Richard Breavington & Ian Dinning explain why data is an increasingly important differentiator
- Aside from the well-publicised issues of how data must be treated from a legal and regulatory perspective in relation to the GDPR, there are number of opportunities that data can offer and commercial advantages it can create.
Data is often meaningless as individual entries or unmanageable as a whole. The power of data lies in its analysis.
Once analysed, data can reveal trends, patterns and associations. A progression of this is prediction of outcomes with increasing certainty. If you can predict what happens next or, just as crucially, what can cause something to happen, you have an advantage.
Insurers have been early adopters of the advantages of using data. This comes as no surprise given that data is the backbone of the insurance industry. Early examples include telematics and fraud detection. An area of potential development is in using feedback from claims data to allow better prediction of risks and how insurance is sold.
In sales, data about purchasers has for some time been of considerable potential
