18/05/2023

During the Salone del Risparmio 2023, the FIDA group, specialized in the development of software applications for financial services and in the distribution and analysis of financial data, launched an absolute novelty for the Italian market: a rating that will allow it to cover a vacuum in the world of insurance and to create an advanced system for evaluating and monitoring IBIPs (Investment Based Insurance Products), compliant with the IDD (Insurance Distribution Directive).

The new rating was presented in the context of the Salone del Risparmio during the conference held today in the presence of the FIDA CEO, Gianni Costan and the team that developed this tool: Luca Lodi - Head of R&D, Paola Caresio - Data Analyst and Davide Dalmasso - Head of Quant.

Investment Based Insurance Products have important overlaps with managed financial products such as mutual funds and ETFs, but the complex structure and their peculiarities have always made them particularly tricky to evaluate. The evaluation of the main quantitative and qualitative characteristics cannot therefore pass through traditional methodologies.

FIDA's challenge was therefore to identify an innovative approach in terms of analysis and data collecting in order to normalize them, evaluate IBIPs in Italy and develope a tool that could concretely help professionals and investors, but above all the issuing companies for positioning evaluation and market analyses.

At the base of the FIDA rating there is the creation of a structured, standardized and clustered owned database – the first in Italy – which includes all the products sold by companies based in Italy: more than 2700 products and 42 companies, with headquarters or secondary branches in Italy, as defined by the IVASS records (Section I and Section II of the Register of Companies and Insurance Groups).

The impressive database collects and keeps updated all the characteristics of the products and financial instruments contained within it, over 6000 holdings of all the IBIPs products analyzed, a hundred separate managements, as well as 2000 internal funds and thousands of external funds.

This impressive database collects and maintains up-to-date information on all product characteristics and financial instruments within it, over 6.000 holdings from all analyzed IBIPs, around a hundred separate accounts, as well as 2.000 internal funds and thousands of external funds.

For each product, information is organized as follows: identifying data (subscription terms, duration, insurance benefits, and options), financial aspects (underlying allocation, risks, target market, performance evaluation of the underlying assets), legal documentation, and costs—both for the insurance wrapper and for the underlying assets (external funds, ETFs, internal funds, separate accounts). The IDD, in particular, places costs at the center of the value-for-money concept, a current focus of interest for regulators, which aligns with the rating system.

FIDA IBIPs rating allows for comparison of insurance products both overall and by specific aspects, made simple through a categorization system that facilitates database exploration by grouping products according to financial similarities and through a specific search engine designed to select products and underlying assets based on their characteristics.

The entire system is highly effective for various objectives, including the relative evaluation of individual products, positioning, and market analysis across a broad range of instruments covering all asset classes and many investment themes, thereby meeting the increasingly sophisticated needs of a discerning clientele.

FIDA’s advanced system provides a synthetic and easily understandable metric, the first on the market, a cutting-edge tool that is not only unique in its kind in Italy but is also pioneering activities that are becoming increasingly important in the insurance landscape.

“The methodology we developed," says Luca Lodi, FIDA’s Head of R&D, "analyzes the main sources of value and their related costs both for the insurance wrapper and the underlying assets in which premiums are invested. The structure of these products is quite complex and varied, requiring a data standardization process and the creation of homogeneous clusters for evaluation. The rating and all intermediate metrics constitute an extremely effective system for market analysis, positioning, and product evaluation. The logic employed also aligns with the value-for-money theme, favored by the regulator, which links costs to the added value of products.”

“Innovation in the service of the financial world is our mission. Fintech and Insurtech are our fields of action,” states Gianni Costan, FIDA’s CEO. “The rating on life insurance policies produced by our research department gives us great satisfaction, as it succeeds in simplifying access to information for a rather complex sector. Today, the market can therefore rely on a new, useful tool that is easy to use, constantly updated, and IDD compliant.”

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FIDA – Finanza Analisi Dati is a group specialized in the development of high-quality software applications dedicated to financial services; it also holds a leadership position in the Italian market for financial data distribution, with particular expertise in the collection, analysis, and distribution of data and information on mutual funds.