The need to analyse heterogeneous and increasingly unstructured data will drive the insurance industry to adopt Big Data technology that has previously been overlooked or underdeveloped.
That is according to Nigel Davis, head of Platforms and Delivery, Global Analytics at Willis. In his latest blog, he says “Big Data is a new term to describe the management and use of data in the modern era.” Davis identifies three areas of Big Data technology that he believes are currently under-utilised by the insurance industry.
These are:
The crunching of social media driven by the need to know everything. In other words, technology that scans millions of newsfeeds and social media feeds, such as Twitter and You Tube for posts containing certain content, e.g. earthquake, within a specific “geo-fenced” area.
The use of sensor networks to track people in risky territories. “Tracking mobile assets produces vast volumes of data very quickly and it requires very high performance computers to analyse the data and facilitate predictive analytics.”
The downloading of on-demand satellite imagery at an affordable cost. “NASA is a particularly good example. Raw flood, fire and climatic data can be downloaded from NASA’s online archives."
“Technology is facilitating change for those that can find ways to harness and consume it,” says Davis, adding that so far the application of Big Data has been predominantly driven by customer demand. “Technology evolution allows us to do things that we could never have thought possible a decade ago but it is not the size of the data mountain that has driven innovation. Rather, it is the demands made by the consumer."
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