In the past year, we saw big data and distributed computing maturing and artificial intelligence coming into the mainstream. These technologies were merely buzzwords not too long ago, but have disrupted a wide range of industries, including insurance. One factor that is often credited for the rapid advances in these technologies is the open and collaborative nature of the computer science and machine learning communities. With a few exceptions, the insurance industry hasn’t always embraced open source software and sharing research, but the trend has been shifting recently as actuaries refine and align their roles in an environment driven by data science. We discuss benefits, challenges, and ramifications of conducting actuarial research in the open, and introduce Kasa AI (https://kasa.ai), a recent initiative for community-driven research and software development for insurance. We demonstrate ongoing projects in life and nonlife insurance, and walk through workflows for participating.

1. Towards Open Collaboration
in Insurance Innovation
Kevin Kuo @kevinykuo
RStudio, Kasa AI (kasa.ai)

3. Tl;dr: Get folks together to do
research in the open, create
software and workflows, and
develop educational materials.

4. Wouldn’t it be
nice if...
We had open source
state-of-the-art
individual claims
forecasting models
that people can
easily adopt for
their own data so
they can do reserving
and claims analytics
better?

5. Wouldn’t it be
nice if...
We addressed the
interpretability
issues of ML models
for ratemaking and get
regulators on board so
we can charge more
accurate premiums?

6. Wouldn’t it be
nice if...
We had end-to-end
tutorials for
pricing/reserving with
realistic messy data
for onboarding new
actuaries/data
scientists?

7. Wouldn’t it be
nice if...
We had a standard set
of packages/workflows
for common problems so
we reduce friction in
audits and knowledge
transfer?

8. Or, solving common problems
together so we have more resources
to focus on our own unique
problems

9. Together?
Who?

10. Actuary

11. Actuary
Data
scientist /
software
engineer

12. Actuary
“Business
stakeholders”
Data
scientist /
software
engineer

13. How?

14. Actuary
“Business
stakeholders”
Data
scientist /
software
engineer

15. Data
scientist /
software
engineer
Actuary
“Business
stakeholders”

16. Git what?

17. Home for code

18. Version control

19. Discuss
approaches
in issues

20. Issues track
tasks

21. Discuss changes
line by line

22. Leverage resources across the industry
Make the world a better place

23. Sounds good
but...

25. Or, solving common problems
together so we have more resources
to focus on our own unique
problems

26. Open source? Yeah, it’s a thing

27. is a new open
source community dedicated
to making insurance
analytics even more fun!
* Kasa = Japanese for umbrella. Because insurance.

28. Kasa.ai
Blog.kasa.ai
@kevinykuo