Dynamo Analytics: Insight, workflows, data, KPIs, and protected IP with Psicle

Software tools available to MGAs are often expensive, outdated and inflexible in managing your key metrics. Psicle provides an affordable tool to configure your modelling processes (and adaptable to nuances across pricing reserving, and financial reporting) without feeling like you’re putting a square peg in a round hole. Step away from spreadsheets to report on the important metrics to you, using the best data, keeping ownership of your IP, and with a solution that flexibly evolves as you do.

Psicle’s core philosophy has always been to industrialise business-critical modelling – bringing together human and machine in the most optimum way. Actuaries and finance experts transform how they run end-to-end  models – they are able to share and explore results in real-time with interactive dashboards and storyboards that facilitate a diagnostic-led philosophy, looking at results first, not last.

We have always recognised the value in empowering actuaries and underwriters, with an initial focus on back-office functionality, such as rate derivation, rate monitoring and exposure management processes.  With the introduction of our PsicleWeb front-end, Psicle Orchestration and Deployment modules (“Psicle Pods”), and the ability to link highly customisable web front-ends to these, the focus has shifted to also providing the versatile and dynamic tools required in meeting front-office function requirements, such as insurance pricing.

Conversations we’ve had across the market tell us that existing solutions fail to solve what remains fragile manual process. Model governance remains a critical requirement which widely used open-source tools fail to provide. Psicle solves these challenges with fully automated rate derivation, publishing of rating algorithms and deployment.

Underwriting agents can take pricing deployments to the next level within a single end-to-end framework in what we believe is a unique offering in the market. Building models that are fully parameterised in Psicle, and connecting user-friendly front-ends with back-end algorithms means users can maximise speed while maintaining both flexibility and governance – a hard-to-beat combination.

With visual front-ends and direct connection to the algorithms, we give agents the confidence to shed their reliance on spreadsheets.  This is particularly relevant in the more complex underwriting environments, e.g. commercial lines and London market, where approaches to technical underwriting requires flexible user interaction and application of judgement, but also more stringent controls.  We believe these markets will benefit most from the use of Psicle, which can also give portfolio insights at the point of risk acceptance.

In addition, it allows the models to not only provide price indications, but capture granular data relevant for exposure management and risk monitoring processes.

Psicle provides the functionality for implementing your rating algorithms and the orchestration and deployment functionality, without any IT expenditure.

Psicle provides real-time execution that automatically takes care of the model resources, data and algorithms in self-contained units, providing high availability to external systems through an API or a self-contained web front-end. This empowers actuaries to truly collaborate with underwriters and to remove their historical operational reliance on IT teams, meaning they can focus on both optimising their pricing algorithms and  designing and implementing the user input required within a user-friendly web front-end, all supported within a single application.  The outcome is the ability to go market quickly without being slowed down by frictions and cost.

Psicle allows underwriters to capture nuances and interactively make adjustments, while providing the rigour to support the technical rating algorithms and automation. We’ve removed weak links by providing strength and flexibility to back-end coding and integrations, whether plugging into existing front-ends, PsicleWeb front-ends, connecting to other internal or external systems or tools. Equally powerful are the connections we’re making across the business – to portfolio and exposure information, finance, actuarial and more.

Psicle facilitates integration of your models to several machine learning and artificial intelligence packages, allowing you to benefit from future advances in AI that may be impacting your line of business.

Opportunities to incorporate machine learning into pricing models are here today, for example live price adjustments reacting to data analysis following a deployment. Psicle’s support for back-end Python code provides all the functionality actuaries needs to test and extend to other algorithms. Co-pilot type functionality on the front-end could provide real-time illustrations of changes to risk exposure given particular changes to risk profiles. Incorporating LLMs could draw an underwriter’s attention to patterns recognised in the risk data. The opportunities are broad and we are excited to see how this will develop and add value to the modelling process, user experience, and ultimately the bottom line.

Discover more: mgaa.co.uk/members/psicle-dynamo-analytics