DALLAS — American International Group Inc. is working to devise new insurance products and services that will advance the insurer in areas such as cyber risk and workers compensation, said Robert Schimek, president and CEO of AIG's property/casualty Americas region.

In addition to working to establish an innovative culture, AIG has invested about $60 million per year on a “science team” that works to identify such developments across all of AIG's coverage areas, Mr. Schimek said.

The team has helped develop a suite of products and services connected to AIG's cyber liability insurance. The products include AutoShun, a proprietary device provided to AIG's CyberEdge clients that blocks cyber attacks from Internet protocol addresses that are known to be threats.

AIG also has partnered with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to identify behavioral trends in workers compensation that can be identified early in a claim's life cycle before resulting in significant costs, Mr. Schimek said.

The insurer's partnership with the university was inspired by AIG's desire to differentiate itself from other major workers comp insurers that underwrite the line “far better and far more strategically than us,” he said.

“We are seeking ways to advance past the pack, not to catch up to the pack,” said Mr. Schimek, who declined to provide details of the Johns Hopkins partnership.

He made the comments during a presentation about insurance industry innovation during the Sept. 10-11 Entrepreneurial Insurance Symposium in Dallas hosted by Dallas-based electronic insurance exchange MarketScout.

Insurers, brokers and insurance service providers should aim to position themselves as having “unique” products and services, rather than striving to be the “best” among their competitors, Mr. Schimek said. This includes investing in new products that may not be successful but can provide customer feedback and allow companies to develop better offerings down the road.

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Such differentiation will be necessary for insurers to cover and mitigate risks for customers, including software and aerospace firms, as the United States transforms into a “knowledge economy,” Mr. Schimek said.

“I'd say probably none of us is in a place where we're ready to be able to handle the changing needs and, quite frankly, the opportunities that will exist coming out of where the United States will be by 2050,” Mr. Schimek said of the industry.

Malcolm Randles, London-based underwriter of enterprise risks for R.J. Kiln & Co. Ltd., a Lloyd's of London syndicate, addressed the growth of cyber risks in a separate presentation.

In his speech, Mr. Randles said companies are creating “dossiers” of consumers that track their spending habits and identifying information. While such information can be targeted by hackers, he said a growing threat is the accidental loss of consumer data through human error or negligence.

That includes instances in which company employees have lost computers with sensitive data while falling asleep on public transit, or a case in which an insurer sold filing cabinets without removing thousands of medical records, he said.

“Forensically, this has become a huge part of what is driving the need for data insurance,” Mr. Randles said.

General liability insurers are not willing to cover costs for cyber risks and lawsuits that result from data breaches, Mr. Randles said.

He cited a case in which St. Louis-based grocery chain Schnuck Markets Inc. had a data breach, resulting in 2.4 million credit and debit card records being compromised between December 2012 and March of this year.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. sued Schnuck in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in August to prevent its excess commercial general liability policy from being used to cover eight class-action lawsuits that have been filed against Schnuck by customers. That suit is still pending.

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“General liability carriers ... are not prepared to pay the first-party costs” that result from data breaches, Mr. Randles said.

In another conference session, Florida State University President Eric J. Barron provided details on the Tallahassee, Fla.-based school's initiative to further establish itself as a leader in risk management studies.

The university launched “The Risk Initiative” campaign last year after its business college received a $5 million gift from the National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research and William T. Hold, president and co-founder of the alliance.

The campaign will be used as part of an overall initiative to create a more entrepreneurial culture at Florida State, Mr. Barron said. That will include investing in the development of new modeling, prediction and simulation technologies that can be used across various industries, including law and medicine.

“Each one of these fields has an element of risk for which we have the capability to do a better job of forecasting,” Mr. Barron said.

About 400 people attended this year's Entrepreneurial Insurance Symposium. Next year's conference is set to be held Sept. 9-10 in Dallas.