eReinsure’s Best-Devereux: Technology delivers for customers, if used strategically

eReinsure has seen “loads of” technological advancements enter the marketplace over its 20-year history, but founder and CEO Igor Best-Devereux told The Insurer TV in Monte Carlo that some advances – such as blockchain – have been less useful to the sector than anticipated.

“You need to develop trust that that technology is working and that creates adoption. And then you have this sort of virtuous cycle.”

Best-Devereux said some aspects of blockchain will likely become an essential reinsurance tool, but it’s not expected to suddenly change the market.

He said eReinsure has an edge because it's been around through multiple generations of changing technologies and has instituted several upgrades to its own platform. The firm, he said, knows how to utilise tech advances to best assist clients.

“There's obviously still continuing investment … actually quite substantial investment in the sector. But I think the knowledgeable, thoughtful investors realise that what really matters is that there's a business benefit,” he added.

Dynamic fac market has increased volume for eReinsure

With higher retentions in treaty structures, the facultative market has enjoyed a resurgence, becoming a more strategic product than it’s been in years, said Best-Devereux.

“And so that's good for our business. It’s meant that our volumes are up,” he said.

“We continue to invest in our technology. We're beginning to roll out essentially what's called a new technology stack to our customer base that's bringing some real advantages to our customers,” Best-Devereux explained.

He added that as people move from one broker to another, eReinsure’s control framework has already captured the business, so it’s able to provide resilience and continuity to customers.

“The business is in a sense within our platform environment … it allows other people to have that business reassigned to them, the account be assigned to them, and just to carry on.”

AI an ‘integral part’ of reinsurance industry, provided the data is good

While machine learning models have already been incorporated into reinsurance analysis when it comes to climate modelling and claims modelling, Best-Devereux said AI must overcome some current limitations to become a more integral part of the industry.

“One of the issues for AI is going to be, as it has been with lots of areas of analysis and modelling, data quality.”

Best-Devereux said good data is essential to training the AI models of the future, as is the use of large language models.

“There's a lot of language involved in reinsurance in terms of, you know, a certificate term or a policy term or terms conditions. And so I think there's a lot that can be done there with these models.”

Watch the 14-minute interview to hear Best-Devereux’s comments on: