Left to right: Andreas Ponikiewicz, VP Global Sales MOSTLY AI; Melanie Hartl, Customer Success Manager MOSTLY AI; Daniela Pak-Graf, CO-Managing Director of Merkur Innovation Lab; and Harald Neubauer, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Merkur Insurance Group

Merkur Insurance is the first Austrian insurance company to use AI-generated synthetic data

Graz/Vienna, 9 November 2022- The next pioneering step, all in the name of data security: Merkur Versicherung is the first insurance company in Austria to use synthetic data. To this end, the Group's own start-up, the Merkur Innovation Lab, has signed a three-year partnership agreement with MOSTLY AI. The goal is to drive data-driven innovations with the help of artificial intelligence.

Just in time for its second birthday, the Merkur Innovation Lab is taking a progressive step to ensure the anonymized handling of sensitive data. Since its founding in 2020, the Innovation Lab has been working to create added value from the existing wealth of data in the form of new services and personalized customer experiences. In order to give the necessary importance to data security and the protection of personal information, Merkur Innovation Lab has signed a three-year partnership agreement with MOSTLY AI.

Two pioneers working together

With Merkur Versicherung and MOSTLY AI, two companies have joined forces that, as pioneers in their respective fields, also provide innovative solutions beyond national borders. Merkur as a holistic personal insurer, which is actively shaping the digitization of the industry, and the Viennese company MOSTLY AI as a global deep tech pioneer in the generation of AI-based, structured synthetic data and its use in the banking and insurance sectors.

AI-generated synthetic data from MOSTLY AI looks like real data and contains all the statistically-relevant information of the original dataset, but without any links back to personal data points. The synthetic data sets are therefore completely anonymized, privacy-safe and GDPR compliant. In the Merkur Innovation Lab, synthetic versions of customer data will be produced in the future using this technology, on which machine learning models can be trained, for example. This makes it possible to share data internally and externally in a data protection-compliant manner in order to develop better services and products for customers.

Ahead of the times

"Our daily bread is innovation. To do this, we need data sources that are connected to gain insights that no one had before. At the end of the day, we want to inspire customers with new services and increase their confidence in digitization. With this forward-thinking partnership, we are not only meeting the legal requirements for data protection, we are also taking innovation to a whole new level thanks to MOSTLY AI, and doing so for the benefit of our customers," says Daniela Pak-Graf, CO-Managing Director of Merkur Innovation Lab.

"Synthetic data helps to establish a data-driven corporate culture and drives AI-based innovation," explains Dr. Tobias Hann, CEO of MOSTLY AI. "As a Viennese start-up that’s now operating globally, we are particularly proud that Merkur Versicherung, an Austrian insurance company, is taking an active part in driving the adoption of synthetic data and laying the foundation to use artificial intelligence for the benefit of both its business, and customers."