The Modern Insurance Professional

A glossary of insurance terms can take up any number of pages. There are terms to suit the generality of the insurance business and there are terms that relate specifically to a particular type of insurance. Put these together, and you get a host of words, phrases and explanations that are commonplace in the vocabulary of today’s insurance industry professional.

Of course, some terms used in insurance today share a place in the lexicon of non-insurance businesses. “Impact,” “presence,” “going forward” can all be considered such terms doing double duty.

One of the more common glossaries for insurance is the one authored and published in 1961 by Walter Jennings, who retired as a claims advisor in 1983 after 32 years with the Hartford Insurance Company. For more general business word usage, we can turn to John L. Locke, a professor of linguistics at Lehman College, New York, and the author of Eavesdropping. The works of both authors appeared at a time when words had a common ancestry – they evolved from simple, ordinary language. Since then, however, business language has transformed into a neology of nouns-as-verbs and portmanteaus in which the extravagance of using two words together to make one word has become dictionary-worthy.    

In trying to compare how today’s business language measures up against the jargon of the past, I decided to try to find some analogies in Jenning’s Insurance Glossary as a start. I must admit I am having some problems. Try as I may, I am unable to apply a commonality with the past and present. I relate the following, by way of example.

Glossary of Insurance Terms

The contemporary usage of ‘track’ (to understand a concept or explanation) does not appear in Jennings’s glossary of terms, nor does ‘leverage,’ ‘brand’ or ‘rightsizing’ (redundancy program). I find no reference to ‘contingency planning’ or ‘management visibility’ in Jennings’s work. I’ve checked twice and I do not see ‘ideate’ (finding ideas) or ‘value-added.’ The term ‘stakeholder’ is nowhere to be found.

Under the letter ‘B’ in Jennings’s glossary, I checked for the contemporary term ‘Box of hamsters’ (workplace or situation lacking vision). Nothing there.

‘Empowerment’ and ‘exit strategy’ do not appear to have been considered. So I guess it stands to reason that a ‘paradigm shift,’ which is commonly interpreted as finding a new world, occurred following the publication of Jennings’ work.

The closest I could come to ‘Generation X’ is general average (an expression in marine lines). I would have thought today’s expression ‘on the runway’ was a sure bet to be found under Aviation. Not a chance. ‘Spin up’ (often used in the sense of creating) and ‘face-time’ are similarly losers, as is ‘siloed’ (completely separated with no communication between).

‘Solutionary’ and ‘secret sauce’ were never meant to be included under ‘S.’

‘Truthiness’ would have been a great item for a counterpart of Fraud.  Couldn’t see it.

‘Seamless’ and ‘open kimono’ (to be open in discussions, in case one wondered) might have been mistaken for ‘tailor-shop’ talk. ‘Think outside the box’ is not there and understandably: it might have been interpreted as ‘Should I refrain from having more cereal’?

‘Information Superhighway’ is missing. ‘Mashup,’ ‘modularity’ and ‘netiquette’ suffer the same fate. I thought for sure that a ‘content management system’ (also known as a CMS) would have been included, but I’m still looking. ‘Aggregator,’ ‘mindshare’ and ‘mission critical’ missed the boat (Uh oh, it’s happening to me, too). ‘Offshoring,’ ‘Eat their own dog food’ (use what you are selling to others) and ‘client-centric’ would have been thought-provoking candidates, but no votes!

‘Core competency’ isn’t there. I couldn’t see ‘co-opetition’ (yes, that is spelled correctly) or ‘circle back.’ I also couldn’t believe that ‘business process outsourcing’ was omitted. I thought some pages from the books were missing.

Under the ‘R,’ I’m still searching for ‘Red Zone,’ ‘reverse fulfillment’ and ‘rich media.’ I will let you know when I find them.

In my zeal to overcome the inconsistencies in the usage of words over the years, I put myself to the test. Using the terms of my current work environment, and applying terms today that reach into the farthest corners of business, here is what I can tell you about the modern insurance professional (with apologies to the late comedian George Carlin):

I’m a Modern Insurance Professional

I’m a productive protagonist, practising antagonist, underwriting play-child and a client-friendly chit-chatter.

I’m a double-portalled multi-tasker and drink from a flask with no questions asked.

A downloading, upper-crusted, baked on high heat flabbergaster.

I can upgrade and off-put, interact and quick connect.

A multi-witted answer man, emailed and photocopied paper wrangler.

An uploaded rating structure, out-sourced and formatted.

I’m lowbrow and high-handed, evenly paced and recklessly candid.

I can outpace, I’m unphased, and an automated functioning workaholic.

I can interpersonalize, digitalize, categorize and fraternalize without disguise while eating fries.

A policymaker, judgment-staker, and a prolific premium taker in up-sell phase.

I’m a high density, low intensity and over-exposed accommodator.

I can intersperse, be diverse and functionally converse without flourish.

A fax-mad, multicopied, scanned and ready, biorhythmic data feeding, computer-processed message grinder.

I’m an underwriting, over-rating, coverage inflating, broker-gating, two-fisted desk grating, coffee slating, morning waiting pencil gnasher.

A put-on-hold, call-back-later phone system hater.

I’m a screaming, screening, booting up, logging off, CONTROL-ALT-DELETE fanatic and mid-market tool.

I’m a harmonized, specialized, dot-com cyber-head, spaced out and ready to crash.

I’m a speed-reading, keyboard dealing, freaking memo reeker, charged up and downplayed.

Hello.  How may I help you?