TCS is sponsoring the above ABI conference scheduled on 19th October. Over recent years, insurance and saving firms have started thinking beyond digitising the multi-channel front-end of their business towards digitising the core of their business using Blockchains, IOT, AI and Big Data technologies. Some are not merely digitising the core to be similar to the older business models, but reimagining new business models leveraging digital technology. The conference has sessions on how these technologies are impacting the insurance business.
The session on “The Internet of Things - what connected buildings, vehicles and people will mean for personal and commercial lines in the next year” will talk about how our ways of living and working are changing due to IOT and how leveraging data from wearable IOT devices and various instrumented homes, factories, vehicles offers insurers new ways of delivery insurance value to individuals and firms. In my view most of the use-cases of IOT are likely to reduce aggregate revenues from the present except where IOT is leveraged to make previously uninsurable individuals and buildings, vehicles insurable. Let us see what the speakers have to say on this.
The conference has a session on “Blockchains and smart contracts – moving from hype to reality”, which will illustrate how Blockchains are moving beyond interesting ideas and possibilities to concrete options. For example B3i and R3 consortiums have made announcements about their plans at an industry level and started working towards these. Multiple insurers have been speaking about their proof-of-concepts reimagining various business processes at various industry events, including the recent Instech London event. A large number of start-ups are being funded in this area and some are working with insurers on various interesting use cases.
As insurers digitise the multi-channel front-end (including leveraging IOT) using above technologies, they generate lot more data adding to the volume, variety and velocity of data that insurers already have. There is a great opportunity to leverage Big Data and AI technologies to leverage this data to generate insights capable of driving profitable growth. Leveraging this opportunity to the full involves digitising the core of the business leveraging Blockchains, AI, Big Data technologies to respond to the needs of the customer expressed through multi-channel front-end (including IOT). Kunal Guha from TCS will be part of the panel discussion in the morning on how AI, machine learning and Big Data will change the insurance and savings sector and Andrew King from TCS will be speaking in the morning breakout session on “Digital Innovation in long-term savings – the Pensions Dashboard and beyond”
But as insurers and savings firms digitise and leverage data, they become more vulnerable to cyber risk. This creates a bigger need to protect the integrity of the data from its generation and management through its life cycle. A digital strategy increasingly needs to have a concomitant cyber security strategy to protect operations and data. While cyber risk is a threat to the data intensive insurance business, insuring cyber risk is also a major growth opportunity for insurers right now as the awareness of the scale of the cyber risk faced by individuals and corporates spreads. So in addition to managing their own cyber risk, insurers have to find ways of underwriting cyber risk, managing its aggregations and managing normal and catastrophic claims for this new category. The afternoon session on “Insuring cyber risk – what will the UK cyber insurance market look like in the future” will seek to describe how various practices are emerging in these areas. AI and Automation are quickly emerging as means to deal with the cyber menace, but there is little structured material on how cyber insurance can leverage AI and Automation. Hope this conference changes that situation.
Overall it looks like an interesting day. I am looking forward to attending for the whole day. Look forward to meeting you there.