This blog is moving!

This blog is moving from its current home (Blogger) to a WordPress one which in my view offers better support. Copies of the existing content have been moved to https://inqa.com/blog/ which is where new content will  now appear. Please visit us there :)

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A (UK) Pensions Data Format Standard - let's make it happen!

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I have long thought it would be useful for there to be a standard format for exchange of data files for DB (Defined Benefit, i.e. final salary or career average revalued) pension plans, at least in the UK initially. This would make it easier for pension plans to share information (with actuarial consultants, but also other advisers e.g. buyout companies, investment analysts), not just in mergers and acquisitions, but also in risk transfers (longevity, or pensions buyouts) and would improve the comparability of analysis across companies by investors etc.  It should also reduce costs for trustees and plan sponsors, and may increase the quality of the data held. I think this both with my InQA hat on (I declare an interest in that our pensionsconcerto.com product would be well placed to use such a standard), but also from the point of view of being an improvement for the pensions industry generally.  Investment banks have standard formats for exchange of information abo...
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Migrating to the cloud (Microsoft Azure and Office 365)

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( This article was first posted on 22 Apr 2016 on a different blog site, but migrated here 06 May 2017 ). I thought I'd share a few thoughts from our experience of moving from Windows servers on which both our corporate and client websites and email were stored to the cloud, specifically Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. ​ The process itself was relatively painless (particularly for migrating email to Office 365).  The only problems we experienced were in migrating some older websites, and some webbased software which, for reasons best known to its manufacturer (whose blushes I will spare by not naming here), needed to be installed as a desktop program (albeit one with a web interface).  Both of these needed to be installed on a virtual machine (a windows server within the cloud) rather than as stand alone web apps (or app services as they are now known) in Azure.  We also had a few teething problems moving some databases from SQL Server...
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Creating a corporate dashboard (using OData and Microsoft PowerBI)

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