From Storm Activity to Human Activity, SAS® Helps NRMA Manage Risk

NRMA has forged a two-decade long partnership with SAS to analyze risk factors for insurance.

NRMA and SAS have been working together since the early 1980s. Twenty years later, SAS continues to help NRMA analyse risk factors for insurance, from individual customer characteristics to environmental and meteorological changes. Woh Choo, general manager for research and development and chief underwriting officer, said an ongoing concern for any insurance business is to understand how to measure risk.

"We need to keep abreast of statistical probabilities which indicate that certain regions are more susceptible to natural hazards so we can adjust resident premiums accordingly," said Woh Choo.

Powering Data Analysis
There is an extraordinary amount of data now available worldwide on climatic change and patterns, ranging from issues such as El Nino to general storm activity impacting specific topographic areas.

"Measuring overall risk is the key to our business. SAS helps us do this through effective data extraction, manipulation and analysis," Woh Choo said. "There are a complex myriad of factors which determine insurance risk and the premiums which customers need to pay to cover their individual risk."

"Apart from looking at environmental issues we must also measure an individual's risk rating, dependent on a wide range of factors such as their age and specific claims history," said Woh Choo. "SAS also helps us measure our effectiveness in assessing risk through performance monitoring."

Twenty-Year Partnership
Performance monitoring involves tracking the underwriting performance of all NRMA's insurance products to ensure risk premiums are appropriately set.

NRMA originally chose SAS 20 years ago for its expertise in analytics. Over the years, SAS has continuously helped the company understand more about its market and the factors that drive it.

"We have found solutions from SAS to be flexible and ideally suited to meet the business needs within our industry," said Woh Choo.

When NRMA required an interim data mart, SAS' Consulting arm helped create a data staging post that was accessed by the NRMA Sales and Marketing team.

"We were impressed with the professionalism and responsiveness of the consulting team and they were able to deal well with the complexity of the task at hand," said Woh Choo. "SAS' ability to help us integrate with other measurement tools enables us to create an effective and easily accessible knowledge base of what is driving risk and how we are performing."

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