Why exactly does big data matter?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years you’ve heard a LOT about big data. But if you’re like most insurance professionals, you didn’t go to school for computer science, and even though it sounds very cool you really haven’t gotten your head around a simple question: What the heck is big data? And how will it affect insurance? For the last several years, the world has been creating more data than it ever had in the past. Some call it the digital exhaust: Everything we do leaves a digital trail, and with a smartphone in every pocket, a laptop in every backpack and near-universal access to giant clusters of computers in the cloud, the sheer amount of data we are able to collect on everyone and everything has grown exponentially. Data grew to such large quantities that it no longer fit in the memories computers use for processing it, so whole new tools had to be designed to handle it. Read more: insurtechnews.com