Property/casualty insurers in North America are increasingly looking to hire people with advanced degrees in analytics and data science to work on big data projects, according to a new study conducted by Strategy Meets Action(SMA), a leading insurance strategic advisory firm, and sponsored by ISO and SAS.
The study, "Big Data in Insurance", found that property/casualty insurers plan to increase the percentage of big data staff with advanced degrees and training from 21 to 51% by 2016. This figure is among dozens of findings in the study that illustrate how insurers are trying to position themselves to develop valuable insights from the increasingly complex world of big data. Here are some of the study's findings:
-Larger insurers are investing. 39% of property/casualty insurers with more than $1bn in premiums decided to invest in big data initiatives, compared with only 14% of those with less than $1bn in premiums.
-Insurers find big uses for big data. The number of property/casualty insurers using or implementing big data analytics is highest in areas such as new business analytics (44%); underwriting profitability (55%); and claims frequency and severity (59%).
-The two biggest challenges are variety and veracity. Property/casualty insurers ranked variety and veracity as the two biggest challenges in big data-above velocity, volume, and value. The challenge of variety lies in managing and making sense of the many types of data that matter to insurers, while veracity refers to developing a system to ensure that data is verified and accurate.
"For years, we have been taking large amounts of disparate data and turning it into accurate and actionable insights for insurers," said Joseph Izzo, SVP of Data Assets and Analytics at ISO. "Our success has been the product of our highly educated and credentialed staff working every day on innovative approaches to understanding big data."
Verisk Analytics employs 531 professionals with advanced degrees, 72 members of the Casualty Actuarial Society, 40 members of the Insurance Data Management Association, and 158 Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter(CPCU) designees. Those employees are part of a highly talented team that helps develop valuable information about risk from more than 500 terabytes of property/casualty insurance data, including building characteristics, fire suppression capabilities, and insurance claims.
"As big data continues to grow, the most successful will not be those that have the most data, but those that know how to use it to improve their business," added Izzo. "Helping insurers understand and benefit from big data will continue to be a top priority for us for years to come."
|
