Consider the amount of data that is amassed and traded between consumers and insurers. At the industry's most basic level, in order to provide consumers with the cost of the policies for their homes, cars, personal property, lifestyle and health, insurers must compare data given to them by consumers with data they have collected on a set of risk factors. Seems simple enough, but this age-old process could improve through better data utilization, especially in the era of usage-based policies.

It's truly staggering how much data we have to work with in the insurance industry. Approximately 2.4 billion GB of data is generated per day within this industry. If 100 GB can hold an entire library floor of academic journals and a single gigabyte of smartphone data is the equivalent of eight hours of YouTube videos, 2.4 billion GB is a staggering amount. In reality, the insurance industry is really the "big data" industry. But beyond policy writing, or even usage-based policy writing, what are we really doing to take advantage of it?

The industry is just beginning to put together an action plan for its customers. For example, we are seeing the increased use of mobile applications to provide first-notice-of-loss for auto insurance and to provide instant accident help. There's still work to be done before we can use data to create true customer centricity and gain better insights into their preferences and, in return, develop more successful cross-selling and retention initiatives.