MongoDB Targets Insurance Risk Management

NoSQL database provider MongoDB announced that its database management system is helping to improve big data decision making and risk management in the insurance industry.

MongoDB said RMS, a provider of catastrophe risk modeling software, has selected MongoDB as the data store for RMS(one), RMS’ cloud-based, open, real-time risk management platform. RMS(one) centralises massive amounts of data and analytics that insurance companies need to evaluate the risk from global catastrophes. The company’s new MongoDB-based risk analytics solution will enable insurance companies to plan new growth strategies and manage their capital more effectively.

Comprehensive risk data

“RMS(one) is a unique platform; nothing like this has ever been built for the insurance industry,” said Philippe Stephan, chief technology officer at RMS, in a statement. “By providing enterprise-wide access to comprehensive risk information, we’re opening up a completely new way of doing business for our clients, who will benefit from greater efficiency in underwriting portfolio management.”

Stephan said RMS’ MongoDB-based platform stores more than 100 billion documents per year and will scale to support trillions of documents, representing hundreds of terabytes of data. Leveraging MongoDB’s flexible document model, RMS is able to create different attributes for risk exposure data, including detailed property, business and policy information, which vary greatly across clients. RMS(one) is currently in beta and will become generally available in spring 2014.

“Compared to technology of the past, MongoDB delivers massive horizontal scale with a highly secure, reliable and resilient back-end data store,” Stephan said. “MongoDB’s schema extensibility, ease of use and robust deployment features enabled us to rapidly develop RMS(one), moving from our current deployed enterprise product to a MongoDB-based cloud system.”

RMS(one) combines diverse data sources into a single application, providing consistently high performance at scale and secure access to the data.

“The RMS(one) platform is an ambitious project that has the potential to transform a multi-trillion dollar industry,” said Max Schireson, chief executive at MongoDB, in a statement. “As evidenced by the complexity and scale demands of this platform, MongoDB continues to be the NoSQL solution of choice to support big data applications.”

Fast adoption

Perhaps Schireson is confident in making such claims as MongoDB was recently named “Database Management System of the Year” for 2013 by DB-Engines, an online initiative to collect and present information about database management systems. DB-Engines said MongoDB has had faster adoption than any other database, is the highest ranked NoSQL database, and is now more popular than traditional database systems such as Microsoft Access, SQLite and Sybase.

Company officials said MongoDB’s position as the Database Management System of the Year follows its most successful year to date. In 2013, MongoDB’s partner ecosystem tripled in size, reflecting 350 partners, and includes strategic alliances forged with many of the world’s leading companies, such as Amazon Web Services, Capgemini, CGI Business Consulting, Cloudera, IBM, Informatica, Intel, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Rackspace and Red Hat.

In September, MongoDB announced a $150 million (£95m) funding round with top-tier investors. This investment is being used to further invest in the core MongoDB project and to support its fast-growing big data community.

“The industry is ready for innovation – NoSQL databases are profoundly changing how businesses are built and run, and it’s happening faster than anyone could have predicted,” Schireson said.

MongoDB has a thriving global community with more than 6.5 million downloads of its open-source database, 145,000 online education registrations, 28,000 user group members and 20,000 MongoDB Days attendees.

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Originally published on eWeek.