More than half of insurance firms now use machine learning

More than half of today's insurance companies use machine learning for predictive analytics, according to a new report by Earnix, an analytics software provider for the financial services industry. Roughly 200 insurers were surveyed as part of Earnix's global "Machine Learning: Growing, Promising, Challenging" study, and they were prompted to select all business areas applicable to them. In total, 70% deployed the technology for risk modeling, the study found. Other uses include the creation of demand models, which forecast market appetite for new products, at 45%. Fraud detection was the third-most popular application, used by 36%.