E113 - CLASSIC - Dr Philip Conway - Peril Pricing in Insurance & What It Means for You

In the ever-changing landscape of the insurance industry, one thing remains a constant.

The need for insurers to price their products in order to better manage portfolio risks.

This week, TAS is back with another classic episode from early 2021.

This is Episode 42 returning as Episode 113.

For the many of you with insurance plans of our own, have you ever wondered about the inner workings of your providers?

Meet Dr Philip Conway

Philip’s Role as a Pricing Leader at IAG

Dr Philip Conway is the Executive Manager of Pricing & Engineering at Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG). IAG is Australia and New Zealand's largest general insurance company. The company has been helping people recover from natural disasters, accidents, and loss since 1851. They provide insurance services under many leading brands and underwrite over $11 billion of premium per annum. Extending beyond paying claims, they are increasing awareness of risk and helping communities reduce and prevent it.

Philip’s Other Work in Engineering

Philip has a background in engineering with a PhD in hydrodynamic modelling along with extensive working experience in natural disaster control as a flood engineer. Prior to joining IAG, he was Flood Engineer and Design Engineer at WMAwater and Atkins respectively. He has also written and published multiple papers on related subject areas. His research topics include Australian flood risk to climate drivers and role of exposure, capital, and infrastructure in post-disaster recovery among others.

At IAG, Philip has previously led teams for natural perils and reinsurance pricing engine development and advises c-suite executives on regulatory protection level requirements and group stress tests. He has also worked on numerous solution designs and developments related to address-level earthquake rates, benchmarking of vendor catastrophe models, deterministic volcano model, generating storm damage footprints, flood risk, and climate change.

Perils Pricing, Risk, and Collaboration

In this exclusive analytics podcast episode, Philip shares:

• How natural perils pricing helps in better managing portfolio risks for insurers
• The pricing analytics philosophy that works behind natural perils pricing
• A hybrid approach to solutions development where internal and external parties, resources, and models collaborate as needed
• The use of frequency and severity data of natural perils in insurance pricing
• Conducting stress tests and risk management to tackle severe perils
• When to use external, internal, and hybrid models
• Solutions for this with real use cases
• Analytic philosophy for embedding the results of analytics into business processes to create reusable end to end solutions
• The best way to choose models, software, and data sources from external parties
• Overcoming the challenges of global warming on natural perils pricing and analytics
• Utilising XY coordinates Geographic Information System (GIS) in perils pricing
• The benefits and functions of perils pricing in action
• How insurers and reinsurers mitigate and diversify risks through strategic collaboration

If you are connected with the insurance and financial industry and want to know more about the inner workings of a company like IAG, this is the episode you do not want to miss.