Industry Expertise Meets Student Ingenuity
The AXIS Research Center (ARC) resides on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which offers one of the top U.S. business school programs for insurance and corporate risk management.
In April 2017, the two organizations teamed up to host their first-ever "Future of Insurance" Symposium and student Hackathon.
The symposium, a "mini-conference," brought together leading insurance experts from industry and academia for a day-long marathon of panels and presentations to an audience including AXIS clients, industry thought leaders and academics. Panels explored some of the most pressing topics regarding the future of insurance- such as the changing economy, new trends in InsurTech, challenges posed by emerging risks, and overcoming the industry's looming talent shortage.
The student Hackathon, a separately held, all-day affair, challenged teams of students to create new catastrophe risk visualization tools - in just eight hours - that could help underwriters assess the potential impact of catastrophic events. The contest attracted budding computer scientists and engineers as well as actuarial and risk management students. They arrived with drones and virtual reality headgear, along with computer programming and risk modeling technologies. This contest demonstrated career opportunities that exist in the (re)insurance industry for the students. For AXIS, the Hackathon highlighted the potential benefits and wide varieties of tools that are possible with current and emerging technologies.
The "Future of Insurance" Symposium and Hackathon are examples of the access to the talent and resources available to AXIS through its presence at the University.
ARC is an innovative collaboration between academia and industry. The University provides experiential learning opportunities to students through internships, classroom case studies and curriculum design. AXIS engages interns, faculty and student consulting organizations to augment available problem solving resources.