The Aon Centre for Innovation and Analytics (ACIA) is celebrating its 5 Year Anniversary and is reinforcing its commitment to drive innovation for its clients through the use of data and analytics to further support business growth.
Established in 2012 as the cornerstone of Aon plc’s (NYSE:AON) global investment in analytics, the ACIA gives clients new insights by leveraging data across Aon. Launched in Singapore with six employees, the ACIA has now increased its workforce in Singapore to over 100 across a broad range of skills and disciplines including PhDs in actuarial, risk modelling, financial analysis and data science.
“It is our aim to bring distinctive value to our clients, through our colleagues across the globe. ACIA has already created new products and solutions for real client problems, and going forward, we want to create more meaningful partnerships to accelerate our impact,”
said Paul Mang, Aon’s Global CEO of Analytics and Head of ACIA in Singapore.
Since launching, ACIA has developed new solutions, tools and applications in response to real client problems, leading to improved decision-making and savings. Some of these include:
- Aon Pulse: An award-winning application which allows clients to systematically manage the cost of employee benefit programmes, leading to savings of up to 15% for clients to date.
- ReMetrica: A financial modelling tool that gives clients the ability to manage insightful, risk-based financial modelling into commercial decision making. Currently used by 200 clients globally.
- Re/View: An application that utilises the data underlying USD 30 billion reinsurance portfolio of Aon’s reinsurance brokerage business. Combined with Aon Inpoint’s consulting services, the intuitive design helps reinsurers compete more effectively when providing coverage to reinsurance clients by detailing line, product and geographic market share and peer benchmarking. The solution has helped several reinsurers, including some of the largest and most-renowned in the world.
- InForm: Developed for the Investment Consulting team, which has an impact on USD 4.2 trillion of assets under advisement, the solution facilitates the process of evaluating and monitoring more than 11,000 investment products on behalf of pension and investment clients. Has been widely adopted across 13 countries and utilizes 13,000,000 data points every quarter.
- InStrategy: This tool is for investment consultants and automatically generates custom client ready collateral, along with analytics and concrete high impact strategic asset allocation recommendations to increase returns and/or lower risks. It is used by more than 170 consultants directly.
- Health & Benefits Analytics: Developed analytics solutions to support Aon’s global health practice. Models developed by ACIA in Singapore have been used by more than 2,500 clients across Singapore, China, the Philippines, the US, UK, Mexico and Canada to great effect.
Looking forward, ACIA will continue to grow its innovation capabilities across all areas of Aon’s business. With the increasing importance of bringing data and analytics-based insights to solve client challenges, ACIA is planning to increase headcount by 40% in the next five years. ACIA is currently developing its premises in Singapore’s business district to create a new space that will help to foster increased collaboration between Aon and potential innovation partners at a global level. The new area, which is targeted for completion in late Q4, will have space to host client demonstrations and events, promote teamwork and development and will be used by both ACIA as well as other parts of the Aon business to develop new solutions to client challenges.
ACIA has built a strong track record of developing dialogue between third parties, including technology businesses, university and research firms and other parts of the Aon business, to accelerate the development of solutions. The plan is to continue this trend in Asia, working with partners to bring new and intuitive solutions to market.
“The environment in Singapore couldn’t be better-suited to establishing a centre which aims to blend excellence in data and analytics with real-word client issues,”
continued Paul Mang.
“The support from the government, the quality of the workforce locally, and the emergence of a credible Insurtech sector and expertise here have been instrumental in the creation of solutions that make a difference for our clients. The ultimate aim of ACIA for next year is to build on what we’ve started and continue the great work that is being done here.”
Clarence Chua, Director (Professional Services), Economic Development Board (EDB) commented,
“Data and analytics is a key enabling capability that Singapore aims to grow to succeed in the digital economy. Aon, one of the pioneers in setting up its analytics centre, has spearheaded applications research in the areas of risk, health and retirement. We look forward to ACIA building on its presence through R&D partnerships with other corporate innovation labs, start-ups and national institutes.”
As part of a company-wide investment in data analytics, the first centre for Aon innovation and analytics opened in Dublin in 2009. Three years later the Singapore ACIA was established in order to further fulfil the requirements from clients globally for leading and relevant solutions, leveraging Aon’s unmatched data capabilities.
Featured image via Pixabay