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.

Milliman's Arius Enterprise was developed through close work with Microsoft engineers using the latter's Azure platform and is intended to reimagine and transform the reserving process for property and casualty (P&C) insurers by adding new analytical and reporting capabilities.

Clients have seen their routine reserving processes reduced by hundreds of hours per year, while at the same time improving their level of analysis and rigour. Last year, one US P&C insurer used Arius Enterprise's cloud-based data management, process automation, and analysis templates to reduce or eliminate most of the manual steps required to get each quarterly process started, cutting the quarterly start-up process from 100 days down to 10 to 12 days.

Milliman says the system provides one of the industry's most comprehensive reserve analysis tools, as well as reporting and visualisation solutions and governance over data and processes.

"Well-designed cloud solutions allow individual analysts—and entire teams—to be more efficient, even while working remotely," says Ken Scalf, Milliman principal and leader of the Arius team. "Users can directly access data, services, and back-end automation capabilities securely from their remote computers without having to connect through slow remote desktop computers or work through VPN connections."