Behavioral intelligence is transforming how insurers assess risk, enhance profitability, and promote fairness in underwriting. In a recent interview with AAIS Partner Pinpoint Predictive, Inc., we explored how carriers can leverage these insights at key stages of the insurance value chain—from risk selection to renewal strategies. Scott Ham, CEO of Pinpoint Predictive, Inc., explained that by incorporating unconventional technologies and behavioral insights, insurers are gaining a more complete picture of their customers, leading to smarter decisions and more equitable outcomes.

Carrier Management recently published a release from AM Best revealing that the homeowners insurance sector suffered an underwriting loss amounting to $15.2 billion in 2023. This loss is more than double that of the previous year and marks the worst underwriting results since 2000. This spike is attributed to increased weather-related events and shifting population demographics, leading insurers to confront significant challenges in underwriting and risk assessment.

Pinpoint Predictive to offer AAIS Members access to their revolutionary risk selection platform that goes beyond traditional variables.

Over the past decade, there has been a new paradigm emerging in the American fire service. This paradigm shift is often referred to as Community Risk Reduction, or simply CRR. The genesis of this change comes from the British fire service, where in the early 2000s the central government mandated that local fire services meet challenging fire reduction targets or face substantial budget cuts. These fire reduction targets were initially dismissed as absurd by fire personnel who had seen limited success in their legacy fire prevention efforts and assumed people were going to continue to make bad choices and fires would continue to happen unabated. However, given that they were facing potentially daunting cuts, the fire services across the UK got creative. They figured out what strategies actually worked, and they started seeing substantial reductions in fires countrywide. What they originally dismissed as absurd ended up turning into a nearly 60% reduction in the total number of fires across the country and nearly a 40% reduction in primary dwelling fires[i] over the initial ten-year period. Meanwhile, during that same period, according to the NFPA’s annual fire loss reports, the number of fire incidents in the U.S. remained largely unchanged[ii].

We recently discussed the rapid proliferation of batteries in modern homes and businesses and the more worrying proliferation of fires associated with those batteries on AAIS Views. On October 12, 2023, the Fire Department for the City of New York (FDNY) hosted a one-day symposium titled, “A Conversation with the Insurance Industry About Lithium-Ion Batteries.” The intent of the symposium was to share the scope of the problem, the current state-of-the-art in mitigating these types of incidents, and a clarion call for insurers to join the fight in addressing this scourge.

AAIS hosted a virtual presentation on September 14, 2023, featuring AAIS Partner OwlSurance (formerly BizDynamics), a business unit of ValueMomentum, for a demonstration of their contractor risk product. Hosted by Stephanie Vasey, Product Manager of Commercial Lines and Inland Marine at AAIS, the demo was led by Bob Ridinger, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at OwlSurance, and Anand Rajaraman, Vice President of Product Management at OwlSurance.

“Check out my new drone. The camera and range are exceptional!”

“I’ve been getting out of the house more than ever with this new e-bike, have you considered getting one?”  

“Now that my solar array is complete, and I’ve connected the new 3000-watt home battery backup, I’m ready to go off-grid.”

This is the next installment in a series of conversations with AAIS leadership to get to know them, their background, and the unique work they’re doing within AAIS to further the insurance industry. In this edition, AAIS Views spoke with Michael Payne, Chief Pricing Actuary, about his career, being creative as an actuary, the role data is playing to create better pricing models, and how AAIS is leveraging those models to deliver value to our Members.

Tell us about your background.

Michael Payne: When I was in college, I liked math, but really didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then I heard about Actuarial Science from an alum who came back to campus and gave a presentation about the career path. That’s what sparked my interest. I got an internship at Zurich and that turned into my first job out of school. I started out doing pricing at Zurich, went to SCOR Re to do reinsurance pricing, and went back to Zurich to eventually lead a pricing tools team.

One not-so-traditional role in my career was a stint I did at Sears in their Home Services unit where I was the Director of Underwriting Analysis. Basically, if you bought a refrigerator at Sears, they were going to offer you a protection plan. It was my role to figure out the prices for those protection agreements based on how likely the appliance was going to need to be repaired or even replaced.

Overall, I really like pricing. It’s prospective in nature as you try to determine what might happen in the future.

In the winter of 2018, I joined AAIS where I’ve been able to leverage my pricing experience. My role includes product development and delivering loss costs that are appropriate for the coverage being offered. Not all carriers have a large team of actuaries or loads of data, so our rating plans offer them a faster speed to market for a new line of business, or even insurtechs to get their first policies written.

In this edition from the AAIS Webinar Series, titled: The Value of Risk Control: Moving Beyond the Basics, Bryon Snethen, Vice President Risk Improvement at EMC Insurance and Jacob Pereira, a Solutions Engineer at Risk Control Technologies identified the purpose and value of risk control to a variety of stakeholders, including agents, insurance companies, policyholders, and society.

In an AAIS Webinar, FLAMES: The Modern Fire Protection Evaluation Model, AAIS Vice President Phil LeGrone, and AAIS Senior Risk Strategy Lead Matt Hinds-Aldrich, PhD, outlined the new fire model, FLAMES, and the advantages it offers over traditional models for underwriters assessing and managing non-cat fire risk.