The Slow Unfolding of Technological Disruption

The Insurtech firm Hippo was facing two big challenges related to climate change: major loss ratios and rate hikes. The company used technologically empowered services to create its competitive edge, along with providing smart home packages, targeting risk-friendly customers, and using data-driven pricing. But now CEO and president Rick McCathron needed to determine how the firm’s underwriting model could account for the effects of high-intensity weather events.

Harvard Business School professor Lauren Cohen discusses how Hippo could adjust its strategy to survive a new era of unprecedented weather catastrophes in his case, “Hippo: Weathering the Storm of the Home Insurance Crisis.”