Why we’re building the future of actuarial analysis in the cloud

December 3, 2020 / 3 min read

The history of actuarial science reputedly dates back to the 17^th century, when the demands of industrialization and global trade dovetailed with the development of more powerful mathematics capable of quantifying and measuring risk.¹

Throughout the storied history of the discipline, there’s been one constant—finding new and innovative methods of understanding and analyzing risk data. In modern times, this pursuit has become inextricably bound up with computing and ever-larger pools of data.

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As the steward of one of the largest insurance datasets in the world, we’ve been engaged in a company-wide effort to enhance the quality, flexibility, and predictive utility of this data—from the moment we ingest it to the moment we deliver it to our customers.

Cloud computing is now central to these efforts.

A powerful new architecture: ISO ratemaking in the cloud

As part of a wide-ranging strategy to enhance the velocity and flexibility of our data and analytics, we’ve been migrating our ratemaking systems to a secure, cloud-based infrastructure.

Embracing cloud computing has the ability to unlock a host of advantages for our customers:

Speed and power: With the processing power of the cloud at our disposal, we can greatly enhance the speed and efficiency with which we execute actuarial analysis and deliver actuarial products to our customers.

We know our customers are seeking new ways to integrate ISO data and content into their platforms. By migrating to the cloud, we’ll be able to deliver our actuarial analysis and information via API so that customers can seamlessly integrate this data into their software platforms.

New analysis and actuarial methods: Leveraging the computing power of the cloud and modern programming languages, our actuarial and analytical staff will be able to execute even more sophisticated loss development and other analyses against our data sets—analyses that, thanks to cloud processing, can be produced faster than ever before. The result will be even more robust and predictive products to help you understand and manage risk.

Security: Ensuring the security and privacy of the data assets under our stewardship is a fundamental commitment that informs every technology decision we make. The migration to the cloud has strengthened our security posture.

Standardization: By moving all lines of business onto a unified technology stack, we can quickly incorporate best practices in analytics, programming, and data storage across all lines of business.

A flexible foundation for future growth

Just as building a solid foundation enables architects to create ever larger and more complex structures, the information infrastructure we’ve adopted positions us to deliver entirely new solutions and capabilities for our customers while simultaneously augmenting the value of current products. The new platform allows for novel forms of analysis and data co-mingling that could yield new insights and the ability to perform analysis on even narrower datasets within lines of business.

Every Verisk product or service that utilizes stat plan data will ultimately benefit from increased power, security, and flexibility thanks to the cloud migration. To date, ratemaking systems for three lines of business—homeowners, businessowners, and dwellings—have been migrated to the cloud. We expect to migrate the remaining lines of business we support to the cloud on a rolling basis throughout 2021.

Learn more about new innovations coming to ISO commercial lines programs. To learn more about our cloud migration, please contact Joseph Izzo at Joseph.Izzo@verisk.com.

Julia Kagan, “Actuarial Science,” Investopedia, June 20, 2020,
< https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/actuarial-science.asp >, accessed on November 23, 2020.