User levels

In this version, we introduce a new concept named User levels. This feature broadens the reach of InsFocus and allows the company to define different access levels to different users. There are now three user levels in the system:

• Full Users – Those are the power users in the company, professionals who create reports, change report definitions, save reports in public or private libraries and perform advanced analytics.
• View Users – These users can only open reports from the public library and view their real-time results. This level of users may be appropriate for the mass of business users whom the company does not wish to provide with report editing functionalities.
• Schedule Recipients – These are users that can only receive scheduled reports by email. They cannot connect to the system and do not have it installed. This level is suitable to staff users or agents for whom the company wants to provide pre-defined content on a “push” basis.

User role definitions can be further controlled using the system’s existing Roles definition mechanism.

Report scheduling enhancements

The report schedule mechanism has been greatly enhanced with new features;

• Multiple users – Power users having the required privileges can schedule the same report to many users. Each user will receive the report that is run under its own credentials. Thus a power user can create one report template for mailing to branch managers and each recipient will see the report showing their information.
• Recovery after ETL finishes – Users might schedule reports to run at times when an ETL process is running. In this case the reports are kept pending and once the ETL process finishes, those reports are run and sent to the user.
• Report schedule editing – Users can edit report schedule definitions including altering run times, recipients and notes.

Reporting in different currency

InsFocus has sophisticated multi-currency support. Each transaction is kept in the data warehouse in the company’s base currency, allowing for uniform reporting, while keeping the option of conversion to the original transaction currency.

We now added a feature that enables reporting in a different currency using any pre-defined currency conversion scheme. This is very helpful where the company needs to report in different currencies than its base currency, such as reporting to reinsurers in US Dollars. Conversion can be defined based on daily rate, end of month , mid quarter, or any other rate of exchange required.

Revamped system center users management

For version 1.94 we introduce a revamped users management screen in the system center.

This new screen adds users’ management capabilities for better and easier administration:

• Filter row allows filtering on all columns for long user lists
• Sorting by each users’ properties
• Batch updating of users properties
• Duplicate button for creating a user similar to another
• Last access column helps quickly identify inactive users
• Administrators now have the ability to choose “User must change password at next login”

Other improvements

1.94 contains many more useful features, amongst them:

• Risk codes selective syncing – This feature is useful in cases where risk codes contain very long value lists (for example, there can be thousands of car models). To enable easy filtering on those risk codes, users can now use an auto-complete box to select values.
• Half-year triangulation – Triangulation is an advanced actuarial calculation unique to InsFocus. It allows comparing one time axis to another in order to compose development statistics and extrapolate data using Chain-Ladder statistics. This feature has now been improved to enable analysis of non-symmetric time axes (e.g. accident years vs. development quarters) and to create analysis based on half-yearly development periods (in addition to years, quarters, months).
• Invert time axis order – A new control that allows setting time axes display order – from recent to past or the other way around.
• Notes in Excel connector – Dynamic data received in Excel connector can now include report header and notes.
• Dynamic CSV export – This new feature requested by insurers may be useful for automatic processes that need to receive data from InsFocus. Using this mechanism, any SOA enabled application can query InsFocus BI and receive back report results in CSV (in addition to HTML that was available before).
• Valid date in title bar – In order to enhance visibility of report’s valid date, it is now embedded in the report title bar.
• Repeat N periods – InsFocus’ time definitions mechanism is very flexible and allows defining any report period, and repeating this period back N years, quarters, etc. The new version adds the ability to repeat N periods as defined, meaning you can dynamically define a report, for example, for 4 months, then the previous 4 months and so on.

For further inquiries on the new version and its new features, visit www.insfocus.com or contact us at info@insfocus.com.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan@insfocus.com

Today we released InsFocus BI version 1.93.

The new release has a set of important improvements, many of them came as direct feedback from our clients. We put a lot of effort into making our insurance-specific data model and business intelligence platform stronger and more flexible.

IF function in calculated items

Creating calculated items in InsFocus has been greatly enhanced by the ability to use logical expressions and the IF function. The new calculated items edit form now looks like this:

Filter by tab

The filter mechanism is now much more sophisticated while used with tabs. When defining a filter on a report with tabs, we get the following dialog:

This allows:

• Applying the same filter on all tabs.
• Applying the filter only on the selected tab.
• Applying the filter on the selected tab, and then filtering all other tabs by the rows filtered in the selected tab.

Distribution column

A distribution column can now be added with a single click to a report:

Flexible “last” period definition

When setting report time periods, the system enables defining different ending dates as seen in the example below.

If today’s valid date is 15^th December, 2010:

• Year to date – 1/1/2010 – 15/12/2010
• Year to Quarter – 1/1/2010 – 30/9/2010
• Year to Month – 1/1/2010 – 30/11/2010
• Full Year – 1/1/2009 – 31/12/2009

Valid date – time base relationships

The notion of “valid date” in the system used to mean accounting date. We filtered every report by this valid date, allowing time rollback, and not displaying “future” inception policies by default.

This was not very suitable for “operation” time base, in which tracking is of daily actions – sales, claims opened, etc. In this time base, people wanted to see all data, including “future” data – when measuring agent sales, it is not very important if the policies sold have gone into the accounting books or not.

In the new version, the meaning of the “valid” date changes by time base; thus operational reports show all activity by default. When doing time rollback on operational reports, data will show up to the operation date chosen, and not accounting date chosen. This will simplify report definition and make it more intuitive to users.

New renewal items

• One of the greatest features of the system is the ability to dynamically measure renewals and lapses. We made this even better in this version by adding more items to the generic model and tweaking the current items. Renewal items now include:
• Policies up for renewal up to report’s valid date
• Policies for renewal for the whole report period (even after valid date)
• Lapses, renewals, lapse %, renewals %.
• Annualized premiums for renewal, renewed.
• Annualized premium renewal difference (of renewed policies).
• Annualized premium lapsed.
• Sums insured for renewal, renewed.
• Sums insured renewal difference (of renewed policies).

The system can now generate reports measuring renewal and lapse ratios, can generate list reports of policies for renewal and policies renewed and can compare premiums and rates changes at renewal.

Other changes

• Optimization in the query mechanism makes running long list reports a lot faster.
• Empty reports can be excluded from report schedule, so user will get alerts only when a report has data (e.g. send me daily all claims above X).
• Valid date in time periods header (@) is now optional.

For further inquiries on the new version and its new features, visit www.insfocus.com or contact us at info@insfocus.com.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan@insfocus.com

We are happy to announce the release of a new version of InsFocus BI, version 1.92. The new version will be shipped by the end of the month, and will further enhance the analytics and reporting abilities of our business intelligence solution.

Version 1.92 has two major additions. The first one, Banding, is an exciting new feature allowing a whole different style of reports, such as showing figures by agent’s loss ratios, by policies’ sums insured, by client’s year of birth, and all with fast, simple to define, dynamic bands. The second addition, Query Builder tables editor, is an advanced Javascript editor for the query definitions, and should facilitate the work of implementing InsFocus BI.

Bands (profiling)

We call “banding” the process of taking data and splitting it by dynamically created bands. This can be simple data, such as an insured’s age, or complex data, such as loss-frequency. Banding is heavily used in insurance, where reports such as risk profiling, client segmentation and so are needed on a regular basis.

• Create bands on:
  • Dimension attributes (e.g. client year of birth, policy #)
  • Risk parameters (e.g. engine size, year of manufacturing, floor number)
  • Any item (e.g. loss-frequency, sum insured, number of policies)
• Dynamically define band ranges
• Display multiple bands in a report on X, Y or Z axes
• Drill-down into any band to further explore underlying data.

System Center has Query Builder Table Editing

The transition from our previous tool, the Admin Util, to the new System Center, is complete with the introduction of the Query Builder table editor. The editor allows editing all Query Builder XML definition tables.

• Fully HTML-Javascript editor working in all browsers
• Has special editors for columns linked to other tables and other data types
• Displays meta-data to ease editing of tables
• Allows filtering and paging

Small changes

• Ability to add additional attributes of dimensions (e.g. client phone #) even when no items axis is there or in multi-dimension reports
• Snapshot with repeat functionality at end of month/quarter
• Comparison in operation time base works correctly in partial periods also when “show future data” is checked
• Snapshot time base can be shown with auxiliary time bases (e.g. policy inception)
• Valid dates are displayed in time period headers
• Drill-down from time period headers changes valid date according to header date

For further inquiries on the new version and its new features, visit our web-site or contact us at info@insfocus.com.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan_taiber@insfocus.com

Today we are happy to announce the release of InsFocus BI version 1.91.

The new version puts a great emphasis on communication infrastructures, enabling easy integration with other services, various external connectors to BI data and report scheduling, all enabling users to be closer to the BI data they require.

REST communication

InsFocus BI is now fully RESTful, providing much easier SOA and new ways to integrate BI capabilities into the different company’s applications and services;

• Fully RESTful interface (using GET, POST, PUT and DELETE)
• Most methods use GET and can be tested from any browser
• Communication is based on simple basic authentication with SSL encryption
• Response format is either XML or JSON
• Most important methods, such as running queries or getting user’s report list, support returning results in HTML
• Many methods which return large results also support returning compressed byte streams, for fast communication

New external connectors

Based on the previous Excel connector, InsFocus BI now has new ways to connect to the BI server and run queries;

• Return a query as internal InsFocus object or as HTML table
• Run a query by parameters or run a report stored in server’s libraries
• Pass query parameters either as structured XML or as part of the query URL
• Connect from any browser or from Excel
• Return HTML table with or without CSS formatting

Report scheduler

Utilizing the new communications and connectors, InsFocus BI now has a report scheduler that is able to send report results by mail and SMS;

• Schedule reports to run daily, weekly or monthly
• Schedule reports to run one or more times per day
• Schedule reports saved in library or queries not even saved
• Send results by template-based, formatted, HTML mail
• Save results to HTML files
• Send results by SMS directly to executive’s cell phones

For further inquiries on the new version and its new features, visit our web-site or contact us at info@insfocus.com.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan_taiber@insfocus.com

• Support for weeks, according to ISO week
• Support for day-of-week
• Flexible time periods for reporting many time periods in one analysis (e.g. last month, last month last year, last year, previous year, etc.)
• User restriction groups for items (measurements) and dimensions
• Many more smaller additions that make day-to-day analysis better.

For further inquiries on the new version and its new features, visit our web-site or contact us at info@insfocus.com.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan_taiber@insfocus.com

• Batch operations – running a report for a set of organizational members (e.g. running a profitability report for all agents and exporting the results to different PDF files)
• Dynamic filtering – item selection, dimension selection, organizational member selection – all can now be dynamically filtered for easy finding (so when looking for, say, earned premiums, just start typing ‘prem’ and don’t look in the tree anymore).
• Dynamic dimensions – dimensions that have a lot of members (e.g. client, policy) can now be filtered using a dynamic auto-complete filter that brings a list of the first 10 members found.
• Premium collection added to generic insurance model.

Hanan Taiber
CTO, InsFocus Systems
hanan_taiber@insfocus.com

We will use this blog to publish all sorts of InsFocus news. The posts will include:

• Business announcements
• New features and technologies
• Version releases
• New parnters
• Project studies and summaries

We truly hope you find those postings useful,

The InsFocus Team.