Data Profiling and Insurance Law

Brendan McGurk
Release date:21 March 2019
Language:English
Pages:312
ISBN:9781509920617
Publisher:Hart Publishing
Price:€ 118,79

This timely, expertly written monograph looks at the legal impact that the use of ‘Big Data’ will have on the provision – and substantive law – of insurance. Insurance companies are set to become some of the biggest consumers of big data which will enable them to profile prospective individual insureds at an increasingly granular level.

More particularly, the book explores how: (i) insurers gain access to information relevant to assessing risk and/or the pricing of premiums; (ii) the impact which that increased information will have on substantive insurance law (and in particular duties of good faith disclosure and fair presentation of risk); and (iii) the impact that insurers’ new knowledge may have on individual and group access to insurance.

This raises several consequential legal questions: (i) To what extent is the use of big data analytics to profile risk compatible (at least in the EU) with the General Data Protection Regulation? (ii) Does insurers’ ability to parse vast quantities of individual data about insureds invert the information asymmetry that has historically existed between insured and insurer such as to breathe life into insurers’ duty of good faith disclosure? And (iii) by what means might legal challenges be brought against insurers both in relation to the use of big data and the consequences it may have on access to cover?

Written by a leading expert in the field, this book will both stimulate further debate and operate as a reference text for academics and practitioners who are faced with emerging legal problems arising from the increasing opportunities that big data offers to the insurance industry.


Brendan McGurk

Brendan McGurk is a leading junior with a wealth of experience in Commercial, Public law and Regulatory disputes. He offers expertise across Chambers’ core areas and he is in equal demand amongst public and private clients in Judicial Review, EU, Competition, Procurement, Professional Negligence and Tax litigation. In addition, he regularly acts in Financial Services and Insurance disputes. His intellectual rigour, hard work and commercial common sense has resulted in a thriving advisory practice. Brendan is personable and persuasive and is regularly instructed in his own right as both a trial advocate and an appellate advocate. In addition, he has been an integral team member in several high-value commercial disputes. Brendan was appointed to the Attorney-General’s A Panel in July 2017. In April 2019 Hart will publish Brendan’s new book on data profiling by insurers and its impact on the law of insurance. He is co-author of Professional Indemnity Insurance, the second edition of which was published in February 2016 by Oxford University Press and the chapter on UK Merger Control (with Ben Rayment) in Weinberg and Blank on Takeovers and Mergers. In addition, Brendan has published several articles on Insurance and Competition law. Brendan is an affiliate lecturer in Competition Law at Cambridge University and teaches Article 102 on the LLM course. Brendan is recommended as a leading junior in Administrative and Public law, Procurement law, Tax and Professional Negligence. He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 2015 and to the Bar of Ireland in 2018.