innovation Awards that ACORD is sponsoring. (Photo courtesy of ACORD)