This interdisciplinary workshop addressed head-on the relation between social theory and insurance. To discuss the conceptual presuppositions of the research in the field being foregrounded, articulated and developed, we brought together sociologists, historians, law scholars and actuarial mathematicians whose recent and current work touches upon these issues: Tom Baker (Pennsylvania), Laurence Barry (Paris), Stephen J. Collier (Berkeley), Alberto Cevolini (Bologna), Elena Esposito (Bielefeld), Pierre François (Paris), Geoffrey W. Clark (New York), Niels Viggo-Haueter (Zürich), Ine Van Hoyweghen (Leuven), Rebecca Elliott (London), Liz McFall (Edinburgh), Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen (Tampere), Vera Linke (Hamburg), Maiju Tanninen (Tampere), Gert Meyers (Leuven), Giancarlo Corsi (Bologna), Jonas Mieke (Bielefeld)
The written record of the workshop can be found here.
The traditional business model of insurance is going through a disruptive change. InsurTech and predictive analytics are raising high expectations because they can offer personalized policy premiums adapted to the individual level of risk. Whereas the personalization of premium setting represents an opportunity, however, it could also become a threat because it can question the principle of risk pooling and spreading on which the whole insurance mechanism is based. This international interdisciplinary workshop involved actuaries, practitioners and sociologists, and addressed the possible socio-economic, ethical and political consequences of algorithmic techniques in the field of insurance. The program can be found here.