Are you ready for the future? North West Insurance Conference

Philip Roath, Motor Engineer at AXA Insurance, attended the North West Insurance Conference.

The conference was hosted by Ant Gould of the CII and Martin Ashfield, President of the Bolton Insurance Institute.

Niall Edwards of Kennedys (Defendant Law Firm) kicked off proceedings with a rare insight into the world of running a law firm and the challenges that presents. Their vision of the future is more claims management and alternative business structure firms taking an increasing market share, operating on a cheaper business model than traditional law firms.

There is also pressure for law firms to take all business rather than just a specialism. An ability to deal internationally to consolidate business essential to retaining larger clients. The near future predicted to move towards automation of the court system, with more online dispute resolution and less hearings.

Niall suggested the changes from the 1998 Civil Procedure Rules are still being felt today. Refinements to the court track, the costs reform, MOJ portal, Medco, and QOCs have all made significant changes to address balance in the system. A system wider than the courts alone, as the cost of claims directly affects the premium that every motorist has to pay.

Finally the highly contentious subject of Brexit was touched upon, with the massive legislative task of The Great Repeal Bill bringing European legislation in line with our own.

Simon Baker, Head of underwriting at Axa Commercial Lines, was up next to discuss driverless cars. BAE, BRL, Venturer, UK Autodrive, Flourish, and Capri are all UK companies that have autonomous car programmes and this led to some really interesting speculation.

As autonomy amongst vehicles advances, they will be more connected with the road network around them such as traffic signals. The rail network could be replaced in favour of autonomous highways. Would there be less thirst for a driving licence altogether as autonomous vehicles become more competent?

These are questions rather than answers. The greatest challenge to insurers and manufacturers alike is a more legislative one. Who owns the data in the vehicle? And in the event of a crash?

Richard Tyler is a motivational speaker. His presentation was entitled “Building your Mindset for Future Fit Leadership”. Previously lead in The Phantom of the Opera, Richard is no stranger to centre stage and captivates his audience from start to finish. To get a group of insurance professionals to sing was a feat in itself and the three that did it alone showed true courage. Where Pani got “La Bamba” from at the end we will never know!

Full of enticing soundbites “Extraordinary never arrives”, and the great Yoda quote “there is no try, only do or do not”, Richard demonstrated the path to leadership is never a comfortable one. Small changes are key. How do we do something better each day?
All who attended were well catered for by the staff at Barton Grange Hotel and ready for the afternoon sessions headed up by Edward Whittington from the Business Fraud Prevention Partnership to talk about fraud, cybercrime and prevention.

The fact that over 90% of incidents involve employee behaviour was a fact worthy of consideration. The person is still the weakest link in most IT systems. It is no surprise then that the FCA encourage the education of staff in this area together with fake phishing emails to check staff awareness, asking firms; what are you doing internally to prevent these data breaches?

Malcolm Hyde followed from the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters (CILA) to discuss the future of surge events and subsequent business resilience, prevention always better than the cure. Malcolm echoed the concerns of many highlighting; resources & capability, a major terrorist attack, a major cyber event, and the general increasing number and severity of events as worthy of ongoing monitoring and preparation.

Resilient repairs in flood prone areas are a high current priority. There is still ongoing discussion between the government and insurance companies over who should fund this? Collaboration between insurance companies has anti-competition issues, however this could be countered somewhat by the clear public interest for building in resilience.

The final speaker of the day was Paul Fidler from GBB in Burnley. A specialist accident reconstruction and investigation company, one of the only companies conducting research of this kind outside the Motor Industry Research and Repair Centre in Thatcham.

GBB compile crash testing results of their own examining cutting edge areas such as occupant movement and telematics data for accuracy. They demonstrated accident reconstruction of an incident involving an ice cream van where visibility was an issue. They mapped out the blind spots from this vehicle showing that the driver could not have seen the person that they ultimately collided with. Their reports are part 35 compliant and they were happy to consider any technical investigation into incident involving motor vehicles.