The 2013 Tech 50: Steve Betts

As a math major at the U.K.’s University of Manchester in the 1980s, Steve Betts became fascinated with statistical modeling. He has had ample opportunity to engage that passion during his ten years with Aon in Chicago. The former PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant joined the insurance giant in 2003 to establish its e-business strategy. Three years later he was named global CIO for the reinsurance business, one of the biggest in the world following Aon’s 2008 acquisition of  Benfield Group. In 2010, Aon Benfield launched ImpactOnDemand, a browser-based platform that enables insurers to analyze their underwriting exposures in real time. “For Hurricane Sandy we were able to provide our clients the ability to immediately assess their losses and the nature of those losses across their portfolios,” says Betts, 45, global CIO for all of Aon since 2010. An Aon product for corporations, RiskConsole, is a cloud-based system for analyzing and managing risk exposures, and the Global Risk Insight Platform provides pricing and placement data from more than 1,000 insurance carriers across nearly 170 countries. “GRIP is a real game changer,” says Betts. “People have tried to catch up. The scale that we have, with $80 billion in premiums placed, gives us the ability to sit down with our clients and talk about what-if analyses.”