Mercury Insurance has appointed Simon Zhang to the newly-created position of Chief Data and Analytics Officer. The hire continues Mercury's ongoing effort to utilize advanced data analytics to drive business growth, elevate the carrier's product offerings, and better meet the needs of its policyholders. As Chief Data Analytics Officer, Mr. Zhang's leadership will add value to virtually every element of the Mercury data science landscape ? from predictive analytics and data science, infrastructure and architecture, to data security and compliance. Mr. Zhang's mission will be to harness Mercury's 60-plus years of valuable data and build systems and processes within the organization to better inform the way the company does business. As this data becomes more available across Mercury's teams, the company will discover better and more efficient ways of doing business. This new position reinforces Mercury's commitment to seeking out better and more innovative ways to utilize its data assets. It will help the company transform to meet the ever-changing needs of its customers and will provide an important foundation for future success. Before joining Mercury, Mr. Zhang served as Chief Data Scientist at GrowingIO, a company he co-founded. Prior to that, he held a leadership role at LinkedIn, where he served as senior director of business analytics.

Interestingly, Mr. Zhang's career journey began in the medical field, where he achieved success as a neurosurgeon performing more than 300 surgeries.