There have been many obstacles in solving data and technology issues across the insurance ecosystem and other industries have raised their game with an open-source mindset. In the AAIS Pulse session, Open-Source Solutions for Today’s Insurance Challenges, host Joan Zerkovich, Senior Vice President of Operations at AAIS, led a discussion with Daniela Barbosa, General Manager of Blockchain and Identity at The Linux Foundation and Executive Director of the Hyperledger Foundation, and Hart Montgomery, CTO at the Hyperledger Foundation, to explore what insurance challenges could be addressed in an open-source environment. They examined how initiatives like openIDL are different from past efforts in the industry and how carriers and other stakeholders get involved in leveraging these technologies to define the future of information-sharing in insurance.

AAIS recently attended the IRMI Agribusiness Conference (AgriCon), the premier event for insurance and risk management professionals specializing in the exposures and coverage needs of farms and agribusinesses. Among the many interesting and informative sessions, AAIS Product Development Specialist Hope King highlighted two topics particularly near and dear to AAIS and our Members.

In 2002, Amazon eliminated millions of dollars from its technology costs by switching to the Linux operating system, an open source technology platform from the Linux Foundation. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Amazon stated it was able to cut technology expenses by about 25%, from $71 million to $54 million, primarily through “migration to a Linux-based technology platform that utilizes a less-costly technology infrastructure, as well as general price reductions for data and telecommunication services due to market overcapacity^[1]. Amazon continues its open source technology strategy today, as do thousands of other companies. Today, 96.3% of the world's top one million servers run on Linux^[2].

AAIS CEO Ed Kelly opened the April 13 edition of AAIS Pulse newsmagazine with an exciting announcement: AAIS has launched openIDL as a Linux Foundation project. The Linux Foundation is the preeminent nonprofit consortium supporting one-source technologies that drive innovation and transform industries.

During the February 2021 AAIS Pulse newsmagazine, AAIS VP Truman Esmond was joined by Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger, Brian Hoffman, Vice President State and Bureau Regulatory Affairs, at Travelers, and Arron Lamp, Vice President Enterprise Business Intelligence & Analytics & Operations, at Travelers, to discuss the obstacles and opportunities around leveraging open-source technology.

Accurate risk assessment is key to mitigating exposure and to unlocking underwriting opportunities.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Carrier Management Magazine on August 19, 2019.

I started my career as the first network administrator at the University of California, Davis. Part of my job was to help build the Bay Area Regional Research network, one of 10 National Science Foundation networks that, in 1986, became what we call the Internet today.

IBM, who has partnered with AAIS on the development of the openIDL data-management platform on blockchain, has long been a strong proponent of open-source software development. Chris Ferris, an IBM Fellow and CTO for Open Technology at IBM, spoke to AAIS’s Joan Zerkovich on the importance of the open-source concept and the powerful outcomes IBM has seen from building technology in an open environment.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, regulators quickly realized two problems. They would need to collect massive amounts of data and issue multiple data calls, particularly around business interruption, and there was no secure, efficient way to gather this data to truly understand the impact COVID-19 was having on the P&C market. With business interruption claims growing, a quick, effective solution was needed.