It's rare for forecasters to be called to account for their predictions, but my day of reckoning came when I was invited to address the recent Casualty Actuarial Society spring conference to discuss my insurance industry outlook from two years ago, "Insurers on the brink: Disrupt or be disrupted."

The report was meant to be a wake-up call for those who believed the insurance industry's treasure trove of data, complex products, strong capitalization, and brand recognition would insulate it from existential threats, whether posed by InsurTechs or competition from other industries. Our hypothesis was that leadership at many insurance companies harbored a false sense of security, with C-suites feeling largely immune to widespread disruption by more tech-savvy newcomers because of what our research identified as four "orthodoxies," namely that:

• Insurers dominate the market on loss data for underwriting, pricing, and claims.
• Insurance is generally too complicated for the vast majority of buyers to navigate without established agents and brokers to guide them.
• Insurer risk pooling cannot be easily replicated by upstarts with relatively little capital.
• Familiarity with established insurers on the part of consumers and regulators will trump any competitive advantages touted by untested disruptors.

My hosts wanted to know whether our stern warnings had fallen on deaf ears, or had our clarion call inspired the industry to overcome its inertia and abandon presumptions of immunity? On the flip side, were we sure in hindsight that our concerns were valid? Or had we perhaps overestimated the threat to carriers holding fast to traditional business models and standard operating systems?