The current financial crisis has placed a greater emphasis onthe need for insurance companies to implement an enterprise riskmanagement strategy. As a result, rating agencies, such as S&P,Moody's, and A.M. Best, are recommending insurers implement anenterprise risk approach to ensure an excellent rating standard.SAS plans to help insurers address these risk needs with the latestrelease of SAS Insurance Intelligence Architecture. Thearchitecture is an updated insurance data model to support riskanalysis and risk-based capital calculations.

"The basic concept of insurance is risk, but very few insurancecompanies have an enterprise risk management strategy," saysNicolas Michellod, a senior analyst in Celent's insurance practice."Solvency II and the recent financial crisis have highlighted theneed for insurance companies to implement risk managementsolutions. Essential to the success of these systems areinitiatives around data, and therefore, implementing an enterprisedata management platform is certainly a key element."

Additionally, Solvency II is beginning to loom large forEuropean insurers. Insurance companies can learn a lot from thechallenges banks faced addressing Basel II compliance. One of thebiggest issues was the volume, consistency, and quality ofavailable data to perform the risk model calculations. Thoseorganizations that initiate an enterprise data management platformwill be better prepared for the Solvency II legislation andultimately the benefits gained from risk management.