Insurance Information and Monitoring Center cooperation

The cooperation agreement signed between Sabancı University and the Insurance Information and Monitoring Center (SBM) includes the implementation of the "Big Data Analytics to Detect Insurance Fraud" Project. The signing ceremony for the cooperation, which will be implemented within the Sabancı University Big Data Behavioral Analysis and Visualization Laboratory, took place on Friday, March 4, 2016 at the Karaköy Minerva Palas with the attendance of Sabancı University President Professor A. Nihat Berker and Insurance Information and Monitoring Center CEO Aydın Satıcı.

Sabancı University and Insurance Information and Monitoring Center (SBM) signed a strategic cooperation agreement.  The signing ceremony for the "Big Data Analytics to Detect Insurance Fraud" Project to be implemented within the Sabancı University Big Data Behavioral Analysis and Visualization Lab took place on Friday, March 4, 2016 at the Karaköy Minerva Palas.  

The meeting began with introductory remarks by Sabancı University President Professor A. Nihat Berker. Professor A. Nihat Berker emphasized the importance Sabancı University places on university-industry partnerships, saying “The insurance industry in particular is the guarantee of sustainability for individuals and the society, and it deserves protection. Each case of insurance fraud makes the society and individuals suffer both morally and materially."

Sabancı University Big Data Behavioral Analysis and Visualization Laboratory Directors and Sabancı University faculty members Burçin Bozkaya and Selim Balcısoy also spoke at the ceremony. Burçin Bozkaya said, “Our expectations from the project include using data analytics on insurance data collected centrally to identify the profiles, factors and circumstances which facilitate insurance fraud, and leveraging this information to achieve better fraud prediction rates. The analytical and visual tools in the Lab will be actively used to reveal these relationships."

Selim Balcısoy commented, “Our work with SBM will be one of the first studies in the world on the analysis of all insurance records in a given field nationwide. An effective analysis with massive quantities of complex data requires the presentation of this data with different visual and interactive methods. Data visualization methods and tools to be developed on SBM data will give us important clues to understanding such an extensive data network."

SBM CEO Aydın Satıcı provided details about SBM and the "Big Data Analytics to Detect Insurance Fraud" Project. Aydın Satıcı explained that SBM was the data center of the insurance sector where all policy and claims data is collected on a real-time basis, making SBM one of the few institutions in the world with this capability. Satıcı said that the analytics and analysis performed on this rich source of data provided value to the insurance sector and promoted growth. Satıcı also stated that they developed analytical models and performed social network analyses to prevent fraud, one of the greatest issues in the industry, and implemented the Fraud Prevention Bureau to identify cases of organized fraud. 

Satıcı continued, "This cooperation with Sabancı University will improve our fraud prevention capabilities by developing a learning analytical model for Turkey based on observation of user behavior, while later stages of the project will include social media analyses, telematics studies, location-based analyses and fraud detection efforts in other lines of business to reduce fraud rates, mitigate the financial losses of insurance companies, and help to reduce insurance premiums for honest citizens."

The project will be implemented within Turkey's first and only Big Data Behavioral Analysis and Visualization Laboratory founded by Sabancı University in association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the strategic partnership of Akbank under sponsorship by SAS, a global leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent solution provider in business intelligence. The project aims to prevent or substantially reduce insurance fraud, one of the largest costs in the insurance sector, by using big data analytics. The claims data and insured profiles kept by SBM, the data center of the industry, will be examined by various data mining methods to identify possibly fraudulent cases or individuals with a higher probability of committing fraud in order to take precautions on a central level. Mitigating fraud will contribute to the profitability of insurance companies, which in turn is expected to translate to lower insurance premiums for honest citizens.