To meet customer needs, insurers are transforming their processes and relying on digital technology Today, the management of unit-linked funds is driven by the need for personalisation and the need to process information in real time. As customers express increasingly specific needs, insurers must adopt tailor-made solutions capable of automating their processes and consolidating their investment data. “The personalisation of the customer relationship is overturning the challenges associated with managing thousands of unit-linked funds and taking into account an exponential number of risk profiles,” explains Guillaume Graignic, Solutions Consultant at Clearwater Analytics. At present, management systems are showing their limitations in terms of the transformation of models. To meet these new customer needs, insurers need to improve their business processes and automate their workflows.

By operating with legacy tools, insurers are exposing themselves to problems linked to the coverage of customer commitments, such as the impossibility of controlling liability/asset gaps, which increases the risk of errors. Better monitoring means more frequent, accurate and personalised reporting, in line with the requirements of end customers. .

Unit-linked: high exposure to operational risks

The same reports that 90% of insurers do not believe that their current operating model can meet the future needs of their organisation. When it comes to managing unit-linked products, the lack of consolidation, transformation and digitalisation represents a daily challenge: “Life insurance companies have been training for 10 years, with insurers operating on the basis of shadow IT (generally Excel), which leads to problems of steering, traceability and auditing,” continues Graignic. The consequences are threefold:

- Regulatory risks, between, on the one hand, the Solvency II directive which requires insurers to report in detail on their risk exposure, the source of their data and the security mechanisms deployed; and, on the other hand, the new ESG requirements which will force them to collect and structure extra-financial data. Here, the Clearwater solution enables multi-standard investment accounting to be carried out on a single platform.

- High operating costs, with the explosion in the volume of data leading to higher processing costs. In this case, the Clearwater platform automatically reconciles over 90% of the data used to manage unit-linked funds. It enables business processes to be automated and streamlined through a configurable order placement workflow.

- A poor user experience, when the unit-linked management tool is not adapted to the different profiles present in insurers (front office, back office, middle office, compliance, actuary, etc.). Here, Clearwater offers dynamic rights & access management as well as dedicated user interfaces. The personalisation of the digital environment is a real factor in attracting talent!

Clearwater supports insurers throughout the entire unit-linked fund management chain

As an integrated platform, Clearwater covers all the needs of insurers for the management of their unit-linked funds. While most tools on the market focus on liabilities, this new-generation solution specialises in assets, offering a complete workflow from orderbook integration through to accounting. The solution can also be integrated into existing information systems thanks to its modern, open technical architecture. Every stage of the process is digitalised, from monitoring asset/liability matching, compliance checks, order generation and reconciliation, to calculating valuations, fees and retrocessions, etc. 

Watch our video to find out more about the Clearwater platform for unit-linked management:

With more than $7.3 trillion in assets under management on the platform, Clearwater can automate data aggregation and reconciliation by adapting to insurers’ profiles. At the same time, Clearwater offers powerful management functionalities enabling: 

- View activity in real time;

- Exception alerts; 

- Generate regulatory reports; 

- …

With Clearwater, insurers benefit from operational excellence and modularity to optimise the management of their unit-linked funds. Because innovation is part of our DNA, Clearwater also offers tools and functionalities based on AI, including a chatbot and an internal search engine to facilitate business management.

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