82: Reinsurance: The data driven future

Recently we hosted a live webcast in association with Genpact, on the use of technology within the reinsurance space and the importance of data.

The insightful discussion explored the industry’s current use of technology and ability to adopt new processes, with a view to what this might mean for the future of the reinsurance market as it looks to progress and innovate.

Our panellists for the webcast were from Genpact, Swiss Re, Google and Tremor Technologies and they all agreed that the reinsurance industry's data and tech maturity is increasing, but that there is a lot more to be done.

“If I was to think about where the industry is and how it has leveraged the opportunities, I think it’s a little bit of a mixed bag, in my view,” said Sameer Dewan, Global Business and Digital Transformation Leader, Insurance, Genpact.

One of the positives, according to Dewan, is that the reinsurance industry in particular has made great strides with its catastrophe risk modelling by leveraging new data sets extensively, and evolving its understanding of natural hazards.

Dewan also noted that solid progress is being made around how the market manages its data and governance, although warned that there’s still a long way to go here.

“What I mean by that, is it’s not just data within the organization that they have across multiple systems, both manual and some more automated processes, but also how data is managed in the ecosystem and how the data transfer plays out. I think that’s a huge opportunity,” he said.

The second piece, he continued, is the under investment in reinsurance core technology.

“There are technologies in play, but I don’t think they necessarily meet the needs of the complexities that we have to deal with today. A lot of the work is still performed manually. Having said that, I think we are at a tipping point,” said Dewan.