A couple months ago, National Underwriter Life & HealthMagazine published an issue focused on technology. Some of thearticles got me thinking about the dynamic we in the benefits worldface between the use of technology in our business and personalprivacy. A couple of the trends noted were the use of big data andwearable technology as a means of underwriting insuranceproducts.

This information got me thinking about whether these trendsrepresent a great marketing opportunity or an invasion of privacy.I wrote a list of things that are available for most people if bigdata principles are used to aggregate information. Some of thosethings included: age and gender; where we live; whether we own ahome or rent; who insures our residence and the limits on coverage;our driving record; our credit rating; our level of exercise(wearable tech); what medications we take (pharmacy scan); and whathealth related items we look up online. (See more in the sidebar,right).

There is other big data about us available; we probably don'twant to know how much. It started me thinking about how an insurercould use big data to research people from public sources orsources that sell data, combined with information from wearabletechnology so personalized offers could be made. The problem in thevoluntary benefits world is that these personalized offers get awayfrom the concept of benefits that feature affordable guaranteedissue, which is one of the drivers of the popularity of voluntarybenefits.