Speaker
K. Dixon Wright
Senior Vice President, Surety at USI Insurance Services
Chairman, Surety Resource Connection
Abstract
Insurance/surety companies have a unique perspective on risk management due to the very large portfolio of organizations and jurisdictions they service. This broad window gives them unparalleled insights into the skew between ‘intended’ performance and ‘actual’ performance, where the insurance company has to ‘pay out’ if things don’t actually go as ‘intended.’ Insurance companies manage this risk through data. Big data provides opportunities to refine and optimize risk management. Use of ‘big data’ is seen as a means to not only create an actuarial database to set ‘risk premiums,’ but also more near-real time identify potential risk factors that can be used as ‘leading indicators’ for risk management.
While “Big Data,” “Data Analytics,” “Predictive Analytics,” and “Data is the New Oil” have become commonplace terms in global business parlance, managing “data overload” remains a fundamental and consequential challenge: fragmented data from multiple sources in the ecosystem that lacks the data consistency to be of value.
The ‘orange button’ initiative aims to solve the challenge of data consistency across the construction infrastructure ecosystem which will enable and facilitate data interoperability between and among stakeholders — public or private — as well as generate innovations to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and provide the transparency to attract capital (cash funding sources) and financial markets (bank and trade credit, insurance, surety) with greater capacity as well as improved terms and conditions. This ‘Big Data’ approach will facilitate measuring and monitoring key performance indicators to improve risk management as well as to strengthen policies and capabilities. Data interoperability will become an increasingly significant factor in determining risk, accessing capital, and/or securing trade credit, and the costs of insurance or surety will likely also be impacted.
This session will illustrate the U.S. federal government’s efforts, in collaboration with the private sector, to establish data interoperability across industries and ecosystem stakeholders in financing, building, insuring, and operating renewable “green” infrastructure projects such as solar and wind energy.
About the Speaker
Dixon Wright specializes in surety bonds for construction and has been engaged in various industry initiatives to modernize surety products and services through data standards that enable data analytics for improved risk management. The current DOE Orange Button initiative seeks to harmonize the data between capital and financial markets, the construction community and regulators to reduce soft costs and promote innovation in the solar industry. The objective is to leverage data and the construction ecosystem for increased infrastructure reliability.
Additional Resources
