Supercede have put a podcast together, with some strong views guaranteed to generate some social media comment and reaction. Here’s the word;
The insurance industry is ‘A+ money for C+ people’ and doesn’t know how to teach artificial intelligence because it doesn’t know itself what it’s doing. These are just some of the provocative views expressed in the new edition of The Reinsurance Podcast by TheHardMarket, the anonymous insurance professional behind the hit Instagram account of the same name.
According to TheHardMarket – whose anonymity has been protected in the podcast – the insurance sector provides high salaries for many individuals of limited ability. TheHardMarket tells co-hosts Jerard Leigh and Ben Rose: “The more successful people are in insurance, the more self-important they are…but we are not Ivy League; we’re not finance; this is its idiot cousin. The fact that people think they’re curing cancer, but they’re just selling insurance, it’s doesn’t mean what we do isn’t important, it just means there’s a lot there to laugh at.”
EVER READ THE T&Cs IN A PHONE CONTRACT?
TheHardMarket is also scathing about the industry’s approach to data and the information needed to write insurance contracts. Talking about the clarity necessary to understand an insurance contract, they say: “This is where our industry’s so antiquated…We’re asked to put together legal contracts, which we have no qualifications to discuss, not being lawyers…None of us are qualified to talk about blueprints; we’re not qualified to talk about the geo-tech report. Is anybody reading these? Not really. You read the summary. I often wonder how seriously that information is taken. I think it’s to pad a file so you can get through an audit.”
On the topic of artificial intelligence, TheHardMarket says: “AI scares the living s**t out of people. AI’s going to take over but not as soon as we think. AI’s like a human and you’ve got to teach it. I don’t think anyone knows how to teach it what to look for – because we’re not even looking at it.
“There should have been automation in data entry years ago but the industry wasn’t interested in the automation, only the data. We wanted people to enter data 17 times, not get the programmes to talk to each other…Now that there’s this workflow automation courtesy of AI, you want these programmes to talk to each other – and you’re going to cut the knees off the people who’ve been entering the data.”
FANCY DRESS CHARIDEE FRIDAYS
In the edition, TheHardMarket also gives their verdict on senior management’s ‘word salad’ Friday memos; the behaviour of ‘boomer’ managers, gender and ethnic representation in the industry and the lack of internal promotions for loyal staff. They also argue that social media has the power to call out the industry’s questionable behaviour and it in a positive way.
Jerad Leigh, co-host of The Reinsurance Podcast, said: “We were thrilled to have TheHardMarket come onto the show. They spoke frankly, candidly and amusingly, which is what their 55,000-plus Instagram followers have come to expect.”
TheHardMarket launched in Instagram in 2019 and has become one of the most controversial social media accounts in the insurance industry.
The episode featuring TheHardMarket is available here: https://supercede.com/podcasts and also on Spotify.
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