BI Database and Reporting Suite Project, Insurance

by Mark Weller

Background

An international reinsurance company was looking to remodel their existing database architecture for a specific actuarial modelled product to support a more robust and secure end-to-end data flow that supports users from the front office to the back office. The global programme required specialist design and delivery for the European/UK part of the business. 

Challenge

The complex reinsurance product required an actuarial model to be calibrated, adopting a data lake architecture whilst using an existing data BI application to be developed and engineered with appropriate ETL and security protocols. The overall programme would also deliver better reporting for the business. 

In adopting this new approach, the business identified many reporting processes that needed robust process definition, for some processes that were not well defined before subsequent development. The data architecture available required complex re-development and testing. For complexity, the existing processes were being used for business-critical decision-making around cash flow, loans and rating calculators.  

​Solution

ECMS deployed a small team (technical and business aligned) to gather requirements across the business and develop and engineer the database and supporting applications to deliver the desired business outputs. Analysis work began with producing detailed To-Be process maps and updating the non-functional requirements of the processes for development. The SQL development delivered for the numerous processes needed subsequent testing through an automation approach adopting several technologies such as Cucumber, Jenkins, and SQL server.  

Outcome

The project definition and requirements gathered allowed the business to document end-to-end processes in a structured basis to support the development of the data architecture through automated testing. The project identified challenges to the ETL processing of data into a secure data store and allowed the business to review its architecture design whilst providing an end-to-end data solution for the specific product with the enhanced reporting capabilities needed.