PathWise platform is 'hundreds of times faster' than legacy
systems
CHICAGO,
May 15, 2017 /CNW/ - Aon
Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor
of Aon plc (NYSE: AON), today announces the launch of its
PathWise® Solutions Group IFRS
17(1) business solutions package - an integrated
enterprise High Performance Computing (HPC) business platform for
this important emerging financial reporting framework. The platform
has been adopted for IFRS 17 purposes by Kyobo Life Insurance Co,
Ltd., one of the three largest life insurance companies in
South Korea.
(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/510934/Peter_M__Phillips_PathWise.jpg )
PathWise allows businesses to model assets, liabilities, and
scenario generators at the same time, thereby providing a complete
solution for the managing and reporting of complex financial and
biometric risks. The award-winning HPC
software[2] runs on Graphics Processing Units
(GPUs), giving it a speed advantage over other legacy systems which
run on Central Processing Units (CPUs), for all the new
calculations required under the IFRS 17 standard.
In addition, unlike many legacy systems all logic and
calculations are completely transparent, making PathWise a highly
flexible platform which comes with exhaustive audit trails and
controls, and which is 'big data' ready out of the box, to help
manage all the new assumptions and data required under IFRS 17.
Peter M. Phillips, President and
CEO of PathWise Solutions Group, said: "Delivering value and
investing in analytics is a core working principle at Aon Benfield.
PathWise, with all these unique advantages, has become a
fast-growing global business."
Mr. Phillips added: "The platform was the first of its kind in
the insurance industry. Having been recently licensed by Kyobo
Life, PathWise is enabling Kyobo to achieve significant gains in
the speed and efficiency of its financial reporting, risk
management processes, new product development and variable product
hedging activities."
PathWise is replacing Kyobo's existing reserve valuation tool
with an end-to-end fully automated system that handles inforce
conversion, assumption transformation, scenario generation,
stochastic-on stochastic calculations and financial report
generation.
The new IFRS 17 accounting standard for insurance contracts
requires companies to significantly enhance their valuation systems
and processes; specifically in areas such as data management, model
management, and computational power for actuarial and asset and
liability projections.
Eric Andersen, Chief Executive
Officer of Aon Benfield, commented: "Peter has taken PathWise from
its infancy to a tool that is now utilised by the some of the
largest life insurers in the world. Under his leadership, he and
his experienced global team have ensured the product has continued
to evolve, as highlighted in the IFRS 17 capability, and in doing
so, PathWise has gone from strength-to-strength. I look forward to
working closely with Peter in the development of this
platform."
Mr. Phillips said: "It has been our pleasure to partner with
Kyobo Life to develop the insurance industry's first IFRS 17
platform. Kyobo recognized the importance of properly managing its
risks under IFRS 17, and required a quickly deployable,
customizable and comprehensive integrated business platform with
very strong audit controls. PathWise provides a single,
cost-effective scalable solution that meets all of Kyobo Life's
risk management standards, satisfies the firm's financial and
regulatory reporting needs, and enhances its asset liability
management capabilities."
Kyobo Life's entire inforce data has been stored and queried in
PathWise Data Warehouse, while PathWise Economic Scenarios
Generator has been calibrated to South
Korea market data and generates scenarios on the fly.
Bae Woo Soon, Chief Actuary at
Kyobo Life, said: "PathWise has greatly reduced the requirement for
manual operations, while improving accuracy and efficiency. Prior
to implementing PathWise as our company-wide IFRS 17 actuarial
system, we relied on multiple solutions to support our financial
reporting processes. Using PathWise, we have been consolidating
these components into a single controlled system, resulting in huge
gains in speed and efficiency for the models that have been
migrated. In fact, the PathWise platform proved hundreds of times
faster than our legacy CPU solution for valuing traditional blocks
of business, reduced variable block valuation run times from 18
hours to less than two hours compared to our legacy GPU based
solution, and consolidated more than 200 products into three
concise models. We now have the aim of eventually transferring all
our products onto PathWise."
PathWise allows for easy maintenance and enhanced model
governance, and Kyobo Life employees fully own the transparent
model and reporting logic, which promotes knowledge transfer and
technical development among staff members and among different
groups inside of companies.
Developed by the PathWise Solutions Group (PSG) in Toronto, the PathWise platform is an
integrated GPU-based business solution for life insurance products,
and supports new product development, financial and regulatory
reporting, enterprise risk management activities, hedge program
management and reporting activities.
About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global professional
services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and
health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower
results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to
deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance.
For further information on our capabilities and to learn how we
empower results for clients, please
visit: http://aon.mediaroom.com.
Notes to Editors:
IFRS 17[1] - is a
forthcoming International Financial Reporting
Standard that is anticipated to be released in the first
half of 2017. It is intended to replace IFRS 4 on accounting for
insurance contracts and has an expected effective date of
1 January 2021.
The award-winning HPC
software(2) - 3rd IDC HPC
Innovation & ROI Award Winners Announced at ISC 2012 - for
Outstanding Application of HPC Computing for Business &
Scientific Achievements.
Follow Aon on
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aon_plc
For information on Aon plc. and to sign-up for news
alerts: http://aon.mediaroom.com.
SOURCE Aon plc