Business intelligience vendor Cognos has launched a new performance management solution for the insurance industry that was co-developed by Suncorp.

The solution is designed to help insurance companies optimise forecasting and reporting of business segment and insurance product profitability.

Dubbed the Cognos Insurance Product Performance Blueprint, it is anchored on Cognos 8 and is based on insurance industry best practice.

"Insurers' revenue growth and profitability depend on offering good products that are priced according to exposure and distributed efficiently," according to Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, Gartner research vice president.

The blueprint capitalises on Suncorp's general insurance forecasting methodologies and expertise.

Suncorp, which is one of Australia's largest insurance groups with more than eight million customers, recently standardised on Cognos as its performance management platform.

During the development of blueprint, Suncorp contributed subject matter expertise including techniques on how to simplify revenue phasing and claims projections.

Suncorp manager of group budgeting and forecasting, John Herrmann, said the blueprint allows insurers to optimise its product mix and continuously drive profitability through both historical reporting and analysis and long-term initiative planning and forecasting.

The blueprint is the third financial services industry-specific solution launched by Cognos in the past year, with the other two offerings aimed at corporate banking and retail banks.

Cognos financial services director, Laurence Trigwell, said that in the insurance industry, it is critical to drive product performance for both individual products and the product portfolio as a whole.

"However, that demands high levels of participation and coordination between product and brand managers close to the target segments, together with finance, actuaries and senior management," Trigwell said.

"The blueprint offers an industry-validated, best practices vision of what forecast and profitability models should look like."

Cognos provides performance management solutions to more than 1,000 financial services institutions worldwide including AAA Life, AIG and Prudential UK.