A couple of promotional emails landed nearly simultaneously this week. The first asked: Can AI run whole workflows? The second asked: Can AI and data unlock smarter, more effective global insurance programmes?

A man from Zurich Insurance recently argued during a webinar that AI should be used to remove underwriting friction, not to replace underwriting judgement.

My grandmother continued to use her Flandria lave-linge à deux bacs (that’s a twin-tub washing machine) well into the 1990s. Not because it actually made the clothes cleaner or was more efficient, she repeatedly admitted.

No fear, cavalier; renegade: steer clear. A tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, And I decline. It’s the end of the world as we know it, And I feel fine.

Quite a bit was really cool about the Ptolemaic Dynasty. They were the royal family that ruled the Kingdom of Alexandria in Egypt for about 275 years, right up until Elizabeth Taylor, Queen of all Egyptians, fell in love with Richard Burton, and handed it all to the Romans.

Recently LIIBA, the London International Insurance Brokers Association, posed some important questions about digital trading, then set out to answer them by asking their members what they believe the answers to be.

Deviens ce que tu es. Become who you are. That was the advice of Lacoste about 30 years ago, lifted directly from Nietzsche, master of the self. For sure when I wore my first overpriced polo shirt with its little alligator on the breast, it made me feel different, someone apart (bet in retrospect not in the least more me).

Every decade or so reinsurers get fixated on a bit of tech wizardry, and pursue it with vigour. In the 20-teens it was Blockchain. Now it’s AI. Back in the 90s, the internet was the next must-have technological innovation.

Chernobyl’s nuclear accident was a defining event for many people of a certain age. As a boy, I literally lost sleep over my worry that France would suffer a plague of radiation sickness when the toxic clouds blew over us, raining death from the skies.