Where to find free reports, research on emerging insurance issues
This WSIA Emerging Issues & Innovation Committee remains future-focused.
Members of the WSIA Emerging Issues & Innovation Committee are tasked with keeping an eye on the future. The committee’s mission — to identify, evaluate, discuss and provide useful tools that will enable WSIA members to better analyze, manage and underwrite emerging issues and trends — necessitates it.
This year, the committee’s work has focused on developing webinars and leveraging WSIA’s partnership with Georgia State University’s WSIA Distinguished Chair, Hal Weston, to produce papers and reports that can be valuable resources to member firms encountering these emerging trends. A webinar focused on the construction environment is currently on the radar, and says Preferred Specialty, LLC, President and Emerging Issues Committee Chair Robert Sanders.
“Planning and producing webinars that hone in on topics specific to the wholesale, specialty and surplus lines industry is important,” Sanders said. “There is no shortage of great webinar content available to most of us, but we’re committed to discussion of emerging issues with a surplus lines lens, which makes these different and really applicable for members.”
The committee is also considering a multi-part webinar series addressing parametric insurance. The first in this series was hosted in May and is available for replay on the WSIA website.
The WSIA Heat Map, which identifies trends and innovations impacting the surplus lines industry, is a biennial project for the committee. The 2022 Heat Map is available online, and the results help determine topics for future trend report topics for the committee and inform WSIA programming.
Sanders said the Heat Map is developed by surveying WSIA members, so it’s a good pulse check for what members believe to be top priorities. The 2022 version also includes COVID-related topics to help ensure that the issues under consideration are reflective of current events.
“I would encourage members to take a look at the Heat Map,” he says, “It’s a great overview of not only emerging exposures, but also operational trends that are impacting us.”
WSIA Project Coordinator Lindsay Holland says that the Heat Map results also inform Insurtech Conference session topics and WSIA education program curriculum. She said that several session topics at the recent WSIA University resulted from Heat Map feedback and that several committees rely on the responses to help drive content.
The WSIA Heat Map and 19 trend reports are available to view and download on the WSIA website, on the publication page. These trend reports offer a deeper dive on topics of interest and include an infographic layout of the implications, opportunities and threats associated with each emerging trend. Committee members research and compile the reports and publish them for colleagues and peers as free resources.
“It’s easy to get mired in the day-to-day of our work and fail to lift your head to look at what’s coming next,” Sanders says. “These tools are great ways to quickly refocus and remind ourselves that we live in a world of innovation, and we have to stay aware of that to continue the growth we’re experiencing.”
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