Conning Releases Enhanced Financial Modeling Platform

GEMS^® and ADVISE^®Versions 5.7

HARTFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Conning, a leading global provider of investment management services, risk and capital management solutions, and research to the insurance industry, today announced the release of its ADVISE^® 5.7 Advanced Stochastic Modeling and GEMS^® 5.7 Economic Scenario Generator (ESG) Platform. Building on Conning’s capital markets expertise, this latest version offers enhancements that significantly improve insurers’ ability to understand and manage investment risk. The new release also builds out the platform’s capital management capabilities, and provides performance and ease of use enhancements.

”The new versions of GEMS^® and ADVISE^® respond to the insurance industry’s need to deliver superior returns in a challenging market environment while more efficiently balancing risk and reward opportunities,” said Stephen Sonlin, CFA, Managing Director and Head of Conning’s Risk & Capital Management Solutions business. “Our goal is to help insurers meet those challenges and drive consistency in their overall performance with the development of sophisticated but user-friendly solutions such as the Efficient Frontier Analysis optimization tool.”

The new advanced Efficient Frontier Analysis (EFA) Tool works in conjunction with the capital markets capabilities of the GEMS^® ESG to provide users with a sophisticated approach to finding their optimal investment allocation strategies, mapping the asset strategies along a risk-reward frontier. The EFA tool can optimize on an asset-only basis or on an integrated asset liability basis over multi-year time horizons. Additionally, the EFA tool provides an option to optimize against the Present Value of Distributable Earnings (PVDE), as an alternate choice to optimizing against ending value.

Included in this 5.7 release are also enhancements that improve inter-operability of GEMS^®and ADVISE^® with other software applications, allowing these programs to operate seamlessly within any company’s overall enterprise risk management platform. Companies can now more readily import projected liabilities, economic variables and cash flows from life actuarial systems and property-casualty risk management applications.

Additional new business logic features include:

• Enhanced Asset and Capital Rebalancing – the Decision Module can now be used in combination with the EFA tool to make decisions regarding investments and financing at the outset of the simulation. This new functionality aligns – and rebalances -- the investment portfolio and capital structure before the simulation actually begins.
• User-Specified Credit Scenarios – the User Paths Module now allows for external credit scenarios reflecting pre-specified spreads and transitions as input for the Corporate Yield Model and the overall ADVISE^® simulation engine. Examples of using this new capability include deterministic stress testing and importing credit scenarios from other risk management applications.
• Expanded Economic Variable Coverage – further expanding the range of assumed economic variables, version 5.7 calculates expected future points on the Treasury yield curve for use by the Life Insurance Module so that they can be incorporated into point-in-time projected cash flows and discounted values.
• Poland Economy – GEMS^® 5.7 now includes the Poland Economy which has been added to our quarterly real-world parameterization service.

Notable enhancements to improve performance and ease of use include upgrades to the command line interface to improve integration with external systems and data, and improved storage and access capabilities.

About Conning’s GEMS^® and ADVISE^® Software

Conning's GEMS^® economic scenario generator enables users to simulate future states of the global economy and financial markets, including alternative assets and the pricing of derivatives. It leverages industry-leading financial models, ensuring consistency with historical performance, provides a realistic representation of extreme events and supports hedging strategies with market-consistent pricing. The ADVISE^® engine allows companies to optimize financial decision making across all interrelated aspects of their business and build a true competitive advantage through greater accuracy in decision making, regulatory and ratings agency compliance, and in the allocation of capital and resources.

ADVISE® and GEMS® are registered trademarks of Conning, Inc.

About Conning

Conning (www.conning.com) is a leading investment management company for the global insurance industry, with $88 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2012 through its global investment centers and Goodwin Capital Advisers subsidiary. The Company’s unique combination of asset management, risk and capital management solutions and insurance research helps clients achieve their financial goals through customized business and investment strategies. Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, Conning is focused on the future, providing clients with innovative solutions, leveraging its global capabilities, investment experience and proprietary research. The company is headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, with additional offices in New York, London, Dublin, Cologne, and Hong Kong.

ConningTeri James, +1-860-299-2335 (direct dial)
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Source: Conning