Two heads are better than one, and perhaps more so when the other is from the academe.
Insurance law firm BLM has partnered with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to further advance its analytics capability and potentially tap into new markets through additional services. A team of three LSE professors will be working with BLM to develop prediction models for litigation risk.
Leading the academic side of the partnership is Professor Henry Wynn, chair of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series and head of the Decision Support and Risk Group. He is joined by LSE Statistics department head Professor Pauline Barrieu and machine learning expert Professor Milan Vojnovic – who also serve as Institute of Actuaries principal examiner and Data Science chair, respectively.
“LSE is a great, global brand and we are working with a team whose combined skills go to the core of what this is commercially all about – better valuation and management of litigation risk for individual claims and portfolios of disputes,” commented Andrew Dunkley, head of analytics at BLM. “There is a strong technology and AI component to this project, but we think combining this with decision science and actuarial expertise will lead to even more exciting developments in litigation risk management.”
The models will relate to projecting cost overruns and case length, as well as valuing disputes and predicting outcomes. A dedicated post-doctorate fellow will support the team of professors and work closely with the law firm’s analytics unit.
“Analytics are increasingly critical to risk assessment and claims management,” said Dunkley. “This is a step forward for BLM in driving innovation that tangibly benefits our clients in relation to volume litigation and for high-value claims.”
Meanwhile Wynn said the collaboration seeks to explore greater predictability in hopes of determining the optimal strategy for litigation.
“The LSE Statistics department and its Decision Support and Risk Group has a substantial interest in quantifying risk and uncertainty,” he noted. “Building up a joint centre of research excellence in the valuation and management of litigation risk with BLM is an exciting development in this area, with a clear commitment on our part in terms of the investment and funding of this work.”
The research project is co-funded by BLM and LSE’s Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund.
