Prem is a Principal in Oliver Wyman’s Actuarial Practice in New York, NY. He specializes in strategy for data monetization, data science, and digital transformation and has more than 15 years of experience spread across actuarial, predictive modeling, data transformation, and product development.
His experience includes advising clients on becoming data-driven organizations by outlining analytics strategies that encompass analytics insights, technology, and process optimization. Team members rely on Prem for advice on complex problems that require defining a decision management framework. “I'm often depended on to define processes where analytic insights and predictive model outputs are tied to actionable decisions or recommendations driving business strategy,” he notes.
Prem’s passion for data-driven solutions strengthened when he began to see the direct social impact of some of his work. For example, an Artificial Intelligence solution for offline eye image diagnostics increased access to health care in rural areas where health care workers were not available. “This experience has allowed me to always put the ‘impact on consumer' as an intrinsic parameter to choose the right solutions, after which I began to find greater enjoyment and motivation in building data-driven products,” he adds.
Looking ahead, Prem anticipates that, given the combination of economic and social conditions and lifestyle changes driven by consumers' interaction with new technologies, insurers will be forced to change the way business is rendered and digital transformation and innovation will be key for their growth.
Our clients will be forced to embrace new forms of customer engagement and adapt their data ecosystem to provide personalization, speed, and efficiency. Products, pricing, risk, and financial systems will need to evolve accordingly.
To those entering the data science world, Prem's advice has always been to differentiate between wisdom and intelligence. “Wisdom is the ability to ask right questions which comes with varied experiences over time and intelligence is the ability to find answers which comes with your education and technical skill sets,” he explains. “Since the right answer to the wrong question adds no value, problem solving should always begin with the right questions. Seeking opportunities to work on a variety of projects is the best way to build this ability.”
Outside of work, Prem enjoys his time with his daughter, tries to find time to pursue writing, and dreams of retiring into a teaching role someday. He frequently speaks at industry conferences on emerging risk and data science topics.