Customer story
AEGIS London and hyperexponential: Optimized workflows, powerful data, and rapid model building
Key results
58 models built in just nine months in-house
Richer data and better data capture for decision-making
More effective actuary/underwriter collaboration
Challenge
AEGIS London wanted to replace their legacy bespoke pricing system with a modern solution.
Solution
hx Renew is a market-leading system that meets all of AEGIS London’s requirements and unlocks new possibilities with its advanced features and capabilities.
Results
AEGIS London built an incredible 58 pricing models in hx Renew—their entire suite—in just nine months. Powerful data capture and seamless data integrations are enriching their pricing workflow.
About AEGIS London
AEGIS London is a highly profitable top-quartile Lloyd’s syndicate that has consistently outperformed the market. With over $1bn of Gross Written Premium planned for 2024, it writes a well-diversified book of business across Property, Casualty, Specialty and Marine & Energy classes.
Data-driven, AEGIS London embraces technological innovation to maximize the efficiency and efficacy of their workflows.
Challenges
AEGIS London were using a bespoke web-based pricing platform which was developed for them to house 58 individual pricing models.
The user experience of both the actuaries and the underwriters was lacking. A reliance on external developers meant delays, errors and miscommunication were commonplace. Excessive rekeying and a lack of integration also slowed down the pricing workflow.
Automated reporting was not possible and only ad hoc analyses could be run on request, so the wealth of data they were building up was difficult to access and leverage.
The challenge was to shift models that had been custom built for 21 lines of business onto a new platform, maintaining each model’s unique attributes whilst taking advantage of the material advances in modelling technology since they were first implemented.
Solution
AEGIS London sought a market-leading, forward-thinking platform:
Manageable in-house by the AEGIS London actuarial team, granting them ownership of new model builds and development.
Enabling full utilization and capture of their data and surfacing it throughout the pricing workflow for stronger decision-making.
Offering a smooth user experience for underwriters, integrating with internal systems to minimize double keying.
Featuring custom automated reporting.
Allowing complete control over versioning, timelines, and change reviews.
AEGIS London created a longlist of potential suppliers, which they shortlisted down to 6, with each provider put to task creating a complex burn cost model. After obtaining feedback from the underwriters, the actuaries narrowed the products down to 3 and got hands-on with training and building a simple model in each.
hyperexponential, with their hx Renew system, emerged as the winner. All model features could be comfortably accommodated, and integrations with AEGIS London systems and other data sources were straightforward. hx Renew training offerings were rated very highly, and AEGIS London were “impressed by hyperexponential’s forward thinking and ambitious attitude.”
Using Python to build and iterate on pricing models was also an appealing prospect.
The use of Python as the coding language provides an intuitive and flexible environment that we could easily operate using expertise within our team. The open-source language means that there are so many product features that can be developed and allows full integration opportunities with our current and future AEGIS systems
Holly Wilson, Head of Pricing at AEGIS London
Results
AEGIS London built an incredible 58 pricing models in hx Renew—their entire suite-- in just nine months. This was done entirely by actuaries in-house. Not only was the transition rapid, but the new models represented a marked leap forward in usability and in terms of the pricing workflow.
The new models are far more user friendly – they have been designed by underwriters, for underwriters. The flow is designed around ingestion of relevant information at each step of the underwriting process to generate prospective pricing as quickly and accurately as possible.
Jonathan Humm, Deputy Head of Marine and Energy
Tom Chamberlain, VP of Customer and Consulting at hyperexponential, says “collaboration is key to any transformation, both internally between the functions, and externally with trusted partners. With the Actuarial and Underwriting teams working closely together, AEGIS London were able to accelerate their model roll out and successfully achieve the goals they set out at the start of the project.”
AEGIS London have built out several key integrations, with more still to come. Pricing data is being captured for future decision-making, and the flexible model development process keeps AEGIS London models at the cutting-edge of the market.
The use of APIs offers new data sources, and the ease of model changes allows us to keep our models appropriate and up to date as the market changes and our books adapt.
Holly Wilson, Head of Pricing at AEGIS London
Beyond product-led innovation, AEGIS London and hyperexponential have built a strong working partnership to drive success. Roger Misra, Change Manager at AEGIS London, says “the quarterly business reviews are very effective at focusing on pain points and areas to improve performance, not just a box ticking exercise that we sometimes see.”
AEGIS London also engage very actively with the hyperexponential user groups. Exclusively for customers and partners of hyperexponential, these interactive events provide a chance to network, learn and share knowledge.
What’s next for AEGIS London and hyperexponential?
When we signed up with hyperexponential, the term ‘start -up’ was definitely being used. That is not the case now, as we see hyperexponential maturing in the market and being selected for use by our peers in Lloyd’s.
Roger Misra, Change Manager at AEGIS London
AEGIS London are never ones to rest on their laurels, and neither are the hyperexponential team. AEGIS London stay up to date with the latest releases—the recent introduction of Plotly being one example, enabling powerful data visualizations within hx Renew.
They are continuing to build out and optimize their pricing models and workflows with hx Renew. One landmark project is building out an integration with their innovative online quote and bind system, OPAL.
AEGIS London are also exploring how to make the best use of their captured pricing data and other data sources, driving even stronger decision-making.
Transformation doesn’t stop when all the models are built. The next stage is looking ahead to see how to further enable the underwriters to make better decisions, ensuring there is a feedback loop between data and insights which enables even better decision making. It is great to see AEGIS London already on this path, focusing on enhancing the workflows, surfacing more data and innovating around the pricing and underwriting process.
Tom Chamberlain, VP Customer and Consulting at hyperexponential
As Rajan Singh Purba, actuary at AEGIS London says; “With hx Renew, the art of the possible is endless. We are only just beginning our hx Renew journey.”
