Healthy lives for four-legged family members

SAS helps insurance company promote animals’ well-being now and in the future

People love their pets and all over the world, spending on the well-being of cats, dogs and horses is increasing. Veterinarian bills take up a large portion of the spending and people are increasingly insuring their pets against the cost related to unexpected health problems. According to Research Nester, the global market for pet insurance was estimated at USD 2.6 billion in 2016 and forecast to grow to 5.7 billion by the end of 2024.

Agria is an insurance company providing health, life and liability insurances for pets and horses as well as agriculture and crop insurance. Agria is present in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France and Great Britain. It is a subsidiary of the Swedish mutual insurance company Länsforsäkringar.

Agria uses SAS® Studio and SAS® Visual Analytics for multiple tasks related to the pricing and risk factors of their insurance products as well as marketing and customer communications – but does not stop there. Using the vast amounts of data, Agria provides statistics on the health of different breeds of animals to scientists, veterinarians and breed associations.

“Our mission is to promote best of care for the animals and peace of mind for their owners. We believe that through better animal welfare, we get healthier dogs and other pets. We provide our data to help understand illnesses and breeding-related health issues in various breeds and we also give part of our income to further research in animal welfare,” says Peter Nord Andersson, Head of Pricing and Analytics at Agria.

Sophisticated data analysis

Data analysis has always been a core competency of the insurance industry and is no less important when it comes to insuring animals. Many factors weigh into the calculations of prices, risk and market development. 

 “With Agria operating in six markets, data analysis is a very sophisticated operation. We have hundreds of gigabytes of data and a lot of parameters for cross-analysis. We needed a sophisticated analytics platform and the ability to show different perspectives on the data. With SAS Visual Analytics, we have gained a lot more granularity in our information and have increased our usage of analytics across the organization,” said Peter Nord Andersson. 

Today, there are 50 business users in sales, product development and market surveillance using SAS Visual Analytics to carry out their daily tasks. Instead of relying on aggregated data sets and the help of consultants, users now have access to a wealth of reports and the ability to see information at both a high and a very detailed level – all the way down to a specific dog and its product suite.

Furthermore, Peter Nord Andersson has made a valuable investment into Agria’s analytics journey by joining and completing the SAS Analytics Value Training program. This has given him the opportunity to develop strategies that can transform the organization even further to be more data driven and obtain business value with analytics.

Data for dog breeders

Agria dedicates a significant amount of resources to promoting health in animals by sharing their detailed data and analysis. By analyzing claims data, Agria can spot trends in health issues. This can be important information for professional breeders, who organize in clubs, and Agria provides this information. Working in SAS Visual Analytics has also brought speed and efficiency to these efforts.

“We produce detailed reports, so-called Breed Profiles, on the health of animals and provide them to breeders, researchers and veterinarians. For each dog breed, we have two reports. It used to take us to up to two months to compile – now it is done automatically through SAS Visual Analytics. And if we want the report to be on a different breed, we just change the breed in the report and the data in the report changes automatically” said Peter Nord Andersson.

Peter Nord Andersson has already set his sight on the next analytics improvement at Agria: Giving business users better access to predicting outcomes of different scenarios. The tool: Visual Analytics on SAS® Viya® and adding SAS® Visual Statistics on Viya®. The migration is planned for later this year.

“We are continuously transforming our business and the best way is to involve the users themselves. It can be easy to forget the people who will use the systems, but it is never just about making the best model. It is only when analytics is used widely, and the knowledge is spread out that we can reap the real benefits”, says Peter Nord Andersson.