Recently, I was at one of the local RIMS chapters for a “Dinner & Debate.”  The chapter had invited the CEO’s of a half dozen RMIS companies and put them on stage – panel style – to answer questions from both the audience and the special guest moderator.  Most of the answers were sort of like politics… pretty predictable and along party lines.

The CEO of the TPA-owned RMIS vendor managed to weave into every answer the fact that they had millions of “benchmark” claims at their disposal.  The CEO who had recently joined the RMIS industry from a standard I.T. company quoted Gartner Group several times and threw out a series of statistics and trends, gleaned from CIO magazine, that were fairly interesting but not very original.  He lathered on liberal amounts of “hoo-ha” about trends in “Big Data.”  The CEO’s of the pesky up and coming companies were animated, brash and bold and the CEO’s of the “legacy” vendors rolled their eyes in obvious annoyance at these barbarians at the gate causing them so much grief and discomfort in their otherwise comfortable lives back home.

Like I said… the dialogue was predictable and mostly forgettable. But one exchange shocked my face off.  When it occurred, I was so stunned that I lost my ability to concentrate on anything else over the last 30 minutes of the panel discussion.  In fact, a year later I just can’t get it out of my head.

Hear it is.  About mid-way through the panel discussion the moderator asked the question: “Do you, as the CEO of your Company,  feel a responsibility to introduce forward thinking, creative innovation to the industry even before the industry demands it?”

One of the CEO’s (and this wasn’t one of the legacy vendors) actually said the following… “Absolutely not! There is no way that we can know what the future will bring so we just wait for our clients to tell us what they want and we give it to them.”

WHAT?!?!  You have got – to – be – kidding – me! THIS IS THE PROBLEM!  With all due respect to this CEO, the client doesn’t know what they do not know and they do not have time to research technology innovations and then dream about how these innovations might apply to Risk Management!  That’s what they are depending on you to do.  With this attitude, is there any wonder that Risk Management is the most un-automated discipline in the world?; that many TPA’s are still pushing paper files around?; that insurance brokers are still suffering from chronic spreadsheet’itis?; that risk management professionals are drowning in mountains of paper and inefficiency? My goodness Mr. CEO.  Are you serious?  Are you satisfied running a company that does enough to sell a bunch of systems, make some money and retire rich?  Is that really all there is to this thing we call a career?  I would suggest the answer is “NO.”

Let’s get busy folks. Unfortunately, I am 60 years old and don’t have 30 years to dedicate to this challenge. I can give it a few more years, but you youngsters… don’t let this CEO – born of the “me generation” – influence you.   Don’t sit back and cruise.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Look around you at all the life change in our world made possible by technology driven improvements.  Don’t we in Risk Management deserve better?  I would suggest the answer is “YES!”  I, for one, am desperate to leave this place better than I found it.  I’m going to figure out what you all will need next year and get busy on it this year.  Let’s do this together.