Big Data could lead to the creation of a single lifestyle policy covering all an individual’s liabilities, according to Aon Benfield.

Such a policy could be priced almost entirely on Big Data feeds, the reinsurance broker says in its latest Insurance Risk Study.

Consumers leave a “digital exhaust” trail, such as information from personal fitness devices and smartphone location services, which can be exploited to design personalised risk protection.

But there is much work still to do. “Big Data is like iron ore: bulky and useless in its raw state,” the report says. “It has to be refined through several stages before it yields up actionable and consumable information.”

For the insurance industry this would involve combining data sources, remapping, recoding, cleansing and normalising data.

The report says global insurance and reinsurance premium totalled a record $US4.9 trillion ($5.41 trillion) at the end of last year, with global capital at a high of $US4 trillion ($4.42 trillion).

Aon Benfield expects the global insurance market will grow 18% by 2018.

The US will remain the largest property and casualty market, representing 37% of global premium, but China will overtake Japan to become the second-largest, with 9%.