Bloomberg news reports that auto insurance may be on the brink of an incursion from mobile-phone and technology companies.
There is no doubt this is going to happen – insurance is going to be digitized, and when driverless cars no longer get in fender benders – the world of automotive insurance will never look the same. Property casualty insurance will be first, because their contracts are short term in nature, and as a result their business models can react faster to change. The Bloomberg graphic leaves no doubt as to the popularity and rise in consumers view of better priced, more optimized automotive insurance:
But have no doubt, life insurance and annuities are next – these staid industries will struggle with the impending change to a much higher degree than the property casualty industry, but the impact on of the future digitization of their business will be no less as dramatic. The U.K. is ahead of the game and that should not be a surprise as they have pretty much defined the insurance industry since the middle ages – noting that first life insurance policy was taken out in the U.K. on June 18, 1583. In life insurance, we see Beagle Street, a start-up in 2012 quickly growing to one of the fastest growing life insurance companies by offering life insurance cheaper and faster than competitors.
At my day job at GWG Life, we are committed to finding new ways of disrupting and transforming the life insurance and related industries through innovative products and services, and technology. Historically, our business focused on creating opportunities for consumers to obtain significantly more value for their life insurance policies as compared to the traditional options offered by the insurance industry. But now, we are working with epignetic technology that we believe will digitize and automate the underwriting process entirely.
We recently announced that we began collecting and analyzing epigenetic samples from life insurance policy owners, making it the first insurtech company to apply DNA Methylation technology to life insurance underwriting. We have moved quickly from theoretical science to applied science by converting the epigenetic technology into life expectancy underwriting, which we plan to use as additional information to enhance our traditional underwriting practices. Dr. Horvath proved the science is more than theory and we commercializing the application. And we intend to do this not only for GWG Life’s current business, but for the life insurance industry as a whole. We firmly believe that the technology will significantly improve the life insurance underwriting process in terms of its accuracy, speed and cost. I can clearly envision the day when life insurance purchasers will no longer be subjected to traditional invasive underwriting practices.
Soon we will be in a position to better articulate the place that this epigenetic technology will have in the marketplace through the help of insurance technology expert Tom Nodine and a team from KPMG. The value proposition of the advanced predictive technology for the life insurance industry is huge, and we believe that GWG Life is the first company to identify the implications of the predictive powers of epigenetic biomarkers for the life insurance business. We welcome Silicon Valley’s aid and participation in this exciting transformation. This is going to be big!!!