Verisk’s Stanway: Rich, liquid data could change competitive landscape and attract new capital

Clients that are moving towards “liquid data” are changing the game, Verisk’s chief digital officer Reid Stanway told The Insurer TV from the annual industry Rendez-Vous in Monte Carlo last month.

More data on each risk, said Stanway, creates more informed and educated decisions around deploying capacity.

“And I think the richness of that data, which hasn't necessarily been there, is going to attract new capital,” said Stanway.

Reinsurers have been a bit slower on the digital uptake than those in the insurance space, according to Stanway.

“We are seeing a bit of digital trading in some of marketplace platforms, like Whitespace, where customers may be digitising or trading some of their slips to take that information and put it into policy administration systems,” he said.

And in the facultative space, Stanway said he is seeing some customers trying to capture placement premium and exposure data in a digital trading medium similar to Whitespace.

“But it's not maybe evolving at the same pace,” Stanway said.

Whilst reinsurers are not fully involved in the digital trading space, the data it creates is helping them go about their business in a more efficient manner, and will continue to gain importance.

“We're getting huge amounts of data being created in the primary space. And what's that going to do for the reinsurers, as they get that rich clarity of data, is going to be quite neat.”

“So, I think, having an eye on what's happening in the digital trading space, and the pace upon which it's happening in that environment, is pretty important for reinsurers,” said Stanway.

The availability and richness of data might also have the power to change how reinsurers and insurers interact.

“I think what we'll see is a huge shift, maybe in some of the primary space, where we're getting more and more portfolio-based data scientists; and we're gonna see some new roles maybe being brought in, as we think about portfolios and the law of large numbers, and forming maybe risks that wouldn't traditionally fit that sort of description.”

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