Insurance is a mature business that developed over the centuries to serve important social needs. Insurance policies can be long-term contracts involving promises lasting several decades, and insurers have long promoted themselves as offering financial strength and stability.

States, in turn, have passed laws to regulate market practices and solvency to ensure that insurers' promises are made fairly, that the products they sell match those promises and that they have adequate financial resources to meet them.

Stodgy & resistant to change image

Perhaps because of this, the insurance business is perceived as stodgy, beholden to inefficient legacy distribution systems and practices, overly regulated and resistant to change. And perhaps because of that, there is now a thriving ecosystem of individuals and enterprises — in industry parlance, InsurTech — devoted to developing innovative applications of technology to improve, modernize or, in some cases, disrupt insurance.