Recent advances in AI technology have had, and will continue to have, profound impact on all industries, including insurance. However, insurance analytics professionals, and actuaries in particular, being some of the most quantitatively minded businesspeople, have a unique opportunity to embrace AI and open research and modernize the profession. We introduce Kasa AI, a not-for-profit community initiative for open research and software development for insurance analytics. Inspired by rOpenSci and Bioconductor, we hope to bring together the insurance community to solve the most impactful problems.

1. Towards open
collaboration in
insurance analytics
EARL 2019
@kevinykuo

2. Amuse-bouche
About me!
- Kevin (he/him)
- Currently: Multiverse team @RStudio
- Formerly: Actuary, “data scientist”
- Likes to drink taste wine

3. Amuse-bouche
About me!
- Kevin (he/him)
- Currently: Multiverse team @RStudio
- Formerly: Actuary, “data scientist”
- Likes to drink taste wine
- Wrapping up a book on Spark + R!

4. Towards open
collaboration in
insurance analytics
EARL 2019
@kevinykuo

5. A+ for effort!

6. Japanese for
umbrella
(I’m not Japanese)
Umbrella,
because
insurance
The (on-going) story of...
AI, for hype

7. Menu of the day
Who we are / What we do
Château Kasa, Blanc de Blancs, “Le Rêverie”, NV
Lessons learned / Discoveries / Tips
Bad Joke Cellars, Red Blend, “The Cynic”, 2012
Current projects / Vision
Dr. Brandstiftung, Riesling S.G.N., “Einladung”, 1990

8. Menu of the day
> Who we are / What we do
Château Kasa, Blanc de Blancs, “Le Rêverie”, NV
Lessons learned / Discoveries / Tips
Bad Joke Cellars, Red Blend, “The Cynic”, 2012
Current projects / Vision
Dr. Brandstiftung, Riesling S.G.N., “Einladung”, 1990

9. Tl;dr We aspire to be like...
...but for insurance

10. The output
- Research (reproducible + open)
- Software (pkgs & templates)
- Educational content (tutorials/blog
posts)

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

13. Menu of the day
Who we are / What we do
Château Kasa, Blanc de Blancs, “Le Rêverie”, NV
> Lessons learned / Discoveries / Tips
Bad Joke Cellars, Red Blend, “The Cynic”, 2012
Current projects / Vision
Dr. Brandstiftung, Riesling S.G.N., “Einladung”, 1990

14. #1
Empathy

15. Acknowledge the
Objections

16. Towards open
collaboration in
insurance analytics
EARL 2019
@kevinykuo

17. Towards open
collaboration in
insurance analytics
EARL 2019
@kevinykuo

18. Towards open
collaboration in
insurance analytics
EARL 2019
@kevinykuo

22. Cultural changes don’t
happen overnight!

23. wins <<- wins + 0.01

24. wins <<- wins + 0.01
Build critical mass,
slowly but surely

25. Disrupt respectfully

26. Disrupt respectfully
don’t be a cynical asshole
don’t be a hero

27. “The way things are done now is
going to be completely obsolete in
5 years.”

28. “It’s not epistemic uncertainty
unless it’s from the Épistéme
region of France, otherwise it’s
just parameter estimation
uncertainty.”

29. Mind the gap

30. Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v1.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v2.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v2b.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v3-FINAL.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v3-FINAL-REVISED.xlsx

32. Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v1.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v2.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v2b.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v3-FINAL.xlsx
Q3-IBNR-Analysis-v3-FINAL-REVISED.xlsx
Happygitwithr.com
Tutorials
Etc

33. The output
(old priority)
1. Research
2. Software
3. Educational content
(new priority)
1. Educational content
2. Software
3. Research

34. #2
Build first, then iterate

35. Nobody:
Me: I didn’t say anything about Agile
or MVP, y’all did!

36. - Will people actually participate?
- How do we ensure code quality?
- Are we using state-of-the-art
workflows?
- How do we vet projects and
contributors?
- How do we resolve differing design
preferences in the community?
- What should our governance
structure be?

37. Nobody:

38. What is good debt? It's taking money from someone,
promising to pay them back more money in the future,
and using the original money to make even more
money than that, so both you and the lender profit.
Good tech debt is just the same. It's taking
shortcuts now to save time and get something
shipped, knowing that it will cost you more time
than you're saving now to fix it later. But by
shipping now, you ensure there is a later, with a
product that's out there and being used, a bigger team
and therefore adequate time and then some to fix the
debt and keep improving the product. Everyone wins.
@davnicwil
https://news.ycombinator.com/item
?id=20685950

39. Get content out there
so people can react to
it!

40. #3
Nights and weekends of a
few people only go so far

42. Tl;dr We aspire to be like...
...but for insurance

43. Tl;dr We aspire to be like...
...but for insurance

44. We’re actively seeking support
- Research/education grants through actuarial societies
- Partnerships with companies
- Partnerships with academic labs / departments
- More outreach to the R and insurance communities

45. - Be cool (but not too cool)
- Just do it
- Make it rain

46. Menu of the day
Who we are / What we do
Château Kasa, Blanc de Blancs, “Le Rêverie”, NV
Lessons learned / Discoveries / Tips
Bad Joke Cellars, Red Blend, “The Cynic”, 2012
> Current projects / Vision
Dr. Brandstiftung, Riesling S.G.N., “Einladung”, 1990

47. Ongoing Project: Practical Ratemaking
- End-to-end tutorial on general insurance ratemaking
- Covers data prep, modeling, filing, implementation
- Everything is reproducible!

48. Leveraging R’s
reproducible
workflow ecosystem
to run a distributed
data science
project...

49. Keeping track of moving pieces with

50. Capturing package dependencies with renv
https://rstudio.github.io/renv/
renv.lock

51. Written in
Built on
Continuously deployed to

52. Get involved!
Other ongoing/upcoming projects include
- Deploying real-time models developed in R with k8s
- Underwriting dashboard featuring ML explainability
- Data simulators
- And more!

53. The invite
Please connect if you are
- A useR at all interested in insurance
- Insurance student/professional at all interested in
R/open source
- Interested in helping out in any way
- An oenophile

54. Cheers!
Resources
- github.com/kasaai
- kasa.ai / blog.kasa.ai / quests.kasa.ai
- slack.kasa.ai
- Hit me up @kevinykuo (github, twitter, linkedin)