Unlocking the Lifelong Value of Data: Personalization of Consumer Experiences in the Insurance Market

Prifina’s CEO Markus Lampinen spoke to Alex Bond on the podcast about the current trends with personal data and how individualized data-driven innovation could be introduced to the insurance services market.

TLDR

• What is the lifetime value of personal data? How can we ensuring benefits from user-generated data for individuals rather than solely benefiting companies, particularly in the context of digital environments powered by applied AI?
• How can we leverage data to reimagine the consumer experience? What if I could bring my data to my own car or use sensors to enhance personal health and wellbeing?
• What is the interplay between data and our surroundings? Is it possible to integrate personal data and surrounding ambient data to create impactful user experiences?
• What are the implications of user-generated data in the insurance sector? 

Here is the conversation between Markus Lampinen (Prifina) and Alex Bond. 

Markus: My name is Markus Lampinen, I'm based in San Francisco where I run a company Prifina. We help make products smart. We do this by embedding sensors into different types of physical products. For example, I'm wearing - not that you can see it on the podcast - a really nice kimono-based silk jacket produced by a Tokyo-based company Ichijiku. This jacket has an embedded sensor that can measure a number of different things around, e.g., how the jacket is doing, surrounding data like humidity, etc. Our role at Prifina is to overlay different types of datasets like the sensor data and correlating them with other types of data, e.g., your heart rate when you wear the jacket.

Prifina allows companies to build different types of applications that enable them reimagine the end-user experience for how we interact with not only physical products but data. Our vision is that in the future, have more data than ever - how can we use it to create new experiences? Something that's different from what we've had? 

Alex: That's great. I think that when people hear about sensor-driven technology in clothing, they think about performance, sportswear. But it's much more than that, isn't it?  

Markus: That's right. We work with pro athletes that want to improve their performance, e.g., top basketball clubs. For them, it's about understanding performance, recovery, sleep, stress, hormonal activities, and so on. From a player’s point of view, how can players themselves understand what's going on with their body and their environment to essentially get better? But it's not just about performance sports, it's also about stress - how do you manage stress? 

There is a lot of data that we already have, e.g., our sleep data. 

We can go all the way to, for example, luxury fashion and thinking about how does the clothing that you wear impact your your mood or happiness? As for all this data, we're kind of sitting on this goldmine: we, individuals, have so much data but we're just not using it. It's a huge opportunity. 

With user-generated data, it is possible to build new types of experiences. 

Alex: We're now talking at the MENA Insurance Summit. How does this relate to, for example, insurers? 

Markus: We work with a lot of insurance companies around the world are looking look at preventative health, mental health and wellness. If you can make your policyholders healthier and happier, then they're going to be better customers for the insurance company, because they have very similar incentives as the insurance company does.
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Alex: Okay, applications are really wide for the insurance industry. … Markus, you explained that it's not just about kind of tracking the data, but it is about the lifetime value of a product that is enhanced by your own data.

​Markus Lampinen: Indeed, the lifetime value is one important aspect of a product. How are you maintaining your car? Are you driving it too fast, and so on and so forth. 

But then, we get into this very delicate balance as well: the data should benefit you as an individual, not the insurance company alone. At the end of the day, for example, when it comes to different types of collectibles, tracing the entire value chain (where everything came from, who actually owns it, etc.) becomes important, especially for maintaining the value and also secondary transactions. 

This fits into a broader conversation about what is authentic, especially in the digital environments powered by applied AI and deep fakes. We have Barack Obama thats now trying to sell you some skin care product. How do you know that something is authentic? 

But our focus is very much on reimagining the whole of the consumer experience using data. There are incredible applications as we move forward. For example, cars generate a lot of data. So do you as an individual. What if you could just enter into the car which already knows that, am I a five star driver today? Or that I am only a three star driver today? If you slept really poorly of if you had a little bit more than one drink…? We're not talking about sharing it anywhere, but using your own data for your own benefit. 

That’s where there's this interplay between all the data that we have and all the things around us. How can we tie them into a unique importable experience going forward? It's a very, very big theme, of course, but that's kind of something that we look at as an inevitable trend.

Alex Bond: I think people are just starting to wake up to be protective of that. I’d like to finish with one more question: what does it mean for insurance? I'm an insurance guy. What about applications for the insurance sector?

Markus Lampinen: Sure. Insurance emerged as a very clear secondary market for personal data use-cases. Let's take an example. After today’s summit here in Doha, I'm traveling to Switzerland where we're working with our partner that has a sensor embedded into both the left and the right ski boot as well as the helmet.

So you can actually get your triangulate the skier and their position to maybe help them improve. Now, performance athletes may care about the angle of tilt on their 760 turn on the mountain. But most skiers don't. 

But if you start essentially hitting this type of data on skiers, could you create individualized insurance per skier per day in dynamic conditions? Could you give them incentives to ski safer based on those? These are some things that are currently really hard to price dynamically. But if you started having this type of data, could he actually create almost like reverse marketplaces for these types of products? Could you do this on, let's say, a resort by resort basis? You can also use it as, let's say recommendations for routes on different types of ski resorts. You can also use it for insurance products as well. 

So that's been very much our foray into thinking about starting off in a very, very clear value prop for the individual, but then realizing that there's this entire ecosystem. 

Alex Bond: Markus, you've been very generous with your time. Thanks for being a guest.

You find the entire conversation on , here it is.