PRIN 2022 - INSURtech and sustainABILITY

The present project aims to study the impact that technologies have on two major issues in insurance law, while trying to select some cases in which these effects can have operational repercussions on the rights of persons and on sustainability. Major issues in insurance law on which to evaluate the technological impact are:

1) The meaning and the lawfulness of statistical discrimination, typical of insurance and considered as traditional foundation of its legal specificity, in light of the more recent scenarios of personal and not personal data processing;

2) The function and the functioning of insurance, both challanged by recent phenomenons of disintermediation and deprofessionalisation, urgently relevant because of the technological developments of social networking, and of the use of robotic and AI technologies.

Sub 1) it is necessary to take into consideration the trend in the automation of data collection, in interoperability, the functioning and use of smart contracts; the impact of the new techniques of data collection and processing in insurance sector can be described as an increase in the degree of personalization in risk assessment. This increase can crack the idea of mutuality, which indeed carachterizes insurance business and its risk pooling activity. The availability of more consistent databases (big data) highlights the need to compare traditionally used statistical models in insurance assessments with models based on Machine Learning techniques which make insurance pricing more flexible, notwithstanding the risks to lose the “natural” mutuality on which insurance is founded Sub 2) In the insurance sector, sharing and collaborative models challenge the traditional professionality of insurers, while also showing how such kinds of experiences stay in the middle between the need of risk transfer versus a partial cost and the different goal of a simple sharing of common risks or of purchaising a financial aid in case of loss, as it seems to occurr in the current and spread use of different platforms. They highlight an evolution in the insurance business model, above all in “non life”, indemnity lines.

From a theoretical point of view, the main question is whether the new models can and should be still considered as insurance, with the consequential implications as for applicable legal discipline; from a practical and operational point of view, the aim is to evaluate the impact that the different solutions could have on strategic sectors for the sustainable management of risks (for instance in urban mobility or in healthcare services); finally, it is necessary to confront the two perspectives in order to verify the operational and policy effects/repercussions: verify which rules have to be applied in the selected areas, considering the consequences on the concrete ways to implement the risk management stategies; evaluate the opportunity to keep and use the existing rules also suggesting possible changes in legislation.

ENTE PROMOTORE: Unione Europea - MUR

NOME PROGETTO: PRIN 2022 INSURtech and sustainABILITY. Towards sUStainable ChANges, in the use of technologY and in the role of information, in insurance (INSURtech and sustainABILITY); COD MUR: 2022W2Y8ES

PERIODO E DURATA: 28/09/2023 – 27/09/2025

FINANZIAMENTO: Missione 4 “Istruzione e Ricerca” del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza ed in particolare la componente C2 – investimento 1.1, Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN) – del Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, dedicata ai Progetti di ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale - CUP J53D23005970006

COORDINATORE: Università degli Studi di Pisa

REFERENTI SSSA: Prof.ssa Maria Gagliardi, Dr. BUSTAMANTE HERMOSILLA Gabriele, Dr. Niccolò Pellini