Winning risk team of the year brings great prestige because it is awarded by InsuranceERM's independent panel of over 40 chief risk officers.

Phoenix Group scoops this year's accolade for three successful and measurable achievements in 2021.

First, the UK life insurer's group risk team successfully implemented the Phoenix risk management framework (RMF) to the newly acquired ReAssure business.

Phoenix completed the acquisition of closed life book consolidator from Swiss Re in July 2020.

Implementing Phoenix's RMF for the ReAssure business included the migration of over 1,000 risk and control data points onto the Phoenix risk management system, as well as training over 800 new employees.

Second, the judging panel was impressed with how the team designed and implemented a Group Risk organisational structure and business engagement model that incorporated the ReAssure risk team and had the capabilities to support Phoenix's increasing activity in the open life markets.

A third achievement was the way Phoenix's Group Risk team supported the harmonisation of the Standard Life and Phoenix Life internal models.

Phoenix had gained UK regulatory approval to merge its internal model with that of Standard Life, the life firm it acquired in 2018.

This made it the first European insurer to gain regulatory approval for combining approved models.

In total, over 70 individual validation reports were produced by the Group Risk team as a part of an independent review of over 100 methodology proposals to support the pre-application and full application delivery.

Reviewing the methodology was just one aspect of the validation for the internal model merger. Much of the risk-based judgement came in interpreting and challenging the model outputs.

Here, Phoenix's Group Risk team provided an independent validation of six different solvency capital requirement valuations during the project, four of which were completed in a six-month period in 2021 as part of testing the model's operational readiness.

Phoenix says the new internal model better reflects the risk interactions between entities, provides better understanding of the overall risk profile in supporting key business decisions, and led to an estimated Solvency II surplus increase in the region of £400m ($543m).

Speaking to InsuranceERM about the achievements of its risk team, Phoenix Group's CRO Jonathan Pears says integrating ReAssure into the Phoenix RMF means there is one risk system and one common way of looking at risks across the organisation.

Pears says: "ReAssure had a more quantitative approach to some risk metrics than Phoenix, so one enhancement in our risk appetite framework from the integration has been to adopt a number of these to achieve a best-of-both approach to risk management."

"ReAssure also had a risk behaviours metric that we will use to bring a quantitative lens to our risk culture assessments".

In terms of bringing the respective risk teams together, Pears says: "We had around 80 colleagues in the ReAssure risk team and 100 in the Phoenix risk team at the point of ReAssure purchase. The integration process involved putting in one leadership team by end-2020 and then by summer 2021 fully integrating all of the teams."

He adds: "I sponsored the project, but its success is owed to the whole team for their determination in explaining and delivering against the design approach, particularly holding true to our core principle of being location agnostic."

Bringing the risk teams together has also involved adding new capabilities, such as in asset management, change management and supporting Phoenix's ambitions to originate new business as well as acquire closed books.

Pears says combining the risk teams goes beyond integrating processes. He says: "Although risk teams often do things differently, there is commonality in their core purpose of supporting and independently challenging the business, so we approached the integration with strong desire to learn from each other and not be entrenched in how things used to be done.

"Building the right risk function for both today and tomorrow was a major undertaking and needed both leadership strength and empathy in helping colleagues understand the need for change in the broader context of Phoenix's ambitions and the evolving risk environment."

He also notes the integration of the risk teams had to be done virtually since for most of the period the UK was in Covid-19 lockdown.

"While there are some disadvantages to [working virtually], there were some advantages in terms of the consistency of message and being able to reach everyone at once," Pears says.

"Even as we return to the office, we are continuing to do virtual townhall meetings in the company."

In terms of the internal model harmonisation, Pears says it was important to bring the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) along on the journey.

He comments: "We would acknowledge that we were in uncharted territory in trying to bring together two approved internal models, aiming to achieve an outcome that was better-than-the-best-of-both, so to some extent we were learning throughout the process. It is testament to the tireless effort put in by our risk, actuarial, finance, change and regulatory relationship teams, and the PRA themselves, that we achieved model approval."