Top 10 lists are always very subjective and a good source for debate. Who is the best soccer player ever (Pele – no dispute), favorite movie (Citizen Kane - really?), greatest band (Beatles, although my personal favorite would be Queen) and so on…
Well Insurance and Technology recently published the top innovators in insurance and what is NOT open for debate was the inclusion of analytics and SAS’ CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight in this list.
It could be argued that analytics is not new to the insurance industry. In the 1970’s and 1980’s insurers were using basic reporting for state filing and management information. In the 1990’s they progressed to using data mining capabilities for ratemaking. In fact the first actuarial mortality tables developed by Equitable Life in the eighteenth century could be considered analytics. What is beyond doubt, is that as SAS led the change in the last century enabling insurance companies to gain insight into their historical data, it has also spearheaded the analytical revolution in the 2000’s as insurers have used data to gain foresight with techniques such as predictive modeling, segmentation, forecasting and optimization.
Innovation does not happen overnight, especially in the insurance industry! But SAS and analytics is leading the charge to transform the insurance industry as insurers gather more and more data to gain insight into their business operations. Congratulations to Dr. Jim Goodnight, and the others on this exclusive list, and may the good times continue…
Finally, those of you attending the ACORD/LOMA conference in San Diego from May 22nd to May 25th, please join me for my session on Making Data Work at 11am on Tuesday May 24th , or stop by the SAS booth.
I’m Stuart Rose, Global Insurance Marketing Manager at SAS. For further discussions connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
