Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

Do we see Geico Pet Insurance on the horizon?

Richard Zatorski, a consulting actuary writing for the American Academy of Actuaries magazine, Contingencies, recently wrote an article on innovation in insurance. He starts off:

The insurance industry has rarely been known for its creativity and foresight with regard to the emerging needs of its customers. In fact, many recent policy changes have been attempts to clarify what isn’t covered as opposed to giving consumers more and better features to choose from.

Anyone living in Florida or on the gulf coast needing home owners insurance knows all about that.

He then goes on to talk about microtrends - "intense identity groups that are growing and have needs and wants unmet by the current crop of companies and marketers." (the book he references is Mark Penn’s book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes if you are interested in the topic.)

So I was gratified to see he picked up on pet insurance as one of these trends in insurance.

Veterinary Pet Insurance in Brea, Calif., and Embrace Pet Insurance in Cleveland are among those companies that currently offer comprehensive health insurance products for pets, but considering all those childless couples, empty nesters, and retirees for whom the pet has become a true family member, this area may be ripe for further exploration.

Someday, that ever-present gecko may become the official spokesanimal for policies covering pet life insurance, funeral expenses, and maybe even genetic cloning to replace dear old Fido in a way never before possible.

Now that would be something - Geico Pet Insurance. Perhaps I could do the voice of a talking British dog for that one :)

The rest of the article goes on to talk about other niche insurance products - you'll just have to read the article Why Didn't I Think of That? to find out what they are.

The Actuary's Prayer

As ode to the actuarial pet insurance work I'm doing today, I give you The Actuary's Prayer:

The ACTUARY's PRAYER (ver 3.01)

Our model, which art in nowhere.
Guessing be thy name.
Thy assumptions come,
Thy will be done in future as it was in the past.
Give us this day our premium rates,
and forgive us our lousy estimates,
as we forgive those who supply us with crappy data.
Lead us not into insolvencies, and deliver us from auditors.
For thine is the #NAME?, #DIV/0!, and #VALUE!,
forever and ever.

Amen.

I've no idea who wrote it (likely an actuarial student who was supposed to be studying...) but if you are an actuary, you'll get a good laugh out of it...

And now back to our regular programming....

Actuarial Pioneer: Laura Bennett, pet insurance actuary

The Society of Actuaries (SOA) has been building a list of the top 100 actuarial "Pioneers" as part of building the awareness of the actuarial field. To be on it, you have to be "an actuary who has blazed a trail for actuaries by creating a new application for actuarial science, or one who is among the first to apply the actuarial skill set in a non-traditional setting."

I think that pet insurance certainly qualifies in that category, don't you? And nicely enough, so does the SOA. Cool!

So, I did an actuarial Pioneer interview with the SOA a few months ago (it just went online) about the impact that being an actuary has had on my career, among other things. It's a bit of a fun mish-mash of tidbits about Embrace and me. Maybe it will inspire some aspiring actuaries to spread their wings, who knows?

I really liked the quote they selected out to highlight the whole article: " ... the smallest kindness in business goes an incredibly long way and it more often than not brings you benefits you could never have planned for." I really believe that - do you?

BTW, the picture above is not the picture I gave them for the article (this one was taken afterwards for a friend of Embrace) but I would really have loved to have used it instead of the goofy "corporate" one I sent instead. Oh well. Must get my "official" photos reshot!

What is an actuary?

Someone once told me that an actuary is a "pension engineer", which frightened the bejesus out of me as I was contemplating doing the actuarial science degree at the time (I did a pure mathematics one instead - much more exciting!)

So, if you are wondering what on earth an actuary is, here's a much better description from Society of Actuaries' What is an Actuary:

The future is full of uncertainty. Some of the events that can happen are undesirable. "Risk" is the possibility that an undesirable event will occur. Actuaries are experts in:

• evaluating the likelihood of future events,
• designing creative ways to reduce the likelihood of undesirable events,
• decreasing the impact of undesirable events that do occur.

The impact of undesirable events can be both emotional and financial. Reducing the likelihood of these events helps relieve emotional pain. But some events, such as death, cannot be totally avoided. So, reducing their financial impact is very important. Actuaries are the leading professionals in finding ways to manage risk. It takes a combination of strong analytical skills, business knowledge and understanding of human behavior to design and manage programs that control risk.

Wikipedia also has a good Actuary entry too.

As you can see, this description is extremely relevent for being a pet insurance actuary because there's really no other insurance that I know of that people get so emotional about. What do you think?

BTW, another tidbit about being an actuary - the actuarial profession has consistently been rated as one of the top five jobs in the United States according to Jobs Rated Almanac. To learn more about this, click here.

And finally, there are many actuary jokes since actuaries are stereotyped as being more boring than accountants (so we must be bad!) Here's one of my favorites to keep you amused:

What is the difference between an introverted actuary and an extroverted actuary? An introverted actuary stares at his own feet during a conversation, while an extroverted one stares at the other person's feet.

I left the male reference in the joke because there are still more men than women in the profession. Check out this site for more groaners.

The only full-time pet insurance actuary?

There aren't that many actuaries in the world, and there aren't that many people working on pet insurance full-time either, so when you put that together, you get only one actuary who works full-time on pet insurance - that's me (as far as I know).

I've been doing this for a while now and have not found anyone else to share this honor with anywhere. So please, if you know of any more actuaries who are working on pet insurance full-time anywhere in the world, get her/him to step forward (either through the comments or email me if you are shy) and reveal himself/herself. It would be fun to share war stories.

(that's me by the way, age 1)

Can an actuary be cool?

I just happened to come across this ad for Microsoft that mentions an actuary on the Society of Actuaries' website.

Imagine a geeky guy in a suit enthusiastically talking about this new idea for a comic book action hero he has - accountant by day, crime-solving mathematician with laser vision by night - all powered by Microsoft products, and there you have it. Not sure who the ad is aimed at but it certainly isn't me! 

Now, I'm off to use my laser vision to see what the future holds for us all... Back soon.