Cyber Insurance Underwriting: What do CISOs think?

Underwriting is at the heart of the insurance business. From evaluating individual risks and the exposures to an entire portfolio to assessing the risk, risk appetite, and ultimately profitability is increasingly crucial with rapidly changing risk factors from weather, climate, societal, technology, and more. The underwriting discipline is making major moves not just to automate the workflow but to change the way underwriting is done by providing access to more data sources to gain new risk analysis insights while creating significantly enhanced agent/broker and customer experiences.

The global economy has quickly adapted to the new normal, and customer expectations of speed and security continue to drive innovation and adoption. COVID-19 has moved digitization to the forefront, and Property & Casualty (P&C) insurance is no exception. As insurers look to protect employees while answering policyholder demands for faster and safer payment methods, push to card solutions have emerged as a method of offering a new level of flexibility and speed to a traditionally ACH and check heavy industry.

A simple Google search for 'big data definition' returns over 70M hits in less than one second, and only one definition appears more than once among the first dozen hits. Is the fact that this volume and variety can be accessed with such velocity a testament to the democratization of data, or is the lack of clear veracity for any one definition a sign of revolution to come? Will insurance uses of big data be decided by insurance professionals like actuaries or regulators, or will consumers be the ultimate decision makers of how their data is used in insurance and beyond? In this session we use case studies to examine issues and stories surrounding big data in insurance, with a focus on regulation and governance issues. We also reflect on various solutions under discussion at both the national and state level to address big data and how actuaries can help decide its future.

In an industry facing multiple disruptive forces including technological, regulatory and competitive pressures rethinking finance as a strategic function can help insurers reduce costs, report faster and extract more value commercialization of their data. In this crossover interview, Paolo Rubano, Finance Transformation Director at Generali, shares his perspective on the evolution of the insurance industry and how the finance function is responding to it. He explains in particular the role of Finance in this journey to allow a greater impact.