Celent Webinar | The AM Best Innovation Assessment - What it Means for Insurers

Overview

AM Best announced a prospective change to their company rating methodology that adds an assessment of insurers’ innovation efforts. This step is a significant signal that innovation is now mainstream and that AM Best sees innovation as an intrinsic element of the strength and solvency of an insurer.

In this webinar, led by Celent Senior Analyst, Mike Fitzgerald, representatives from AM Best will review the proposal outlined in AM Best’s draft paper, Scoring and Assessing Innovation. Celent will present its research regarding the tools and techniques that insurers use to further their innovation programs.

Attendees will be better positioned to communicate about the AM Best changes within their organizations. They also will be able to begin planning their responses to the new rating methodology.

This webinar is based in part on the report of the same name which can be accessed here.

Featuring

Jieqiu Fan, ACAS

Senior Financial Analyst, AM Best

Jieqiu Fan is a senior financial analyst in AM Best’s property/casualty ratings division. She is currently responsible for the analysis and financial ratings of a portfolio of property/casualty insurance companies, with a particular emphasis on the U.S. and Bermuda markets. Jieqiu is also a specialist in the medical professional liability insurance sector and in property/casualty reserving. Prior to joining AM Best in 2016, Jieqiu was a rating analyst for Standard & Poor’s. She also had various actuarial pricing and reserving positions in her prior career. Jieqiu holds a joint MBA/MA degree in finance/international relations from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Fudan University in China. In addition, Jieqiu is an Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society (ACAS).

Clare Finnegan, MA

Senior Economist, AM Best

Clare Finnegan is a senior economist in AM Best’s economic research and analysis division. She is currently responsible for the analysis of country-specific factors that could impact the rating process. In addition to analyzing country risk, Clare is the project lead for AM Best’s innovation initiative. She is a contributing author to various AM Best special reports and the analytical contact for various criteria procedures, including those on terrorism, the tail risk of sidecars, national scale ratings and country risk. Previously, Clare was an analyst within AM Best’s credit rating criteria, research and analytics division, and was primarily responsible for coordinating the development and dissemination of rating criteria and the associated analytics. Prior to joining AM Best in 2015, Clare conducted private sector research. She has been published in the Journal of Wine Economics, The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, Wine Economics and Policy, and is a contributing author to The Sustainability of Agro-Food and Natural Resource Systems in the Mediterranean Basin. Clare holds a master’s degree in international relations/economics from Seton Hall University and a bachelor’s degree in history from St. John’s University. In addition, Clare is the recipient of a US Department of State Critical Language Scholarship and an AmeriCorps alumnus.

Michael Fitzgerald, CPCU, MBA, PMP

Senior Analyst, Celent

Mike brings extensive industry experience to the analyst role. Prior to joining Celent, he was vice president of enterprise underwriting solutions at Zurich North America, where he led the evaluation of technology alternatives to support a new underwriting product development process. He held a number of positions at Royal & Sun Alliance, including a field operations regional executive role. His technology implementation experience includes the installation and maintenance of billing, automobile policy administration, and workers compensation automation. In the 1990s, Mike led an initiative which delivered one of the first global online technical underwriting and claims learning platforms in the industry. Mike's research focuses on innovation, emerging technologies (blockchain, artificial intelligence), billing, business process and operations, social media, and distribution management. Mike has a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Davidson College and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He is a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

This webinar is based in part on the report of the same name which can be accessed here.

Registration

This webinar is OPEN TO ALL. Registration will close at 9:00 am ET on September 12th, 2019 . If you have any questions regarding registration, please contact Chuck Smith at csmith@celent.com.