Insurers may have been quite wedded to traditional reserving processes in the past, but all that is all changing now, according to Shil Patel, Psicle director at Dynamo Analytics – the winner of this year's best reserving solution.

Patel says the actuarial and software consultancy has witnessed "more openness" by insurers to changing their reserving processes. Part of this is due to IFRS 17, the new accounting standard for insurance contracts, which has triggered "finance and actuarial transformation".

Psicle is Dynamo Analytics' actuarial and financial modelling platform. One of the key capabilities of Psicle is its triangle reserving, which aims to transform the way clients run their reserving processes. This follows clients' feedback that existing reserving technologies had not developed fast enough to keep up with growing demands.

Its flagship Psicle client is a large Australian group that has adopted it for reserving and IFRS 17 across multiple territories. Other Psicle reserving clients are a mixture of UK, Nordic and South Africa domiciled insurers across personal and commercial lines.

Given the large amount of touch points that Psicle has with different processes, the judges praised the way the platform can offer a true process transformation with real benefits such as reduced reporting timelines.
InsuranceERM's judging panel also liked the ease of integration and simplicity of design offered by Psicle.

Patel says: "Our philosophy to reserving is a top-down approach where actuaries and teams can set assumptions in advance, rather than in the heat of the moment."

Asked about plans for 2020, he says Dynamo Analytics is starting to think more about offering algorithms to help make actuarial judgements more automated.

Patel says the firm will also work on a standard this year on how IFRS 17 models should be run as part of the reserving process.