As insurers adopt more sophisticated data and predictive analytics, the industry is facing an equally important question: How do we ensure those tools support fair, responsible, and defensible decision-making?
Pinpoint Predictive Chief Actuary Devyn McNicoll, ACAS, CSPA, MAAA recently joined that conversation in the Summer 2026 issue of Casualty Quarterly, published by the American Academy of Actuaries. McNicoll, who serves as Vice Chairperson of the Academy’s P&C Committee on Equity and Fairness, was featured alongside Committee Chairperson Tyson Mohr in a deep-dive Q&A exploring potential bias in property and casualty insurance.
From a Theoretical Question to an Industry Priority
One of McNicoll’s central observations is how dramatically the conversation around bias has evolved.
Five years ago, she explains, much of the discussion centered on whether bias existed within insurance pricing and underwriting and whether it could be effectively measured. Today, regulators, carriers, and actuarial professionals are actively working to determine how bias should be defined, tested, and mitigated.
That evolution is already influencing insurance regulation. McNicoll points to developments including Colorado legislation requiring bias testing and actions from the New York Department of Financial Services addressing disparate impact testing concepts. At the same time, carriers are increasingly developing their own internal testing frameworks rather than waiting for regulatory requirements.
The result is a new challenge for actuaries: determining not only what models predict, but how those predictions should be evaluated through the lenses of fairness and potential unfair discrimination.
For McNicoll, addressing bias is not as simple as introducing another model validation test.
The profession first needs greater clarity around what terms like “bias,” “fairness,” and “unfair discrimination” actually mean in practice. The P&C Committee on Equity and Fairness has been working to identify where actuaries genuinely disagree and where differences may stem from inconsistent definitions or methodologies.
That work becomes increasingly important as insurers incorporate more advanced analytics and new sources of data into underwriting and pricing.
It is also closely aligned with McNicoll’s work at Pinpoint Predictive, where she leads actuarial strategy at the intersection of traditional actuarial science, predictive analytics, and emerging approaches to risk assessment. McNicoll brings more than a decade of P&C experience spanning pricing, reserving, regulatory filings, modeling, and actuarial leadership.
Moving the Industry Forward
The Casualty Quarterly discussion also makes clear that questions of fairness extend far beyond personal auto. Similar challenges exist across homeowners, workers’ compensation, commercial insurance, life, and health, with different datasets and regulatory environments creating distinct considerations for each market.
As predictive analytics becomes more deeply embedded in insurance decision-making, actuarial leadership will play a critical role in determining how the industry moves forward.
McNicoll’s work represents an important part of that effort: pushing the industry toward more sophisticated risk assessment while ensuring innovation is paired with rigor, transparency, and thoughtful examination of how models perform across populations.
Read Devyn McNicoll and Tyson Mohr’s full Q&A in the Summer 2026 edition of Casualty Quarterly.