The insurance business is all about decision-making. Hundreds, even thousands of decisions, every day, at every level in the organization.
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Should we let this person/organization fill out a quote?
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What price do we charge?
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Should we take an application?
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Should we write the business? At what coverage levels? At what deductibles? What billing plan?
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Should we reinsure this specific risk?
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What reinsurance treaties do we need?
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How’s that newly appointed agency in Eau Claire doing? Doing well at writing business? Or writing profitable business?
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What reserve should we set for this claim?
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Are claim service timeframes where we want them to be? Why? Why not?
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If the claimant is getting legal counsel, wouldn’t you rather be in their living room first?
Historically companies have relied primarily on the knowledge and experience of its senior leadership to make good decisions; using that experience to train new people, write guidelines, and put rules into rules engines. Today, these are not enough. Thankfully, analytical science, computer hardware and software have evolved to the point where technology can help us make better decisions.
Join us as we explore the pros, cons, and pitfalls of human decision-making; biases to try to avoid, and some techniques and technologies to help you make better decisions.
Our Keynote
Our Beautifully Imperfect Minds: How a better understanding of how we think can improve the decisions we make.
Dr. Justin Sydnor, Ph.D., will provide an overview of some of the most important findings on decision-making from the fields of psychology and behavioral economics that are relevant to insurance professionals. The human brain is an amazing and powerful thing, but it is not without limits. Psychologists have shown that because our brains have limited cognitive capacity, humans have developed a range of mental short-cuts in our thinking. These short-cuts can be incredibly useful, but they sometimes create systematic biases in how we process information and make decisions. Many of these biases are especially important for those, like insurance professionals, who have to make decisions in environments with a great deal of randomness and uncertainty. Dr. Sydnor will discuss challenges humans face in processing random events, the ways salience and memory affect our decisions, and the potential impacts of framing, emotions and overconfidence on decisions.
About Dr. Sydnor
Dr. Justin Sydnor, Ph.D., is an economist and assistant professor in the Actuarial Science, Risk Management, and Insurance Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Business. He is a leading young researcher in the emerging field of behavioral economics. Behavioral economics was popularized by researchers such as Richard Thaler, author of the book Nudge, and Nobel-prize winner Daniel Kahneman and attempts to incorporate important insights from psychology, sociology and other disciplines to help inform our understanding of human behavior in economic situations. Dr. Sydnor has published research in a range of leading economics journals, including work on how consumers make decisions under risk, how self-control problems affect the design of incentives, and how consumers' use of cognitive short-cuts affects markets. He has taught courses in risk management, behavioral economics, game theory, and micro-economics.
Agenda
9:00 - Welcome and introductions
9:10 - Keynote with Dr. Sydnor
10:15 - Break
10:30 - Data visualization: The Power of Knowing
11:15 - Other technologies to improve decision-making, and how to use them to actually make a difference
12:00 - Lunch and networking - optional (Box lunches will be provided. Feel free to stay and network, or take one as you leave)