Insurance and media: getting your message across

Greg Lang, founder of the Reinsurance and Insurance Network, gives some advice on how to best get your message out to the world.

Elon Musk has never been shy about sharing his views on any topic, including the media. He recently said: “People who get their news from traditional television are living in a false alternate reality. »

Whether you agree or not, the role of mainstream media and its impact on the public has changed. The perception and accuracy of information is also changing. The same can be said for the insurance information we consume.

“I tried to write an article using Perplexity. It was incredible.” Greg Lang, RAIN

In the past, major dailies had beaten insurance journalists. Today, the industry depends on podcasts, blogs, social media and trade publications to disseminate information. Most of us receive some form of email every day. Many organizations offer them. Everyone has their favorites. Investment in proprietary content has exploded. Unfortunately, much of this comes across as “commercial.”

AM Best’s monthly magazine Best’s Review has identified 50 publications covering insurance news. Four focused specifically on the captive insurance sector, including this publication. The same article identified 42 industry podcasts.

The number of podcasts may be underestimated: even an old man like me has created an audio podcast. Following its release, I conducted an unscientific investigation. I published it with an article with similar content, on my LinkedIn page.

The article initially generated more traffic/views. Maybe it’s my voice. It could be my age or that of my audience. But six months later, the article is read occasionally while the clicks on the podcast are more consistent. I see video podcasts as a dominant medium in the future. Who doesn’t watch videos on Instagram or YouTube? Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI), we’ll be able to share insurance jokes long after we’re gone. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but we’ll talk about AI later.

Speaking of being gone, does anyone still answer the phone? Are all your calls now scheduled on the calendar? Have Zoom and Teams replaced the phone? Are you a camera on or camera off person? Maybe we have too many videos.

Distribute unfiltered, uncensored and uncut information

A 1973 National Lampoon cover featured a dog with a gun to its head. The headline was: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” There is a lot of pressure on publications to maintain their readership and profitability. Publish or perish has been replaced with “he with the most clicks wins”.

Does anyone else feel like their LinkedIn feed has become another Facebook? LinkedIn was Microsoft’s biggest acquisition to date in 2016. In five years, revenue reached $10 billion per year. Much of that came from advertising – revenue from Facebook.

AI-generated media

AI-generated articles are increasingly becoming the norm: algorithms extract content from existing databases. Given that much of the content is press releases, it’s no surprise that many of the articles read the same. Forty percent of all insurance-related content comes in the form of a press release.

Luckily for me, the captive insurance industry has limited, accurate content available online. I assume many of you have tried ChatGPT: a version is available for free. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about a test conducted on the top five robots and their useful skills. OpenAI’s GPT Chat is probably the best known. Perplexity, a search-focused chatbot, has been awarded for being the best in business writing. Perplexity cites its sources with links, which is useful when submitting articles to editors, the good ones anyway, who always appreciate that the story is correct.

I tried to write an article using Perplexity. It was incredible. Amazing like me? LOL. I will continue to write.

Read and learn

I am often asked about books I would recommend on insurance and captives. My first read was “Invisible Bankers: Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted You to Know” by Andrew Tobias, written in 1982. I read it in 1986 and still quote from it today: “There is only two things more complicated than insurance accounting. and I have no idea what it is.

Kathryn Westover has written several books about captives. The first, “Captive Practices and Procedures,” was written in 2006 and she wrote a follow-up in 2014. Westover’s books are a good place to start your Captive 101 journey. Several chapter titles from her original book are became the basis of the International Center for Continuing Captive Education (ICCIE) course; ICCIE will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the Vermont Captive Insurance Association conference in August.

Most readers of this publication quickly move past 101 and are looking for resources tailored to the specific needs of individual captivities. Most of this industry knowledge is not easily accessible and often resides in the heads of my peers who have neither the time nor the inclination to write it down or share it.

Knowledge is power, right? It’s also how many of us earn a living. Some people believe in giving back – that’s why I started writing. I also started teaching again with ICCIE. I think after 20 years some course materials need to be updated. Anyone want to help?

Greg Lang is the founder of the Reinsurance and Insurance Network (RAIN). He can be contacted at: [email protected]

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