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Intact Financial is collaborating with Université Laval to establish two new research chairs to advance artificial intelligence and actuarial science research.
The two chairs are the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)/Intact Financial Corporation Industrial Research Chair in Machine Learning for Insurance; and, the Educational Leadership Chair (ELC) in Big Data Analysis for Actuarial Science – Intact.
A release said that Intact will support both chairs with a $2 million contribution. About 30 students from Université Laval’s Faculty of Science and Engineering will take part in the research.
“At Intact, we are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to design relevant products and services for customers and we aspire to be the best insurance AI shop in the world. That is why we are building unique partnerships with leading institutions like Université Laval,” said Intact Financial CEO Charles Brindamour.
“Our collaboration with Université Laval is aimed at building a leading talent pipeline of actuaries and data scientists, developing cutting-edge products and positioning Quebec and Canada at the forefront of AI and machine learning,” Brindamour added.
“Advances in research and training will strengthen Canada’s position as a world leader in artificial intelligence, while expanding the scope of our expertise in machine learning and big data,” commented Université Laval rector Sophie D’Amours. “Such advances will speed up the adoption of machine learning methods in the insurance industry and foster the development of applications in many other sectors, such as medical diagnostics.”
The ELC, in particular, will train future actuaries in the digital, computing, and statistical methods skills needed in order to process big data in the insurance industry.
Meanwhile, the NSERC chair will focus on interpretable machine learning. In addition to Intact’s financial contribution, the research program expects to receive government funding, for a total of about $6.5 million in research grants.
