AdvantageGo’s Summers on the power of data to add value to underwriting

Digitising distribution and workloads will be key in bringing data into the underwriting decision-making process, according to Ian Summers, global business leader at AdvantageGo.

Insurers and reinsurers will need to work hard to gain a greater understanding of which sources of data to combine for better efficiencies and insights, he told The Insurer TV during the recent Rendez-Vous in Monte Carlo.

Successful data management is set to play a leading role in the industry’s digital transformation in the coming years.

Summers said: “If you take cyber, for example. Cyber is constantly evolving. What's the new thing around the corner that we don't necessarily know yet? To try and surface that information for our customers has been more troublesome than normal lines of business.

“So, we've brought in three new data sets since the last summit, and that enables underwriters to service that information at the right point in time in their underwriting process.”

Summers highlighted the areas where he believes the industry needs to improve to effectively manage data and digital transformation.

“We haven't really recorded [data] in a structured way, so that you can report on it and pull information from it. We haven't really used all the great information that is out there about those individual risks, probably because there's so much of it,” he explained.

“You’ve got billions of risks and billions of lines and bits of code. So, to try and pull that together is quite challenging,” he added.

AI is often seen in binary terms, as either a panacea to fix problems or as a threat to the human factor. According to Summers, AI is helping structure data but it “isn’t the answer to all things that it is portrayed to be at the moment”.

He added: “I'm sure it will be in time, but you've got to have very reliable data sources with appropriate guardrails on both sides of it, before you can let AI interrogate that data.

“It has huge value, but it's got to be used carefully. And at the top end of the market, that we're in, that's a risk you don't want to take just too much.”

Discussing data needs across different classes of business, Summers said “the lines you understand the least” should be the priority, followed by the ones where competitors are getting an edge.

“In newer lines of business, like cyber, where you want to come in and understand the risk, more data is helpful, to have some way of quantifying your risk better,” he noted.

Watch the interview with AdvantageGo’s Ian Summers to hear more about: