Blog: How brokers can best use sophisticated data to analyse risk

First Central Insurance & Technology Group’s Jonathan Davison explores why data is as crucial for brokers as it is for insurers.

Twenty years ago, the tools for calculating risk in insurance were about as sophisticated as looking at a few rows and columns in an Excel spreadsheet. Whilst today this seems simplistic, at the time, this method would have been cutting edge – and was a perfectly legitimate way to provide accurate results, given the technology and customer data available.

However, over the past couple of decades, the volume of data insurers can access, process and store has increased exponentially. For example