predictive analytics

Lest anyone think the previous exchange is fanciful or seems a bit paranoid, it is already happening. It is known as using accelerated underwriting using external data and over two dozen U.S. insurers are currently using it.

More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies.

The Life Predictive Analytics Survey Report from Willis Towers Watson

RGA's Marc Sofer, Head of Data and Strategic Analytics, Asian Markets, discusses how the newest data sets, together with existing data and novel analytics, are impacting the industry’s growth and development.

RGA shares basic steps insurers can take to prevent overfitting for more accurate predictive models.

Congress may have forced Mark Zuckerberg to reveal more about personal data gathered on Facebook (FB). But consider this: Your insurance company likely knows a lot more about you. 

The controversy surrounding the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica’s use of personal data harvested from social media accounts without the users’ permission is among the first of what likely will be a long series of public debates about how the use of “big data” can shape our lives. And one of the most obvious battlegrounds where we should expect such fights to play out soon is in the insurance industry.

Slides from presentations given at the 48th annual M.U.D. Conference have been posted at their website. Presentations include:

• The Population is Abusing Drugs, but Are Drugs Abusing Insurance? 
• Update from the Cuckoo’s Nest: Mental Health Underwriting  
• Electronic Medical Records - State of the Union Update
• The Rise and Fall of Liver Biopsy
• Prostate Cancer- To screen or not to screen that is the question 
• Through Thick and Thin – Red Blood Cell Disorders
• Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: Evaluating Those with a Big Heart 
• Using Third Party Scoring in Accelerated Underwriting
• Data Analytics & Underwriting: Are 20th-century regulations still appropriate for 21st-century underwriting? 
• Anti Aging, Youthful Medication, Longevity/HGH 
• Mind the Gap- Understanding the influence of anti-selection and various holes in the underwriting process of accelerated versus traditional underwriting 

Increasingly, computer templates are making binding underwriting decisions through information that is programmed in with final decisions virtually unappealable.  It’s a frustrating situation that is taking the human element out of a very human situation of health and risk assessment.

As life insurers move toward accelerated or low friction underwriting, there is an increased interest in adopting emerging mortality risk prediction scores that are available almost instantaneously.