4 May 2016 Insurance

Duperreault hails potential of data science to transform industry

Brian Duperreault, chairman and chief executive officer of Hamilton, has hailed the company’s partners on a new joint venture to create a new technology-enabled customer-centric insurance platform for the small to medium enterprise (SME) market as “kindred spirits” in terms of their mutual belief in how data science has the potential to revolutionise the industry.

Bermuda-based Hamilton announced a new joint venture to create a new technology-enabled customer-centric insurance platform for the (SME) market last week. The joint venture has been created in conjunction with America International Group (AIG) and affiliates of Two Sigma Investments.

Speaking to Intelligent Insurer after the launch of the joint venture, Duperreault said that it was a three-way partnership, with three significant entities joining together, with each one bringing something special to the table.

“I approached AIG in the beginning to look at applying data science, using their skill sets and our skills sets in some kind of winning combination,” Duperreault said. “That conversation evolved to looking at the SME space, the small business space. What was interesting to us was that AIG has embraced data science and are kindred spirits of ours.

“They have a wealth of experience and data and capabilities in SME – but they were never a pure SME company – they did business across all classes, all sizes of risks. There’s no company that has a better portfolio in terms of product offerings than AIG.”

According to Duperreault, working with AIG gave them what he described as an incredible ability to offer a wide variety of coverages. He added that Hamilton has been working in this small space for more than a year and as a result has been developing some good technology, as well making good inroads in the producer community.

Duperreault said that the idea was to marry what Hamilton has, which is an operational thrust into that business, match that with AIG’s domestic product offering and data and then bring Two Sigma into the picture as a pro at this science, with a proven track record in that area, to produce something “very special”.

“In combination I believe that we can do a better job than we could have done individually. We have a unit already set up, so it’s operational, AIG can put the business into this JV, so we get the benefits of their business and their data and we’re all believers in data science. It all came together so well, because when things make sense they more move quickly – and this made a lot of sense.”

Duperreault pointed out that he had been speaking out on the subject of data science for some time now and that while the industry was making efforts in this area, its ability to put things together is somewhat limited as it tends to do things somewhat incrementally, as going all-in is not something that it does – or should do.

“Are we therefore ahead of anyone? I don’t know. We’re trying to create something that makes sense, and the creation of it involves putting together a process that is beneficial to the customer, that gives them a product in a way that is easy for them to work with.”

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