Canopius: Allphins Powers Data-Driven Strategy
Key results
Reduced exposure analysis time, enabling swift responses during peak periods.
Delivered real-time analytics to validate assumptions and align exposures with risk appetite.
Improved ability to analyze year-on-year changes and assess profitability with actionable insights.
Canopius is a leading global specialty lines (re)insurer. Since August 2022, the company has progressively deployed Allphins as a key component in digitising its marine energy and terrorism reinsurance operations. Here’s the story so far.
At last: treaty-first analytics
The management team at Canopius has always focused on technology as a way to drive efficiency, clarity and predictability. Ben Pinnington, Marine Treaty Underwriter for Canopius, says, “We’ve always had a developed internal view of risk. As a specialty (re)insurer, we have terrorism and energy insurance portfolios, and we would work to ensure our treaty portfolio exposures aligned with the group risk appetite, by using the systems already in place for the insurance portfolios.”
That worked fine, but the fact that Allphins is designed from the ground up to serve the needs of treaty reinsurers has been an attractive proposition. Claire Wallace, Head of Marine Treaty, says, “Software is generally geared for insurance products and then retrofitted towards reinsurance, whereas Allphins is treaty-first. But it’s more than that: by being an underwriting focused tool, it is designed for self-service by the underwriters and effectively embed exposure management in the underwriting process. This means that we can validate both our own and our EM’s assumptions (and vice versa) – it’s like having a second set of checks, balances and commercial comfort.”
Automation made easy
For (re)insurers, integrating the complex datasets from different portfolios has always been a painful and sometimes manual experience, which existing software could not achieve. Pinnington says that Allphins solves the problem. “We rely on the quality and consistency of the data that we are given”,he says. “But there's often a lack of standardisation or consistency around naming conventions. Allphins has a name-matching algorithm which captures a huge amount of those slight differentials to make sure that we're classifying similar names as the same risk. The nature of reinsurance means we're looking at a portfolio at a certain point in time, so we're never going to get 100% accuracy. But Allphins is helping us narrow that gap and allow us to be as confident as we can be in the numbers within our portfolio.”
Never fear busy times of the year
That visibility and flexibility also comes with dramatically more streamlined processes. Where information from brokers would slowly pass through the Treaty team to Exposure Management to run the numbers and back again – often several times until the figures were agreed – now there is a near-real time picture to work with. That is particularly appreciated during the busier times of the year, where effective analysis of exposure is mission-critical for the rest of the year’s operations.
Portfolio optimisation: discovering “the best we can be”
Pinnington says that the agility of having actionable data on tap allows the team to deliver better service to customers and also has strategic value. “Part of our way of working is always seeking efficiency:getting back to clients fast and making decisions quickly. Allphins cuts the time-to-decision significantly.”
“But Allphins also gives us the vision to optimise our portfolio. If you're just getting numbers and you can't compare how they flow through the various books of business, you're not always going to make the best decisions. Allphins means we can now be the best we can be.”
Choosing the right data tools
Wallace adds, “We can analyse a huge schedule of values almost instantly. We're not only able to view how it impacts our platforms across the portfolio, but we're also able to dig into an individual portfolio and understand how it's changed year on year. So we can conduct instant comparative analytics across a portfolio’s history to identify growth or reduction or significant change in a certain part of the book.”
This all means much greater clarity; and the analytics require no training: “It’s an incredibly easy-to-use interface - just drag and drop”, says Wallace. “And because we don't have to wait for it to run overnight, we've all got the same view.”
Easy to deploy as well as easy to use
Data-driven solutions are central to Canopius’ long-term Group strategy, so the firm is always on the lookout for high-value partners who can provide data-driven solutions. But operating in over 130 territories and with multiple offices, there’s always a worry about investing in new processes, especially when technology is involved. Also, not every data tool on the market makes it to implementation. Wallace says, “When I say that innovative data-driven solutions are a real focus for Canopius, that doesn't mean that every shiny new piece of software gets passed!”
Allphins, however, met with approval from both ExposureManagement and Underwriting teams. Says Pinnington, “Perhaps the most important step was ensuring that the outputs that we would get from Allphins matched the outputs that we were getting from our existing systems. We managed to reconcile the numbers incredibly quickly, which for the exposure side was a real win.Underwriting supported us because of the depth of real-time analytics for portfolio optimisation, even pre-bind, which Allphins unlocks.”
Wallace adds, “Allphins have also been responsive to our needs. When we tested the system, we ran it past both our people and others across the industry. We came up with some very good ideas; and Allphins were quick to respond to ideas.”
Building the digital future of reinsurance
Canopius recognise that data is the raw material at the heart of competitiveness in reinsurance. Says Pinnington, “Having a tool like Allphins is, I think, vitally important because quality data needs quality analysis. Software that can analyse hundreds of thousands of rows of data and compress it into a format that's easy to use, access and understand is crucial now and will only continue to increase in importance.
About Canopius
Canopius is a global specialty (re)insurer with underwriting operations in Australia, Bermuda, Singapore, the UK and U.S. It underwrites through Lloyd’s Syndicate 4444 (managed by Canopius Managing AgentsLimited), a US surplus lines insurer, Canopius US Insurance, Inc and Canopius Reinsurance Ltd, a Bermuda based Class 4 Reinsurer. For more information, visit www.canopius.com or https://uk.linkedin.com/company/canopius.
Canopius: Allphins Powers Data-Driven Strategy
Canopius is a leading global specialty lines (re)insurer. Since August 2022, the company has progressively deployed Allphins as a key component in digitising its marine energy and terrorism reinsurance operations. Here’s the story so far.
At last: treaty-first analytics
The management team at Canopius has always focused on technology as a way to drive efficiency, clarity and predictability. Ben Pinnington, Marine Treaty Underwriter for Canopius, says, “We’ve always had a developed internal view of risk. As a specialty (re)insurer, we have terrorism and energy insurance portfolios, and we would work to ensure our treaty portfolio exposures aligned with the group risk appetite, by using the systems already in place for the insurance portfolios.”
That worked fine, but the fact that Allphins is designed from the ground up to serve the needs of treaty reinsurers has been an attractive proposition. Claire Wallace, Head of Marine Treaty, says, “Software is generally geared for insurance products and then retrofitted towards reinsurance, whereas Allphins is treaty-first. But it’s more than that: by being an underwriting focused tool, it is designed for self-service by the underwriters and effectively embed exposure management in the underwriting process. This means that we can validate both our own and our EM’s assumptions (and vice versa) – it’s like having a second set of checks, balances and commercial comfort.”
Automation made easy
For (re)insurers, integrating the complex datasets from different portfolios has always been a painful and sometimes manual experience, which existing software could not achieve. Pinnington says that Allphins solves the problem. “We rely on the quality and consistency of the data that we are given”,he says. “But there's often a lack of standardisation or consistency around naming conventions. Allphins has a name-matching algorithm which captures a huge amount of those slight differentials to make sure that we're classifying similar names as the same risk. The nature of reinsurance means we're looking at a portfolio at a certain point in time, so we're never going to get 100% accuracy. But Allphins is helping us narrow that gap and allow us to be as confident as we can be in the numbers within our portfolio.”
Never fear busy times of the year
That visibility and flexibility also comes with dramatically more streamlined processes. Where information from brokers would slowly pass through the Treaty team to Exposure Management to run the numbers and back again – often several times until the figures were agreed – now there is a near-real time picture to work with. That is particularly appreciated during the busier times of the year, where effective analysis of exposure is mission-critical for the rest of the year’s operations.
Portfolio optimisation: discovering “the best we can be”
Pinnington says that the agility of having actionable data on tap allows the team to deliver better service to customers and also has strategic value. “Part of our way of working is always seeking efficiency:getting back to clients fast and making decisions quickly. Allphins cuts the time-to-decision significantly.”
“But Allphins also gives us the vision to optimise our portfolio. If you're just getting numbers and you can't compare how they flow through the various books of business, you're not always going to make the best decisions. Allphins means we can now be the best we can be.”
Choosing the right data tools
Wallace adds, “We can analyse a huge schedule of values almost instantly. We're not only able to view how it impacts our platforms across the portfolio, but we're also able to dig into an individual portfolio and understand how it's changed year on year. So we can conduct instant comparative analytics across a portfolio’s history to identify growth or reduction or significant change in a certain part of the book.”
This all means much greater clarity; and the analytics require no training: “It’s an incredibly easy-to-use interface - just drag and drop”, says Wallace. “And because we don't have to wait for it to run overnight, we've all got the same view.”
Easy to deploy as well as easy to use
Data-driven solutions are central to Canopius’ long-term Group strategy, so the firm is always on the lookout for high-value partners who can provide data-driven solutions. But operating in over 130 territories and with multiple offices, there’s always a worry about investing in new processes, especially when technology is involved. Also, not every data tool on the market makes it to implementation. Wallace says, “When I say that innovative data-driven solutions are a real focus for Canopius, that doesn't mean that every shiny new piece of software gets passed!”
Allphins, however, met with approval from both ExposureManagement and Underwriting teams. Says Pinnington, “Perhaps the most important step was ensuring that the outputs that we would get from Allphins matched the outputs that we were getting from our existing systems. We managed to reconcile the numbers incredibly quickly, which for the exposure side was a real win.Underwriting supported us because of the depth of real-time analytics for portfolio optimisation, even pre-bind, which Allphins unlocks.”
Wallace adds, “Allphins have also been responsive to our needs. When we tested the system, we ran it past both our people and others across the industry. We came up with some very good ideas; and Allphins were quick to respond to ideas.”
Building the digital future of reinsurance
Canopius recognise that data is the raw material at the heart of competitiveness in reinsurance. Says Pinnington, “Having a tool like Allphins is, I think, vitally important because quality data needs quality analysis. Software that can analyse hundreds of thousands of rows of data and compress it into a format that's easy to use, access and understand is crucial now and will only continue to increase in importance.
About Canopius
Canopius is a global specialty (re)insurer with underwriting operations in Australia, Bermuda, Singapore, the UK and U.S. It underwrites through Lloyd’s Syndicate 4444 (managed by Canopius Managing AgentsLimited), a US surplus lines insurer, Canopius US Insurance, Inc and Canopius Reinsurance Ltd, a Bermuda based Class 4 Reinsurer. For more information, visit www.canopius.com or https://uk.linkedin.com/company/canopius.