When I first bought my Tesla and I put my three children in the back, do you think I was going to let the car be driven by a computer? No way. These are my children we're talking about, my most important asset. So at the beginning I was like, OK, I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to do it on the highway in a straight line just for a few seconds. I was very, very nervous. Then a little bit more, for a couple of minutes. Wow. This thing understands. It sees cars. It's starting to steer. Wow.

I started to learn that technology was advanced, and it turns out that a Tesla vehicle has multiple cameras and makes 1 million, gazillion calculations every second, faster than I ever could. And I was driving with the Tesla a few months later, and all of a sudden it broke really quickly, faster than I reacted to brake. Why? Because it saw something ahead to protect me and my family. From that day forward, I said, "This thing is smarter than me."

As time went on, and now I've had my Tesla for two years, you can imagine how I drive my kids to school every day: "Tesla, go ahead and take them." I'm not saying this is going to happen with all technology, especially when it comes to financial management and protecting our risk and protecting our estate and protecting our assets and the wealth of our clients. But over time what will happen is that we as advisors and our clients will start to trust the technology, which means that we must do something inimitable that the technology cannot do, and that is have a relationship, engender trust, look into the eyes, have a smile. That's what we need. That's the most important thing.

Put your hand up if you are wearing an Apple iPhone watch or a Samsung Gear watch or a smartwatch. Wow, that's about 15%, 20% of the room — technologically advanced group here. How will the watch affect life insurance? I think about it all the time. I bought a life insurance policy 15 years ago. The first time I was ever at MDRT, from an MDRT member named Frank Andreoli from Canada. And Frank has been my advisor ever since.

I remember he said, "Nick, this is the type of life insurance you want." He came to my house, he met me and my wife. We went through my expenses, my revenue, my expectations, my risk, and we came up with a plan. He left, who came to my house a week later? A nurse. This is what happens when you purchase life insurance. And what did the nurse do? She took my blood, I peed in a cup, took my pulse, took my blood pressure, and asked me a few questions.

"Nick, do you smoke?"

"Nope."

"Do you drink?"

"Nope."

"Are your parents still alive?"

"Yep."

Then she left.

She was at my house for five minutes. I have been paying the same bill every year for 15 years because of this woman that came to my house 15 years ago that assessed me for five minutes. Has my life changed? A little bit. What does the watch know about me? Everything. Give me an example of some of the things the watch knows about me. How many steps I took yesterday, my heart rate, my pulse, my UV index. My watch also measures my emotionless index, and how well I slept, knows everything.

Bear with me for a second: I'm going to innovate and develop a whole brand new product. If there's any insurance manufacturers in the house, close your ears. I'm coming up with a new invention right now where based on your health in the previous 24 hours you would get adjusted 1/365th of your annual premium. You had a good day yesterday, you ate well, your pulse was good, you exercised? Premium goes down a little bit for the next day. Wouldn't that be awesome? You had a bad day yesterday, ate too much pizza late last night, drank too much, didn't have any sleep, party too much? Premium goes up the next day. Aha, dynamically priced life insurance premiums.

Who would be able to enter the insurance market to develop such a product? Apple. Is Apple in the insurance business? What's the answer?

Not yet is answer. So there's another example of how technology can disrupt the industry. It's very, very important for us to understand these things, to keep our eyes open, because there are industries who are disrupted whose eyes were closed. What happened to Airbnb and the hotel industry? What happened to Uber and the taxi industry? They weren't paying attention. We need to pay attention as MDRT members.

Dr. Nick Bontis is the world’s leading expert on intellectual capital and its impact on business performance. He is an award-winning professor of strategic management at McMaster University and was named as one of the top 30 management gurus worldwide. His dynamic, high-energy presentations provide recommendations for improving individual and organizational effectiveness and accelerating management performance. Bontis is the author of the best-selling book “Information Bombardment: Rising Above the Digital Onslaught.” His speaking services have been sought after by leading financial organizations such as RBC Insurance, Manulife, London Life, Great West Life, Hartford Insurance and Citibank.