AIG’s Peter D. Hancock told more than 500 insurance professionals at Advisen’s Casualty Insights conference in New York on Thursday that the industry can incentivize behavior and help improve the safety of the community.
“The key to maintaining the trajectory toward a safer world is working with our clients,” said Hancock, who joined the largest commercial insurer in the US and Canada as president and CEO six months ago.
The way that a casualty claims adjuster responds to a client is a “moment of truth” for an insurer, he said, noting that AIG commits more capital to its casualty business than any other.
“Safety is a human necessity,” second only to basics such as food, water and shelter, he said. “Without economic safety, grief can overcome us.”
Road safety is a major focal point in improving public health at the insurer, which supports the development of new technologies and educational programs to reduce road traffic deaths and severe injuries globally.
“It is the No. 8 leading cause of death” and is likely to jump ahead of the illnesses that precede it now, he said. But unlike curing the illnesses, road safety “is something we can actually do something about.”
AIG and other companies pressed the UN to include road safety in its post-2015 sustainable development goals. It has also supported efforts to use Big Data to speed the analysis of road safety at intersections and invested in drivers education programs in China.
“In China, the average experience of drivers is three years,” making them a country of teenage drivers, he said.
Rising medical costs has also prompted the insurer to redesign its processing of workers compensation claims so the most severe were routed to the most experienced adjusters, he said.
“What’s the next thing in casualty?” he said. The anticipated explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet has raised the question of how safe their software is from cyber attack.
“We need to compete over safety,” he said.
