2019 Katie School/CPCU Symposium
Katie School/CPCU Symposium
2019 Presentations
The 2019 Katie School Symposium presentations were on the theme of Trends Transforming the Insurance Industry. Each of the speakers presented on trends and issues affecting the insurance industry.
Jim Jacobs, CEO of Country Financial presented and led off the day discussing key issues and how to succeed in insurance industry. His key points included: 
- Be yourself
- Don’t “over-plan”
- Never stop learning
- Be a great listener
- Be good to your word
- Share your talent with others
- Be good to everyone, you’ll never regret it
Jim emphasized the need to not forgot about the reason insurance exists, and the customers you serve.
| Kjersten Moody, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, State Farm spoke about turning data into an asset. She emphasized that good KPI’s should require you to do something, and avoid “vanity” KPIs. She emphasized that data should serve consumers interests and be used to correctly assess their risk. promoted a model of transparency and having customers opt-in to share data. She explained that analytics when done properly is inherently collaborative involving Business Areas (must understand strategy and business context), operations, information technology, legal ( 20-30 percent of analytics job in insurance is regulatory compliance which is much higher than other industries), office of privacy and ethics, finance, computer science, and math. |
|
|
Ronora Stryker, ASA, MAAA and Senior Practice Researcher for the Society of Actuaries, presented to Actuaries Climate Index, showed the results of climate change, and explained the data foundation, website features, and strategic direction for future work. |
 |
|
Illinois State University Students Taylor May and Alexander Ostojic, presented the results of their study on what today’s students from 4 universities look for in choosing an employer. Opportunity for advance and job stability topped the list of what students look for. Students be a wide margin prefer to meet in person. Student panelists Ryan Glotzbach, Brenae Ford, and Bethany Gildemeister elaborated on the findings and suggested that advancement means continuing to be engaged in new learning opportunities. They also said the look at culture to mean the value the company places on investing in its people. They found it to be a disconnect between the high touch, relationship business that they want to be doing, and the companies that recruit 100 percent virtually and impersonally. None of the students thought the remote, impersonal interviews were effective in attracting the top students. |
|
|
Jim Almeda, Health Promotion and Wellness Coordinator at Illinois State University, led an interactive session on mindfulness and Koru to help center people and reduce stress in an ever-changing work environment. View STATE of Your Health - The Art and Science of Mindfulness |
|
| Fawad Ahmad, Senior Vice President-Enterprise Technology, State Farm explained how technology can be used to enhance the customer experience, and give customers the flexibility of opting into using technology such as Drive Safe and Save, telematics application, to improve driving behavior. He emphasized how success in technology requires CEO buy-in and support, and the support of people across the enterprise, not just in technology areas. |
 |
|
Jim Jones presented on the The Future of Work in Insurance. He summarized BLS trends and projections, and then examined how tasks within occupations can migrate to either lower level roles (assisted by technology), or be completely performed by AI. He highlighted trends in innovation and insurtech space, and made predications on how the occupations growth in insurance would grow based on these technologies, and proposed how these changes will affect the skills needed to succeed in the future. |
 |
|
The Illinois State University ICC Cyber Risk and Insurance team presented their model on how to assess the threat of cyber risks by comparing firms with five industries of financial, health care, retail, manufacturing, and cloud computing. They developed their model based on frequency of attacks, severity of loss potential (based on the data stored), and the velocity of response capability to a threat). |
 |
