Insurance Edge caught up with Richard Tomlinson, (below) CEO at Percayso Inform, to reflect on another year of rapid growth and look at the latest trends in AI, insurance data stacks and more.
IE; It’s been a busy year for Percayso with more clients signing up for your services, is BIBA a good chance to take stock on that progress?
RT; You have to keep taking stock every three months or so and look back on what the company has achieved. We also like to try and update the market on new clients coming on board and what kind of things new clients are doing too. We have a new announcement in June in the Motor sector which is exciting, but we are working with clients in Commercial, Home and other sectors too.
We are finding the UK partnership sector is busy too, Percayso just connected with RDT and Acturis, plus Chimnie – as you might guess a property data company – and we have done lots of testing on their data, which is showing useful gains.
IE; Are you seeing property insurers using drones or other tech to help price risk, or renewals now?
RT; Yes we are seeing more of that, things like LiDAR data, tree roots, multiple feeds from public source databases, plus brands are creating their own sources.Ultimately the market is really about who has the best data and that’s where Percayso want to be.
IE; How valuable are data partnerships?
RT; Very. We are always happy to work with other data partners because it extends our reach, it also enriches your brand’s offer. It’s easy now to plug into partner platforms and that has benefits for all suppliers in any insurance chain of course, it’s win-win.
IE; What you’re providing at Percayso is a customisable set of data for any insurers or brokers, depending on their exact needs. Each company can have its own very specific niche, or policy lines and so their data demand can vary a great deal too?
RT; You always start with a broad brush and then get into the real work. We do rigorous data tests working with new clients. That can throw up all sorts of different focus points within one sector like Home or Motor, you eventually hone down to particular points that deliver the most impact, the best value.
You can often sift hundreds of pieces of data and find maybe six or seven variable points that make a huge difference in the client’s business.
360 VIEW, GRANULAR DATA
IE; Postcodes are a sort of blunt instrument in some ways, have we moved onto something more granular these days? You can look at attempted break-ins, vandalism, floods or other incidents nearby and get a better picture of overall risks, which might affect say Motor risks indirectly. Are we in an era of layered pricing data now?
RT; We have to gather up all those layers and identify the different points where you can join up a bigger picture, we need it. To be able to spot risk patterns you need a timeframe and the detailed location of incidents too, that’s how you price the real risks accurately in the future.
We would say to clients always look at the different layers of data in detail, compared to your policy lines, so you can assess the true risks. That in turn depends on the platform used, because it’s about the orchestration of layers if you like. You need to organise your analytics carefully to see the true picture.
There are some insurance brands still looking at data patterns in isolation to an extent. Bringing it all together is doable and insurers need to be part-detective when it comes to data patterns.
IE; Can AI help crunch that layered data faster and better?
RT; Definitely. Decision analytics platforms can do the hard yards for you although you need some human input as well.
IE; Are you seeing growth in embedded insurance and therefore a demand for data at the point of sale?
RT; Yes we are although it isn’t growing quite as fast as I thought it would do. There are niche sectors again, like the taxi market say, where you need particular cover on-demand. Travel is another sector where embedded can still grow rapidly, it’s about making it easy for the customer and the insurance brand at that point of sale.
IE; Do you think consumers always understand exactly what they’re buying online, especially on embedded products?
RT; The existing regulations – and future regs – are a big part of embedded product sales, it’s a challenge for sure but it’s necessary. It can slow things down a bit, but again AI RegTech companies will help solve those problems over time. It’s almost a parallel stream of tech in itself and that is going to grow alongside platforms, dashboards and data analytics over the next few years.
IE; Busy times ahead, Rich thank you.
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