Like many people who have met Dr. Henna Karna, Google’s general manager of Global Industry Solutions in Insurance, Reinsurance and Risk Management, it’s hard for a journalist not to be impelled by her mission. For nearly 25 years, since her work as an actuarial assistant at John Hancock Insurance, Karna has probed the insurance industry’s inherent inefficiencies, waste and lack of customer-centricity.
Executive Summary
Henna Karna, Google's general manager of Global Industry Solutions in Insurance, has never wavered in her campaign to make insurance the best it can possibly be. Here, journalist Russ Banham catches up with her, recounting an inspiring journey breaking through some formidable roadblocks and her activities since being featured on the a 2021 cover of Carrier Management.I first wrote about her in this magazine in 2018, having read several articles in the insurance trade press featuring her innovative ideas on how cloud computing, automation and artificial intelligence could change the industry for the betterment of carriers, reinsurers, brokers, policyholders and society at large.
Her vision was as sweeping as it was far-sighted. Unlike many InsurTech entrepreneurs focused on efficiency gains for a particular risk exposure or a specific line of insurance, Karna had bigger game: She wanted to design a way to pragmatically evolve the entire operation of an insurance company on an end-to-end basis, creating a means to share accurate risk exposure data across underwriting, pricing, risk management, reserving, claims management—the whole kit and kaboodle.
