Читать книгу Analytics for Insurance - Tony Boobier - Страница 18

By 2020, everybody will have 5.1 connected devices, according to one management analyst and Gartner indicate that there will be 15 billion networked devices, many of which will be able to communicate with each other.

The concept of ‘Smart Devices’ isn't new, in fact starting off 20 years ago. High tech manufacturers such as LG and Samsung already offer ‘internet-enabled refrigeration.’ It is already possible to control the central heating remotely, and turn the lights off and on (or even just dim them) using an android phone. The increased popularity of mobile devices such as ‘Fitbit’ and ‘Jawbone,’ amongst others, is leading fashion companies and watchmakers to consider embedding devices in attractive jewelry and timepieces. We are rapidly entering the period of the Internet of Things (‘IoT’) with significant future impact on the insurance industry.

What are the consequences for insurance and insurers? Can we see over the horizon something which we might call the ‘Insurance of Things’ and if so, what is this and what will be the consequences? There is no doubt that Big Data and Analytics will play a part in this new environment. Enormous amounts of data will be created, analyzed and interpreted.

The use of connected devices is not entirely new in the insurance industry. The initial focus seems to have been on personal lines but will the next big wave of innovation find itself in the commercial sector? Whilst much of the focus has been on personal vehicle telematics, this is readily extended to vehicle fleet insurances. Some insurers have already obtained indirect benefit from a broad range of technologies from RFID (‘Radio Frequency Identification’) tagging of container shipments to monitoring of supply chain conditions to ensure fresh produce.

The Internet of Things in an insurance capacity will be considered later but starts to open up interesting new areas. Naturally there will be issues of security, standardization and privacy all to contend with, but these are topics which go beyond insurance and rather affect the ‘new’ modern world as we (currently) know it. If insurance in the future will be increasingly dependent on data and devices, where will the burden of maintaining and future-proofing those devices rest? Will insurance start to consider the introduction of new conditions and warrantees which are directly influenced by the new Big Data environment?