{"id":6536,"date":"2024-02-12T09:05:28","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T09:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=6536"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:45:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T10:45:39","slug":"new-podcast-with-robert-wiest-ceo-of-ms-re","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/new-podcast-with-robert-wiest-ceo-of-ms-re\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the future, AI, and a fully digital value chain \u2013 Robert Wiest, CEO, MS Re"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep197 Robert Wiest CEO MS Re: A good plan and the capital to execute it\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=vvy4d-1569200-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=0&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Voice of Insurance podcast featured the CEO of MS Re, who provided his views on the transformative role of data, analytics and technology in the present hard market, and into the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is one sure way in which the recent reinsurance market turn differs from any in the market\u2019s history \u2013 and that is the ability of technology to play a leading enabling role for an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/technology-making-waves-in-insurance-industry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">industry embracing digital transformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Digital&nbsp; transformation was a running theme in Robert Wiest, CEO of MS Re\u2019s appearance on the Voice of Insurance podcast, in which he explained the role of data, analytics, and \u2013 increasingly \u2013 of artificial intelligence (AI) in driving efficiency and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/the-underwriting-decision-at-the-right-time-implied-knowledge\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">better decision-making insights<\/a> for the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MS Re is a mid-size reinsurer with a giant Japanese parent (Mitsui Sumitomo), which gives the company some strategic advantages, such as in its ability to secure and deploy capital, and also to deploy platforms for digital transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By education an electrical engineer, Wiest describes himself as \u201ca Swiss Re child\u201d after much of his career spent at that reinsurer. He also keeps firmly in touch with his \u201cgeeks\u201d origins, he confessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have a digitisation programme with a lot of components for AI embedded and already in production,\u201d he told host Mark Geoghegan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hardened market has accelerated the reinsurer\u2019s overall strategy in most regards, he revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are now almost two years ahead of our plan, because the market has changed in a positive way&#8230; we continue pushing, we just continue pushing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conversation turned towards a fully digital value chain, and where that will take the market of the future. Wiest said he sees three major aspects, starting with current inefficiency. He cited the example of where premium goes, after the consumer pays for it, along the risk transfer chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLet&#8217;s be generous, we\u2019re eating up between 15 to 30%, just by doing our stuff, and that&#8217;s very inefficient, which ultimately you see in expense ratio,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe second thing is automation in the processing parts, in the middle and back office, technical accounting and claims handling. You will see it in the improved quality of decision making that&#8217;s underwriting,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For underwriters\u2019 efficiency he is most focused on gains through improved quant decision making. While of these some technology improvements on the loss ratio might in time be negated by competition, as the market embraces the same technologies, for now there is a competitive edge to digital transformation, he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, technology\u2019s enabling role for the most recent market turn has been limited, he thinks, with data mining still in its early stages across the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPartially, yes, but in our case was limited by the capability to digest these data, because we&#8217;re still rolling out our transformation progressively,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Future gazing is increasingly scientific, but actually seeing the fires before they happen remains the domain of sci-fi writers and dystopian novelists, which is perhaps a good thing for the industry, he suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHere\u2019s my philosophical remark: if everyone is getting more information and a more transparent view of the underlying risk, you&#8217;re shooting at the uncertainty which drives our business. If I know exactly that&#8217;s going to happen, who&#8217;s willing to pay me the premium? More data is good. Ultimately, the Holy Grail of knowing everything, would be bad for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The technical capabilities are already in place to absorb huge volumes of data, he emphasised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have the data legs already; we have the infrastructure already in place. We&#8217;re using AI in the middle office, technical accounting, claims area to address the efficiency points. We\u2019re not yet using it on the underwriting part,\u201d Wiest said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wiest signalled that MS Re will likely deploy AI into its underwriting processes \u201cone year ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark brought up the topic of triaging tasks for the underwriter, using AI and its underlying data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe know we can use the same technology in the underwriting space, addressing exactly that processing component, so we can increase productivity in the underwriting space\u2026However, it is not a case where you get a black box, you switch it on, and it works. It takes time to tune that machinery to get what you aspire to on efficiency,\u201d Wiest said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He remains more sceptical about how to improve the quality of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe know we can take a lot of information, filter it out and provide it as a starting point to the underwriter. We don&#8217;t know yet how much of the decision making part, where today you need an experienced underwriter, you can substitute with the machine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He sees even more usage for AI at the portfolio analysis level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat are the correlations of the various portfolios; do we have our diversification component, which is a factor in the solvency calculation? Small changes make a huge difference on your return on capital, for example, so getting more insights is for a reinsurer very interesting, Wiest added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Voice of Insurance podcast featured the CEO of MS Re, who provided his views on the transformative role of data, analytics and technology in the present hard market, and into the future. There is one sure way in which the recent reinsurance market turn differs from any in the market\u2019s history \u2013 and that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[38,14],"line-of-business":[24],"class_list":["post-6536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","tag-technical-vision","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-cyber"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=6536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}