Thinking Expansion While Your World Shrinks

My illustrious insurance career began about a year and a half ago. The indoctrination process has involved policy review, claim work, learning the insurance language and a lot of listening in on client meetings. Normally my lack of experience is a hindrance to the day to day work I do, but it can be an unexpected advantage. My outsider’s perspective can help notice bad habits or trends in the industry, and I have noticed one in particular. Coverage in the insurance industry is shrinking. Between endorsements limiting coverage or outright exclusions, policies are covering less and less. I cannot blame the insurers because it is a form of trickle down insur-a-nomics. Claims are increasingly expensive today, and insurance companies are not in the business of losing money. Instead of paying out, they exclude specific things or create certain carve-backs that seem sensible but are ultimately designed to put a ceiling on the money paid out in a claim.

As stated, it is logical what insurers are doing but if you zoom out a problem starts to form. Once these exclusions are added, it is rare for them to be removed. Over the course of time the web of coverage under a policy gets smaller and smaller as more and more exclusions are added, until you start to say “Well then, what even is covered anymore?”
One solution to the shrinking problem is to get your wallet out. The more premium you fork over, the more coverage you will get back … probably. Some issues though, have insurers digging their heels in no matter what the circumstance or price. What do you do in that case? My answer to that, after my whopping year and a half in the bizzzz, is expansion.
There are lots of helpful options that business insureds are unfamiliar with. Things like Insurtechs, Parametrics, and far more tailored insurance programs can expand and diversify your insurance profile, and they are not the only options available. Expansion of your insurance “norms” can hold enormous value too. As the new guy at Blades, and formerly trained in the ways of Rickover’s questioning attitude, I have challenged the system. I ask questions like “What if we tried it this way?” and “What says we can’t do that?”. Many times, the team at Blades (~85 years of experience) has a very good reason or there are laws preventing my ideas, but occasionally I hear “I don’t know, that just how it’s always done”.

Those instances of customary and rudimentary procedure are the times to shake things up and explore some expansion. Rethink and restructure a program or get a parametric policy to cover the gaps your shrinking insurance has left exposed. There are more options available in the expensive and ever shrinking world of traditional insurance. You just have to expand your mind to some different options and ask the right questions … Or you can let Blades, Crout & Proulx help you.