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Empowering actuaries with low-code/no-code solutions for innovation

LC/NC solutions are becoming key to the actuarial toolkit, amplifying predictive capabilities, expediting tasks and driving innovation.


In brief

  1. LC/NC platforms streamline workflows and enhance analytical capabilities for actuaries without requiring extensive technical expertise.
  2. LC/NC solutions improve governance, transparency and communication. Intuitive visual workflows facilitate model oversight.
  3. Integration of LC/NC platforms is becoming integral to modern actuarial practice.

There has been a strong appetite for leveraging and investing more heavily in technology; that appetite is increasing due to increasing complexity (products, models, data requirements, processes) and the strategic imperative to improve efficiency and reduce costs. With the advent of low-code (LC)/no-code (NC) solutions, actuaries and business analysts can now more easily harness the power of technology without needing to possess deep technical expertise or excessively rely on the IT organization. In our opinion, achieving and cultivating synergy between actuaries and IT professionals is a critical success factor in today's data-driven insurance landscape.

There are many different LC/NC platform offerings available, and they feature a multitude of benefits that enhance the actuarial workflow and drive efficiency. This article explores the benefits of incorporating LC/NC platforms in an actuarial setting and how actuaries with different skill sets can capture the benefits and opportunities from enhanced efficiency, collaboration and analytical capabilities.
 

Based on our observations and experience, one of the common LC/NC platforms that actuaries in the insurance industry frequently use is an analytic tool that allows users to extract, blend, cleanse and analyze data from various sources. It has a user-friendly interface that enables data preparation, transformation and modeling without requiring extensive coding skills. While we crafted our case studies in this article using a specific platform, the underlying principles highlighted are not confined to this single tool and should apply universally to any LC/NC solution in the realm of actuarial work. In fact, the universality underscores the adaptability and broadens applicability of LC/NC technologies in transforming and optimizing actuarial processes.
 

Incorporating LC/NC platforms can make the actuarial workflow more efficient. The table summarizes some of the key benefits:

Key benefits of LC/NC technologies in the actuarial setting

Seamless data integration

These platforms are equipped with preconfigured connectors and APIs that effortlessly enable the integration of diverse data sources. This empowers actuaries to efficiently import, cleanse and analyze data from a wide array of origins, all without necessitating an extensive background in programming. They foster an environment where actuaries and data professionals can collaborate seamlessly, each concentrating on their respective areas.

Cost-efficient automation

Customizable workflows and automated data processing allow actuaries to streamline repetitive tasks, reduce operational costs, save valuable time, reduce the overall operational costs and free up time for analytics.

Scalability and governance

LC/NC technologies address the challenge of scalability of increasing data volumes driven by accounting regulations and complex modeling. These platforms enable actuaries to handle large data sets without major workflow modifications. This scalability not only enhances efficiency but also aids in transitioning workflows from desktop to production environments. Moreover, server- or cloud-based execution provides strategic benefits for model governance, providing centralized control and compliance with data governance, security and regulatory standards.

Modernizing actuarial specialty toolkits

Integration of LC/NC solutions enhances the capabilities of actuaries to streamline complex modeling tasks and develop other specialized actuarial use cases, such as experience studies and financial reporting. With prefabricated components and functions, actuaries can develop and customize specialized solutions quickly.

Improved process transparency

LC/NC platforms provide a visual representation of a model’s components, making it easier to understand and interpret the logic. A flowchart interface illustrates input extraction and transformation, making it accessible to reviewers without the need for intricate programming review. This transparency expedites understanding for compliance teams and nontechnical stakeholders. It also strengthens model governance and facilitates communication of results to a broader audience.

Optimizing teamwork and communication

Effective collaboration across actuarial teams and various business functions is essential. LC/NC solutions streamline the communication process by providing an intuitive visual interface that is accessible to nontechnical team members.

Software as a Service (SaaS) empowerment

These tools seamlessly incorporate the latest advancements in technology, such as statistical learning techniques, artificial intelligence (AI)/ machine learning (ML), generative AI (GenAI), etc., through software updates. This allows users to align their work processes with the cutting-edge technology and techniques without the burden of extensive research and complex coding implementation.

Agility realized

The agility of LC/NC technologies, actuaries can create and adapt production-level pipelines without excessively relying on IT development. These platforms possess the ability to revolutionize traditional workflows and optimize resource allocation by embracing technology-driven solutions to sustain competitiveness and efficiency in the ever-evolving contemporary business environment.

Seamless data integration

Actuarial work relies on data, and LC/NC platforms come with prebuilt connectors that facilitate seamless integration with various data sources such as SQL and other database formats. Because actuaries can easily import, clean and analyze data without extensive programming knowledge, data processing time is reduced, which facilitates the use of up-to-date information. With most platforms, the built-in input tool can read today’s commonly used data sources. Based upon the type of input, the tool will automatically ask for the appropriate parameters to connect. Using the prebuilt functionalities in a LC/NC platform allows actuaries to spend less time troubleshooting data issues and more time performing analysis, which provides opportunities for actuaries and data professionals to collaborate more effectively.

Cost-efficient automation

Recurring processes, such as month-end reporting, require significant resources. These processes often involve an actuary or business analyst performing many inputs and data manipulations. LC/NC platforms facilitate the automation of repetitive tasks in actuarial work and streamlines complicated processes. Different inputs can be sourced and transformed in one workflow, which can be configured to work with dynamic inputs and run automatically. If certain records need to be changed, actuaries can add manual adjustment so the workflow can automatically adjust the output without user action. By creating custom workflows and automating data processing, actuaries can save valuable time and reduce the overall operational costs and increase business insights. The impact of LC/NC platforms extends to reporting and visualization; with robust reporting capabilities, users can generate insightful reports that distill complex data into actionable insights. Additionally, these platforms interface with visualization platforms, presenting an integrated solution for transforming data into visually engaging dashboards and reports. This creates an integration solution to automate the end-to-end process – from data aggregation and transformation to visualization and reporting.

Scalability and governance

With data sets becoming larger in response to accounting regulations and more granular models, scalability has become a concern. LC/NC platforms address scalability issues with solutions that allow actuaries to handle large sets of data without significant changes to existing workflows. Most solutions allow for workflows to be processed on cloud computing platforms by using grid computing. Cloud computing capabilities enable users to access resources as needed to handle substantial amounts of data. These platforms also provide an avenue for transitioning workflows from desktop versions to production environments. Beyond the scalability, server or cloud-based execution offers a strategic advantage for model governance by facilitating centralized control and management, which is essential for compliance with data governance, security and regulatory standards.

Modernizing actuarial specialty toolkits

Actuaries often rely on specialized software for complex modeling and analysis. While actuarial modeling software remains indispensable, the integration of LC/NC solutions can augment these existing processes significantly. For example, model development often includes unit testing through replicator workbooks in traditional tools such as Excel. They can become intricate and slow, particularly when replicating complex calculations like stochastic models. LC/NC analytical platforms can address these problems by enabling step-by-step replication of actuarial model logic and efficient scaling for large data sets. Having a user-friendly interface reduces the risk of errors caused by syntax or complex logic, allowing actuaries to focus on their core tasks.

Traditionally, actuaries have done this highly recursive exercise in SQL and spreadsheets, a process riddled with challenges that include handling large data sets efficiently, managing numerous copies of intricate workbooks for each iteration with the potential for human error. LC/NC analytical platforms offer a better approach, in our opinion; they use workflows to source inputs directly from assumption repository databases, perform data manipulations, automate recursive actual-to-expected (A/E) calculations, and generate optimized rate tables for a target A/E ratio. It couples all of this with data visualization tools to present comprehensive reports. This automation enhances accuracy and efficiency while accelerating the entire experience study process.

LC/NC platforms can be used to produce customized rollforward tables to support financial reporting. The process for customized rollforward analysis completed in spreadsheets can be cumbersome and requires transformations of large post-model data sets. In addition, a spiderweb of mappings and business rules can lead to low interpretability, limited flexibility for format changes and increased risk of user error. LC/NC platforms allow users to visually lay out transformation and mapping logic, providing a more user-friendly experience, with a variety of rollforward reports in a fraction of the time.

Lastly, LC/NC platforms go beyond traditional actuarial software by offering built-in advanced analytics packages. Actuaries can leverage these capabilities to create tools for advanced and predictive modeling and integrate with GenAI capabilities such as optical character recognition (OCR), customized large language models (LLMs) and natural language generation (NLG). This empowers actuaries to explore new horizons in their field and harness cutting-edge technology to drive insights and innovation. The preassembled components and templates in this technology allows actuaries to craft specialized toolkits within a matter of weeks – not months.

Improved process transparency

LC/NC platforms offer a visual representation of a model’s components, making it easier for users to understand and interpret the logic behind calculations. With LC/NC platforms, the tools form a flowchart on a canvas that depicts how inputs are extracted and transformed into the final product. Instead of reviewing complicated programming language, reviewers can examine the model quickly by looking at the LC/NC workflow and setting up test cases.

LC/NC workflows allow compliance members and nontechnical stakeholders to accelerate understanding of the model. This transparency enhances model governance and aids in explaining results to nontechnical stakeholders.

Optimizing teamwork and communication

While actuaries are generally well trained in technical skills, it can be a challenge to share knowledge of highly complex models and code. LC/NC solutions streamline the communication process by providing an intuitive visual interface that is accessible to all – including nontechnical team members. By more directly involving nontechnical team members, LC/NC platforms improve collaboration with all business professionals and help them to better understand actuarial results and facilitate strategic decision-making.

SaaS empowerment

LC/NC solutions come with an assortment of pre-built tools to enable users to quickly construct workflows and models. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model offers regular version upgrades and enhancements, and these tools can seamlessly incorporate the latest advancements in technology, such as statistical learning techniques. This allows users to effortlessly align their work processes with the cutting-edge tools and techniques, without the burden of extensive research and complex coding implementation.

The platforms have built-in libraries so that actuarial capabilities are up to date with the latest technologies. One recent example is the GenAI boom’s “coding assistants,” which help with the development and debugging of models. Comparatively, constructing and maintaining homegrown models often requires the involvement of subject-matter resources, who need to navigate the intricacies of integrating new technology or features, potentially slowing business innovation.

Agility realized – actuarial transformation case study

An EY team assisted a large life and annuity insurer with streamlining and automating a complex data preparation process used for the monthly valuation process. The result was the transformation of what once was a manual and time-consuming procedure that spanned several days to an automated workflow that takes only a few hours to run. Incorporating automatic error handling and user alerts for data quality control further enhances the efficiency and reliability of the process.

In another use case, we addressed a significant challenge where actuaries from six different product lines were required to independently format their cash flows into a standardized reporting format every quarter. This was a resource-intensive burden prone to multiple rounds of errors requiring rework. Leveraging a LC/NC platform allowed the extraction of data from various sources, data transformations, and standardization to be consolidated into a single automated process that one user running the workflow can perform automatically.

These examples showcase the power of modern data analytics and automation tools in revolutionizing traditional processes and optimizing resource utilization.

Limitations

Considering their pivotal advantages, it becomes evident that LC/NC platforms constitute potent assets within the actuarial toolkit, furnishing a multitude of capabilities. It is imperative, however, to underscore that they are not intended to serve as the sole universal solution for all circumstances. Practitioners should be conscious of the limitations. For instance, it may be more prudent for specialized IT teams that employ optimized processing languages to oversee and manage extensive data pipelines.

Conclusion

In a rapidly evolving landscape, many insurance companies are adopting LC/NC solutions into their processes, adding them into toolkits to address specific and unique business problems. LC/NC solutions empower actuaries by providing them with the means to fully unleash their analytical potential and navigate the increasingly data-centric landscape of modern actuarial science. While a major benefit of LC/NC platforms is that they help actuaries reduce the barrier of entry for analytics through ease of use and rapid development of solutions, it is crucial to recognize the importance of adhering to leading practices, stringent model governance and coding standards to unlock their full potential.

Looking ahead, we expect that advancements in artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), including GenAI, will further usher in an era of amplified empowerment for LC/NC platforms. These solutions are poised to revolutionize how actuaries approach their work by augmenting predictive capabilities, expediting tasks through automation, enabling seamless communication and facilitating adaptive learning. As this technology continues to advance, we believe its integration is likely to become the standard in actuarial practice, driving the industry forward into more innovative and data-driven excellence.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization, the Society of Actuaries, or the editors of this newsletter.co

Henry Chen, FSA, MAAA, FCIA, Senior manager at Ernst & Young LLP Consulting and Frank Siu, FSA, FCIA, Manager at Ernst & Young LLP authored the article.

Phani Chaturvedula, Executive Director at Ernst & Young LLP contributed to the article.


Summary

Low-code/no-code (LC/NC) platforms are empowering actuaries by streamlining workflows, enhancing efficiency and boosting analytical capabilities. As LC/NC solutions become standard practice, actuaries are empowered to innovate, predict and optimize like never before.

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