RPC Consulting: Fortune favours the brave in insurance technology
Alun Marriott, managing partner at actuarial technology firm, RPC Consulting (RPCC), explains how the business is embracing technology to help re/insurers stay ahead
What are the benefits of RPCC’s Tyche platform?
RPCC’s actuarial and financial modelling platform, Tyche, has always been about making it easy for users to respond: respond to clients, regulators and investors but also responding to the ‘what if’ scenarios that managers need to explore. Speed, flexibility, integration and ease of use are key when you must get answers quickly - whether pricing a deal, reporting results, modelling capital or working out the optimal reinsurance spend.
We empower actuaries and risk professionals working across non-life and life insurance firms to do the modelling themselves, speeding up the turnaround.
For example, one of our recent developments launched this year is Tyche Hive. Tyche Hive allows users to distribute models across a pool of machines thus improving runtime and cost efficiencies. However, Tyche Hive is not just about distributing calculations but truly using a grid as though it were a single machine, and having access to values within and across scenarios. This technology is accessible to the actuarial user – without recourse to specialist IT expertise.
How is RPCC embracing technology to keep re/insurers ahead?
One of the challenges firms experience when embracing new technology are the time and costs incurred in transitioning from legacy systems.
For the life sector, we have created a new technology that takes an Excel version of a single policy calculation and converts it into a complete working Tyche model in a matter of minutes meaning transition costs fall significantly.
Another development out this year is our Nemesis engine. Nemesis offers a further transformational reduction in runtimes and memory use and enables Tyche to scale to ever larger and more granular models. We want our clients to have access to real-time risk data and complete the runs they want to complete, and not just those they have time for.
How are advances in cloud technology impacting the re/insurance sector?
The world is becoming ever more cloud-centric, but there are also non-cloud technologies like graphic processing units (GPUs) that insurers can take advantage of. Tyche Nemesis is aimed at supporting both.
We do see clients becoming more accepting of cloud technology. Software as a service (SaaS) is a hot topic with many of our clients seeking operational cost savings as improvements and understanding of data security issues have evolved.
Though it can still be politically hard for some insurers to embrace cloud tech, some firms have already migrated and some now only adopt cloud aware solutions from the outset.
What is RPCC’s business strategy over the next year?
Our business has grown rapidly and we’re delighted to see a strong pipeline in the year ahead. We have expanded into the US and Europe and see opportunities in other markets too.
We are also expanding our product line up. Working in conjunction with Partner Re, we created the Tyche Pricing System, a state of the art commercial lines pricing platform that leverages Tyche’s speed and modelling throughput.
We have also been working with Guy Carpenter to develop a dual inward / outward reinsurance optimiser that allows clients to jointly optimise their choice of inward and outward contracts in one go.
However, we haven’t forgotten our existing tools – for example we continue to invest in our capital modelling library suite (TCM) and have seen many syndicates, re(insurers), brokers and regulators move over to Tyche.
Strategically, we see Tyche as the one-stop-shop for the capital, pricing, reserving and modelling activities of any insurer. This is one reason why the likes of Aviva have chosen Tyche as the modelling platform across both their non-life and life units.
Alun Marriott
T: +44 203 060 6710
