Tackling cyber in advancing technologies requires collaboration
The push towards digitisation and the advent of newer technologies such as driverless cars and artificial intelligence is leaving businesses more exposed to a cyber attack.
At the Airmic Conference 2017 in Birmingham, UK, Intelligent Insurer spoke to numerous executives who suggested these evolving risks will require a more collaborative approach among insurers, risk managers and technology specialists.
“Anything new usually poses some form of risk,” said Paul Greensmith, underwriting director at XL Catlin.
“The environment changes and it generates risk. Our job with our clients and brokers is to understand and manage that risk, because it’s not all about risk transfer.”
Kevin Warwick, a British engineer and deputy vice-chancellor at Coventry University who spoke at an AXA lunch on artificial intelligence at Airmic, said that autonomous vehicles are already on the horizon, and through optimising the technology, accidents are a possibility.
Warwick suggested that the mix of multidimensionality of artificial intelligence and the predictions it makes will have a huge effect on the insurance industry.
If an autonomous vehicle is aware it is going to crash, for example, it will look at various factors such as what the minimum cost will be, what speeds they’re going, how heavy the vehicle is. The vehicle would aim to minimise the cost and the insurance, he suggested.
Greensmith stressed the need to build up knowledge networks, and cited XL Catlin’s partnership with artificial intelligence firm Oxbotica, which specialises in autonomous vehicles.
Through this joint venture, Greensmith said XL Catlin hopes to take an autonomous vehicle from the centre of Oxford to the centre of London and back.
Greensmith added: “From a logistics perspective, you now have forklift trucks driving around warehouses autonomously, potentially a lot of this stuff goes into medical devices. We are looking at the broader applications of artificial intelligence and what the implications are for the insurance industry.”
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