Page 12 - TurkinsuranceDigitalMagazine

10 interview

Pandemic has been changing the risk perception and expecta- suggestions in a contactless and safe environment by monitoring pa-
tions of both insurance market and customers. In your opinion, tients’ symptoms through AI-supported applications. I believe that
how does this shape the actuarial side of the business and risk such developments will also emerge in our country in the near fu-
management? ture. Remote working will become an inevitable part of professional
life after the pandemic. Physical company concept will go through
I have to say that pandemic has accelerated digital transformation radical changes.
and forced individuals and organizations that were not mentally and
structurally ready for this transformation to change. In an ecosys- Do you expect an increase in people’s interest in actuarial sci-
tem where customer behavior constantly changes in parallel with ence as recent developments have increased the importance of
technological advancements, the most important way of getting this profession?
sustainable competitive advantage is to have the ability of learn-
ing faster than your competitors. And this can only be achieved by As important as it is to gain professional expertise, interdisciplinary
human resources that are passionate, self-aware and is hungry for thinking and building a common working culture with different pro-
learning. fessions have become even more important in today’s world. For
instance, it seems that we are about the get significant findings as
We can say that number of practices based on advanced analytics a result of the close and joint working efforts by Prof. Dr. Alpay
in production and claims processes has increased, and customers’ Azap, Member of Turkey’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board
purchasing trend has shifted towards digital platforms. On the other and Professor of Infectious Diseases & Clinical Microbiology, and
hand, we see an increase in the design of parametric products which Prof. Dr. Fatih Tank, one of the members of our Association, during
are developed for low-probability but high-impact risks and are gen- the pandemic. Cooperation of an expert who knows about the nature
erally preferred to be used against losses that might be incurred due and possible behaviors of a virus that impacts the entire world and
to natural disasters. an expert who can combine and interpret the data through math-
ematics and statistics, removes the gaps on models and helps us
How do you evaluate the perspective about the actuarial sci- inform the public accurately. We should expand this culture.
ence and importance of investments in this area during the
pandemic? Actuaries do not transfer their responsibilities to close circuit mod-
els whose explanations are unknown to them. On the contrary, they
I had encountered the following statement on social media in 2013: are experts who are aware of the behavior of the event or product
“Mathematics is the logic of certainty; statistics is the logic of un- they are modeling, and try to explain it through the most appropri-
certainty.” I’m adding on that: “And actuarial science is the art ate mathematical method in a specific confidence interval. In the
of making uncertainty measurable.” Technological and technical coming years, we will see a rapid increase in the number of projects
investments continue to increase for IFRS 17 standards which aim where doctors, sociologists, engineers and climate scientists work
to reduce uncertainty for investors as a principle. In order to en- with actuaries. Cyber attacks, climate change, natural disasters
sure that financials of insurance companies are comparable to the such as hails or floods, and existence of pandemics that impact the
financials of not only local companies but also to global insurance entire world, have changed the risk perception of the public and or-
financials, the results should only reflect insurance revenues. There- ganizations. During these times when making decisions under uncer-
fore, it is highly important in IFRS 17 to separate different kind tain circumstances has become one of the routines of our daily lives,
of components in insurance contracts. Insurance market has also the need for actuaries -who can recognize and model measurable
increased its investments in telematic systems which are applied to risks and transform their outputs into business models- and tenden-
vehicles or wireless devices such as mobile phones, and structured cy towards this profession will undoubtedly increase.
and unstructured data which is obtained through wearable and
smart technology products. Moreover, tests and projects are also
ongoing for artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms
that will transform this data into meaningful outputs. Although ma-
chine learning is currently used as a complementary function for
traditional methods, it will inevitably replace them in near future.

What were the contributions of digitalization movements in the
market and in actuarial science to the continuity of business
during this challenging period? Are there any new digital steps
planned to be taken for now and towards becoming prepared
for new risks?

COVID-19 pandemic has been the biggest so-called social exper-
iment in human history, and caused companies to shift to remote
working model very rapidly. As demand increases for working from
home, business models are going through radical changes. We have
seen that our remote working system and digital workflows in our
Association have increased transparency and productivity. It was
really pleasant to connect to our systems and work on millions of
rows for modeling studies without experiencing any connection
problems. In some countries, it became possible to give treatment

Rabia Kübra Kanun / kubrac@bestyayincilik.com