Social justice is an easy goal on which to agree, though as the events of the past year have taught us, we often fall short transforming the aspirational into reality. That doesn’t mean we stop trying, and in as vital an industry as insurance, the need to ensure we properly and fairly serve all consumers has never been greater nor more widely understood.

Here in the insurance capital of the known universe, the Connecticut Insurance Department believes that our charge to protect consumers includes encouraging competition and facilitating the provision of as many relevant products as quickly and as affordably, for as many consumers, as possible. We all need insurance. We all should have it.

That means that we, as regulators, must be facilitators of innovation and growth in rapidly changing times. So much has changed since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, since the first iPhone was released in the U.S. in June 2007, since IBM’s supercomputer Watson won on Jeopardy early in 2011.

These days, advances in technology seem to come quicker and with a broader impact than ever before. The goal of many startups is the disruption of the business or product status-quo. This approach has businesses bringing products and services to market that generally fall outside the existing regulatory framework. That can be a challenge to properly regulate. But when new business practices are managed properly through effective regulation, growth can occur with acceptable risk, and consumers benefit.