212 L McFall
makers operating as planners and policymakers at both national and local
levels. PIC had a vision for the cities of the future and the infrastructures
that would serve them that went far beyond the design of individual developments. Focusing on the Prudential Center in Boston, Rubin describes
how the company used architecture to assert its civic values and its vision
for how future cities would work. This was a vision that departed from the
nineteenth century city and its railway based, centralised structure towards
a city that was ‘multi-nodal, organised around highways and easy parking’
(2009, p. 11). The Prudential Center was part of a spatial and social model of
a new city that linked suburban middle-class apartments and retail centres
to huge commercial offices in the inner city. PIC invested in schemes that
supported this model across the United States, investing first in small suburban community centres and, from the 1950s onwards, in the development
of numerous regional malls and suburban office buildings (Hanchett 2000).
The company didn’t just provide the finance for all of this – its staff
was directly involved throughout the organisation and administration of
the development process, they helped select the tenant mix, choose architects and appointed contractors. The paradox of all of this is that PIC, as
part of the broader infrastructures and institutions of insurance, were so
deeply ingrained that they were everywhere and nowhere – so ‘pervasively
diffused through American social and economic life that they seemed to
disappear into the atmosphere like so many particles of air’ (Rubin 2009,
p. 31). Perhaps most prophetically, in 1958, PIC helped construct the suburban Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California that would, in
the decades that followed, become the core of Silicon Valley, the home of
the twenty-first century octopus that seems poised to disturb insurance: the
tech industry.
The lightness of insurtech
In 2015, when Aviva opened its digital garage, concern about the prospect
of major disruption to the business model of traditional, ‘legacy’ insurers
from the tech industries was widespread across the sector. Management
consultancy reports, press coverage, a spate of insurtech start-ups featuring Stanford trained data scientists among their founders, all signalled the
threat to the industry from big data and digital technologies. By the twentyfirst century insurance was dominated by giant, consolidated brands distinguished by low levels of brand differentiation, customer loyalty, and trust.
Aviva was the largest British multinational general and life insurer formed
from the merger of Norwich Union, Commercial Union, and General
Accident and over 100 other companies. Its new brand, a palindrome based
on the Latin for alive was meant to sound memorable, snappy, and global
but it entered a conglomerate lexicon of equally forgettable names.
The giant returns on investment that had sustained insurance throughout the twentieth century had been on the decline since the 1990s, many of
makers operating as planners and policymakers at both national and local
levels. PIC had a vision for the cities of the future and the infrastructures
that would serve them that went far beyond the design of individual developments. Focusing on the Prudential Center in Boston, Rubin describes
how the company used architecture to assert its civic values and its vision
for how future cities would work. This was a vision that departed from the
nineteenth century city and its railway based, centralised structure towards
a city that was ‘multi-nodal, organised around highways and easy parking’
(2009, p. 11). The Prudential Center was part of a spatial and social model of
a new city that linked suburban middle-class apartments and retail centres
to huge commercial offices in the inner city. PIC invested in schemes that
supported this model across the United States, investing first in small suburban community centres and, from the 1950s onwards, in the development
of numerous regional malls and suburban office buildings (Hanchett 2000).
The company didn’t just provide the finance for all of this – its staff
was directly involved throughout the organisation and administration of
the development process, they helped select the tenant mix, choose architects and appointed contractors. The paradox of all of this is that PIC, as
part of the broader infrastructures and institutions of insurance, were so
deeply ingrained that they were everywhere and nowhere – so ‘pervasively
diffused through American social and economic life that they seemed to
disappear into the atmosphere like so many particles of air’ (Rubin 2009,
p. 31). Perhaps most prophetically, in 1958, PIC helped construct the suburban Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California that would, in
the decades that followed, become the core of Silicon Valley, the home of
the twenty-first century octopus that seems poised to disturb insurance: the
tech industry.
The lightness of insurtech
In 2015, when Aviva opened its digital garage, concern about the prospect
of major disruption to the business model of traditional, ‘legacy’ insurers
from the tech industries was widespread across the sector. Management
consultancy reports, press coverage, a spate of insurtech start-ups featuring Stanford trained data scientists among their founders, all signalled the
threat to the industry from big data and digital technologies. By the twentyfirst century insurance was dominated by giant, consolidated brands distinguished by low levels of brand differentiation, customer loyalty, and trust.
Aviva was the largest British multinational general and life insurer formed
from the merger of Norwich Union, Commercial Union, and General
Accident and over 100 other companies. Its new brand, a palindrome based
on the Latin for alive was meant to sound memorable, snappy, and global
but it entered a conglomerate lexicon of equally forgettable names.
The giant returns on investment that had sustained insurance throughout the twentieth century had been on the decline since the 1990s, many of