The shared ignorance of the future on which mutualisation rests, and which behavioural data tends to lift.
The veil of ignorance designates, in insurance, the fact that no one knows in advance who, within a group, will suffer the loss, which justifies the lucky paying for the unlucky in the reciprocal expectation of solidarity. This shared ignorance is not a defect but the very foundation of mutualisation, for it is what makes solidarity acceptable and necessary. Behavioural data and the predictive power of artificial intelligence have precisely the effect of lifting this veil, by revealing the risk of each individual, which reduces the space of mutualisation accordingly. At the limit of perfect prediction, insurance would dissolve into a personalised savings account, emptied of all solidarity, which makes the preservation of a measure of ignorance the price of collective protection.
As long as the insurer does not know who will have an accident, good and bad drivers contribute together; a perfectly individualised pricing would lift this veil and make the solidarity between them disappear.
voile d'ignorance assurantiel