| | March 20159CIOReviewThree Trends for Insurance Technology ProfessionalsInnovative Driven CompetitionThe world we live in is changing faster than ever before, and the insurance industry is no exception. Telematics, ride share programs, smart buildings, smart cars, driverless cars, competition from alternative capital, wearable medical technology, competition from non-insurance companies, drones, cyber risk exposure, changing workforce demographics, smart robots, water shortages, and catastrophes.Using telematics as an example, insurance companies are capturing and analyzing information such as miles driven, acceleration, braking, cornering, excessive speed, road type, day of week, time of day, weather conditions to do a better job of setting prices. More importantly, data driven features available on apps are allowing drivers to see how well they are performing in categories such as cornering, braking, and speeding habits. Leveraging this type of post trip feedback, insurance companies have evolved beyond pricing to providing insurance customers with real-time risk management feedback. For a parent of a 17 year-old driver, these types of statistics could help save a child's life.Staying with a personal automobile example, what happens to premium volume as cars become smarter and accidents drop significantly from current levels? On the flip side, what happens to premium volume if bad actors hack into vehicles and cause accidents? What happens to auto insurance agents if internet companies aggressively sell insurance products?In the news, we see a number of articles discussing the topic of humans being replaced by robots. For some of the largest contract manufacturers, the eventual impact could equate to millions of human workers being replaced as robot installations expand across the globe. In the Wired.com article titled Better Than Human: Why Robots Will--And Must--Take our Jobs, the author notes, "It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today's occupations will likewise be replaced by automation." For workers' compensation insurers, that sure represents a lot of lost premiums.From telematics to game changing line of business trends, IT professionals will need to pay attention to the major shifts in the collection of data with high volume, variety and velocity (e.g., smart phones, GPS devices, cameras, sensors, unstructured text, photographic data).The ability to collect, store, manage and analyze data on a PDA or laptop on demand will be IT's next big adventure.ConclusionIn the Forbes article titled Data Scientists: The Definition of Sexy, Gil Press stated: "A data scientist is an engineer who employs the scientific method and applies data-discovery tools to find new insights in data. The scientific method--the formulation of a hypothesis, the testing, the careful design of experiments, the verification by others--is something they take from their knowl-edge of statistics and their training in scientific disciplines. The application (and tweaking) of tools comes from their engineering, or more specifically, computer science and programming back-ground. The best data scientists are product and process innova-tors and sometimes, developers of new data-discovery tools." Although the term data scientist is getting a ton of play in the media, it is the information technologists that are the backbone of addressing the three trends we have identified. In the end, with-out careful planning and execution by IT professionals, the vision defined by the data scientists might end up on the shelf, never be-ing effectively deployed into core insurance operations with the desired impact on the top and bottom lines.Today, insurance companies are attacking all types of challenges with big data and analyticsDave Schmitz
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