b'TECHNOLOGYInsurtechIntroductionWhat a Decade Its Been! When we first started publishing our Year in Review reports a decade ago, insurtech was no more than a blip on the insurance industrys radar. Most sources identify 2010 as the year on which the history of insurtech began in earnest, although the use of innovative technology by the insurance industry long predates that year. Since then, the insurtech industry has grown at an eponential rate, encompassing an ever wider range of insurance-related products and services. According to CB Insights, the total size of global investment in insurtech was as little as $350 million in 2012, the year when we first started publishing our Year in Review reports. By the end of 2021, this figure has grown by 4,300%, to $15.4 billion.As the insurtech industry has evolved, so has the attention devoted to it by the US state insurance regulators. 10 years ago, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which is a US standard-setting organization of which the insurance regulators of the various US states are members, did not have a single committee or initiative devoted to studying or regulating insurance technology advances and the way insurtech is being implemented in the market. Today, the NAICs insurtech-related initiatives are one of the key items on its agenda, as they are on the agendas of state insurance regulators nationwide. Looking into the future, we expect that the insurtech industry will only continue to grow stronger with each passing year. We look forward to witnessing this growth and the exciting new technologies that the insurance industry will be implementing to improve the insurance consumer experience. 2021: Another Year of Change, Disruption and GrowthIn commenting on insurance technology and innovation developments in our 2020 Year in Review, we observed that the COVID-19 pandemic forced both the insurance industry and the insurance regulators to reexamine the application of technology and innovation to insurance products and services to provide better services and products to policyholders. At the same time, the pandemic forced the emergence of 118|Global Insurance Industry Year in Review 2021'