Automated Data Analytics for a Large Insurance and Asset Management Provider
Client
The client is a leading insurance provider and one of the largest institutional investors in the UK, with one trillion pounds under management.
Challenge
The client was struggling with inefficiency in its actuarial workflow, resulting in high costs and lost deals. It was taking weeks for its actuarial team to perform risk and profit analyses for a single insurance deal. Such long and inefficient processing stifled profitability on insurance deals and placed the company at a competitive disadvantage.
Solution
The company partnered with DataArt to design and build an automated data analytics platform with a simple, intuitive user interface.
DataArt and the client analyzed the existing actuarial workflow and concluded that they could simplify and automate about 90% of the time-consuming and resource intensive actuarial processes. Actuaries could then focus on higher-value analyses to best mitigate risk and optimize pricing of insurance deals.
The client also required rapid delivery, with the goal of having a minimum viable product (MVP) working in time to support preparations for an upcoming deal that would enable the client to break into a new market.
DataArt and the client analyzed the existing actuarial workflow and concluded that they could simplify and automate about 90% of the time-consuming and resource intensive actuarial processes.
The Approach
The client engaged DataArt on a T&M basis, trusting the design and development team to rapidly learn through its Agile process. The team would work in two-week sprints to iteratively design, deliver, and refine highest value requirements through:
User-Centered Design
Actuaries closely collaborated with DataArt’s designers to iteratively develop a simple web interface that enabled actuaries to easily input and view data instead of having to comb through extensive spreadsheets. By providing early user feedback on initial prototypes, actuaries also enabled the designers to:
- Maximize usability
- Minimize rework by incorporating key improvements before React developers began programming
Strategic Automation
The client also worked with DataArt to prioritize processes that would add the highest value.
- Having identified data input as a particularly time-consuming process, DataArt created API-based integrations so that actuaries could quickly and securely access and store both external and internal data.
- The team also harnessed Excel’s calculation power to automate repetitive tasks so that actuaries could efficiently validate models and easily run hundreds of sensitivity tests simultaneously.
- Maximized performance for the most complex and demanding market scenarios
- Tighter integration with market surveillance for improved regulatory compliance
- Lower TCO due to improved automation and monitoring
- Improved customer satisfaction
The Outcomes
Completed MVP in Time to Help secure a Strategically important deal
Dramatically increased efficiency
By enabling early analysis of key data to minimize risk and optimize pricing
Boosted performance
By accelerating validation of complex financial models
Looking Ahead
DataArt and the client established a flexible, long-term partnership that supports further improvements to the platform:
- With further automation, actuaries will soon be able to complete analyses for a deal in a matter of hours rather than months. Such increased efficiency will enable the actuarial team to take on smaller deals while still realizing a significant profit.
- The platform will also expand to cover a wide variety of deal types, enabling the client to become a pioneer in new markets.
- Designed from the outset with cloud readiness in mind, the platform will soon migrate to cloud services allowing seamless scaling to meet the resulting expansion in deal flow.
