Insurance 4 0 What to Do and What to Stop

Well, good afternoon everyone and thank you for persevering and staying to one of these late sessions. It's my pleasure and honor to be here to present to you today on insurance 4.0 zero leveraging some of the experience that I've had from Verisk over the last 25 years in the global specialty insurance and the last seven years specifically at Varys leading the business unit a bit of headlining about Varys a context set we've had revenues of over $3 billion over 8,000 employees in more than 30 countries so we come with significant experience and that's our honor to present to you today so where do we start one of our biggest frustrations and challenges given that we are digital pioneers is the duplication and the preservation of that duplication across the insurance distribution chain. So we have moved on from paper to data first. Yet many risks still have many versions.

And with those many versions, it creates uncertainty, a lack of clarity in terms of what is being underwritten, what the capital is being there to secure it against, and ultimately what the risk is being presented to the insured and the capital providers. What we believe insurance 4.0 represents is a single version of the truth, a single data set, a single data record at the center of the market that can be collaborated on and shared by each and every party simultaneously. If we compare that to mature markets, unlike Abu Dhabi as we look to build and support the market here in the region, mature markets have huge amounts of legacy. They have millions of documents and have multiple versions of the truth which makes it challenging to unravel some of that legacy.

The ultimate message to you today to Abu Dhabi Finance Week is that we can build from fresh. We can build data first, digital first and create that single version of the truth at the center of the market to deliver the ultimate collaboration and capital efficiency. As I talked about the risk at the center of this process with the legacy markets is huge. There's a tendency to reconcile the many versions rather than make distinctions on a single version. The copies of risk multiply as endorsements and contract changes, cancellations and reinstatements get processed.

And because of that, there's many errors that surface throughout the issuance, quotation, renewal processes that support those policy life cycles. Ultimately, the insurance capital that is there to support the markets runs on stale information. Sometimes there isn't the clarity on what version of the risk is the one that's actually underpinning the capital that's behind those decisions. And because of that it ultimately evolves into confidence erosion in that market as questions around the sustainability of some of those legacy practices. So our vision as I said is one very uh one record for every decision and one truth for the whole market and that's through the full policy life cycle from submission management underwriting review pricing and modeling quote and bind exposure management and then the capital and reinsurance process.

This vision is something that we've brought to life through our whitespace platform and to date we've got over 385 firms trading on that platform and 16,000 users. Microphone just has fallen off. Uh we estimate this year in 2025 alone there'll be over $25 billion of premium transacted through the white place platform and it's there to remove many versions of the truth to get to that centralized single data record. And we've done that through learning from some dos and don'ts that I'll share with you today. So it's upon each and every one of us whether an intermediary, a broker, a cover holder, an MGA, an insurer or reinsurer to capture data at source.

We let ourselves down when we start with documents and those documents typically lend to many versions of the truth and some of the confidence erosion that I talked about earlier. We must keep a single record. We must do that in the center of market. We make must make that single record accessible through APIs from day one and that has to be on standards and those standards have to be shared. The number of portals that have been developed on a bespoke basis whether you're a broker and insurer creates further confusion and lack of clarity in terms of the underwriting and placement processes.

What we mustn't do is look at digitizing existing legacy workflows. Starting with a document looking at ingestion how we can take that data out and create structured data from multiple versions is another pitfall that we must avoid. We must remove all the multiple copies and the legacy tendency to rely on those multiple copies at different stages of the transaction life cycle and also be more transparent with the rules. How do we process that data? How do we make the decisions and how do we share that on a more open basis?

So the simple message as I said at the start is we don't have to in Dubai. You've got a clean market. You've got a new market. We can be data first. We can be API first.

And we create a digital market that will enable growth on a much more certain and capital efficient manner. So we're proud to be here. We're proud to support the market. We're proud to support each and every one of you. Please get in touch and we're more than happy to carry the digital conversation on as appropriate.

And thank you for the opportunity this afternoon.