InsuranceERM Annual Awards 2020 - Americas

Moody's Analytics AXIS solution has grown steadily in North America over 30 years and 2019 was no exception, reflecting the strength of the company's analytics team in software design and development.

At the core of the innovation is the development of a data lake environment, built on Hadoop open-source software and scaled utilising Amazon Web Services infrastructure.

The award for alternative capital dealmaker goes to an individual this year.

Judges praised Nodal as a "great example" of the power of data analytics.

Metabiota's team has been working on pandemic risk mitigation for over a decade, with a focus on building out data, analytic, and modelling tools over the past five years.

Ron Schuler, head actuary for property & casualty broking for North America at Willis Towers Watson (WTW), has made a long and outstanding contribution to the insurance industry.

Nick Silitch, chief risk officer (CRO) at Prudential Financial, has displayed excellence both in times of crisis and in calmer periods when he has spearheaded the company's enterprise risk management programme.

Actuaries are undoubtedly swamped with data and scenario analysis and anything that can be used to streamline and add efficiency to the end-to-end reserve analysis process is welcomed.

Verisk's end-to-end cyber risk solution is built on an industry database that contains policy information on more than 12 million businesses.

Willis Towers Watson's DataValidator wins the award for data solution of the year for its intuitive application, comprehensive reporting features and extensive functionality across all types of source data.

InsuranceERM's judges said the product showed its strengths in providing automation, governance and controls, along with the orchestration of multiple systems, across complex projects and processes.

Moody's Analytics has focused on building robust, transparent, and quantitatively assessed strategic asset allocations and investment strategies that are well understood and scrutinised in the context of a company's liability profiles.

Conning has maintained service throughout the pandemic conducting some 3,000 Microsoft Teams calls/conferences and more than 400 Skype calls by the end of March 2020 alone.

When it comes to helping insurers manage the Long Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) to US GAAP, FIS's response has been both timely and impressive.

KPMG has helped a number of insurance clients over the last 18 months in their ERM journeys - from providing observations and recommendations on current ERM programmes, to developing risk management for individual needs.

As a group, they have garnered respect for thought-leadership. Most recently, as the Covid-19 pandemic started to engulf the US, the team published a white paper articulating how they were seeing companies respond from an ERM perspective, remaining up on the curve.

Stress testing and scenario analysis serve as a crucial complement to stochastic modelling and are required or strongly encouraged by important regulatory regimes such as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

ViClarity won this year's best operational risk solution because it allows insurers to track and manage all of their audit, risk and compliance in one system.

Zhou was promoted to senior vice president at Third Point Re (USA) last May after being appointed actuarial director the previous February, and now leads the company's six actuaries in the US, two of whom are new hires he recruited from university programmes.

Milica Aksic has risen through the ranks of claims handling via numerous long-term assignments in both Zurich and London.