InsuranceERM Annual Awards 2021 - Americas

Cloud technology solution of the year: Milliman

Milliman's Arius Enterprise wins the cloud technology solution for the second year running after continuing its successes in pushing sound solutions for insurers. 

Ken ScalfThe technology, designed with Microsoft, aims to help re-engineer all phases of the property and casualty reserve analysis process, adding efficiency and reliability throughout.

In 2020, the system's new Advanced Analytics module provided a platform on which sophisticated machine learning models can be built, with results incorporated directly into the reserving workflow. These tools take advantage of Azure machine learning to create new models using historical data and uncover additional insights for analysis.

A case study highlighting Milliman's expertise involved a major US P&C carrier that wanted to give their actuaries immediate and direct access to data at any level of detail that would help them best understand their business. Their Arius Enterprise claims database data quickly grew to well over 2bn records. With that volume of data, even highly optimised queries could take 20 minutes or more to return information necessary for analysis.

Milliman implemented Microsoft's new Azure Data Explorer as a solution to the challenge. The new Arius claims repository reduced query and aggregation time using the 2bn records from 20 minutes down to seconds. It now forms the basis for the system's efficient management of the vast repositories of information it holds.

Another major US insurer was concerned about potential volatility in their traditional case reserves for a specific coverage.  Milliman implemented the Advanced Analytics module in their Arius Enterprise system to provide additional information for these analyses.

InsuranceERM's judging panel praised Arius Enterprise for standing out from the crowd and providing strong case studies.

Ken Scalf, Milliman principal and leader of the Arius team, says: "What continues to amaze us is how the solution delivers new information that we never expected. The easy access to huge volumes of data, combined with powerful data visualisation tools and the latest machine learning capabilities, are providing analysts with fresh business insights with relatively little additional effort."