"Insurers are under constant pressure to deliver leading-edge pricing techniques just to maintain market position, yet ensuring appropriate governance remains critical,” said Colin Towers, Product Leader for Radar at Willis Towers Watson. “This latest release provides significant analytical improvements, as well as the governance and security advantages crucial to operational efficiency, helping insurers to deliver improved speed to market and pricing accuracy.
“The risks inherent to a business adopting open source software for its key capabilities can be significant,” added Towers. “In addition to potential security risks, a company is also vulnerable to solutions which lack transparency and are subject to arbitrary change, which can have a significant impact on the ability to transact business. Sophisticated governance of these processes has to be part of the DNA of any business that wants to be resilient and successful in the digital world.”
Radar 4.4 implements new fine-grained security controls that simplify the application of the pricing software, particularly when used in larger teams and organisations. Group access controls allow, for example, analytical and pricing teams to ensure appropriate segregation of work while ensuring the entire business can see the full picture. When combined with Radar Live, it ensures an organisation can safely deploy innovative insights from machine learning models to market in minutes.
Other updated features of Radar include enhancements to the Elastic Net method, a machine learning tool, to allow hyperparameter searching. This simplifies the modelling process by making it quicker and easier for users to assess what parameters to include within a traditional rating tariff, as well as reducing modelling sensitivity and risk, freeing up valuable resources to concentrate on making quick and informed pricing decisions. Radar’s ratebook optimisation has also been upgraded, resulting in substantial speed improvement. For the first time, this release also includes the option to switch the application into Chinese.
About Radar
The full Willis Towers Watson Radar product suite comprises the Radar Base modelling and reporting environment; Radar Dashboard for sharing pricing management information across the organisation; Radar Optimiser for price optimisation; and Radar Live for rate delivery. All are fully integrated with Emblem, which fits predictive models rapidly to very large and complex datasets to reveal the underlying patterns in your data, and Classifier, which provides detailed categorisation and assessment of risk by geography.
About Insurance Consulting and Technology
Willis Towers Watson’s Insurance Consulting and Technology business has over 1,200 colleagues operating in 35 markets worldwide. It is a leading provider of advice, solutions and software – primarily to the insurance industry. Its consulting services help clients manage risk and capital, improve business performance and create competitive advantage – by focusing on financial and regulatory reporting, enterprise risk and capital management, M&A and corporate restructuring, products, pricing, business management and strategy.
About Willis Towers Watson
Willis Towers Watson is a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients around the world turn risk into a path for growth. With roots dating to 1828, Willis Towers Watson has over 45,000 employees serving more than 140 countries and markets. We design and deliver solutions that manage risk, optimise benefits, cultivate talent, and expand the power of capital to protect and strengthen institutions and individuals. Our unique perspective allows us to see the critical intersections between talent, assets and ideas – the dynamic formula that drives business performance. Together, we unlock potential.