Actuarial System Transitions: A Snap Poll for the Celent Executive Panel
Available Only for Members of the NA Celent Insurance Executive Panel
Abstract
Snap polls reflect questions posed by members of the Celent Executive Panel, a group of C level executives in the insurance industry. Questions for a snap poll come from one of the other members of the panel. This insurer was looking for insights how others have implemented actuarial systems.
18 insurers responded to this survey over the course of 7 days. Of the 18 respondents, only four provided responses to the questions. The others noted that either they outsource actuarial functions, utilize excel, have a homegrown solution, or haven’t replaced their system.
If you are an insurer and are interested in participating and receiving these snap polls, please email kcarnahan@celent.com to verify eligibility.
The question that was posed was:
Background:
The insurer is looking at their actuarial systems.They’d like to understand which migration practices were the most successful, how long it took, how others are thinking about a cloud migration, and would like to understand how others are looking at some of the compliance aspects of a migration like this.
Questions:
Have you replaced your actuarial systems in the last five years? If so,
- What system did you replace? And what did you replace it with?
- How did you approach the migration – big bang lift and shift? breaking it up and moving over multiple years?
- How long did it take?
- Where were the resources mostly utilized? On the IT side or on the Actuarial side for testing and process transition?
- How would you characterize the migration? Easy, hard, neither easy nor hard.
- Did the migration come in: on time? On budget? On scope?
Did you move it to the cloud?
- Were other sorts of technologies included in the actuarial cloud migration? (which ones)
- Clearly, capabilities in cloud are greater. We have the ability to model much faster and more frequently. Did you see benefits from these greater capabilities?
- How did you balance the transition from fixed to variable resources?
We see that challenges may be faced with data retention, Historically, we’ve saved the original artifacts as an audit/regulatory requirement. But we’re now consider the notion of storing copies in the cloud as we’ll have the ability to quickly recreate the original artifacts. How did your firm think about this issue?
Do you have any suggestions on how to balance the transition with existing priorities, regulatory needs, etc