Franklin Manchester

Jan 15, 2025 | blogs.sas.com | Franklin Manchester

AI and AI-adjacent tools have become ubiquitous in everyday life. For example, real estate apps embed climate risk tools into the interface (look closely at the accompanying video – you may see yours truly). So, what does this mean for the insurance industry? It could be the answer to a terribly daunting problem on the horizon – the silver tsunami. The industry is in a talent war. In the US, 400,000 workers are expected to retire by 2026.

Dec 11, 2024 | blogs.sas.com | Franklin Manchester

The situation is dire. Carriers continue to retreat from markets. Consumers shoulder the burden of ever-increasing insurance premiums. And the unprecedented loss of life and destruction of property leaves communities across the globe shaken and terrified. I imagine the residents of Los Alamos, New Mexico felt a similar sense of manic urgency when Oppenheimer began directing work at his laboratory. But solving climate risk will be more complicated than building a nuclear device.

Dec 3, 2024 | blogs.sas.com | Franklin Manchester

To be direct: Machines learn like humans learn. Let’s consider how. Neural networks are computing systems with interconnected nodes that work like neurons in the human brain. Through algorithms, they can recognize hidden patterns and correlations in raw data, cluster and classify it, and – over time – continuously learn and improve. An early form of artificial intelligence, neural networks are fueled by data. And data represents experience.

Sep 30, 2024 | blogs.sas.com | Franklin Manchester

This oncoming freight train commands the attention of banks and life insurers who must quickly evaluate their investment portfolios. Why did this happen? Post-Covid work-from-home trends have put commercial real estate on its heels. Famously, Warren Buffet and the late Charlie Munger tag-teamed this trend with a simple exchange in the May 2023 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting:“The buildings don’t go away,” Buffet said. “But the owners do,” Munger finished.

Aug 26, 2024 | iireporter.com | Franklin Manchester

// (Image credit: Greg Rosenke/Unsplash.)When the CrowdStrike outage struck on July 19, stakeholders feared the cybersecurity firm had been hacked. A reasonable concern: Cyberattacks rose by 72 percent between 2021 and 2023, and cyberterrorism is an ever-evolving, ever-present threat. But it turned out the CrowdStrike outage wasn’t an attack; it was an unintentional inside job, a software update gone wrong.