Adrian Ericsson, group managing director of Dynamo Analytics, explains how the financial software provider's technology platform, Psicle, can optimise insurers' actuarial processes. Ericsson also discusses the provider's ambitions in the US
What is Dynamo's industrialisation philosophy?
Industrialisation means building fast, robust modelling processes so experts can spend their time on high value activities that materially impact the bottom line.
In the current environment, we see highly skilled and expensive people performing business critical calculations in fragile systems. Too often, these experts spend the majority of their time trying to operate a fragmented process, leaving little time to do the things they are good at, like conducting scenario analysis, understanding implications, or sharing insights across the organisation.
We leverage our technology platform, Psicle, to transform end-to-end financial and actuarial processes. Psicle processes run orders at a faster magnitude, they are robust, and they are well governed. The technology supports experts in making the easier judgement calls quickly, so they can spend much more of their time on high value activities.
As a result, business leaders can make better, faster decisions, using model outputs they trust.
What are your ambitions for Dynamo, and in particular for your footprint in the US and Americas?
Our ambition is to help more insurance carriers and allied businesses transform their business-critical processes and unlock the power of their experts.
Discussions we've had with our US and Bermudan clients, and at industry events, show our philosophy really resonates here. Many carriers are relying on fragile systems and processes, and this is exposing them not only to significant operational risk, but also to opportunity costs, of experts spending their time grappling with sub-optimal processes, and business risks of failing to spot trends quickly or having to make decisions without ample scenario analysis.
Dynamo has a reputation for service, a unique working culture, and an incredible team of actuarial consultants, software developers and data engineers. I'm proud that we've brought that to the US market. We're hugely honoured to receive the Actuarial Consultancy of the Year award and we're excited to expand our US and Americas footprint year on year, by delivering real value to the market.
InsuranceERM readers can expect to see us at US conferences over the next six months and into 2025.
How does Psicle respond to the evolving expectations of insurers, and how does technology influence Dynamo's approach?
Insurers' expectations of their modelling capabilities will continue to rise. Across markets, there is a requirement for greater modelling complexity, without sacrificing speed, transparency or governance. Teams are being squeezed on all fronts, and they aren't able to face the challenge with their current technology stack.
This leads to demand for platforms like Psicle, which has powerful out-of-the-box modules, as well as a flexible calculation engine for clients to build highly bespoke solutions. With Psicle, our clients can streamline their business-critical calculations and apply robust governance structures over the build, maintenance and running of their modelling processes.
We invest significantly in research and development, exploring how modern technology can support financial and actuarial teams, and the experts within these teams, to build better processes. This includes the application of modern algorithms, embedding machine learning and AI into the Psicle process. We're also thinking a lot about how best to combine human judgement with artificially generated judgement, to produce reliable results – we call this "cyborging".
What initiatives and developments do you have planned and how will these enhance your offering to insurers?
Psicle is already a leading platform for the automated production of complex, business-critical, financial results. Reserving, capital and solvency, and financial reporting are our most prominent offerings, but we also have clients using Psicle for financial planning, life valuations, pricing and portfolio management. Our soon to be released Psicle Web is a big development for our clients. The web view will enable experts to share live, interactive results dashboards across their organisation, helping their modelling to become a cornerstone of business decision making.
The launch of Psicle Web evidences our commitment to continually push the boundaries of Psicle, to expand our clients' modelling and process capabilities.
