Insurance Technology Featured Article

Towers Watson Harnesses Data for Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurers

By Tara Seals
Contributing Writer

Property & Casualty (P&C) insurers, like other industry verticals, are looking to make better use of automation and data analysis to drive more informed business decisions and streamline their operations. With an eye to these trends, Towers Watson has updated its ResQ reserving software to version 3.7.

With the latest version of the platform, Towers Watson has concentrated on performance and scalability enhancements, for a more efficient analysis process and a deeper understanding of the underlying insurance exposure. It also contains a generalized scripting solution and enriched improvements to the user experience, so that P&C actuaries have the tools they need to really understand their business.

ResQ combines a suite of modeling and reserving methods with flexible mechanisms to structure, access and manage data sets. There are nearly 300 insurance companies worldwide that currently use the software. In the new version, performance has been enhanced significantly, particularly for large projects, with speed increases of up to 100 times for some activities, the company noted. With a better ability to slice and dice data using advanced data mining and predictive modeling techniques, actuaries can better manage risk and ratemaking.

It also includes a generalized scripting solution in the Enterprise edition. This feature allows ResQ's functionality to be extended by the user, so that common tasks can be automated. This streamlines the reserving process and provides efficiency gains. For instance, users could build customized reports from ResQ directly into Microsoft (News - Alert) Excel.

"Regulatory initiatives and changes to financial reporting require clearer audit trails from claim data to management information," said Peter England, Towers Watson's global product leader for P&C reserving software. "Among other things, the scripting solution in ResQ 3.7 can assist with automating key tasks, reducing the possibility of human error and strengthening the governance around reserving processes."