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.

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. 

As the actuarial work moves more towards computer intensive stochastic modelling methods, AXIS has kept up. This article will give you an update on stochastic processing enhancements in AXIS.

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.

With the expanding user base of AXIS, we felt it time to introduce a training tool that gives new users the opportunity to get started with AXIS straight away. After many months of work, this training tool is now a reality.

This new web-based training approach has many advantages to users: 

• Offers training on demand so you're not limited to GGY's availability and schedule
• Allows you to learn AXIS at your own pace 
• Becomes a reference tool--it gives easy access to specific topics of interest 
• Allows experienced users to quickly run through the training to reinforce existing knowledge and introduce new AXIS functionality
• Provides easy access for our global clients

We appreciate your comments and feedback. To help us continue to improve this training in the future, please send comments to Nadia Foglia.

Here's a sample screen capture from the web-based training:

No need to get excited - HELP is on the way! In fact it's already here in the form of a new on-line help topic. Just *click here* for an overview of the recommended approach to putting CALM in AXIS.

It includes many tips and techniques to allow you to make sure your CALM implementation does what you want it to, and complies with the various technical implications of the CIA standards of practice on this valuation method. (At this point our lawyers will insist we remind you that confirming compliance is your job, and that we are only pointing out some tools that should help that to happen!)

While intended to be useful for users facing a CALM project for the first time, those who have already built an AXIS process will no doubt find some useful information here too. We are always interested in fine tuning the information so if you have found easier and/or better techniques please write and let us know.

You can also find this new Help topic in your AXIS Users Guide (in the latest releases of AXIS) in a brand new book created specifically for these kinds of topics: Advanced Applications in AXIS. At the moment "How to Approach CALM in AXIS" is the only topic in this book, but we hope to add more in coming months. Of course you can also get at this topic - and any other Online Help topic in AXIS - through our Website under the Tech Support menu list on the home page.

The 11.2 release saw the introduction of a new module in AXIS that addresses the speed issue. The Stochastic Processing Module is designed to provide you with powerful new tools to model and analyse scenario sensitive products under large numbers of scenarios more quickly than ever before. These tools allow you to continue to use existing Cells to define product features and pricing/reserving assumptions, but to use the assumptions and processing logic of the cells in new ways that optimise the processing while providing powerful new reporting tools specifically designed for stochastic analysis.

Currently, the Stochastic Processing Module can only be used to model Variable Annuity and Segregated Fund products that are set up through the Annuity Module (for both pricing and valuation purposes). However, functionality to include other types of products in other modules is expected in the months to come.

The key new object in this new module is called the Block. A Block allows you to select and run multiple cells through a great number of scenarios quickly and efficiently. While a normal recalculation batch allows you to recalculate cells under multiple scenarios, the Block is designed to run in an optimal fashion, calculating and storing only the results specifically required for the stochastic analysis, and minimizing the overhead required when rerunning a portfolio of policies through multiple scenarios. Once the Block calculations are finished for all desired scenarios and cells, the Block provides new calendar year and summary report options which allow you to easily see the results under any or all scenarios. Special functions on the Block summary screen allow you to create reports showing CTEs or percentiles of any result (such as PV of cashflows or IRR) over all scenarios processed. The reports will also allow you to examine the details under each scenario within the tail of the distribution.

For those with extra computers to share the work, the Distributed Processing feature of AXIS works extremely well with the Block processing to enable very efficient reductions in runtimes for large scale models, as more helpers are made available to assist the master processor.

If you want to get more information or a demonstration of this new module, please contact Wesley Leong.

Do you have enough computer power to run your models? If you sometimes run short, we may have the answer for you down on the Farm.

Some of you may know that I used to be a sheep farmer. Many years have passed but now I have set up another farm right here at GGY HQ. This time around, it’s a computer farm. It was built to help us develop and test distributed processing and now Grid computing, working together with industry leaders Platform Computing and IBM Global Services. It can also be used to help our users to run through large calculation jobs.

Our first GGY farm was more like a hobby farm. We worked on it in our spare time. It was built by harnessing together in the evenings and at weekends the computers our developers used during the day. This was not ideal, since some of our developers might have needed access to their machines outside of working hours, and it also meant we could not use the farm during the day.

So our second farm was a custom built job. Sixteen Dell desktop computers were strung together on a dedicated network, but were strewn around the office wherever a spare network connection and a power outlet could be found. Just one of these machines was located in Victor’s office. This one acted as the Master for distributed processing, and we attached a keyboard and monitor to it to control the testing. This farm allowed us to test distributed processing for up to 16 processors.

But we are developing distributed processing now for 32 processors, and Grid processing for 64 processors and beyond. How do we test at this level? We employ a multitude of methods. First, we have used the IBM Research labs at San Mateo, California to test on 64 processors. Second, we have just bought 8 dual processor IBM Opteron e326 rack mounted servers, to bring our internal farm up to 32 processors in total. Third, from time to time we can still hook up the developer’s machines to bring us to 64 processors.

Our various farms have been instrumental in the dramatic improvements we have made to the reliability, scalability and ease of use of distributed processing and Grid processing. The latest developments include Dynamic Load Balancing, which can greatly improve run time, and Fault Tolerance, whereby AXIS can recover from network problems that previously would have led to a failure of the batch job.

We use this farm for development purposes only. We have a separate farm whose job is to run through our regular nightly source code testing. So while we sometimes need all the horsepower we can throw at a problem, at other times the farm is available to process large jobs for our clients. We have a secure upload and download facility, and ready access to every version of AXIS. If you have some long jobs and not enough time and hardware to meet your target deadlines, you can rent time on our farm and our developers can run your jobs for you. We don’t guarantee we will always have capacity for you, so it helps if you can give us some notice, but we will always try our best to accommodate you. If we have more than one client’s jobs to run, we can always split our one big farm into multiple smaller farms of 8 or 16 processors each.

If you are interested in taking advantage of the GGY farm, please call me (416 250 6777 Ex 224) or Victor (416 250 6777 Ex 237) for more details.