Surviving the crisis, or responding to it?

Surviving crises isn’t enough. Especially in an industry like insurance that stands at the very center of risk, what makes the real difference isn’t the ability to survive, but the reflex to respond. Surviving is defense; responding is initiative. And insurance is by nature a business of response.

To understand this, it’s enough to look at the 2009 Miracle on the Hudson. An aircraft that lost both engines to a bird strike making a controlled landing on New York’s Hudson River isn’t just a survival story; it’s a strategic victory of human intuition over the algorithm.

What the algorithm couldn’t see

Right after the engine failure, ground simulations made a clear calculation: the plane could return to the nearest airport. The data proved it. But Captain Sully felt something the computers couldn’t factor in: the weight of the moment and the irreversibility of seconds. What made him able to make that decision was years of experience; the intuition earned over thousands of flight hours.

In the investigation the algorithms nearly declared the captain at fault. Until one detail was noticed: when 35 seconds of human decision-making time was added to the simulations, all the calculations collapsed. It became clear the plane couldn’t reach the runway. So the algorithm was technically right, but it didn’t account for the real world’s human delay.

Survivor or responder?

The survivor is the passive actor trying to escape what befalls them with the least damage. The responder is the actor who takes initiative and acts to change the course of events. For insurers this distinction is very concrete: it’s the line between closing a claim file according to policy terms, and creating a real difference in the customer’s world at the moment of crisis.

To make it concrete, picture a moment of disaster. After a flood, thousands of claim files hit the table at once. The survivor insurer closes the files in order, by policy terms; technically correct, but in those days the customer wants cash and speed. The responder insurer sends teams to the field, makes advance payments, helps the customer get back on their feet. Both pay the claim in the end. But one merely fulfills the policy, the other makes a real difference in the customer’s life. In insurance the real issue is often not the loss itself, but the liquidity and the response at that moment.

What a responding institution looks like

It’s possible to institutionalize the response reflex. In companies that do, I see a few shared behaviors: rather than waiting for the claim to arrive, they communicate proactively; after a disaster they go to the field with teams and advance payments; they tell the customer clearly what will happen and when. They use technology exactly here; automating the routine and reserving the human for the truly important moment, that of decision and contact. So technology takes the human’s load, not their place.

The memory that walks out the door

An organization’s biggest strategic asset is its institutional memory, written in no system: the experience, intuition and nuanced knowledge accumulated over years. One of the industry’s quietest risks is here. As experienced names retire, decades of human-centered risk intuition walk out the door; only algorithms take their place.

On the brokerage side I see this very clearly. The value of the person who asks the right question at the moment of claim, senses in advance how a given cover will operate, and knows who to talk to, is written in no database. Algorithms are perfect survivors: they process data, analyze the past, manage standard situations. But they’re poor responders. They can’t feel the weight of the moment, can’t show that human response instinct in nonlinear crisis moments.

Preparation begins before the crisis

The response reflex isn’t born at the moment of crisis; it’s built long before. Sully made that decision in 35 seconds, but what made those seconds possible was years of preparation and discipline. In insurance it’s the same: being able to act fast and humanely at the moment of claim depends on processes set up beforehand, trained teams and accumulated trust.

A crisis doesn’t create character; it only reveals it. How an insurance institution behaves on a bad day shows in how much it prepared on the good days. So a culture of response must be built long before, not after a disaster.

Real leadership

Real leadership isn’t only managing technology, but protecting the organization’s active, responsive spirit. The way to protect this reflex is clear too: build environments that pass the intuition of experienced names to younger teams, put into writing the reasoning behind critical decisions, and position AI beside the human, not in their place. Augmentation is always more valuable than replacement.

Algorithms increase efficiency, I don’t deny it. But the decisive action a crisis demands can be triggered only by human memory and experience. The insurance giants of the future won’t be those with the fastest algorithm; they’ll be those who blend institutional memory with technology and turn from a structure that merely fulfills the policy into a power center that actively solves the problem. The point isn’t only to pay the claim, but to respond to the moment.