Last week saw the first ever geoinsurance event. Geoinsurance is one of
a series of conferences/exhibitions being run by a company called Corinium.
They are taking a different approach to the AGI and running vertical specific
(insurance/utilities etc) events as opposed to themed events of the Big 5.
Anyway with several council members speaking at the various events it made
sense for us to run a media partnership and so I went along.
I am no expert in insurance but fortunately some fellow AGI members
from the newly formed Insurance
and Risk SIG also came along and I’ve picked their brains for the review.
The event consisted of one stream spread over two days taking a broad
view of the role geographic information and location plays in insurance. There
was an interesting variety of views from very high level strategy from the
likes of Esri UK and Willis Group to much more operational detail. Munich Re opened
the conference with an interesting presentation on the four phases of
integrating business intelligence and geographic information.
 |
| AGI Stand at the Start of the Day |
Unsurprisingly mapping flood risk and exposure was a recurring theme
for the conference however there was much more variety than I would have
expected and some of the presentations on fire and terrorism risk were very
interesting. Apparently 46% of all UK claims in Q1 of 2013 were fire related,
the stand out fact of Mapflow’s presentation on fire risk and insurer over
exposure.
Day one also saw a slight conflict of views with James Brayshaw of
Pitney Bowes arguing that it’s not about maps it’s about data. Ordnance Survey
and David Henderson contended that data by itself has no context or meaning and
it is the addition of the spatial element that gives data its value. The great
soundbite of ‘bad data is like a virus’ came out of the Pitney Bowes
presentation and this is certainly something that is relevant whether the data
is spatial or not.
Day two started with a more strategic look at the industry and the role
of spatial including a presentation by the Willis Group on making spatial
accessible to the whole organisation. This raised the point that however good
the data and the tools are if the outputs don’t get to the right people then
the value of geographic information, or any other form of business intelligence
for that matter is lost.
Following on from points about the quality of data SCOR presented about
the need to benchmark catastrophe models by looking at how real event performed
compared to the predictions. Making assumptions based on models that haven’t
been benchmarked is like using a dataset that you know nothing about on a map.
Overall Geoinsurance was a good event providing an interesting mix of
strategy and tactics, high level views on the role of geographic information
and specific case studies of its use. It was encouraging to see an industry
embracing geographic information like this and some high level people
championing its value. It seems the insurance industry already views geographic
information as part of or equivalent to business intelligence.
It was also good to see the brand new AGI Insurance and Risk SIG being
well received by the delegates, watch this space for some upcoming evening
events.
Thursday’s blog will have long awaited details about this year’s AGI
conference, GeoCom ‘The Changing Face of Geo.’
No comments:
Post a Comment