With new SAS offering, insurers improve risk analysis, capital calculations

The financial crisis, economic downturn and soft global market have insurers clamouring to improve transparency and financial performance. To offer organisation-wide risk management capabilities, SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, introduces SAS Risk Management for Insurance, a comprehensive solution for risk analysis and risk-based capital calculation.

The SAS data management and reporting platform, which includes an insurance-specific data model, helps life and P&C insurance companies implement the Solvency II standard model for calculating risk-based capital.

The SAS Business Analytics Framework also enables insurers to support the internal model approach for risk analysis - an added business benefit. The solution helps provide senior management with greater understanding of the company's risk and financial condition.

“Solvency II and other regulatory requirements are increasing the adoption of risk management solutions within insurance carriers,” said Karen Pauli, Research Director, TowerGroup. “Behind these initiatives is an increased focus on data management, especially data quality, analytics, including stress testing, and reporting.”

SAS Risk Management for Insurance reduces volatility by helping insurers understand the impact of economic factors on the balance sheet. It ensures solvency by stress testing the insurer's assets and liabilities from sudden, dramatic changes in market conditions. With SAS, insurers can perform more accurate risk analysis, employing an enterprise data warehouse that offers more comprehensive data management. Greater competitive advantage results from better risk-based business decisions. SAS also helps lower total cost of ownership with a single, extendible solution that provides comprehensive features and can integrate easily with third-party risk software.

“The financial crisis and updated regulatory requirements taught insurers that complex risk management requires more advanced, integrated and scalable solutions,” said Andr'e Zitzke, Head of Risk Practice at SAS South Africa. “SAS Risk Management for Insurance supports the evolving risk requirements of insurers today and in the future.”

SAS Risk Management for Insurance features an insurance-specific data model that includes pre-built data management capabilities, and risk analytical and reporting functionality. Other elements include:

SAS Market Risk Management for Insurance - helps risk analysts configure and calculate market value of financial instruments and assets such as bonds, equity, derivatives, swaps and property.

SAS Underwriting Risk Management for Life Insurance - helps analysts blend actuarial and financial techniques to evaluate complex life insurance liabilities and supports the ability to configure a valuation framework and project cash flows for individual life insurance products, including term, annuity, and whole of life and endowment products.

SAS Underwriting Risk Management for P&C Insurance - helps analysts blend actuarial and financial techniques to value P&C insurance liabilities on both an accident and underwriting year basis.

SAS Firmwide Risk Management for Insurance - aggregates risk across the enterprise and calculates the quantitative measures required for Solvency II.