In this interview, Miguel Edwards, 5M Consulting, and Anthony Habayeb, CEO and co-founder of Monitaur, talk about the importance of having a plan for AI governance. They also discuss the role of CIOs in AI governance and the future of AI in the insurance industry.
The importance of AI governance for insurance companies was discussed in detail by Anthony Habayeb, co-founder and CEO of Monitaur. He believes that while compliance is a daunting but necessary expense, AI governance can be viewed as something that can provide better structure. Habayeb mentions, "By having better structure that informs how we prioritize AI projects, how we create visibility and alignment on those, how do we better measure the success and the efficacy of those applications, it seems really obvious and intuitive."
Habayeb also said that AI governance could help insurance companies get the benefits they wanted from their AI investments. He stated, "If we can be a business enabler, I think that's a much more exciting space. We all agree that there's great potential for AI to create better efficiency, product offerings, and maybe even better equity within the insurance space."
Habayeb thinks AI governance can let federated business units have more control. It can also give companies a way to control and standardize how they approach AI projects.
Habayeb emphasized that insurance companies should adopt a uniform approach to AI governance, irrespective of whether they are building or buying the models. He mentioned, "Insurance is an industry built on models with actuaries being the model builders. We already have many critical modeling systems making decisions for our business."
Habayeb also spoke about the regulatory environment around AI, saying, "The expectation of carriers is you need to be responsible for the AI not just that you build but that you're also buying." He believes that every insurance company or vendor selling to insurance needs to know what their risk management for applications looks like.
Habayeb believes that AI governance should be viewed as a single, comprehensive solution that can connect across all stages of the AI journey and can align with underlying infrastructure, whether it be AWS, Azure, Python, or a legacy actuarial system. He mentioned, "The power of Monitaur really comes in with we've got really great capabilities across that full spectrum from defining your program through automating it."
Habayeb also highlighted that, for governance, it's never too early to understand that this is a thing you need to approach and you need to solve. He said, "Before you get into how you could technically solve it with software, you first just need to build some policies and establish some visibility."
Habayeb noticed that companies that are more advanced in their AI governance adoption are seeing 2 to 3x better results in their AI return on investment. He stated, "If we can help really a lot of junior people deploying high stakes applications to have better understanding of what good looks like, you then get better outcomes."
Habayeb sees Monitaur's role as enabling their customers to tell their own story. He believes that Monitaur can provide a layer of governance that can connect across all stages of the AI journey and can also connect with the underlying infrastructure of an organization. This, according to Habayeb, is Monitaur's unique value proposition.
