Insurance technology awards make final call for entries

Two yet-to-be named Canadian firms, which are using information technology to get “intelligence” from insurers’ data, will be recognized next month in Toronto.

Insurance Nexus is accepting nominations for Canadian Insurance Carrier of the Year and Canadian Insurance Innovator of the Year until Aug. 24.

This is the third year Insurance Nexus has been running the award program, said Mariana Dumont, the London, England-based head of new projects for Insurance Nexus, on Thursday in an interview.

Winners are scheduled to be made public Sept. 25 at the Insurance Analytics Canada Summit at the Westin Prince Hotel, near the Toronto neighbourhood of Don Mills.

To be eligible for Carrier of the Year, the nominee needs to be licensed to write either property and casualty or life insurance in Canada.

The second award – Innovator of the Year – is intended for vendors, such as software developers or systems integrators. To be eligible, the nominee needs to “share a business case” of how it is actually working with an insurance carrier, said Dumont.

Judges will be looking for a “practical application” of data analytics, Dumont added.

Data analytics means “going beyond the old-fashioned (business intelligence software) that insurance carriers used to have,” Dumont said. Analytics entails “how you can gather together the different data sets that carriers have been collecting through the years – not only to do more accurate actuarial and underwriting decisions but also to bring more intelligence to the business,” she added.

In picking the winners, the judges will take into account both the benefit to the carrier and the benefit to its customers.

For example, an application might “have a huge impact on claims operations” increase efficiency or reduce costs, Dumont suggested.

In picking the winner, judges “tend to prioritize customer-facing innovation,” Dumont noted, but added the application “doesn’t have to be something that would dramatically improve customer experience.”

The business case needs to be recent – within the last 18 months or so.

Winners will not get any prize money but will be recognized in front of about 300 industry peers at the Insurance Analytics Canada Summit, Dumont noted.

“We will let the whole industry know about their achievement.”

Scheduled speakers at the summit include senior business and technology executives with Desjardins, Intact, Wawanesa, Economical, Aviva and The Co-operators.

Insurance Nexus is a unit of FC Business Intelligence Ltd. FC Business Intelligence Ltd., publishes reports and produces events focusing on topics including advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.