The impact of technology on life financial modelling

The results of the survey confirmed what many throughout the industry are experiencing and allows participants to rank themselves and their results with those of their peers. Before going into the results, we would first like to emphasise every company is different, and if you haven’t already done so we suggest going through your specific situation compared to these results with your WTW consultant and assess the implications for you.

The message from the survey was clear:

• We're pleased to note that most insurers are satisfied with where they are, comparing the state of today's modelling and reporting to today's needs.
• However, they saw high pressures for cost control and from both management and regulators to deliver more information in a shorter time. The three key challenges to achieving that were:
  • The efficiency of their processes, where automation can help.
  • The shortage of skilled resources, particularly where companies were using old, obscure, or bespoke toolsets. Refreshing the tools can unblock this, but also deliver so much more.
  • The need for governance and auditability, which are baked into modern tools, and automation.

Most respondents recognised that technology is the solution to this - via business process automation, cloud computing and SaaS; but many were cautious of the changes needed to access that.