The spur in the IoT technology and number of connected devices today ensures that a large volume of data is now available form fitness trackers, sensors in vehicles, home automation systems and mobile devices. Leveraging this data from these IoT devices allows insurers to create new product strategies, for example, using the information from customer’s smartphone devices using the GPS features, insurers can offer flexible travel insurance for the number of days abroad, rather than someone having to buy a fixed duration upfront.
In Trucking and transportation insurance, companies now have the opportunity to proactively reduce the claims that would follow an accident and/or pilferage, by monitoring the vehicles and the material. Insurers can adjust premiums based on the provision of real-time driving patterns and metrics from connected cars as compared to static variables like age, gender and driving history.
Besides, IoT data has now enabled insurers to enhance the capability of their software to factor in user behavior and use this cognitive information to determine the price of risk. The insurer can also inform the user what their actions mean so that an individual or company can act to mitigate changes in risk.
Here are some guidelines for setting up a unified data strategy which a lot of firms are calling ‘Data Lakes’:
· Take Data Engineering Seriously – if done right, this can give a huge impetus to the data scientists
· Invest in building data engineering skills.
· Socialize across an organization, get stakeholders on board
· Create a cross organization data governance
· Invest in increasing data quality
· Champion standardization – and first time right
· Discourage data hacks
Article of the Week by Career Development Cell Contributed by Tanmay Kadam – Mechanical 3rd year
