The Blufftop Framework
The Blufftop Framework. Cash flow
projection models are already in wide use within insurance
companies, and currently emerging regulatory and accounting
requirements will turn their use into a staple of actuarial
practice. The "Blufftop Framework" refers to a
component-based design for open models, and to a model-development
platform based on that design. The design is based on
Strommen's 1997 NAAJ paper "An
Object-Oriented Design for Dynamic Simulation Models".
Blufftop LLC has used the Blufftop Framework for research
projects while steadily polishing the user interface, which we refer
to as the Modeler's Workbench. Version 1.0 was released in September 2017 and
includes all the features listed in the sidebar at the right.
In its first release the Blufftop Framework provides a model shell in which the user must define the
insurance product and required assumptions. This
blank-sheet-of-paper approach has some advantages:
- It can shorten the learning curve dramatically compared to
competing model development platforms with their long lists of
product options and features that the user must understand.
- It can alleviate the feeling of using a black box.
- It provides complete flexibility to model any possible
product and any accounting treatment. This framework could
be adapted to model liabilities of a bank, a property/casualty
insurer, a continuing care retirement facility, a pension plan,
or any collection of financial liabilities that is managed in
connection with a portfolio of invested assets.
A disadvantage is that it is a burden to start from a blank sheet
of paper when specifying an insurance product, its data
requirements, and the calculations that define policy values.
Efforts towards releases of the Blufftop Framework that include insurance
product templates to start from have been abandoned.
If you want to know more about the Blufftop Framework, let us
know of your interest by sending an email to
support@blufftop.com. If you wish, you may download a user
manual for the Modeler's Workbench, a model development platform
using the Blufftop Framework by clicking
here or read
more about the Workbench here.
Features of the Modeler's Workbench
- A model development environment that includes integrated and
ready-made modules for scenario generation, management of tables
and assumptions, investment simulation, output management and
flexible report generation.
- A data-driven product definition facility that includes a
source code generator to write much program code for a product
simulation module, leaving blanks to fill in formulas for
contract values.
- Implementation of the "one-model" concept, facilitating
support of multiple actuarial functions (valuation, cash flow
testing, corporate projections, etc.) using the same interface
to the product simulation module for a contract form.
- A facility to trace dependencies among the variables and
formulas defined by the user.
- Direct use of the C# language and the Microsoft .NET
platform. This not only provides complete flexibility to do any
kind of customization, but allows models developed using the
Blufftop Framework to be packaged for support by IT staff using
a tool familiar to them: Microsoft Visual Studio.
- A unique internal design that enables faster calculation and
reduced memory requirements compared to some commercial
models.