The AI Book

CHAPTER 19Insurance and AI: Choices in Leadership, Purpose and Trust

By Shân M. Millie¹

¹Founder, Bright Blue Hare

Let’s say you’ve skipped to this section of the book because you’re in (re)insurance; maybe you’re an executive on the board, or an independent non-executive/external director, or leading a critical function in the firm. Almost certainly you’ve grown up in insurance, and are technically adept in underwriting, finance or actuarial. This is a business that (a) productizes data-driven insights, measurement, tracking and mitigation, and (b) specializes in imagining and quantifying risks that have not been invented yet. Technology is constantly on the board agenda in one way or another…so, no-one can say that your data and technology foundations are shaky. But technical literacy means something different in the 2020s, and as an insistence on individual accountability for leaders across financial services strengthens,¹ this matters to individual leaders.

So to a long agenda of “everyday” issues – results; COR; analysts’ ratings; economic, political and social turbulence; investment returns and the rest – insurance executives must now add the requirement to develop, articulate and (increasingly) defend decision-making on that cluster of technologies labelled “artificial intelligence” and on algo-driven business. This chapter will not list use cases, or survey scenarios (covered thoroughly in this section). Instead, it tries to sit where you’re sitting and consider the ...