The concept of "big data" and ways to leverage it has not been lost on the insurance industry. Although other sectors may be ahead, the risk and insurance industry actually was an early adopter of data, in particular its foundation based on the '"law of large numbers" and utilization of actuarial science.

Indeed, where would underwriters be today without their arguable mastery of big data?

Consider the volumes of loss, construction, fire protection and historical weather data that are routinely analyzed by property underwriters; workplace claim and injury data accumulated and scrutinized by workers' compensation carriers; aggregated exposures tracked and analyzed by reinsurers with respect to catastrophic events; the development of mortality and morbidity tables used by the life/health companies, as just a few examples. And you get the picture of an industry that in many ways has been at the forefront in its ability to capture, manipulate and utilize vast amounts of data—big data—for a variety of its critical applications. 

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