Insurer invests to better manage data assets, bringing trust to financial and risk reporting

With Solvency II deadlines fast approaching, Aegon Ireland has chosen data management and reporting technology from SAS UK & Ireland, the leader in business analytics, to not only satisfy regulatory requirements but also provide insights from data to help its business leaders make better decisions.

Aegon Ireland, part of the Aegon Group, has provided offshore investment solutions since 2002 and currently manages assets of over £4 billion for its 20,000 customers across the UK, Germany and France. Like many financial services organisations, it needs to comply with the Solvency II Directive that requires insurers to demonstrate they have enough capital to remain solvent and have effective risk management systems in place. While faced with an array of requirements under Solvency II, it is also an opportunity for insurers to invest in staff and technology with a long-term strategy that brings benefits to the business over and above compliance.

Tadhg Clandillon, Director of Reporting for Aegon Ireland, said: “We want to improve the processes employed right through the data life cycle – from source to report – so that we can provide reporting data more cost effectively whilst retaining robust standards that are transparent to all stakeholders. Opting to work with SAS on this project was a decision made easier by their ability to track data all the way from start to finish, report on that data in the standard formats and give us the ability to investigate our data to support business decisions.”

John Farrelly, SAS Regional Director, commented: “We’re delighted Aegon Ireland has decided to use SAS to improve the financial reporting process. Being able to trust the data you are reporting on is critical to any business, especially when you have regulatory stakeholders. In the information economy it’s crucial that businesses like Aegon Ireland are able to properly collect and analyse data that will help with new regulations and compliance while improving risk management decisions across the business.”

SAS® solutions deployed by Aegon Ireland:

• SAS Risk Management for Insurance implements the Solvency II standard model approach for calculating risk-based capital with a comprehensive solution for performing risk analysis and risk-based capital calculations. It is built on a robust data management and reporting platform that includes an insurance-specific data model for complex risk analytics.
• SAS Visual Analytics, which is part of SAS’ suite of high-performance analytics solutions, enables organisations to easily map out and understand analytic insights and share those with employees and customers across an organisation. It delivers rapid in-memory analysis and interactive dashboards for reporting in-depth data visualisation. System RequirementsSAS Marketing Automation is an open, Java-compliant solution with components installed on clients, a middle tier and an application server tier.Client applicationsSupported platforms
• SAS Data Management is an industry-leading solution built on a data quality platform that helps you improve, integrate and govern your data. No matter where data is stored – from legacy systems to Hadoop – SAS Data Management helps you access the data you need. It is also integrated, so all components – from data quality to data federation technology – are part of the same architecture.