CARY, NC  (Nov. 10, 2008)  –  The current financial crisis has placed a greater emphasis on the need for insurance companies to implement an enterprise risk management strategy. As a result, rating agencies, such as S&P, Moody’s and AM Best, are recommending insurers implement an enterprise risk approach to ensure an excellent rating standard. SAS, the leader in business analytics, plans to help insurers address these risk needs with the latest release of SAS® Insurance Intelligence Architecture. Central to the architecture is an updated insurance data model to support risk analysis and risk-based capital calculations. 

“The basic concept of insurance is risk, but very few insurance companies have an enterprise risk management strategy,” said Nicolas Michellod, a senior analyst in Celent Research's insurance practice. “Solvency II and the recent financial crisis have highlighted the need for insurance companies to implement risk management solutions. Essential to the success of these systems are initiatives around data and therefore implementing an enterprise data management platform is certainly a key element.” 

Additionally, Solvency II is beginning to loom large for European insurers. Insurance companies can learn a lot from the challenges banks faced addressing Basel II compliance. One of the biggest issues was the volume, consistency and quality of available data to perform the risk model calculations. Those organizations that initiate an enterprise data management platform will be better prepared for the Solvency II legislation and ultimately the benefits gained from risk management. 

SAS Insurance Intelligence Architecture helps insurance companies to gather data from operational applications then transforms and cleanses the appropriate data into an enterprise view. With SAS Business Intelligence, insurers can cultivate better transparency to disseminate the relevant information to insurance executives and regulatory bodies. 

SAS solutions for risk management help insurers address credit, market and operational risk as well as actuarial and enterprisewide risk. 

The recently published Economist Intelligence Unit/SAS ERM survey noted, as risks and organizations become more complex, the need for a sophisticated data infrastructure to gather and process risk information is becoming more pressing than ever before. Just over one-half of respondents (56%) agreed that it is essential to have an enterprise risk data infrastructure in place. 

SAS has a worldwide presence in the insurance industry, with more than 1,100 companies using SAS for customer intelligence, performance management and risk management. SAS’ industry expertise is evidenced by long-term relationships with top insurers, including Allianz, AXA, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Groupama France, Liberty Seguros, Swinton Insurance, Tapiola Group, TD Meloche Monnex and Topdanmark. 

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