Solvency Reporting & ORSA Dashboards made Simple
Case Study: Solvency & ORSA Dashboards
Valucor is an actuarial consulting company based in Zürich, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Its business is to help insurance and pension funds with actuarial advice, project consulting and administrative services. Compliance reporting and risk management advisory services are a large part of this and Valucor helps to make these functions efficient, accurate and transparent, while managing to reduce the costs and ensuring 100% compliance.
The introduction of reporting in XBRL format for the Solvency II framework and the requirement to implement targeted risk analysis under the ORSA framework was a huge challenge for all European insurance companies but, in particular, for smaller firms without the extensive resources and in-depth knowledge of such systems. Valucor saw this as an opportunity to extend the services that it could offer, and also to help its clients adopt the new reporting requirements.
The European Insurance and Occupational Pension Authority’s (EIOPA) Solvency II directive requires insurance companies to provide regular supervisory reports on their financial condition to the local National Competent Authority (NCA). In addition, insurance undertakings and Pension Funds are recommended to conduct an ‘Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA)’ as part of their risk management procedures at regular intervals.
If you want to find out more about the requirements, then you can find the relevant information on EIOPA’s website:
Explanation of Solvency 2
Guidelines on Own Risk Solvency Assessment (ORSA)
Selecting the Right XBRL Tools
After extensively reviewing the market for Solvency II reporting tools, they selected UBPartner’s XT Cloud service, as it used familiar Excel templates to collect the required data and convert it into fully validated XBRL reports.
Adopting UBPartner’s XT Cloud Service, which uses a ‘Software as a Service‘ (SaaS) approach, also meant that Valucor did not need extra system resources, nor did it have to make significant investments in IT training and new skills, as UBPartner took responsibility for installing and updating the software each period as the reporting requirements and rules changed.
Working closely with the clients using UBPartner’s XT Cloud collaborative and simple interface proved to be a winner both for building deeper and more profitable relationships with their customers, but also allowed Valucor to look at further steps to increase the services it could offer clients and to increase its service revenues.
Building Risk Dashboards
Several clients had asked Valucor about the need to implement internal risk management dashboards as recommended by the ORSA framework. Like Solvency reporting, this would require new software to be acquired and new IT skills to be learnt.
However, UBPartner also provided a way to store Solvency reports in XBRL format in its XT Database. This allowed for further analysis using standard Business Intelligence tools, like Power BI and Qlik. The reporting tables could also be extended with other data. This enabled Valucor to build a range of management and risk dashboards in a simple way.
Quantum Life Ltd. was one of the first customers to adopt the risk dashboard solution. The system has been tailored for them by enriching the data with internal accounting and management data extracted from the company’s internal systems. The result is that Quantum Life now has one central hub to analyse the business and its risks.
We have been really happy with the process and the service that the new dashboard delivers. We can focus on the analysis of Solvency II results and delve deeper into the detailed scenarios that may affect the company’s future solvency, without incurring cost of acquiring the skills and setting up the systems ourselves. In addition, we have an overview of our portfolio of insurance policies and can undertake detailed analysis on profitability, reserving and other key-metrics.
Christopher Hurford-Green, Member of the Executive Management of Quantum Life Ltd.
High-Value Low-Cost Solution
Providing internal management systems and Dashboards involve regular updates and high maintenance work. Valucor wanted to ensure that it could provide the solution to its clients at an affordable price. Hence, the system had to be as automated as possible, easy to maintain, and simple to scale up to support new clients and continually evolving reporting requirements.
The XT Database can also be installed and managed in the Cloud by UBPartner, so this was an easy solution to adopt. The Solvency reports that are generated using UBPartner’s XT Cloud Service are automatically loaded into the database, once they have passed the validation checks and are 100% compliant.
Valucor manages the addition of specific internal management data locally and uses a business analytics platform, Qlik, to build a series of standard Dashboards and reports. Using such a tool, it is easy to enable data integration and develop new business intelligence insights. The result is a ‘high-value’ solution that can adapt quickly and readily tailored to new client requirements, but one that also significantly reduces the costs of implementing and maintaining such systems.
Valucor: Extending its Services and Value to Clients
Valucor’s philosophy is to work very closely with their clients and to integrate with their environment. Clients benefit directly from their technical insurance expertise and experience on all actuarial and regulatory issues. By thinking beyond the regulatory environment and standard approaches, Valucor has delivered more value to its clients and increased its revenue opportunities.
“Valucor has been assisting our clients to prepare their Solvency II reports using UBPartner’s XT Cloud Service.” stated Thomas Gisler, Managing Director at Valucor, “It quickly enables us to extend our actuarial services and work collaboratively with our clients and to simplify their Solvency reporting. We also collaborate with several clients on their internal ORSA reports and management dashboards within their risk management framework as well as risk reporting systems”.
“The new system based upon the XT Database, helps to keep the data up-to-date and to visualise trends and potential issues in a more effective way. We support our clients in transforming their data architecture, combining it with the versatile technology of UBPartner, enabling management to have full control of data and visualize it according to their needs for decision-making purposes”.
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Trusted XBRL Reporting Tools
Tight deadlines, new regulations and changing reporting requirements make the new European supervisory frameworks challenging to manage for European banks and insurance companies. However, the availability of a powerful range of simple to use XBRL tools provided as a simple web service on the Cloud makes adoption much easier.
The UBPartner XBRL Toolkit (XT) is already being used by over 500 financial services firms in Europe that need to submit compliance reports in XBRL format. XT has also been adopted by industry and financial application suppliers, systems integrators, and even government agencies and market regulators to help them collect and validate the reports.
Want to know more about how XT makes Solvency reporting simple?
Contact us to organise a demo and discuss your requirements with an expert.
Advantages of Cloud Services
The ability to simply log on to the XT Cloud Service, download the relevant reporting templates and to start working on them has proven to be a major draw for smaller insurers and actuarial consulting firms. The simple-to-use, yet powerful tools make Solvency II reporting as hassle free as possible. While using a shared service in the Cloud significantly reduces both initial and ongoing costs.
The service has proven to be extremely popular since its launch in January 2017 and the addition of the XT Database complements this by making it quick and simple to store the XBRL data and enable standard Business Intelligence tools to access and analyse the Solvency data.
Find out more about how our XBRL tools can help make Solvency Reporting and ORSA Dashboards easier
XT Cloud Service
XT Database