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InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Mark Cunningham, Managing Director: PriceHubble: Is your data useful or useless? (403)

InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

InsTech

Entrepreneurship, Business, Investing

4.9 • 51 Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Introduction In this episode, Matthew Grant speaks with Mark Cunningham, Managing Director at PriceHubble, about how insurers can move from fragmented data to genuinely informed decision-making.  Despite decades of investment in data and analytics, many insurers still lack a clear understanding of the assets they are covering. Mark offers a candid view of where the real problems lie, and why improving outcomes starts not with more data, but with better data.  He introduces a simple but powerful framework, seeding, signalling and selling, which reframes how insurers should approach risk. From establishing a reliable baseline of what is actually on risk, to identifying meaningful signals and acting on them, the model highlights the gaps that continue to hold the industry back.  The conversation explores the practical challenges of property data, including inconsistent addressing standards and the underuse of unique identifiers such as UPRNs. Mark explains how solving these foundational issues unlocks a far richer understanding of exposure, enabling insurers to assess risk with far greater precision.  Looking ahead, the discussion turns to emerging pressures. Mark shares analysis suggesting that up to 500,000 UK properties could become effectively uninsurable within the next decade due to the combined impact of flood and subsidence. It is a stark example of how climate risk is becoming financially visible and why insurers need to rethink how they model long-term exposure.  The episode also highlights missed opportunities across the wider financial ecosystem. Despite working with similar data, insurers and mortgage lenders remain poorly aligned, creating friction in customer journeys and limiting the potential for more integrated risk assessment.  Mark also reflects on where generative AI is already making a difference, from reactivating historical leads to improving customer interactions and product recommendations. The impact is less about transformation and more about strengthening existing processes in practical, measurable ways.  At the heart of the discussion is a consistent theme: better decisions depend on better foundations, and the industry still has work to do to get the basics right.  In this conversation, Mark shares:  Why data in insurance is either useful or useless, and the risks of relying on anything in between  How the seeding, signalling and selling framework helps structure better risk assessment  Why many insurers still do not fully understand what they have on risk  How UPRNs can act as a common language for property data, and why adoption remains limited  What new data sources are revealing about construction risk and evolving exposures  How combining climate perils and property economics points to a growing insurability challenge  Why insurers and mortgage lenders are still not aligned, and what that means for customers  Where generative AI is delivering practical value today across operations and distribution  Mark’s recommendation:  Book: The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn.  Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, welcome or welcome back to the Instech podcast. As always, it's Zoya here.

0:14.9

And this week, Matthew Grant is joined by Mark Cunningham. Now, one thing you may have noticed in recent episodes is Matthew asking guests for recommendations,

0:24.6

the ideas, books and perspectives shaping their thinking.

0:28.6

And in this conversation, that idea runs deeper, because Mark is effectively offering a set of recommendations for the entire insurance industry.

0:35.6

Mark is managing director at Price Hubble,

0:39.0

leading insurance data analytics across Europe, and brings a refreshingly direct view on where

0:44.0

insurers are falling short. So if you're interested in where insurance data is really heading

0:48.2

and what needs to change, this is one to lean into. Mark, great to have you back. Normally we kind of just like to get people's

0:58.0

bit of background. You've been with us quite a few times for the podcast. I know you've done so many

1:01.7

things. If we asked your career history, we could chew up 30 minutes just on that alone. But you've

1:06.2

had a really, really fascinating background, but ended up in insurance. Yeah, that's right. I left the state world of

1:13.6

rock and roll to end up in insurance. It was quite the change of career. Well, I think you do bring a bit

1:18.3

of rock and roll to insurance. I've been given your performance with your swords on stage at our last

1:22.8

event. Anyway, great to have you back for the podcast. So, Mar, today you are the MD for Price Hubble looking after

1:29.2

insurance data analytics across the whole European spectrum. I love the way you described data

1:35.0

and how people should think about it for using that for insurance assessment. And I guess financial

1:39.5

services more broadly, which is your point was that data is either useful or useless, but there's no

1:45.7

midpoint. Can you just talk a bit more about what you meant by that? Sure. Data is either useful or

1:50.9

useless. There's no nearly useful, and that's what you're trying to avoid, the nearly useful,

1:55.8

because that's where the inaccuracies lie. And you're often better off not knowing something

2:01.5

than knowing the wrong thing.

2:03.0

So we try and separate those two ideas out

...

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