Executive Outlook 2020

It is trite to say the industry is changing.

By how much — and how quickly — has become a topic of conversation among the industry’s key decision-makers.

There is no shortage of major issues facing the industry right now. Here are a few examples:

• Technology and service standards have become especially important in an age when people want to buy insurance in an instant on their mobile devices.
• Customers want their car insurance rates to go down when the industry’s claims costs are going up. Too many drivers are focusing on their text messages and changing their music instead of the road. Their cars, designed to keep them safe, are too expensive to repair when their warning signs are ignored.
• Commercial properties are exposed to the same kinds of flood perils as people’s homes – both subject to increasingly nasty weather. To say nothing of the wildfires. And we won’t even go down the path of discussing earthquakes, for which eastern Canadians are clearly not prepared.

So, when it comes to figuring out how to change your business to make an honest living in this environment, where do you even start?

To help focus people’s priorities for change, we went to 10 of the industry’s top decision-makers and asked them: “What is the most important issue facing the industry in 2020? (And why?).” We followed up with a question about what the industry needs to do in order to address the top issue that they’ve identified.

Here is what the executives told us.