Inside AXIS Newsletters

SEPTEMBER 2010

New Hedge Projection Module Released The newly released AXIS module meets a major need of insurance companies offering guarantees related to Equity Fund Performance who need to assess hedging strategies designed to mitigate the financial risks in these guarantees and to price and reserve for these guarantees.
Policy Audit Report A Beta version of the Policy Audit Report to be released in October will enable users to produce a single output file per policy containing various existing reports as well as specific Policy Audit Report information.
FAS 97 and SOP 03-1 in AXIS AXIS has more resources focused on providing a more robust, transparent system for performing US GAAP valuation and projecting out US GAAP financials for FAS 97 products. Users can also run stochastic SOP 03-1 projections directly within their base FAS 97 run.
New Training Videos New training videos of recent enhancements to AXIS are online. Visit our website to watch and learn more about continuous improvements and exciting developments in AXIS.
Phil's Corner: Eating Our Own Dog Food Phil takes a look at how GGY AXIS staff make extensive use of AXIS.

NOVEMBER 2009

VACARVM and C3P2 in AXIS This article provides a guide to setting up VACARVM and C3P2 calculations in AXIS.
AXIS GridLink Farm Development and Production Environments This article describes best practices to organize secure development, testing and production environments for AXIS GridLink farms.
New Training Videos New training videos of recent enhancements to AXIS are online. Visit our website to watch and learn more about continuous improvements and exciting developments in AXIS.
Phil's Corner: Quality Control Quality control at GGY involves extensive testing of AXIS to maximize the quality of each new release. Phil describes how that quality is assured and how quality control extends beyond the system.

APRIL 2009

Cost of Capital Valuation Supported by AXIS To support a Cost of Capital approach to valuation, a new valuation Reserve Method is being developed in AXIS. A new approach to determining required solvency capital is also being added.
AXIS EnterpriseLink Towards creating secure, multi-user, server-based AXIS environments for front-end model development and testing, and back-end production processing, the AXIS EnterpriseLink project is bringing all AXIS tools together, and also adding a suite of new features to provide a truly powerful data management platform that will organize the work in your department, and scale all the way to the enterprise.
Hedging in AXIS AXIS functionality will soon respond to one of the industry’s most important risk management needs: a powerful tool to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness or cost of various hedge strategies.
New Sample US Dataset A new sample dataset was introduced in version 12.4 of AXIS. This sample dataset holds examples of US specific functionality.
New Training Sessions Based on recent surveys, new training now includes Tools in AXIS to Improve Efficiency, and a separate session on the Stochastic Processing module.
New Training Videos New training videos of recent enhancements to AXIS are online. Visit our website to watch and learn more about continuous improvements and exciting developments in AXIS.
Phil's Corner: AXIS Turns Twenty AXIS turned twenty years old last month. Phil shares his thoughts on how the partners and staff at GGY make it possible to stay "ahead of the curve".

SEPTEMBER 2008

HPC/WCCS Integration HPC/WCCS integration enables AXIS users to take full advantage of all AXIS GridLink features while efficiently sharing the hardware resources of the cluster between AXIS and other HPC applications.
BondEdge Access AXIS can now access the BondEdge asset cashflow engine to generate scenario driven cashflows for asset-liability analysis under unlimited interest rate environments within the AXIS system.
Result Comparator Many improvements have been made to the user interface, speed and functionality of the Result Comparator application.
Equity Indexed Annuity AXIS now supports a full spectrum of functionality for the Equity Indexed Annuity product with a point-to-point crediting strategy.
Phil's Corner: Generating Solutions Generation routines in AXIS enable your computer to do what it does best, crunch numbers, while the actuary does what s(he) does best - make sense of the results.

MARCH 2007

Version 12 is OUT!

Version 12 was just released in February. Read this article and you might find a new feature that is right up your alley.

Experience Studies on Its Way

New experience study features are being implemented into AXIS. Here's a bit of a teaser.
Phil's Corner: Processor Farms Phil does full coverage on the features that will be a dream for your IT department. Take a read and pass it on to them!

JULY 2006

New Web Training:
Formula Tables and
General Assets

Web-based training for Formula Tables is now online. General Asset is also partial online--get a head start now!

More on Stochastic

Stochastic models are becoming more complex. Now see what we've done to make these bears easier to tame. We introduce the Embedded Block.
EBS Update / US GAAP We've been pumping up our Earnings By Source functionality. See how much we offer. Now including EBS for US GAAP.
CICA 3855 On Its Way The new Canadian accounting standard 3855 is going to affect all companies. See how this will affect your AXIS runs. Includes useful links to learn more about this standard that becomes effective October 1, 2006.
Calibrate Your RSLN So you have a pile of historical index data, and a Regime Switching Lognormal (RSLN) model in your hands. What now? Learn about our new feature that will calibrate your RSLN model parameters to the historical data.
Phil's Corner: GridLink Phil has discovered the greatest thing since sliced bread! Learn about GridLink and how it will revolutionize your processing and handle your biggest headaches with the click of a button.

October 2005

OCTOBER 2005

Web-Based Training:
General Liability

Web-based training for General Liability is now available online! Learn key skills that will help you become the next AXIS power user! 

Survey Says...

In the spring of 2005, GGY conducted a survey of our users. See the results here. Also see some results from the SOA software review.
New MCCSR Features New Mortality Risk and New Segregated Fund Capital requirements are on the horizon for Canadian companies. AXIS has geared up to make sure that our users are ready.
U.S. News: C3 Phase 2 U.S. Companies with Variable Annuities have been working hard to perform the intense calculations required by C3 Phase 2. With the October release, we are now ready to handle the requirements. 
Risk Has Class Slim down your model and reduce the number of cells by setting up Risk Classes. Who said that models can be too slim?
Phil's Corner: Distributed Batch Testing Phil is never short on words or ideas--and you'll see that in the ever-colourful Phil's Corner. This issue, Phil covers Distributed Batch Testing. This article is sure to give you a better understanding of how it works and how to really optimize it.

JANUARY 2005

Web-Based Training:
General Overview 		New for 2005! With our new web-based training facility, users can train with just an internet connection and some free time. Take the Overview Training session online at your own pace.

Staying C.A.L.M.

The Canadian Asset Liability Method (CALM) is a complex monster at times. If you've ever had any questions about how to perform CALM using AXIS, this article is sure to answer many of them. 
Doing It Stochastic As the actuarial work moves more towards computer intensive stochastic modeling methods, AXIS has kept up. This article will give you an update on stochastic processing enhancements in AXIS.
Phil's Corner: GGY Farm Phil's world-renowned column will talk about our new computer Farm and how you can rent it out to take advantage of some extra computing power at those times when you need it.