SURVIVING A TSUNAMI – Why data matters in Insurance
I recently sat down with David Simon, the Founder of Inonde, to talk about the company and his views on the impacts of unstructured data, big data, and analytics in insurance.
So far as 10 years ago, almost 40% of insurers already recognized the real-world applications of projects like ‘big data.’ That number jumped to 74% in 2012 and has continued to skyrocket. Insurance companies have actually been outpacing their cross-industry peers in their ability to use analytics to a competitive advantage. They invested $2.4 billion in big data in 2018, and that number is expected to increase to $3.6 billion by next year.
However, big data is not as simple as it seems. Simon was actually leading a team at a Fortune 500 company when the ‘Big Data Boom’ hit the industry, and he let me in on a little secret behind all those great solutions: they didn’t get it all right.
Data is King – Insurance and the Modern Monarchy
In 1996, Bill Gates said that “content is king.” Then he predicted a viral pandemic during a TED talk five years before it happened. Bill is a smart guy and while he was terrifyingly accurate about the pandemic, we think his quote about content may be a bit outdated.
New technologies like apps and sensors are all around us and the “Internet of Things” is more like our “Life of Things,” recording and reporting on us every minute of every day. Nowadays, digital applications are available to help us manage almost every aspect of our lives.
The constant in all this is not the “content.” It’s the data.
Freeing Your Data and Revolutionizing the Insurance Industry
Freedom is important in the United States. We are free to speak our minds, to publicly share our ideas, to assemble and protest unfavorable outcomes, and to celebrate a religion of our choosing. We are free to be individuals.
With individuality comes innovation. From how we buy homes to how we protect homes, we are living in an era of technological change. Social media, shopping sites, and analytic services are altering the way we think about our communities. Artificial intelligence and big data have transformed the way we live our lives. As other industries adapt, so should insurance. It’s time for a revolution.
There are a few key drivers for insurance industries to implement the use of big data and big data analytics. Big data can provide insurance firms with valuable insight, and analytics can transform that insight into action.
Jazzing Up the Healthcare System
Originating in the early 19th century, jazz is a free-spirited and spontaneous form of music that places a heavy emphasis on musicians finding their own unique sound and style. Instead of reading music from a score, they make it up as they go along. Jazz has transformed lives, business, and the world. It provides the opportunity for creativity and is unceasingly inventive.
Inventiveness is critical to the future of healthcare. It is time to pick up the sax, find our creativity, and develop a unique style of handling health data. In the wake of the global pandemic, there is so much information in a wide variety of formats. Siloes are being erected unintentionally in the name of sharing data faster.
As healthcare continues to evolve and becomes more consumer-centric, the significance of value-based care increases. We all know health insurance has a critical role to play. This is a unique opportunity to come together and do more than just ‘gamify’ our Fitbits, sensors, and company health incentive checklists. We can encourage healthier lifestyles, make use of personal data, deliver insightful individualized health analytics, and drive down costs as we apply machine learning and AI for the betterment of society.
But how?