Momentous Change and Mobile Devices

Technology is the foundation of the insurance industry: the means to solve or approximate answers to questions about the cost and availability of insurance, in addition to ways to reduce risk, improve service and expand coverage. When technology makes it easier to track possessions, when people can see—in real time—the whereabouts of goods they pay to insure, when reporting a lost or stolen item takes minutes rather than hours or days, eliminating paperwork and the temporal hell of waiting to speak to a customer service representative, of having to endure music on hold, when technology increases efficiency and accountability, everyone wins. Winning translates into not losing your possessions. Winning is a product of technology: a product unto itself in which your smartphone or tablet is a source of intelligence, syncing with an accessory that is strong enough to thwart thieves and smart enough to alert you about attempts to steal your possessions. For consumers, these benefits speak for themselves. For insurers, these benefits speak to the need for a single voice—authoritative in its text and absolute in tone—that says, “Yes We Will.” That message is one of hope (and change), regarding the use of mobile devices such as Mimic Go, where people can enjoy much-needed peace of mind not only about their valuables but items of sentimental value, too. Items that cost little, financially, but whose emotional cost is incalculable. Items that insurers underwrite but often fail to understand, because a minor loss to an insurer can be a major—and irrevocable—loss to a person, couple or family. See also: Mobile Apps and the State of Privacy   To protect these items, whether they are on a shelf or inside a suitcase, starts with technology. Without that technology, insurers and policyholders are without—period. They are unable to learn what is otherwise knowable, the status of their private or professional possessions. They are, in a sense, dispossessed: blind to the status of their most prized possessions and dependent on chance, having been denied the chance to buy and install the tools that lessen theft. They are without the actual sense of sight—and touch—because they cannot see what they cannot tap on their screens to open: an icon that shows them, a symbol that tells them everything is okay. That a solution exists, that insurers can give people incentives to use it, that people are already eager to adopt it, that it can avert the villainous and assuage the virtuous, or at least hinder criminals and help lower specific incidents of crime, is a good thing; a great thing. Achieving that goal is a matter of awareness. Insurers owe it to themselves to inform the public about the relationship between mobility and safety. Put another way, insurers cannot afford to maintain the status quo in which people go about their lives—and go wherever their work takes them—without the technology to track and secure their possessions. See also: Innovation: ‘Where Do We Start?’   Insurers owe it to policyholders to further safety, not frustrate it. Insurers have a duty to do the right thing.