There is much conversation around the overabundance ofinformation cycling through the modern digitalized economy, and thetransparency and insight it affords those who are willing and ableto digest it. The exploration and exploitation of this informationand the understanding provided by data analytics is not onlyincreasingly impacting business, but our day-to-day lives aswell.

The insurance industry has not been immune to the disruptiveforce of information. The industry also is no stranger to dataanalytics. From its earliest days, the business of insurance hasbeen built on the ability to calculate and underwriterisk.

See the Forest from the Trees

What is new, however, is the staggering amount of information atdisposal,including the computer-aided vision into correlations andpatterns. For the previous generation of insurers, it would haveseemed illogical to think that someone's occupation, homeownershipor credit score could predict his or her likelihood of having anautomobile claim, but all are widely excepted criteria today.Successful carriers are those who take a moment to step back andsee the entire breadth of data available today, much likeappreciating the multitude of species in an entire forest ratherthan focusing on one type of tree.

Demand Real-Time Solutions

In this modern economy, the sheer numbers of data elementsavailable for use as possible decision points are mind boggling. Iwork for a software vendor and this year alone we will perform morethan 100 million real-time transactions with our carrier partners.The vast majority of these transactions are new business. To saythe pace of commerce has accelerated is an understatement. Theinformation superhighway has paved the way for business at thespeed of light, and carriers cannot afford to employ solutionsslower than real-time. Agents have come to expect business tohappen in real-time. This helps them provide superior service andcreates transparency into transactional information that helpsprovide better overall service.

Seek Clarity from the Cloud

The vast majority of these transactions are taking place in thecloud. The volume and velocity of resulting data has proveninvaluable to carriers who are taking the time to dissect it–andthis only represents a faction of what is available through ourindustry's ecosystem. I've been in the industry for more than twodecades and firmly believe a trait of successful carriers will betheir ability to drivedata to and from a cloud where it can beaccessed in a secure environment at any time, from anywhere.

Data is and will increasingly be important. That is not going tochange. Unfortunately the exploration of information is oftenmuddied by the debate over privacy and the fears of an Orwellianworld. Data analytics as a whole is not a bad thing. It can helpprovide for better experiences for modern knowledge works,consumers and anyone looking to take steps out of their alreadyover-stressed lives. Nowhere can that impact be more essential thanthe archaic, heavily regulated and procedurally rich world ofinsurance.