With titles like global chief information officer, chief data officer and chief platform operations officer marking an accomplished career in financial services, Ursuline Foley is well-positioned to peer into the P/C insurance industry’s future with AI.

But when CM Guest Editor Michael (Fitz) Fitzgerald selected Foley to interview as part of a series of articles about leadership tips for AI-powered insurers recently, it wasn’t just her experience in leading multiple global business transformations for XL Group (and later AXA XL) that pointed him in her direction.

Fitzgerald was also interested in her view from the vantage point of a member of boards of directors of multiple companies in and outside the insurance industry. In particular, Fitzgerald wondered about the composition of boards. Do they have enough technologists like Foley? In what ways do the skill sets of directors need to be broadened as the opportunities and challenges of AI rise to the boardroom agenda?

Foley purposefully left her last executive role in the insurance industry to focus her full attention to serving on various boards of directors. Having served on the boards of not-for-profits like the Society for Information Management, Pace University and the National Association of Corporate Directors, and in advisory board member roles for private equity firm Blumberg Capital LLC and Accenture’s Insurance Innovation Executive Board, Foley landed her first public board role in 2019 with Provident Financial Services, where she serves on the Risk and Technology committees. Then about three years ago, she was appointed to the board of Greenlight Capital Reinsurance, serving as chair of the compensation committee and a member of the audit committee.

Foley doesn’t “believe for one second” that she garnered those two public board appointments based on her technology skills alone. Noting that a typical board is composed of between eight and 15 people, she said, “They can’t really afford to bring on an individual that just represents one skill set. Boards want to manage their size. Otherwise, it can become a bureaucracy and not an oversight body.”

She believes boards “are looking for technologists—but technologists that have a very strong business acumen.” She encourages fellow technologists, even those who have “managed risk and business continuity in a big way [and] have had to understand the business operations of companies end to end,” to “round off” their risk management skill set with certificates in enterprise risk management. Highlighting areas like liquidity risk management, credit risk management, investment risk management, geopolitical risk and third-party risk management, she noted that the DCRO Risk Governance Institute offers programs such as Qualified Risk Director, Certificate in Risk Governance and Certificate in Cyber Risk Governance designations (all three of which she holds).

“The only way you can peel back the black box is to know that you’ve got good confidence and ownership in your company’s data, and understand the analytical tools that you can rely on to validate your own data.”

Ursuline Foley

A diversity of skills represented among directors enriches the conversation in the boardroom, Foley said. “It forces questions to be asked that are outside of the box.” The questions encourage broader thinking on topics. Board members who were more likely to lean one way initially, might move “more toward the middle on a particular topic” as a result, she said.

Fitzgerald also asked Foley what boards should be asking executive management about the use of AI.

“They should at least be asking their technology officers, ‘Is it something we’re considering as a company? And how are we providing some oversight and guidelines on that—and education?'” she said, reporting that her boards are educating directors on the capabilities of AI.

Foley pointed out that boards of P/C insurers and reinsurers are confronted with many issues—AI opportunities and risks being just one of them. She listed catastrophe risks, convective storms, interest rate risk and geopolitical risks as items also consuming boardroom mindshare. There’s a lot to navigate in addition to the speed of technological change. “Never have we lived through such an uncertainty on so many fronts,” she said.

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Still, Foley said carriers can’t afford not to embrace the prospects of using AI tools to bring efficiencies to support desks and to activities like data entry and memo writing. “Those are low-hanging fruit.” But AI “should never be used totally on its own. I see it as an enabler,” she said. “If you’re using external information, [then] you can’t totally trust that it’s factual.”

Foley also emphasized the importance of governing internal data—ensuring it is current and validated using good analytics. “If you’ve got all of that right now, you can basically embrace AI and take it to the next level,” she said. She added that “for companies that are more advanced in their data governance and analytics, then they are in a great position to leverage AI in the more valued business processes of underwriting, claims management, risk management, etc. AI will be a game-changer long-term, but those companies that educate and prepare their teams now about the possibilities and the risks of AI so that they can start to embrace it in their solutions and culture are the companies that will reap the big benefits over the long run.”

The prospect of an AI-enabled future “really reinforces the topic of data even more than ever before, which in turn reinforces the topic of good analytics as a means to validate data,” she said. “If you don’t have those two check marks going well in your company, then you are far away from using AI well.”

She continued: “Everybody is worried about the black box for AI, and the only way you can peel back the black box is to know that you’ve got good confidence and ownership in your company’s data, and understand the analytical tools that you can rely on to validate your own data.”

Foley also cautioned insurers to move slowly as they incorporate AI tools into their operations. “You want to be a close follower. You don’t want to be the laggard. You can’t afford not to do it. You want to be in there, but you don’t want to be the leader either,” she said, explaining that leaders will stumble through early issues. “Having lived in the world of technology for 35 years-plus, I would say that about any technology when it’s first introduced. It’s going to evolve and it’s going to become even better,” she said.

“One positive thing that AI is doing is that it’s opening up employees’ and business leaders’ minds, and especially society’s minds even more to the current capabilities of technology. Even if you’re not going to use AI—[if] you use blockchain or you use e-commerce or some traditional method—the fact is that society and employees and business leaders overall are much more aware now of the possibilities and capabilities of technology.”

“Their eyes have been opened,” she said.