Company: CNO Financial Group, Inc.
Company background: CNO provides life and health insurance, annuities, financial services, and workforce benefits solutions through our family of brands and supported by our associates and agents. Our customers work hard to save for the future, and we help protect their health, income and retirement needs with 3.2 million policies and $34 billion in total assets.
Contact: Lindsay Quandt
Title: Director, IT Program Manager - LDTI
Country: United States
Award Category: Innovative Problem Solver
Tell us about the business problem you were trying to solve?
On August 15, 2018, the FASB published Accounting Standards Update No. 2018-12 (ASU 2018-12) on Target Improvements for the Account for Long Duration Contracts (LDTI). LDTI is largely viewed as one of the biggest insurance overhauls in FASB accounting in several decades. Specifically, CNO looked to SAS for help in solving for three unique business problems:
- Enhanced disclosures. Comprehensive new disclosures are required to accompany financial statements to reveal the reasons for the change in liability balances, as well as information about significant assumptions and the effects of changes in those assumptions.
- Reporting challenges. The new reports include multiple runs with different data models and assumptions, management of extensive cohort historic data, and post-run assembly of results for income and disclosures. Tight reporting deadlines place greater demands on system performance and require efficient processes
- Data storage / ad-hoc analysis – Explanation of results requires real-time drill down into underlying data and results, using a single source of data
How did you use SAS to solve that business problem? What products did you use and how did you use them?
- SAS and CNO worked together quickly after the regulation was made public to customize a SAS SubLedger Accounting Module (SLAM). SLAM had previously been utilized by SAS customers outside the US for IFRS, but CNO was the first US company to utilize and customize SLAM for LDTI. Because of that customization for LDTI, this SLAM solution was a heavy implementation lift.
- Due to the volumes of data required for LFPB attribution steps, CNO built its first native Cloud environment. Because of that, SLAM standardized actuarial accounting logic was built in the Cloud, to enable speed of complex runs, critical in a quarter close environment.
- SAS and CNO worked together to maintain the need for multiple quarters of live or mock parallel simulations. Many companies descoped this due to delays and our team adhered to our original plan, even if it made the execution more difficult. Doing this allowed the team to identify issues early and remedy them prior to Go Live. This also created a smooth transition from implementation partner to customer that was critical during a time constrained close process.
What were the results or outcomes?
CNO and SAS completed the implementation of SLAM on time, supporting our business need to complete the work in support of 1Q2023 earnings. This enabled CNO to release our earnings on time, in line with historical GAAP filing timelines.
Why is this approach innovative?
The SAS SubLedger Accounting Module (SLAM) is a new SAS product that US based customers can now utilize to solve similar problems, including the LDTI private filers in 2025.
