Reducing and Shifting Risk with the Internet of Things

By Roy Wilmoth, Head of Liability and Financial Lines, Southeast Asia, AIG Asia Pacific Insurance

Roy Wilmoth, Head of Liability and Financial Lines, Southeast Asia, AIG Asia Pacific Insurance

Insurers have collected and used data for years to understand and mitigate risks, but there has never been a more exciting time than today.

Every second, more than 205,000 new gigabytes of data are created, which is the equivalent of 150 million books. The sheer amount of information generated each day has already begun to create a new technological revolution.

Connected devices will help insurers know more than we have ever known before, enabling us to mitigate risks relating to health, manufacturing processes, worksites, and more.

While the Internet of Things (IoT) still presents many unknowns, an AIG survey found that twice as many people were optimistic about its advent rather than fearful. By 2020, more than half of major new business processes will incorporate some element of IoT, according to Gartner.

But what does the proliferation of these devices and data mean, and how can companies and individuals capitalize on it?

Making Big Data Work for you

Before the IoT, we asked ourselves: how can we monitor a behaviour or process? Now, we wonder if we should measure and track it and if it is a negative process, how we can mitigate it?

An example is the workplace, which is home to all manner of hazards. Every 15 seconds around the globe, a worker dies from an occupational accident or disease and a further 153 workers are injured.

What if we could use a wearable device to warn workers if they are carrying too much weight, exposed to noxious gases, or standing too close to a dangerous area?

In addition to reducing workplace accidents, the data generated could help businesses understand patterns at their worksites, identify injury hotspots, and take steps to make their workers safer. Insurers can use the data to better price risk and adjust premiums accordingly.

AIG is already turning big data into actionable insights through our Client Centric Analytics process in the US. Identifying that finger, hand, and wrist injuries led to global claims of around $10 million over the past few years, we invested in safety gloves to help our clients avoid the monetary and human cost of these risks.

Reducing Human Error

AIG in Singapore is today leveraging telematics to create better and cheaper solutions for car insurance customers while improving road safety. This year, AIG Singapore launched an intelligent driving mobile application AIG On the Go, which uses telematics to measure driving performance and reward safe drivers with insurance discounts up to 15 percent.

Connected devices will help insurers mitigate risks relating to health, manufacturing processes, worksites, and more

This comes off the back of a road safety survey conducted by AIG Singapore in 2015, which found that 68 percent of Singapore drivers would consider installing a telematics device to pay lower car insurance premiums, while more than half of drivers believe telematics would change their driving habits for the better.

The use of telematics to monitor data not only means that consumers can regulate their own behaviour for the better, but it also allows land transport authorities to track patterns including high-risk car accident hot spots to improve road design and incentivise safe driver behaviour.

Going a step further to automate our transportation process, governments and companies are pursuing solutions related to autonomous vehicles, or driverless cars.

A driverless vehicle takes people out of the equation removing human error, which is said to be the cause of 90 percent of road accidents while creating more efficient and environment-friendly travel.

Last year in Singapore, the first ever public trial of a robo-taxi service was launched by self-driving software company nuTonomy–one of four companies permitted by the local Land Transport Authority to conduct driverless vehicle trials.

It will be a while before driverless vehicles become the norm. In the interim, telematics and 360-degree sensors and cruise control are already available to detect unsafe driving behavior, and drivers can then take action to reduce human error.

Risk will Shift, not Disappear

If autonomous technology can effectively think and even act for us, who is to blame when something goes wrong? If personal responsibility is removed from the equation, where does liability lie?

For driverless vehicles, blame is likely shifted to manufacturers, software developers, and fleet operators in the event of a system malfunction, hack, or terrorist attack. So the risk will not disappear but simply shift in an age of IoT.

For insurers and companies, this means grappling with new risks such as privacy and cyber breaches, especially with the rising number of cyber attacks. Just this month, a global cyber attack unprecedented in scale hit more than 200,000 victims in 150 countries, including major companies and government bodies across Asia.

According to insurer Hiscox, cybercrime cost the global economy over $450 billion in 2016. This figure is only going to grow, creating a more urgent need for cyber insurance.

Based on what AIG Singapore has observed, less than 10 percent of Singapore companies currently hold such insurance leaving them vulnerable to cyber attacks and data privacy issues. As a result, we forecast that the number of companies taking up cyber insurance will accelerate to 40 percent by 2020.

Companies will need to tread the balance – work closely with their insurers to understand their most significant exposures in this new age, but also learn to leverage IoT to make meaning out of big data for their customers.

Seizing the Opportunities

As the IoT takes hold, it will lead to greater risk, but also a great opportunity. Health insurers providing free fitness trackers and lowering premiums to meet daily exercise goals will become the norm. Home insurance companies will incentivise customers to install connected devices to warn of potential dangers, while IoT-based analytics will be used to predict future events such as major weather patterns and natural disasters.

Companies, consumers, and insurers can work together to optimize the opportunities brought about by an IoT-enabled ecosystem, not only to mitigate risk but to prevent accidents from happening in the first place.