Allstate Insurance Company wins the NCSA Private Sector Program's 2003 Grand Challenge Award, honoring more than five years of data-mining innovation.

There's value to be found in any pile of data. When you're facing a molehill, it’s easier to dig up. Patterns, if they exist, can be found with little effort. Predictions can be made based on those patterns. And any deviation from the norm catches your eye. But for Allstate Insurance Company, molehills gave way to mountains not long after the company paid its first claim on a broken car door handle in 1931. Today, with more than 30 million policies in force, finding patterns and deviations in the vast customer, geographic, economic, and other data requires more than just a keen actuary and a slide rule.

To glean more insight from the data that they collect and have access to, Allstate has worked with members of the NCSA's Automated Learning Group for more than five years in a field known as data mining. Data mining combines statistics, machine learning, pattern recognition, database management, and high-performance computing to produce automated methods for analyzing data sets and discovering new knowledge. It's a burgeoning and challenging field that no company can afford to ignore in today's rapidly evolving business environment.

Geographic data of the sort being used in Allstate's Territorial Rate Making project. Click to enlarge.

Together, the team has taken advantage of data mining to improve customer service, experiment with new pricing systems, and develop better ways for the company's analysts to keep up with changes in the competitive environment. These efforts allow the company to work more efficiently and better target their products to their customers--whether those customers are buying a new car, insuring their first home, or recovering from a fire.

In April NCSA's Private Sector Program presented its 2003 Grand Challenge Award to Allstate, honoring this expansive data-mining relationship.

Access Online | Posted 5-27-2003