Case Study: Delottie achieves secure, accurate health-insurance churn predictions while protecting sensitive data with Kaggle Masters Competitions

Delottie - Customer Case Study

Kaggle’s Masters Competitions let companies tap elite, crowdsourced data science while keeping tight control over sensitive information and intellectual property. Facing the privacy risks inherent in health claims data, Deloitte Australia ran a Masters Competition for HCF in Q4 2013 to predict which customers would lapse coverage within 12 months, requiring NDAs and anonymized data to protect patient and competitive interests.

The solution restricted participation to Kaggle “Masters” (the top ~0.25% of the community) under direct contractual terms, released anonymized claims only after signed NDAs, and ran a 60-day contest that attracted 46 elite data scientists. The competition produced advanced, deployable models that stretched algorithmic approaches; HCF is exploring implementation, and sponsors retain IP control — a model Kaggle has repeated for firms like Genentech, Pfizer, Allstate and major credit card companies.

Delottie