Data Ethics

With insurance becoming increasingly digital, data ethics has become the key lens through which issues and challenges are emerging. What makes it particularly important is how it is influencing insurance at both the policy and the market levels.
64 posts
Data Ethics
Underwriting 2 min read

The Clash of Narratives in Life and Health Insurance

There are two narratives becoming established around life and health underwriting, and they don’t fit well together. What they point to is an uncertain future for how rating will evolve. Insurance is a risk business, yet could this uncertainty be perhaps the biggest risk of them all?…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Regulation 3 min read

The Huge Health Data Disruption has Arrived

The final wording of the EU’s Health Data Space regulation is out, and the implications for insurers are significant. Not only is there a prohibition on insurers’ use of secondary health data, but as I anticipated, what counts as such data is wide. Insurers need to move with care here.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Underwriting 9 min read

The EU’s Social Scoring Ban – What Does It Mean?

The EU’s AI Act prohibits social scoring. Insurers need to carefully weigh up the implications of this ban, for a lot of new digital insurance practices bear a remarkable resemblance to it. The ban was never meant to put pressure on modern insurance practices, but will that protect insurers.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Claims 5 min read

Vulnerability Starts with Scope

Vulnerability is a significant theme for the UK regulator, and obviously insurers have been responding to those expectations. This has led to a lot of management information being produced around vulnerability. That’s only as good though as the scope of what you decide to put into your MI.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Underwriting 3 min read

Risk Variables Are On Their Way Out

Underwriters have relied on risk variables for a very long time. After all, how would insurance work without them! Yet is their unique status on its way out? When motor insurers use 1000+ rating factors, what does this say about how insurance is now priced? More than just on risk, clearly.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Discrimination 4 min read

Why Secondary Data Could Turn Toxic for Insurers

Digital innovations are helping the sector break new ground in how policies are underwritten. The problem is that some practices could be landing insurers outside of the law. This is not bias in data or analytics. This is ill advised decisions around the strategic use of secondary data.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Data Ethics 3 min read

Forced Transparency – the Challenge facing Insurers

2024 will see several challenges that the insurance sector is facing come to a head. Out of this will emerge a period of forced transparency, in which certain working practices are opened up to scrutiny. How insurers prepare for this is crucial for customers, investors and regulators.…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Data Ethics 4 min read

Synthetic Data - 3 Things Insurers Need to Understand

The data that fuels a digital strategy can be incomplete, expensive or biased. One way to overcome this is through synthetic data. As margins from existing datasets narrow, more and more insurers will turn to it. So what sort of ethical questions are associated with it?…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
Marketing 6 min read

Embedded Insurance and Manufactured Vulnerability

Embedded insurance is a form of hyper-personalisation designed to present the right product to you just when you need it and most likely to buy it. In short, data fuelled prescriptive marketing. Yet if marketing is about persuasion, how do insurers steer clear of digital manipulation?…
Duncan Minty
Duncan Minty
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