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Insurance business behaves differently than regular business activity. Policies are issued for varying coverage periods, policy conditions and rates can subsequently be changed by midterm endorsements, claims are reported in delays, claims reserves are set and adjusted over time and finally claim payments are made at even later dates.
These time dependencies affect the way insurance business is reported and analyzed and the way an information solution for insurance has to be structured.
The following features built into InsFocus' business intelligence system provide insurance executives and professionals with the full spectrum of data reporting and analysis functionality required to effectively manage their business:
FEATURES INCLUDE:
InsFocus includes metrics profitability indicators such as loss ratio, loss frequency, burning cost, risk cost per policy – all on gross, reinsurance, and net basis. These built-in KPI's provide advanced reporting and analysis capabilities out of the box.
InsFocus manages insurance time dependencies within its data model and calculation methods. It enables analyzing insurance information from different time perspectives, providing the framework of analysis and reporting to marketing executives, underwriters, claims managers, reinsurance managers, actuaries, and accountants.
The system provides operational reporting, financial accounting analysis, policy inception (underwriting year statistics), accident/pro-rata (actuarial analysis), and snapshot reports (for reinsurance excess of loss rating). Each time base perspective alters the way measurements are calculated, and the system supports inter-dependencies between them.
Insurance is not just about premiums and claims cash flows. Companies need to monitor their exposure to risk whether unit based or sum insured based. InsFocus provides insurers with pre-built calculation methods and measurements to analyze and monitor their exposures to underwriting risk on gross, reinsurance ceded and retained basis.
The majority of insurance products are made up of "sections" or "coverages" representing either different insurance coverages, insured objects or a combination of both. InsFocus' data model and query building functionality provide a built-in answer enabling seamless analysis along both insurance "products" and "lines", providing the company's underwriters with invaluable insight into their business behavior.
Unlike conventional BI tools, InsFocus enables viewing of different risk parameters for each insurance product (e.g. vehicle type and driver age for motor vehicle insurance, building type and floor for home insurance, occupation and health status for health and accident insurance). These views provide insurance product pricing information at the underwriter's fingertips, saving days and weeks of data analysis required using traditional analysis methods.
The number of risk parameters defined per product is unlimited and performance load is linear, unlike some conventional data architecture types where number of dimensions is limited by exponential performance load.
The system includes two powerful built-in features which are required by almost any insurance entity. Multi-currency information management that enables both consolidation of company information to base currency reporting as well as detail of original currency transactions. The mechanism supports multiple currency conversion rates that may be required under different accounting standards. Seamless Index Adjusted reporting is especially useful for preparing historic long tail claim statistics used for design and pricing of excess of loss protections for motor and liability lines. The system supports multiple index bases and can be customized to specific territorial index standards.
The system stores information at individual transaction granularity thus users can view any report exactly as it appeared on a particular date. Insurance professionals can review underwriting decisions with the same data as when the decisions were made, and financial results can be analyzed at their effective date.
InsFocus data integration process transforms raw policy data to an optimized insurance data warehouse structure enabling fast earned and unearned calculations at any selected date. Calculations are defined for each relevant time base providing precise unearned reserve or earned premium calculations at any information level from an individual policy coverage section up to the whole organization.
This feature provides executives with the ability to monitor their portfolio profitability on daily basis and detect trends ahead of time.
InsFocus fully supports asymmetric organizational structures and multiple hierarchy chains. It also provides "as-is" and "as-if" views when organizational structure changes. This ensures correct reporting of distribution channel sales and profitability performance including correction of reorganization distortions.
Policies and premiums up for renewal are grouped by their renewal date. The system provides renewal lists, analysis of lapses and renewal rates comparison. These functionalities highlight insurance product characteristics, distribution channel behavior and also provide active marketing and sales support.
InsFocus captures full claims information including outstanding claim reserves, claim payments, payment components, event codes and perils, deductibles and all relevant claim activity dates. The system's built-in metrics provide claims managers with the full spectrum of information required to monitor claims activity and effectively manage it.
Information available takes into account inter-dependency of dates, enabling analysis views of opened, closed and re-opened claims by payment, occurrence, reporting and policy dates breaking down payments into indemnity, expenses and subrogations.
As described further on, InsFocus' calculation mechanism is based on re-usable calculation templates. Such templates are available for allocation of IBNR reserves calculated by the company's actuary on total company portfolio down to individual policy and claim level. This mechanism which needs to be tailor fitted to each individual company's claims reserving practice provides executives with the tool to drill down from a companywide profit-loss analysis down to agency, product, geographical area or even individual client level.
Claims reserve analysis is supported by two powerful features that provide further insight into reserving. A built-in triangulation statistics mechanism provides a view comparing any time-base to any dependant time-base. For example, incurred claims on financial year basis can be compared to accident year basis creating the classic triangulation statistics. Using a built-in Chain-Ladder extrapolation mechanism, the company's actuary can get a first estimate of the IBNR reserve required for a particular line of business or claim type. The system's Claim-Status-Filter provides out-of-the-box Runoff Statistics, where historic reserves can be compared to actual values at which claims were finalized. This tool can also be used for auditing outstanding claims estimates lists at closure of financial statements.