IFRS 17 Business Rules Implementation for an Insurance Company

Challenge

An insurance company needed to implement complex IFRS 17 business rules within its data processing environment. The regulatory standard required frequent adjustments to calculation logic as interpretations evolved and auditors provided feedback. At the same time, business users, particularly actuaries and finance specialists, needed the ability to define and modify rules directly, without depending on IT development cycles for every change.

The existing approach tied business rule changes to conventional software release processes, creating a bottleneck: each regulatory adjustment required developer involvement, testing, and deployment. This cycle was measured in weeks rather than days. With IFRS 17 deadlines approaching and ongoing regulatory refinements expected, this cadence was unsustainable.

Approach

Alligator Company implemented a metadata-driven business rules framework on Exasol, with Data Vault providing the audit trail required for regulatory compliance. Rather than hardcoding IFRS 17 logic into ETL jobs, the team developed a generic framework that separates rule definitions from execution logic. Business rules are stored as metadata and interpreted at runtime, allowing changes without code deployments.

To put control directly in the hands of domain experts, Alligator Company built a dedicated frontend that enables actuaries and finance specialists to define, edit, and update business rules themselves. This removed the dependency on IT for routine rule adjustments and significantly shortened turnaround times.

Data Vault is the underlying architecture and provides a complete, immutable audit trail of all data transformations, a core requirement for regulatory compliance and external audits. The computation-intensive IFRS 17 calculations run on Exasol’s in-memory analytics database, which processes complex rule sets within acceptable time windows.

Stack: Exasol, Custom Business Rules Framework, Data Vault, Git

Outcome

Actuaries and finance specialists now maintain IFRS 17 business rules through the frontend without IT involvement. The metadata-driven approach allows rapid adaptation to evolving interpretations and audit findings without software release cycles.

• Adjustment turnaround reduced from weeks to days
• Complete, traceable history of all rule applications and data transformations satisfies external audit requirements
• Exasol’s in-memory engine processes computation-intensive rule sets within the required time windows